Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Double Digits!

Another sharp outfit. This one is a gift from Aunt Angela. So sweet!

Our little boy is 10 months old!! People always say that the first few years go by too quickly, and they are so right. I can't believe our tiny baby is going to be 1 soon! Thankfully I have two more months of maternity leave and I plan to fully enjoy every minute of it. Especially the minutes under the sun in Barbados!!

Last night my dad and Eric Leblanc were in town to see Alan and Kyle play with David at the Carleton. This is a great venue for musicians because no one is allowed to talk while the band is playing, which is basically my dad's dream show. It was a really great time. Lydia and Nick and a few other friends joined us and the band was amazing, as always.

I was so happy that Katrina had offered to babysit for us, but I admit I was a bit worried about how it would go. I definitely spoke to soon on the sleep improvement front in my last couple of blog postings. After catching a cold and spending a week in Fredericton, Cale is back to waking frequently and has basically reverted to sleeping with me for most of the night. This is going to change starting tonight, but in the meantime I was really worried that he would be a bit of a nightmare for Katrina and her roommates. I dropped him off with lots of warning that he may not sleep at all and headed for the show. I was very happy when I called to check in during set break that although he wasn't sleeping, he had been very happy and having a great time. So far, so good. Then during the encore (my favorite song Pair of Shoes which you can see here) I heard my phone vibrate. My stomach dropped. I was sure they had been going through an hour of crying and finally broke down and called me. I glanced down at the text and read 'he's been sound asleep for awhile, so take your time'!! Whooooohooo...what a relief! When I went to pick Cale up he was sound asleep, in Katrina's arms on the couch!! I should have taken a picture! Apparently he was great all night and then just wore himself out and slept happily with her while the girls watched a Christmas movie! When I left they said the best thing I could have heard 'We can't wait to babysit him again!' Thanks Katrina!!!

Here are a few pics of Cale's latest trick - trying to stand on his own.

So proud of himself!

This takes concentration

Going down (aka Elvis legs)

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Daddy's gift from Scotland

Best dressed in the family, hands down. Thanks, dad!

Friday, November 19, 2010

Home, home again

Someday these will all be mine!!
So good to be here when I can. Alan is on tour in the UK for a week, opening for Jools Holland and playing to crowds of several thousand in Glasgow, Aberdeen and Leeds. That means Cale and I are back in Fredericton for a week. We've been havnig lots of fun times with the grandparents, cousins and other baby friends. As you will see below, he has learned a few new tricks over the past couple of days. Tomorrow I'm off to Cocagne with 14 ladies for Lydia's stagette party! Should be a blast.
Enjoying Linda's new glass tables

Thankfully, we don't have stairs at home

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Sneakers and sleepers


Well, Alan and I decided it was time to take the final step in our relationship - matching shoes! If only they had kids sizes, all three of us would be sporting new kicks!! No one has commented on our matching foot wear yet, but we've definitely received a few approving glances (at least we interpreted them that way) so we are feeling like hip, young parents again!

I didn't know if I would ever write this - but Caleb slept through the night! From 8-6. This is a hugely significant event in our lives and has taken weeks of hard work to finally get to this point. I think just being at home for a month helped us get into a good, consistent routine, but we also held firm to our no night time feeding and no picking up rules. The successes have been gradual to get us to this point. For the first several nights if Cale woke up, we'd go to his room and rub his back until he fell back asleep. Then we began letting him try to fall back to sleep on his own, which he seemed quite ready to do and never cried for more than a 5 minute period. Now if he wakes up at night he is able to settle himself back to sleep quickly and we don't have to go into his room at all. Yay for sleep!!!

It feels so good to know that once he is down, he will stay down instead of just waiting for him to wake back up in an hours time. It gives Alan and I our evenings to ourselves and already I'm sleeping more soundly and feeling much more rested than I have for well over a year. Now, let's hope we can keep this up when I head back to Fredericton for a week.

Bedtimes are no trouble for this grown up boy!

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Rain, rain, go away

I want to go outside and play!

Grampy Greg and Grandmama Linda were in town during this wet weekend. It was their first experience with stormy weather in the Cove and although they enjoyed looking out at the breaking waves, my dad admitted to feeling a bit seasick watching the rough water! The highlight of the weekend was taking Tyvonn to watch the St. Thomas hockey team play against DAL on Friday night. My dad knows the STU coaches so he was able to get the players to sign a stick for Tyvonn and we also arranged to meet the entire team at Tim Horton's before the game. STU ended up losing in overtime, but it was a pretty special evening for Ty.

Caleb is now 9 months and one week old. He weighs 24 lbs and is in the 90th percentile for height and weight. He loves exploring everything around him, although he has unfortunately picked up the world's most annoying habit - grinding his teeth! He seems quite pleased to have a new sound in his growing repertoire, but it is incredibly difficult to listen to!

How can I be 9 months old already??

I'm still not ready for a full sleep update. We had been doing really well, but things have once again regressed into frequent night wakings. We have completely stopped feeding him or picking him up when he wakes at nights, which led to 3-4 nights of long stretches of sleep, but he is now waking every 2 hours again. Booo. Even though a quick back rub puts him right back to sleep I was hoping we'd be much further along after 12 nights of trying. It is a bit frustrating, but hopefully we will see improvements again soon.

Reading a book before bedtime. If he's tired enough, he'll even sit still for a few minutes!

Monday, November 1, 2010

Halloween

Our 8 tooth Caleb pumpkin

Cale had a great first Halloween. We spent the evening in town to pass out candy and have a nice dinner with our friends Cate and Jordan. Cale happily munched on tofu, roasted red peppers, noodles but no candy! We were laughing at some parents who were trick or treating with babies even younger than Cale. There is no way the baby is eating all the candy...maybe Alan and I should've taken him out to stock up on treats for ourselves! We didn't have a clever costume for Cale this year, but we couldn't resist using some things from around the house to do a little photo shoot.

Elmer Fudd

Our good friend and bassist Kyle Cunjak