A Tongue Like Mommy ...

Caed has been using his tongue a lot more this week, and as of yesterday, he started sticking it out when he's concentrating on something. Sounds strangely similar to someone else you may know .... And no, it's not Michael Jordan. He'd have to watch old VHS of the Dream Team or Chicago Bulls for that. (That may be where his mama got it though :).

Coldplay Concert Raleigh

I was waiting for this for almost a year (and at the time I didn't even know they'd be coming to Raleigh) ... yep, it was the Coldplay concert last night ... what a great show! I definitely have a place in my heart for Coldplay, especially since almost a year ago, little Caed entered this world to the tunes of Viva La Vida streaming from our iPod setup in our labor & delivery room ... and to kick off his birthday month, we got to go see them in concert, how cool!

Caed stayed at GG's last night, so unfortunately he didn't get the chance to experience Coldplay first hand, but it sounds like he had a fun evening just the same hang'n with GG, Champ and Tucker. He even ended up having his first slumber party ... what more could an 11-month-old want? Brad and I had planned to pick him up after the concert and just transport our sleeping baby from GG's back home. But when the concert traffic didn't allow us to get home until after midnight, we decided to let Caed just stay over, and it worked out great! (Except for the fact that he woke up at 6:30 am ... meaning that I had to drive over to bring his breakfast at 7:15 this morning and then take him home.) Oh well, all in all, I don't mind a bit ... this slumber party opened doors for many new possibilities and marked the 2nd successful night that I didn't have to nurse him to sleep ... he just drank his milk from his CamelBak and went to bed (well ... and with a little cuddling on the couch with GG and a few minutes of TV.)

But back to the concert ... we had a really great time. We went with Jason and Amy and then ran into Jumbo and Lisa, so the company was great, and we even got pretty good lawn seats (well, until we found out that the 2 people sitting in front of us were saving seats for 5 more people, all of which had lawn chairs to sit in ... but we ended up standing for the 2-hour Coldplay show any way, so it didn't really matter.)
I haven't been to too many concerts in my life, but I think this one has been my favorite so far. The music was obviously great,Chris Martin is a great entertainer, and the videography and lighting effects were really neat. Plus, we even got a free CD, Left Right Left Right Left. It's a great compilation of the songs they're singing on this tour.

Here's some of the footage:














A Sneak Peek of Viva La Vida (my camera isn't working correctly these days, so I couldn't zoom ... just enjoy the music (and the girls singing next to us):



A Sneak Peek of Lost:



A Snippet of Billy Jean Cover (they actually played at a remote stage half way up the lawn for this one and a few other numbers ... very cool):

A "New" Play Area

So ... I'm not sure if I mentioned it in my previous post or not, but Caed is in to EVERYTHING. The house has been baby proofed for a while now, but there's only so much you can do to keep him away from floor lamps and electrical cords ... especially in our small place! (I even rearranged the living room furniture to barricade off the lamps and cords, but he was still squeezing by!) So, toward the end of last week, I was at my wits end ... it was 7:30pm, Brad and I had just finished dinner and Caed was hanging on our legs to get our attention as we finished eating (between this and chasing him from lamp to lamp and taking him away from the entertainment cabinet) ... I was exhausted! Brad and I came to the conclusion at that moment (thanks to suggestions from my mom) that Caed needed some boundaries, and we couldn't agree more.
Brad immediately scoured the Raleigh Craigslist and Amazon.com for good deals on super play yards. We had priced them out about a month ago, but didn't think they were totally necessary ... so we didn't get one. It may have been a good idea then! As I was on the phone with Erika to get the name of the brand they have (they use theirs outside while they're doing yard work), she mentioned that since they were heading out of town, we were welcome to use theirs for the week ... what a blessing!!! We drove over immediately and picked it up.

I couldn't advocate more for boundaries now. The "new" play area or cage (ha) is wonderful and Caed does really well with it. He's obviously not in it all the time, but when I'm in the kitchen cleaning up or getting a meal ready, it's perfect. He can just sit down or stand or scale the walls of the play area and play with his toys, and I don't have to worry about the things he's getting in to. Or, even when I'm eating my breakfast or he's finished with his dinner and we're not quite done yet, it's a great place for him to go to have his space. But even last night, we had about an hour to play before he went to bed, and the two of us (Brad's in California for work) just sat in there and played. We'd play together for a bit and then he'd venture off into the corner to play by himself. It's so wonderful and I don't have to constantly pull him away from the things he's not suppose to be in to or be on all-day "NO" patrol. This way, I can save my "no's" for the times when it's really important and as he gains a deeper understanding of what "no" means, and how he's suppose to listen and obey his parents, we'll be able to make greater strides and not get frustrated over the things that he doesn't quite get yet or that we can't figure out how to communicate yet.

Plus, I think the play yard, in addition to his morning reading time, will help him develop a sense of independence and reduce his "clingyness" in this stage of life right now.

By the way, Caed's wearing his new soccer jersey in the picture above that we got him the other day. I think it's sooo cute ... and he and Brad wore their white jerseys to church on Sunday. :)

Happy 11 Months Caed!

Good grief, where has the time gone! As I was filling in the most recent pages of Caed's baby book last night and looking through each month's milestones and pictures from birth to now, I'm amazed at how he's daily transforming from a baby into a little boy. His face is thinning out, he no longer has 3 chins, he's growing taller and his mobility, coordination and baby babble is increasing every day! He can go from laying down to sitting up to crawling to standing in no time ... and then when he wants to reverse, his sitting skills are becoming more refined. (Well, he still just plops right down on his boo-tea, but it's a lot more graceful than it use to be :) ... that's more than I can say for myself sometimes :).

With all that said, I can't believe that Caed's 11 months. (He actually turned 11 months on Saturday, but this is the first time I've had a chance to blog about it since then.) At 11 months, as I said above, his mobility, coordination and babble is increasing all the time. One moment he's sitting right in front of you and then next minute, he's standing up scaling the wall, shouting "ba ba ba" on the opposite side of the room ... and to get there, he either crawled, rode his tractor (which he can get off and on for the most part by himself these days) or pushed his little mail cart. Fortunately, our living space is not too large, so he can't get too far without me realizing where he is ... but because everything is fairly compact, it's very easy for him to try and pull the floor lamps down, yank the hanging blinds down, try to climb Aslan's perch or "sneak" into the entertainment cabinet and pull out all kinds of surprises (cables, batteries, who knows what else ... it's kind of a catch-all cabinet right now), so he definitely keeps us busy ALL the time!

One fun thing that we like to do now, is to sit in the hall, close all the doors and roll or throw the ball back and forth. His coordination is getting much better ... he even threw the ball with one bounce yesterday ... and we can keep that up for a few minutes consectively. He gets so excited when he sees the ball and if I grab it and crawl toward him, he crawls toward me in full force and laughs the whole way until he bonks you in the head (Brad taught him that ... it's cute now, but just wait until preschool or something when all he does is bonk kids in the head with his noggin!)

As far as what he's eating these days ... it's become a lot more fun because up until now, he hasn't had any food allergy issues, so we bend the 4-day wait rule a bit and give him new things a little more often. Let's see, he's eatting black beans and kidney beans, apple sauce, cashew butter or tahini toast in the mornings and leftovers for snack, prunes, blueberries (he LOVES these), pieces of fresh cherry, sweet potato cupcakes (thanks to Mason's 1st birthday ... see picture to the left), whole wheat, blueberry pancakes (don't ask Brad about these ... they didn't taste so great on our end), cheese quesadillas ... oh and sweet potato & spinach quesadillas, and he tried a few bites of my vegan oatmeal raison cookie yesterday at Whole Foods (I don't think Caed will have a problem with sweets).


And finally, in the middle of all his babble, he has finally associated "ma ma" with me (yay!), as well as communicate "all done", "more", and maybe "please" through the sign language that we've been teaching him. I think we confused him on the "all done" sign though, because we realized that he associated "all done" with taking off his bib ... that's why we taught him that sign to begin with because he would just rip off his bib any time throughout the course of a meal. So, we tried to teach him that he could take off his bib when he was all done, but after a while, we realized that when we said, "all done", he would rip his bib off. Over the last week, we've made progress to correct it, but at least he understands the concept, and he's much better at keeping his bib on throughout the duration of a meal.

Oh, and one last note, Caed has 7 teeth ... yes, 7 and I'm sure that the 8th one will be on it's way soon! The picture above gives you a pretty good view of most of them ... including the soggy Cheerio.

Future Baseball Star?

From the looks of Caed's LEFT-HANDED throwing arm, a future baseball star might be in our midst. It all started a few weeks ago when he and I were sitting on the floor attempting to roll a ball back and forth. Although it seemed as if it were an accident when he pushed the ball back to me ... after several consecutive rolls, I realized that everything he was doing WAS intentional. Now, he can roll several different sized balls back and forth, and has graduated to throwing!


As you can see, he throws smaller balls fairly well, but when it takes two hands to throw, he can't quite get it out of his hands in time to throw forward.

It's funny how impressionable Caed is right now. We were at the pool yesterday, and we were playing with a 3 1/2-year-old girl and she wanted to play catch with Caed's ball. What an arm she had! She would take the ball over her head and launch it forward. I would catch the ball for Caed and then he would do the best he could releasing it from both hands. (The ball was too big for one hand.) Later on that evening at community group, we were playing on the floor and low and behold, guess how Caed was trying to throw the ball? With both hands over his head! Unfortunately, he didn't have the same outcome as the little girl and the ball fell behind him each time. But the look of determination on his face was priceless.

Look What Caed Can Do ...

Almost immediately after we returned from Atlanta last Monday (6/31), Caed hit the floor crawling. Then, just a few days later his steps were getting a lot more steady for walking. (He was taking steps with us as we held his hands and cautiously scaled the couch to the footstool and vice versa. He even pushed the stroller around the backyard last week while I steered.) But once we stopped to visit Erika and Mason on Monday and Caed got to use Mason's push cart, it was all downhill from there. Mason decided to push his little car cart around the house and Caed took off right behind him pushing the other cart (a little less certain about the turns than Mason). It was sooo cute! I wish we had a video.

Erika let us take the cart home and look what he's doing with it:

Earlier yesterday morning before I took this video, I left Caed in the living room to play while I made a pitstop. I heard faint whimpering and so I said, "Caed, I'm in here buddy, it's ok." And low and behold, a few seconds later, he pushed the cart out of the living room, halfway down the hall and into the bathroom to find me ... doding Aslan's food and water dish. I was so proud of him for coming to find me, but when I really think about it ... now that he's found me once, he'll be sure to find me again, and I'm afraid that my few minutes of privacy are over!

This isn't related to walking, but I took this picture yesterday and thought it was a classic Caed face at this stage in life. (Funny, I have a picture from our Puerto Rico trip, April '08, of me making a similar face. I wonder where Caed gets this from?)

Splish Splash

We bought a new pool for Caed yesterday. He loves the water and played in a similar one with Mason at the Lizotte's house a few weeks ago, so we thought that it would be fun to have one of our own to use in "our" backyard. We have quite a bit of space out there, but with a 10 month old, you can't just hang out back there with nothing to do, so for the summer, a pool is a great option.

Caed loved the pool, but sadly the mosquitoes loved Caed too. We'll need to figure out a solution for this before we go back out there. But ... we still had fun today!

When Caed had enough of the water, he decided it would be fun to push the stroller around the backyard. All I did was stand behind him to make sure he didn't have any major spills, and he did all the walking himself! I can't believe it! He's growing up SO fast!