April already

I can't believe it has been so long since I have posted. Right now Caleb's allergies are getting hit hard. It is really sad because his face is swollen, he has dark circles around his eyes, and his eczema is flaring up. The same thing happened last year around the time he turned 2 so there must be something environmental about this time of year. He has been tested for allergies and they said he is allergic to mold but not to cedar or ash, but mold is not really high right now, so who knows. It is bad enough where people comment like today a lady at the gym said, "Oh, does he have a rash or something?" and I was like, "No, it's allergies."
The other day we went to the mall to do some shopping and Caleb found a sticker that was from a pair of pants and he told Travis and I that it was his "housand" dollars [thousand dollars.] For days he wanted to carry his housand dollars around with him. It was super funny. Travis and I were like, how does he even know what a thousand dollars are?
Today he picked up the box that our keyboard had come in and was walking around looking through it. He told me it was his "noculars" and he was looking to see if anyone needed to be rescued.
Then he went in our bathroom and closed the door while I was cooking dinner and I was like Caleb what are you doing and he came out and he had picked off the little stickers that are inside the cabinets that keep them from slamming. He said, "Look mom, an octagon!" Who knows how he learned what an octagon is.
We also had an exciting thing happen a couple of weeks ago. He finally started peddling his bike! He has a tricycle and he has been doing the scoot thing with his feet, but he was going down our driveway and the next thing I knew he was peddling around the block. His legs still get tired at times and he refuses to peddle but he is doing pretty good with it. We were super excited because he would only use one leg and get to a spot and then start going backwards but now he has figured out the mechanics of peddling all the way around.
We have been working on learning the letters and sounds of the alphabet. We use the website starfall.com. They have a letter match game on it sometimes that he loves. He also enjoys reading books on his own...he has quite a few memorized. We are moving to stories with an actual plot now, rather than books about cars, backhoe loaders, diggers, etc. This moment could not have come soon enough for me. :)
We are in the process of potty training Caleb. It is definitely a process. He has trouble because he just wants to go and play and doesn't want to stay put.
Last weekend we took him to see the movie "Hop." We had read reviews that said the movie was pretty bad, but we have so few movies that we can take Caleb to and we figured this one was pretty safe. He loved it! The character in the story plays the drums and so there was a lot of music and so Caleb spent half of the movie just standing and dancing. We had to stay after the movie that he could continue to dance through the entire credits. The boy loves to dance. He gets so intense and just shakes his bum back and forth to the music. He has started to use his arms with his dancing also which is super funny.
We are excited that we will be able to take him to Utah for his 3rd birthday so he can celebrate with his cousins. We leave in 3 weeks!

Christmas and New Years

What a wonderful Christmas we had this year! Caleb and I were able to leave the night I got off work to go to Utah for 6 days. About a week before we were supposed to leave we got some bad news...Caleb had an ear infection, a staph infection, and a mild case of the chicken pox! I took him in because he was a little lethargic and had a fever and was shocked to hear he was such a mess. Luckily we got him started on his medicine and by the time we left for Utah he was pretty well cleared up. Caleb continues to do better with flying each time we travel. This time was a little different because Travis wasn't able to take us to the airport, so I was concerned about getting all our luggage checked in, getting our car in long term parking, and getting Caleb to the terminal by myself. Thankfully our sister-in-law allows us to use one of her car seats in Utah so at least I didn't have to worry about lugging that around. After all my stressing, things went off without a hitch, and I think we timed our trip perfectly to miss the majority of the holiday travelers.

We always have so much fun in Utah. Caleb absolutely adores his cousins and this year was so funny going up to different cousins and asking them to go play downstairs with him. There is quite an age difference between he and his cousins Savannah and Jackson, but they were wonderful with him, and played cars with him and had a lot of patience with him. He also loved playing with his cousins on the DeJong side, but especially loves to play with Brynlee. We were able to eat at a lot of my favorite restaurants like Cafe Rio and Magleby's Fresh for breakfast. We also saw snow which was very exciting for Caleb. We went to the BYU bookstore, saw our Grandpa Sheen, and Caleb went to see the lights at temple square which he still talks about. Caleb also got a two story garage and a toy with animals that helps him to learn the alphabet from his grandparents. He got a tow truck. He also got a Mac Truck (from Cars) which he had to carry with him everywhere after he opened it.

We were happy to get home to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas with Travis. It was very quiet for us...the first time we've had Christmas at home. It was different, but it was nice for us. On Christmas Eve, we continued the Sheen tradition by having a Family Talent Show. My talent was baking sugar cookies, Travis read the Christmas story, and Caleb sang several songs. We aso put cookies out for Santa. This was the first year we've been able to do any of those things with Caleb so it was really fun for us. I also made a gingerbread house earlier in the month which Travis and I had decorated. It was supposed to make it to New Years but we ended up picking the candy off piece by piece until New Years Eve when all that was left was the house, some frosting, and some rock hard Mike and Ike's.

For Christmas Caleb got a bowling set, a Tball set, a Tow Truck, books, and other cars. We spent all day playing with his different toys. I was most surprised with how much he enjoyed his bowling set. Trav and I tried our hand at making Christmas dinner. We cooked our first turkey which turned out kind of weird. All of the meat looked cooked and there wasn't any pink but as Travis trimmed the meat off the inside was this liquidy meat...I don't know how to explain it. I'm not sure what happened there, but we ended up nuking some of the outside meat and throwing out the rest because it was just a little too dodgy for us. I also made rolls, mashed potatoes, jello salad, and we had a lemon meringue pie. I also made sure we had something else to eat for that evening because another Sheen tradition is having a big lunch and then not having anything to eat for dinner and driving around Christmas night trying to find any place that is open, which usually ended up being Sonic or a gas station to get dinner from.

We spent the rest of the break just hanging out together and then on New Years Day went hiking at a place here called Enchanted Rock. I love the outdoors but I am not a big hiker. We had kind of felt like that Caleb had been getting into quite a bit of mischief over the break and we wanted to take him somewhere that he could just run around and we could let him go and not have to constantly be telling him "no." The hike was short but it was almost vertical at places and so we stopped often to catch our breaths. The view was great but it was super cold on the top of the rock so we just spent a little time up there and then came back down. We decided to swing by Fredricksburg since we were only about 20 miles away and had never been there and get something to eat for dinner. They have a main street that looks a lot like Park City Main Street so I just had Travis park the car and we started to walk down the street looking for something. We couldn't find a single restaurant that looked like something we wanted to eat and we were all starting to reach our limit, so I told Travis Caleb and I would sit on a bench and that he should quickly look at a few other restaurants to see if one of them would work. He left and then an LDS senior missionary couple walked by. I called out to them and begged them to tell us where a pizza or mexican restaurant was so that we could eat. We chatted with them for a bit and they suggested a pizza place that was pretty famous in the town. The only problem was that it was on the complete opposite side of our car so we had to walk all the way back to it. All the way back, Travis was like "Let's just get there" and I was like "Are you mad at me?" because I was the one who suggested we got to Fredricksburg in the first place. When we got to the restaurant it was nice and warm inside, the servers were super quick with the food, and we all enjoyed our food so that was a relief. After that we loaded up for the 2 hour drive back to our house. It was something different and was fun for us, because we really haven't had much chance to see a lot of the outdoor things in the area.

Overall we had a great holiday season, tried some new things on our own, and loved having time to spend with family. Caleb still says to me from time to time that he "misses his fambily" and I tell him were right here, and he says "I miss my cousins." We are blessed to have such a wonderful extended family.

A Conversation with Caleb

Tonight I picked Caleb up from his bath and carried him like a baby into his room to put him into his pajamas. Here is the conversation we had.
Me, "Caleb. I'm not going to be able to carry you like this very much longer. You are not tiny anymore."
Caleb, "I'm not a tiny caterpillar." (A book we read is called The Very Tiny Caterpillar)
Caleb, "I'm Caleb. Caleb Travis DeJong."
It just struck me as so funny. Maybe you had to be there.

Disneyland Souvenir

So when we were at Disneyland we wanted to bring home some kind of a CD that had some of the music from Cars with the actual people singing the songs from the movie. We found a CD that was the Best Songs from Pixar movies. It has songs from Cars, Monsters Inc, Toy Story, Incredibles, etc. It has been a blessing and a curse. It is a blessing because we get to hear Caleb singing along with "Our Town" from Cars which is about the sweetest thing I have heard in my lifetime. The curse is that Caleb realized there was an instrumental song from Incredibles that he loves that he is always requesting. It is an 8 minute entirely instrumental song that we have to listen to constantly. Aarrgh! It is pretty funny because he frantically dances to it. Today he was shaking his body in his car seat and he kept saying, "I'm shaking, momma."

Videos

This is my first try at uploading a video to the blog. This is a clip of Caleb at the Playhouse Disney show at Disneyland. He was dancing like crazy the entire time. He LOVED the show!

2 and a Half

Caleb is now two and a half. He has turned into Mr. Independent. He is always saying, "I can do it all by yourself." (He means "myself.") He is really committed to climbing into booster chairs and car seats by himself. He also wants to buckle his own car seat. He refuses to let us get a band aid for him but has to open it and put it on himself. Whenever he does something, he shouts "I did it" and runs up to get a high-five. Watch out if you try to help him in any of these tasks because you are asking for a melt down.
We haven't had much in the way of "terrible twos" but lately Caleb has been throwing more fits, throwing toys, hitting me or Travis...he definitely has quite a temper.
For Halloween he dressed up as a UT football player. We took him to the ward trunk or treat on Saturday. I was unaware how seriously people take Trunk or Treat here and was a little embarrassed by our undecorated trunk/ lack of lawn chairs/ lack of spooky music. I also took Caleb trick or treating around our neighborhood on Sunday. He would say "trick or treat," "thank you," and "happy hawwoween" to everyone. He also loved the jack-o-lanterns and still talks to me about them and how scary they were. The funniest thing was there was a little girl walking around in a pumpkin suit (she must have been barely walking) and Caleb walked up to her and leaned down to talk to her and gave her a hug. Caleb has always been pretty interested in babies. We only lasted about 45 minutes because it ended up being a lot of walking, so I brought Caleb back to bathe and go to bed and figured I'd still answer the door for trick-or-treaters while I was getting him ready for bed. I had him out of the tub and wrapped in a towel when the door bell rang. I told him to stay put and went to hand out candy and there were like 20 people at the door. I started handing out candy and then heard a ruckus amongst the trick or treaters and turned to see Caleb streaking all over the house. I had to close the door except a crack and finish handing out candy.
We also got the chance to go to Disneyland in October. We visited the beach and then spent five days at the park. Caleb loved it. He still talks about it all the time. The things he mentions the most are the plane ride where the plane took off and landed on the ground and he talks about characters he saw in the Pixar parade like the robot walking around with Jack Jack on his head. He loved the rides. He really liked the car ride where you drive the cars around a track and he loved the Buzz Lightyear ride where you shoot aliens. He also loves to talk about the Winnie the Pooh ride and how Winnie the Pooh was all dirty from the honey and how that was so funny. Personally I loved the water rides the most even though I got soaked on the rapids ride and it was pretty cold outside. It was so nice going with our cousins and Grandma and Grandpa DeJong. It really made it that much more fun with us to be with family.
The saddest thing about the trip is that we didn't want to take our new nice camera so we took an old camera and when we got there it wouldn't work. The battery was gone. We even tried recharging it and that didn't help. I mean who goes to Disneyland for the first time without a camera?!? Luckily we have pictures that Mandy and Grandma DeJong took that I will post when we got a hold of them.

Singing

Caleb loves music. He has always enjoyed watching "The Little Einsteins" on TV and has always been really receptive to music. He went through a quiet time where he would listen to us sing but wouldn't participate even when we tried to get him to sing along. He has recently started singing on his own and it is so much fun to hear. This morning we woke up to the sound of Caleb singing in his bed. He was singing "High note" up high and then "low note" down low which is something he's learned from Little Einsteins. He repertoire contains the ABC's, Twinkle twinkle little star, and Itsy bitsy spider. He will also engage in "Popcorn popping" and sometimes the theme song from The Little Einsteins.
He also loves to dance. Right now he loves hearing the song "Hey Soul Sister" and will be like, play the "heeey, heeeey" song. Then he dances around like a madman. His moves consist of standing in one place and moving his butt back and forth but he is beginning to try to move his arms sometimes also.