Party #2 and Trick-or-treat

(Sorry in advance for the wonky font sizes--Blogger has not cooperated with me the last couple of nights and I finally give up.)
On the weekend after his birthday, Callum got to experience his second birthday party to be able to celebrate with my side of the family. Not that our families don't get along, but our house just isn't big enough to accommodate both sides at once. I don't think Callum was upset, though, since it meant more partying with presents and cake!
He definitely was more alert this time with opening his presents. I guess he just needed to practice first to get the hang of it, although his favorites were definitely the cards people gave him.

This time we did cake instead of cupcakes, and he was definitely more curious with it, but not much made it into his mouth. Apparently eating cake is so last week and all the cool kids squish it instead.
Obviously there was no shortage of people to take pictures of him eating cake!
One of his favorite presents was the Weeble treehouse Grammy and Grandpa got him--he shrieked any time someone would turn the crank for the Weebles to slide. Now he's learned how to get the noises to go just by pressing the button, so he does that to find a song to dance to.

Enjoying Papaw time at the party.

Hmm. Maybe the bat and ball set Uncle Andy D. got him wasn't such a good idea after all. Wonder if the set comes with a new flat screen if needed then?

In keeping with the theme, Callum went as an elephant for Halloween and we visited a few houses. He didn't get any candy, but we sure enjoyed it! He did get some animal crackers and a book to enjoy, though.


For his one-year stats, he is 29.5" long and 21 lbs., 11 0z. Still a smaller peanut, but growing healthy and steadily. We'll definitely take it considering he's been extremely healthy in his first year and generally quite happy. He's also added one more tooth, putting him at a whopping total of five. Not bad considering two months ago he didn't have any, and we've been fortunate he has been pleasant overall in dealing with them. Today he got his latest round of vaccines and took them like a champ. It was sad to have him screaming in my lap for them, but I think for me it was more painful to watch him later this evening yank off three of the Band-aids without remotely flinching--I wish I had that willpower when it came to ripping them off!
We also took some time to enjoy the nice weather before it fast becomes winter!

Look Who's One!

Callum is one today!

It's amazing how fast time has gone and it was already a year ago when this cutie was born. To think he's gone from this:

To this:

Some of his current favorites right now include reading, eating anything and everything (the only thing he doesn't like so far is red pepper, and his current favorite is cottage cheese), zooming everywhere, playing with his toys, giving hugs, and playing with wind chimes. He's not walking yet, but he can cruise along the couches and prefers to be cautious before trying anything new. His current future profession seems to be something along the lines of researcher or professor, and he already has his "office" set up and ready to go for studying the fine art of peekaboo.
Callum is also finally up to four teeth, although he's very shy about showing off the bottom ones and the top two have just poked through within the last couple of weeks.

On Saturday he had his party with the Green side of the family and seemed to enjoy it. He wasn't too sure of unwrapping, but very carefully studied all of the presents as we helped him open them.
His cousin definitely had tons of fun with the tissue paper, though!

Especially since Callum gets two birthday parties and he's only one, I didn't go all out for a theme, but I did try to incorporate elephants for the cupcakes.

He wasn't too sure of eating a piece of elephant on Saturday.

He seemed to really enjoy the cake today, except for a couple of uncertain faces.

Here's his present from us. It takes up the entire bathtub since he still enjoys the kiddie tub, but he didn't seem to mind.

We also had a lot of fun this weekend hanging out. I had fall break and Scott took Thursday and Friday off, too, so we were able to do some quality family time. We also carved our first pumpkin. Callum wasn't too sure about scraping out the inside, but he was a fan of the finished product.

It wouldn't be a monthly post without a Hey Hey picture, and here's the best one we could get. Callum definitely doesn't like to sit still for them these days.

Happy Birthday Daddy!

Happy birthday Scott! Today he is the ripe old age of 29, and to celebrate, we've been eating peanut butter and jelly cupcakes (not nearly as good as the ones from Trophy in Seattle, but still pretty good) and had peanut butter pasta--do you see the theme here?

Scott and Callum were able to get some good daddy/son bonding time in honor of the birthday. I love the expression on Callum's face!



I know I'm in the minority here in the Green house, but I'm glad that the last couple of days we've finally had some fall weather. I was beginning to think that all we'd ever wear was shorts and we'd never have to worry about long sleeves. We did, however, finally break out the long pants, and he's worn his first long-sleeve pj's in quite a long time.
It's been a pretty busy last month, but things have been good. Callum has been living it up and hit a lot of milestones including popping his first two teeth at the same time on the fashionably later side a couple of weeks ago, pulling up on to everything and learning how to safely maneuver back to sitting without hurting himself, and he's currently fascinated with pointing at everything he can. He also decided to start "regular" crawling at the beginning of the month (he had been army crawling for a while and we assumed that's all he'd do since he was so adept at it, but apparently he decided the other way worked better and kept his clothes cleaner). Unfortunately it also makes him a bit faster so we have to keep a closer eye on him.

This is the standard finger-pointing and reaching to grab look Callum is often sharing, although at least the face isn't always this serious looking.

Scott's parents and sister came to visit for Reegan's baptism over the weekend, and they stopped by to celebrate Scott's birthday. Callum was able to talk them into reading stories to him and I was able to get a picture of him with Grandma. This one is The Foot Book if you couldn't see all the feet.
Sporting a new haircut. I've not had much practice so it still needs a little work, but at least he can see out of his eyes now. It really isn't that uneven (at least I don't think so) but just looks like it in the picture.
Eleven months old--it's hard to believe Callum will be a year old in less than a month!
And so Lola doesn't feel too left out, she joined in on the fun.
Mr. Mischievous is his new name.

Callum's new play land. I was curious to see how he would react to being in the laundry basket after trying to climb in, and apparently he decided it was a lot of fun. Either that or he was just humoring me for a few minutes.

August

We've officially survived the first days back to school here in the Green house. It's been a bit of an adjustment, as always, but so far things have been going well. And on the plus side, I've almost made it to my first three-day weekend already!
With the start of school, we haven't really had time to do anything too exciting lately. Right now we're just trying to keep up with kiddo. He's definitely getting into everything and exploring everything he can around the house. His favorite method of moving is the army crawl, which he's been doing well for the last few weeks.
Here's Callum's ten month picture with Hey Hey. He does normally have clothes on, even though this is month two of taking the pictures without clothes. We just almost forgot the picture and by the time we realized, his outfit was sporting dinner.



Here are some pictures just for his Uncle Andy D. They aren't the best lighting, so we'll work on some more, but at least he has the fun Yellowstone outfit!

Back to School

It's been a fun summer in the Green house, but like most fun things, summer break has officially come to an end. I start back to work tomorrow, and the kids come Wednesday. It's been a fun summer and a blast to get to stay home with Callum. I'm definitely not looking forward to returning to the days of a 5 a.m. alarm.
Callum's preparing for school, too by catching up on some summer reading.
I'm also proud of the way he's been working hard on his words and learning what school is like from Brother and Sister Bear (and he's so smart he can even read upside down!). Too bad he doesn't realize that he's not going to school with Mommy.


Overall we haven't done anything special the last month or so. We just returned from a weekend visiting family in Louisville, and otherwise we've been relaxing and doing little things around the house.
Here's Callum's official 9 month pictures with Hey Hey, just a bit late on the posting :). They were taken on his nine-month birthday though! His check-up went well, too. He's 18 pounds and 27 1/2 inches long and everything else looked great according to the doctor.

We've also realized how uneventful Callum is when trying new things. We started giving him a sippy cup and he instantly picked it up without a problem. So much for the funny moments of watching him figure out what to do with it!
Bath time is still one of his favorite activities.
He's not much of a cuddler, but he does give great hugs!

And just because we think he's the cutest thing still (and we're totally not biased at all!), here are some good shots of him from the past few days.

Friends and Food

It's been a busy last few days in the Green house, so I'm trying to do a better job at keeping up to date on here. We've been blessed to have some fun, quality time with friends recently. My friend Luana, whom I worked at summer camp with, was here to visit in between a conference and a wedding. I haven't seen her in six years (I can't believe it's been that long!) and it was so much fun to be able to catch up. It reminded me how fortunate I am to be able to be close friends with her even though we don't get to see each other very often, although Scott and I are already trying to figure out when we can visit her in Australia.

We were also able to spend some time with our friend Carrie, and Callum got some great reading attention, which he loved as usual. He's so fortunate to have such a great godmother!

As many of you know, food is an important part of being a Green. So far, minus not liking apples initially, Callum has easily proven himself to be a worthy green. He loves eating food, especially veggies. Avocado and peas are probably his current favorite, although this weekend he was able to try a new food. Beets! We have been receiving batches of vegetables as part of a CSA program, and he tried some of the beets they gave last week. He loved them, although now since he thinks he can feed himself, it definitely makes for a large mess!