Adventures in Childcare

Easton is ALL OVER the place now - crawling and standing everywhere! I really have to watch him...he's already climbed up the bottom stair and also climbed up onto a box. The bathroom and laundry room door need to be closed, otherwise he's in the bathroom and I'm afraid he'll topple down the one step into the laundry room.





Calder loves to help me bake, especially when it's something he likes - like chocolate chip cookies. The other day we made cupcakes, entirely too many, but it was fun. I only got pics of Calder helping with the baking cups - Lightning McQueen, dontcha know - and we still haven`t iced them all, but purple, blue and red icing is waiting, to top it off with sprinkles. Yum! Maybe we`ll do that this afternoon....after the gym. ;)

Trying new things

Easton has been trying to stand on his own lately. He gets as far as up on all fours, but I think it's great! He's only been crawling for 2 weeks now, and is already into everything, exploring and crawling all over the place.



Easton also got to try Cheerios on the weekend, and he loved them! It was so cute trying to see him put them in his mouth...his pincer grip still isn't well developed, so he was managing to get the Cheerio into his palm, and trying to flatten his palm against his face, thus getting it into his mouth. Needless to say, a lot ended up on his lap. :) But I helped him out. :)

Crawling like Crazy

Easton learned to crawl on Victoria Day this year - Monday, May 24th - that was only 2 weeks ago and already he's a pro. He pulled to a stand the next day, and now does it with ease. Here's some shots of him (as good as I can get) as he crawled around our Family Room carpet the other day.

Standing up on his own

The other day, Calder stood up on his own without needing to grab anything to pull to a stand. I think that the crawling days are mostly over, and this makes me sad and happy at the same time. What a conflict of emotions! He has no need to crawl now that he knows how to walk and to stand with no help. My baby is definitely a toddler now.

And toddle he does - he fairly zooms around the house. That and his dancing (I wish I could get it on video, but he is a camera hog and as soon as it comes out, he is right over) is quite entertaining for Gary and I, and family that comes for a visit.

I'm going to leave you with a photo of Calder and I a year ago. Of course, Calder was in my belly at the time! In this picture I am 37 weeks pregnant, and looking quite huge, but I get even bigger. I'm posting this picture I guess because I am feeling a little emotional. My baby is not so much a baby anymore!!!

A visit from Grandma and Aunt Colleen

Last week Gary was in San Francisco for the week and my mother and sister came over and stayed 2 nights with me. Oh, I can stay on my own, but it's nice to have someone to hand Calder off to when I need to get something done. And I must say, it was nice, too - my mom made me breakfast on Tuesday morning! :)

While they were here, we took quite a few pictures (in part because my sister gets a little snap-happy at times) but there are some great pictures that I wanted to share.

Calder still continues to enjoy his bath, but I made the mistake of buying these cups for his bath, but giving him water to drink out of them first. Now, it is very difficult for me to use that cup to dump water over him, he is always trying to grab it and drink out of it. Sometimes, inhaling is more like it, as he lifts the full cup up (in the bath) and takes a big sniff/gulp. Scary! But he's so happy when he's successful at drinking out of a cup. He loves drinking water!


On Tuesday we happened to be out at all the times when he should have gone down for a nap, and as a result, he got very tired with only one nap under his belt. Poor little guy, he fell asleep at his high chair while eating. :( But he looked so adorable.


Calder doesn't like his playpen too much, but will sometimes play in it while I prep for dinner or vacuum. This is a picture of him watching TV, but if you look closely - he's started to stand on things, like his drum (or sometimes a ball, yes, a ball - we have a future acrobat among us!) to see out the playpen better. Silly monkey.


I just thought he looked so cute in this chair, that I had to post the pics. He wanted to bolt out of the chair (face first, though!) so they were snapped quickly with Auntie Colleen on the ready to catch him. In the second photo you can see his teeth better than any picture I've seen so far!



Calder loves to play peekaboo, with most anyone, anything, and anywhere - here he is playing peekaboo with Aunt Colleen through the stair posts.


A few weeks ago I was feeling restless at night so I packed Calder up and we went for a trip to Chapters. Out we came with some purchases, and at first, Calder didn't seem to like this book, but now he LOVES it with a capital L! He'll try to take this book with him everywhere. It's called "I Like Stars". Here he is intently looking at the pictures while my mom reads him the book.


Calder is starting to use his walker with a bit more confidence, although he is still shaky. Today we saw him actually take a couple of pretty confident steps with it, although most of the time he still uses this just to sit at and play with all the things on it. All in all, he is starting to be more confident with standing as well - today Gary (yay, Daddy's back!) saw him stand for a couple of seconds in his playpen while he held something. Uh oh, I think that walking may be coming soon!


Have a wonderful long weekend, everyone!