Recent moments

It's no secret that I think that Caleb is pretty amazing. Yes, he can drive me mad sometimes but I adore him and I love being able to spend my days with him. There have been so many cute things that he has said and done recently that I just have to document them! I do write a journal as well, so this post is mainly for my family who like to be kept up to date with the little things!

Caleb's language has just exploded recently. I can pretty much have a proper conversation with him and he will speak in full sentences. He absolutely loves helping out with any jobs around the house and when I am dusting, I need to give him a duster too so that he can help. One task that I absolutely can't do on my own is put the washing into the washing machine. Caleb will help me sort the lights and darks then helps me carry the basket to the kitchen. He then grabs armfuls or washing and puts it into the machine. And....get this.... he even knows which buttons to press to make it work and to put it on the right setting. I just supervise now just in case he presses the wrong buttons. The other day when we were doing the washing, I gave him his coat to put into the washing machine. He held it in is hands and looked at it, confused, then looked up at me and said, "but I need my coat, Mummy". He just sounded so cute! I explained to him he could just wear another jacket that day and he was satisfied with that answer. Once the washing machine had actually started, he knelt down on the floor, kissed the washing machine door and said, "good boy, washing machine, I'm so proud of you!". He makes me laugh so much, I love the things that come out of his mouth.

Recently, I have been trying to teach Caleb about Remembrance Day. I know he's only two and a lot of people might say that it's too young to teach him about things like that but you never know what sinks in so I try anyway! He was playing with my poppy the other day and I asked him why we wear poppies. He responded, "to remember people who died for our freedom". It's what I had told him before but it was so cute that he could remember it, even if it doesn't really mean much to him at the moment. Something must have gone in though because we had our own little two minute silence at home on 11th November at 11am and he was silent for the whole thing. For anyone who knows Caleb, they will know what a big deal that is for a little boy who talks non-stop!

Caleb is obsessed with photos and especially selfies. He knows how to work the camera on my phone and he uses it a lot. I often find these random photos of him on there that he has taken. Whenever he does something that he knows is cute or funny, he tells me to "take a smile". I always oblige because usually he is right, it is pretty cute or funny and such moments definitely need to be documented!

Caleb is incredible with letters and numbers. People who have heard him count to 20 are always really impressed and comment on how well I have taught him. As much as I would like to take the credit, I haven't actually done anything, he just seems to have an amazing memory and he remembers these things! His love of letters is more recent. For his Birthday in July, my Mum bought him a little leap pad laptop which says the names of the letters, pronounces them phonetically and then says a word to go along with it. Caleb loves playing with it (he especially loves the V for vulture for some reason!) and now he points out letters everywhere we go! There's a game he plays on my phone where there is a picture of something, a choice of letters and he has to drag the right letter to the right word. Caleb used to get so frustrated playing that game but now that he is better with letters, he will say to me, "Mummy help you" and show me the picture. I will tell him what the word is and sound it out and then he will spell it with the letters in the right order. He will sometimes do it wrong on purpose and laugh like it's the funniest thing in the world.

Caleb loves babies! Which is just as well as he's getting one in a couple of months! My friend Emma has recently had a baby and whenever I hold her, Caleb makes a beeline for her. He loves stroking her hair and fingers and he is so gentle. He looks at her in awe, like she is the most amazing thing he has ever seen. I'm hoping that it bodes well for when his little sibling comes along although I'm not sure how he will take to its constant presence in our home!

One of the things he has started to do recently is so adorable and I love it when he does it. When he is walking along beside me, if my hand is on his shoulder, he will put his arm around my leg and walk like that. It makes my heart melt every time.

This is a ridiculously long post on Caleb but be grateful, it could have been longer! He does so many new things each day that I am starting to struggle to remember them all and I have to write them down somewhere straight away so that I don't forget about them. I am so grateful that he is ours.

(Gushing Mum post over)

My Birthday surprise!

It was my Birthday a couple of weeks ago. I didn't have anything planned for it all and thought that maybe that evening when Seth got home from work, we wold get a takeaway and watch a DVD or something. On the Saturday before my Birthday (which was on the Wednesday), Seth said that he felt bad that he hadn't planned to do anything for my Birthday so he would take the day off and we could spend the day together. I was really excited about this as there is nothing I love more than spending the day with my boys.

On the morning of my Birthday, I woke up to Caleb and Seth walking into the bedroom singing Happy Birthday to me and presenting me with cards and with a large Costa hot chocolate with a shot of hazelnut in it (I'm a bit of a hot chocolate addict and ever since we have been married, we have lived no more than 10 minutes away from the nearest Starbucks, Costa or Caffe Nero. Every Birthday since we have been married, Seth has gone out to buy me a hot chocolate with a shot of almond or hazelnut. He is such a good husband!). I opened cards from family and saved the one from him and Caleb until last. He then presented me with my present - two tickets to go and see Riverdance in Blackpool. That night! I was so excited and I may have cried a little (blame the pregnancy hormones!). Seth told me that as soon as we were ready, we were driving up to Buxton to drop Caleb off at Seth's sister's where he would be spending the night, then we would be driving to Blackpool for the show and staying there overnight. I was beyond excited. It's the 20th anniversary tour for Riverdance and I have wanted to see it for about 18 years - that's no exaggeration! Laura and I had Riverdance on DVD and we loved watching it, we pretty much knew every performance back to front. When I heard that they were touring, I mentioned to Seth that I would love to go and see it and he should get us tickets for my Birthday (I'm not a demanding wife at all, ha ha!) but that was way back in April and I didn't think anything more of it! After I finished my hot chocolate, we got ourselves ready and packed and headed off on our journey.

I love car journeys with Seth as it's always such a great opportunity to talk and I always find us talking about things we just wouldn't chat about in general at home so it's always lovely. Caleb is a very content passenger too, as long as there's a radio station playing that he likes and he likes the songs, then he is well away! When we were about an hour away from Laura's house (Seth's sister Laura, not my sister Laura. Surprisingly, it never ends up getting too confusing - Caleb calls Seth's sister Auntie Laura and mine just Laura so he can differentiate between the two of them when we're talking about them!), Caleb started to get a bit whiney. I turned around to see what was wrong and he promptly threw up EVERYWHERE! It freaked him out completely and we pulled over to clean him up and to sort everything out. It took a while because both he and the carseat were completely covered! I was worried that Caleb had picked up a bug and was unwell but once we had changed him, he sat in the front with me, supposedly to cuddle and take it easy while Seth cleaned up. But Caleb was then full of energy, laughing away and pretending to drive the car!

So we thought he probably just got a bit car sick from driving around windy roads (a couple of days later we realised that no, in fact it was a bug. Lots more sickness to deal with but that's another story!).

We dropped Caleb off at Laura's about an hour later than intended and then made our way to Blackpool. We ended up getting caught in crazy traffic because there had been an accident. Both Seth and my heart sank because we thought there was no way in the world that we would make it to Blackpool in time and that we would miss the show. I was pretty disappointed as I was so excited about seeing it, but I was so disappointed for Seth as well, as he had put so much effort into planning it all for me. By some miracle, once we were through the worst of the traffic, we had a clear run to Blackpool, managed to check into our Bed and Breakfast and made it to the opera house and to our seats just as the announcement was being made about turning off mobile phones! We were both pretty relieved as we thought there was no way in the world that we would make it.

The show was incredible! Seth seemed to enjoy it (yep - Irish dancing is definitely more my thing than his!) but I was just blown away by it, the dancers were just amazing and so talented. Seeing it live was even more amazing than I thought and hoped it would be, when it finished, I just wanted to see it all over again!

The next day on the way back to Laura's, we stopped off in Manchester and did a bit of shopping at the Trafford Centre. As much as I love having Caleb with us, it was so lovely to just have some time with Seth as we don't really get that much time together, just the two of us! It was such an incredible Birthday and I have such an amazing husband for planning it all for me.