The Glory is His / 8 Months

Happy boy!

For starters, sorry the blog keeps changing. It's undergoing a facelift, but the doctor is undergoing training on blog "cuteness" - so it's taking a while since I can't devote several hours at a time. Please bear with me! :) It'll be under construction for a bit longer.

This past month has been a whirlwind to say the least, but let me just say GOD IS SO GOOD! Caleb has been sick his entire 7th month of life! It started with double ear infections and then he caught a virus of some sort (at least we think it was a virus). The ear infections lasted 4 weeks, 5 rounds of antibiotics (oral and injections), a trip to Children's Hospital, fever that spiked to 104 at times and once to 105. For a while it was normal for him to run 101. Now anybody knows that is NOT normal! The roughest part was when his temp would go from 98.6 to 104 or 105 within 30 mins. to an hour! With fever that high, he would become super lathargic. Very scary! When we were at Children's, Caleb had to have tests run to rule out anything extremely serious plus a handful of viruses. Standing by completely helpless is by far the hardest thing I have had to do as a mom. I am so grateful that Jonathan was with us! I think what bothered me the most was knowing everything Caleb had been through already leading up to this point. When we were taking Caleb to Radiology, I saw a little girl being wheeled down the hall in her wagon. She had her mom plus a couple of nurses with her. One of the nurses had her IV drip right there beside her as they went down the hall. I don't know why she was there, but I could hear her sweet little voice coming from her wagon. She was obviously worse than Caleb, and I did have the presence of mind to stop and thank God for allowing us to take our baby home that night. I am so sorry that precious little girl was in the hospital, but I was so grateful for God helping me keep perspective. It was quite a first experience for us that day. It would be easy to say it was tough, because of Caleb being our first baby, overwhelmed by fear of the underlying cause of his fever, the list goes on and on...but it was tough simply because it's YOUR baby that is having to endure all of this when you'd give ANYTHING to go through it for him. As a mom, you want to remedy the situation with all your might, but all I could do was hold him tight and love on him in between tests. By the time we left the hospital, his fever was down and he was smiling again! And now a week later, he is well, happy, and fever-free! Thank you Father for taking care of our baby! All of the glory is Yours!!

Caleb, even though you haven't felt the greatest lately, you have been doing so much! There's no slowing you down. :)

• You'll be crawling anyday now. Up on hands and knees and rock the night away! Lots of tummy surfing too. You still get where you want to go by scooting on your tummy.
• You've been sitting up great for a while now...so proud of you!
• You're starting to sit up from a lying down position. Still working on it but doing great! You've surprised us with this...it'll happen soon.
• You have two bottom teeth and two top teeth. Two more top teeth are starting to cut through the gums. You'll soon have 6 teeth!
• Sign language is going great! You love to see and hear the words you know!
• You are in love with Sully! Sully loves you too. He kissed your hand this morning. Brave yorkie! He brought his soccer ball to you the other day and wanted you to throw it for him. You looked at the ball and then looked at him like "What?" :)
• You're about to get to spend the night with both sets of grandparents for the first time! We have had plans to do this for a while now, but we've been waiting for you to get well so you can have an enjoyable time at your grandparents!
• You're eating well. While you were sick, you didn't take your bottle as well (it hurt your ears to drink). But we made sure you got enough from what bottles you did take, solids, Pedialyte and juice. Now that you're well, you're getting back on your normal bottle schedule and are doing quite well. I'm proud of you!
• Finger foods - we started a few finger foods a few weeks ago, but it just wasn't a good time since you didn't feel good. I held off and we actually started again today. I must say, I think it was best that we held off during this past month, because you are ready for it now. So far, so good. It may be up and down for a while, but we'll get there slowly but surely. You're not a huge fan of having textures in your mouth other than pureed food! We'll see how it goes... :)
• Starting to show awareness of strangers. You don't like to be held by people you don't know at this stage.
• Love to go for walks in your stroller. You've been on one ride in your Burley so far...you loved the ride, but not the helmet. LOL! Hated the helmet in fact. We didn't make you wear it...you're so well protected in this contraption we have nothing to fear!
• Love watching the birds while you eat.
• Lots of new little games we like to play, still LOVE to be sung to, read books all the time! Still love to "turn the page". :) Brown Bear is still your favorite.

This post is already way too long. I'll post more later if need be. I'm too tired to think at the moment. I think I'll add a few pics and call it a day! Good night!

We played with Daddy's hair gel. Ended up with a super cool mohawk!

Havin' a ball in the kitchen.

Love this sweet face.

Caleb, we love you! Sweet dreams lil' tiger!