December 2

I am starting to realize that Caleb is at his best in the mornings.

To be more straightforward, I mean that I'm starting to wonder if it was really the best decision to send him to kindergarten as the youngest in his class, instead of holding him back an extra year. He's just still so young! Up until this summer, Caleb napped every day. People assured me that he would adjust, but it seems that - at almost five and a half - he still does best with an afternoon nap. On days that he doesn't get a nap (i.e. every school day), he is an absolute mess by 5:00. Dinnertime is usually a disaster, and anything after that is just awful. The boy is an exhausted, emotional mess. Most nights he goes to bed at 7:30, but I'm pretty sure 7:00 would be an even better bedtime if we could manage to make it happen.

But mornings? They give me hope that my sweet boy is still in there somewhere. Like today. Daisy bonked into something and began crying, so Caleb came up and gave her a big hug. Daisy was immediately better.

So sweet, right? Even sweeter was that Lily saw these two hugging and joined in. By the time I got to my camera, though, she was done.

I got Caleb on the bus, dropped Daisy off at preschool, and Lily and I headed over to Amber's house to meet her sweet new baby, Edie. (You really should go to Amber's blog and look at pictures of this darling girl. If you're really feeling frisky, you should read her birth story. Amber's children always seem to arrive with flair!) I wasn't sure how Lily would react to Mommy holding a baby, but since we'll have one of our own in roughly three months, I was curious to see her response. In short? Lily loved Edie. She was fascinated and just wanted to look at her tiny face and listen to her sweet noises. After a while, Lily was ready to have her Mommy back, but there was no jealousy. It was very sweet!

Not sweet, however, were the two and a half hours I spent trying to put Lily down for her afternoon nap. It was awful. I finally got the girl to fall asleep in bed, snuggled up next to me. I loved every moment of it, but I had something baking in the oven and had to sneak out to get it when Lily had been asleep for only 30 minutes. I though I had successfully extracted myself, but I returned to find a wide-awake toddler in my bed. Boo.

But at least she decided to be cute.

Then I let her play with my phone.

A few weeks ago, I had two incidents in a row where Lily called random people on my contacts list. After that, I got wise and put a passcode on my phone. Now she can play to her heart's content without ever actually accessing anything on my phone.

Want to see Lily's phone skills in action? Of course you do!