The Growing Caldwell Family

 Christmas Day we went to my parents' to have dinner and open presents.  Pops was playing Santa Claus in his hat.  SG wasn't too sure what she thought of that. She enjoyed looking at her presents.  We had to give the new books a read.  This one is a lift-the-flap and it makes noise when you lift the flap.  What could be more thrilling? A tiger flashlight and the light comes on when you squeeze his tail and he roars.  What little Tiger fan could be without one of these? She tried to open presents, but after a tug on the paper she would move on to other things.  Here she is relaxing and enjoying some of her new things.  She helped herself into the plastic bin, but Aunt Nay helped her get situated. This is the fabulous feast that Mom prepared.  We had beef tenderloin, the wonderful potatoes, asparagus, my favorite salad, rolls, and a peppermint, red velvet cake (not pictured) for dessert.  It was simply heavenly.  The beef ...

Lovie made her this jumper with a cute snowman on one side and a Christmas tree on the other. I will be sad when the Christmas season is over and all her cute outfits are put away. At least we have until Epiphany to wear them! - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Here is last week's baby shot.  This is one of her favorite things to do, reach up and yank her bow out!

We are behind on baby shot postings, so I will try to get caught up.  This one is from two weeks ago. 

Aaron and I were super-excited about Sarah Graves' first Christmas.   Our tree was decorated with several ornaments proclaiming her first Christmas.  I picked this one out for her at a little ornament place in Grant Park while we were in New York. When we came home from church, we could not wait to see what Santa might bring.  We got baby girl off to bed and we followed quickly so that we could wake up nice and early like baby girls like to do on Christmas morning.  When we woke, we came downstairs (after a long nursing in Momma and Daddy's bed where they soaked up every last second of sleep) and found all of these toys from Santa.  It was a little overwhelming to see so many toys at once, but after staring at it for a second, she picked the activity toy up front and focused on it for a while.  Santa also left stuff in our stockings.  Santa Paws filled Lucy's stocking with lots of chew toys and inserts for her treat ball; and SG had some ...

Our Christmas Eve got off to a great start when we went to the Macks' annual Christmas Eve party.  Their house was a treasure trove of things that Sarah Graves would have loved to gobble up and there were some people there who would have gobbled her up!  It was a nice time visiting with neighbors and friends of my parents and some of the kids that I babysat for long ago.  We had some time to hang out at my parents' before church, so Pops read SG some books and we let her open one of her presents.  She received a tent and a tunnel that attaches to it.  She liked the tunnel and I liked the tent! Christmas Eve service was lovely and Sarah Graves made it up for all of it.  I thought she would have fallen asleep before eleven, but she stayed awake and pretty pleasant until after 12.  i was so happy to see some of our favorite people from St. B's at the 11 o'clock service.  After church we headed home so that we could get baby girl in bed before San...

Dear Sarah Graves, This has been a huge month for you.  You have celebrated holidays and learned to walk.  You have also been picking up on how to sign (well, at least you have one sign down).  Perfecting walking has definitely been your focus this month.  You started taking your first steps just before you turned 10 months old and the past few weeks have been about perfecting that.  You quickly learned to stand up on your own and you are pretty fast on your feet now.  You like to hold something while you walk and you leave things all over the house now.  You are so cute when you fall over and just bounce right back.  Your nickname has been pinball (given to you by Pops, of course) because you can start to stumble and bounce off of things before you fall down.  You are undaunted by falling down and rarely cry about it.  You are so persistent and I like to take some credit for that piece of you.  You learning to walk has created s...

We are celebrating today looking at SG's presents from Santa, exchanging gifts with my family, and anticipating a scrumptious meal. We hope everyone is having a day that is merry and bright.

You better watch out, You better not cry, You better not pout, I'm telling you why. Santa Claus is coming to town! Santa sent Sarah Graves a special video message.  You can see it here: http://www.portablenorthpole.tv/watch/-T80yXqrZdat1119hTA7Ww We are all ready for Sarah Graves' first Christmas.  We will bring in Christmas at midnight mass (say a little prayer that she can hang in there until midnight) and see what Santa has for her in the morning.  I haven't been so excited since I was a kid.  It might be her first Christmas, but it feels like mine!

We took several short videos while we were at SG's Grandaddy's house.  It's ironic that we took these little videos right after we watched a DVD that was made from home movies of Mr. Dan and his siblings when they were growing up.  Mr. Dan was a baby in most of them and he was doing many of the things that SG does like stand at a chair and bat her hands at it!  I have worked on my video editing skills and found a way to incorporate several short clips into one little video.  I was talking in the background of them, so I found a way to spare you that torture and put music over the audio.  Let me know if you like the music or hearing all the background noise better.  You can leave a comment to give me your opinion :)

I can't believe that Christmas is on Saturday! That's only 2 days! I am really behind on getting everything ready. I have set clear priorities for what is really meaningful to me to get done, but I am still behind. The cards and baking Christmas cookies were my top priorities. Those are the things that say Christmas to me the most. I finished the cards first because I like for them to arrive before Christmas. Last weekend I started on cookies, but that took longer than I expected. I finished the iced sugar cookies last night and I would like to bake some snickerdoodles. My problem is that I haven't wrapped presents yet. Would anyone care if everything was in a gift bag? I have 2 evenings left to get it done. Now you see why the blog has been neglected. After Christmas I will get caught up on posting baby shots, monthly letter, and a few more pictures from random events. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

A little scavenger went through my pump bag this weekend and removed the milk storage bags and the parts that make it hands-free! Having a walking baby (running at times) is going to make our life a lot more interesting. - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

When I read about foods for infants, dairy was something mentioned as a no,no. Then, other places I would see mention of cheese and yogurt as good snacks for babies. Finally, I read on www.wholesomebabyfood.com (love this site) that most babies can tolerate dairy, but the no dairy advisement is to keep parents from skimping on formula and giving their infant milk. I love the way that these government agencies govern for the lowest common denominator. Just like with the vaccine schedule, the assumption is that parents can't be given choices, or all the information because they might not be able to handle all that thinking. I know there are idiot parents out there, but why do they get to dictate decisions for the majority? - Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

I got busy and didn't have a chance to post some more pictures from our visit to Shreveport.  Sunday morning we picked up Southern Made doughnuts (they are heavenly, if you haven't had them) and headed over to Grandaddy's house.  He and Granny B were ready for SG.  Sarah Graves kept Grandaddy busy reading books, chasing her, tickling, her and generally letting her do whatever heart desired.    Grandaddy had this toy that we termed her lightsaver.  It looked like a sword and it changed colors and oh did she adore it.  She walked around with it and was so excited to hold it.  That evening they had some family over to meet Sarah Graves.  She met her Aunt Gwen... and fell in love with Gwen's husband, Louis. Granny B's son Steven liked her pretty well and she like him.  She has a thing for men...this could be a concern. She met her Uncle Mike.  She liked him a lot and enjoyed playing with him, but when ...

Yesterday was my office Christmas party.  The plan was for me to ride to the party with someone from work, stay at the party for a while, and then be picked up so that I could spend some more time with my cousin, Nikki, who is in town for a few days.  I got to the party just fine and then we started hearing from others that there was a bad accident just outside the neighborhood where the party was.  It took about an hour for most people to finally get there.  We thought that was the worst part of it, but then about 45 minutes into the event we started hearing that the roads were icing and that the bridge you went over to get there was icy.  Great.  Our V.P. decided to cut the party short, so I made plans to get a ride home with someone on my team who lives near me.  We were less than 5 miles from my house, so this should have been a quick ride.  Because the roads were so bad, it took us over an hour and a half to get home.  We were followin...

We took a few videos on Saturday as well.  Please ignore me speaking.  I need to learn to let these be silent videos, but I seem to always be talking.  Aaron would say that he has found that to be true as well :) This one is SG with Aunt Barbara This one is SG with Pap-pa

Our day started off with a visit from Ms. Margaret Anne.  She was excited to finally meet the little girl that she makes all the cute clothes for.  We were excited to show her our little doll and show off the pretty dress that she made.  We are lucky for Sarah Graves to have so many nice things that are made with so much love. Next it was time to celebrate Christmas with the Dillahuntys.  Everyone came to Ms. Nancy's house to enjoy some yummy gumbo and enjoy all of us being together.  We did our gift exchnge and all eyes were on Sarah Graves as she opened her new toys.  She didn't really catch on to unwrapping the gifts, but she definitely enjoyed the art of shredding tissue paper.  She had so much joy shredding that stuff and nibbling on it!  She received some really cute new toys and has enjoyed just going from one thing to the next.  Ms. Nancy's huband, Gerald, has a grandson, Jayden, who came to visit too.  Jayden cel...

On Friday we made a trip to Shreveport to celebrate the holidays with Aaron's family.  This was Sarah Graves' third time to fly and she was a veteran.  She did really well nursing and sleeping most of the flight over.  Our first stop was Citizen's Bank in Vivian where Aaron's Dad works.  Neither of us thought to grab the camera, but SG was in rare form as she pranced all over the bank and let her grandaddy show her off.  She beamed, giggled, and performed all of her tricks.  The ladies in the bank thought she was pretty cute!  Her grandaddy was wrapped around her little finger! After our visit to the bank, we met up with Aaron's Mam-ma and Pap-pa for a grandkids dinner with Aaron's sister, Arden, and his cousin Coan and his wife Jen.  We ate some yummy catfish and had a good time together.  We remembered the camera this time and caught some fun shots.  SG was on her best behavior and was so sweet all during dinner.  This...