Updates on Life in the Sturm Home

Well we knew with our genetics that we were likely to have a stubborn child, but when it came to walking we really thought Caleb's stubbornness would lead him to crawl for the rest of his life! Around 9 months old he was excited to hold hands and walk with people and cruised all over the place. For whatever reason, that changed and he became very stubborn when it came to walking. If anyone would try to hold his hands and stand him up, he'd kick his feet out until you just sat him back down. We knew this would be the first of many things that we couldn't make him do until he was good and ready to show an interest in it! Anyhow, after months of resisting, he finally showed and interest again and is now officially a walker. He stills spends plenty of time crawling around and has a hard time standing himself up if there isn't something to hold onto, but once he's up he goes and goes!

Aside from the excitement of walking, we've had a few other events here and there at home. With the nice weather, we've enjoyed getting outside to go for walks and just play in the fresh air. Caleb enjoys his new slide and climber from Grandpa and Grandma Sturm, but when playing with it we discovered something he really doesn't like...grass! I guess we forgot that this little guy had never really played in the grass before, so he just didn't know what to think of it. He's finally getting a little more used to it and hopefully by Summer he'll have gotten over his fear.
We are also very excited to say that we are no longer washing bottles on a nightly basis...Caleb has graduated to sippy cups for good. We were really worried that he wasn't drinking as much when he took the sippy cup, but he seems to be getting what he needs. It's so hard to know how much is enough when it comes to drinking, eating, and so forth. We added one more item to our list of home improvements last week...new windows! We are so excited to have these new windows and really look forward to the difference we'll see next Winter. The installers put them all in last Monday and on Monday night we got all of the window treatments back up. While we were busy doing that, Caleb discovered a new favorite pastime...tissue boxes! This was the cause for a major babyproofing effort this past weekend. We know there are still many more things for him to get into, but hopefully we've put away some of the more tempting things! The final bit of fun worth mentioning was last Friday when we headed back to Joliet to watch Jacob, Cassie, and Bryce. Keith and Kerri (their parents) went out for the evening, so we had the joy of watching the kids. Tyler always has so much fun and manages to keep up so well with their energy level. It was fun to watch Caleb interact with the kids. He and Bryce are only a few months apart and will definitely grow to be good buddies as time goes on. For now, there friendship seems to consist of stealing books out of each other's hands and trying to sneak sips from each other's sippy cup when nobody is watching. We've definitely got some work to do with these guys! We hope everyone reading this is doing well and enjoying the beginning of warmer weather, longer days, and plenty of sunshine. Even the rain doesn't seem so bad when you know that it's followed by green grass and all kinds of plants coming back to life!