Earlier this month, Caleb turned 2 years old. Being the new-ish dad that I am it has taken some time to really wrap my head around what this event means to him, to me, to us as a family. People said to me that getting married would 'change everything'. It didn't. Becoming a father did.

One thing I've heard about raising children is that you need to provide them with structure in their lives. It keep them grounded and helps them to feel safe. It hasn't been until recently that it has been something that I needed to worry about. Here's the story of our child-care woes.

We had never intended to get Caleb a pacifier.

We had seen too many parents use them as a way to shut the child up and we just weren't prepared to go there. And then we discovered bruises on his arms. At first we thought he'd gotten his arm stuck in the baby bjorn. But then it kept happening. Caleb was self-soothing by sucking on his forearms and giving himself hickies. There was also some evidence that the pacifier helped prevent SIDS.

Not wanting him all bruised up, we got ourselves a couple of orthodnically approved pacifiers. It worked well and as he moved out of infancy we transitioned the binky (as we were calling it) to an only when he's sleeping thing. We even emphasized that part of his getting up routine was for him to put the binky back in his crib himself and wave goodbye. The original plan had been that we were going to toss it out when he turned one but given that he was only using it for sleeping, there wasn't that shame to spur us on so we decided to let him keep it.

In the past couple of months, particularly as he's been speaking better, the binky became part of his bedtime routine. We would first give it to him during story time to help him calm down and soon we would say "Ready for a story?" and he would run into his room yelling "Bee-Tee! Bee-Tee!". All well and good. But then we caught him moving one of his play chairs over against the crib in an effort to climb into the crib and get it. The time was right for it to be gone.

Friday night, the Binky went missing. We don't know where it went but it got "lost". The backups were nowhere to be found. We spent some time looking for it, mostly under the dresser and the crib but in the end we had to give up the search. He has since asked about it a couple of times but only in passing. Last night he didn't ask at all. The substitute of a sippy-cup of water seems to have been accepted as an even trade. That may come back to haunt us in the form of overfull morning diapers but so far things are working out.

By and large, Caleb has a low awareness of fear. There really aren't a lot of things that he is afraid of. He has his 'shy' moods where he just clams up and won't talk at all but actual fear seems pretty foreign to him. Because of that I think that the things that do scare him become that much more obvious. The first thing to make him panic was the vacuum cleaner. Lately, he's been having some difficulties with the concept of 'shower'.

Over the weekend we went over to Brookside Gardens to see the bulb show and walk around. I snapped this picture right after Caleb reached up to grab Alyson's hand. He holds your hand now not so much so he won't get lost but more so that he can make sure you don't get lost. He worries for you like that.

I've always been something of a fan of Consensus reality... the idea that certain things exist because we agree that they do. It fascinates me because there are some things that exist even without our belief in them.. a good portion of math, physics, and biology for instance. But then there are some portions of Quantum Physics that seem to exist because there are holes in our attempt to model them, yet we treat those gaps as if they were reality.

Closer to home and every day life, things like Language, Color, and Emotion all have meaning because we give it to them and agree to that shared definition.

So it seems as though I haven't made a post in quite a while. I'm not sure what's been keeping me from posting. Been busy and distracted with work and life and whatnot. Right now I'm at my parents new house. Well, its my grandparents old house but they've been making modifications to make it their own.

Caleb survived the trip up to MA without much issue. We got up to New Jersey on Sat and then drove the rest of the was up to MA on Monday. We managed to get the travel times to match more or less with the little guy's nap times so it wasn't bad.

For Halloween we took Caleb out Trick or Treating. The original plan had been to head out to the mall for whatever they were doing, do a little bit around my mother-in-laws, and then visit a friend with an extra-little one over by the Rockville Town Center. Plans didn't work out quite that way but were close and I'll get to that later.

It has been a little over a week now since we declared Caleb's first word. He's said a number of 'words' just to say them or to mimic us. His first word where he knew what it was and was able to say it? Squirrel. (Or as he says it SKRL) So the first thing a good Mommy and Daddy do is make sure he has a little toy squirrel to carry around. In this video Caleb spends a little time trying to see the video screen of the camera before we switch it around so he can see himself. I think Alyson did a fabulous job keeping him in the frame. We then let him show off his first word. For the record he knows 'Go' and 'Car' now and is getting better at mimicing our words but with meaning.

I really wanted to edit this one down a little bit, but the converter that I downloaded was working weirdly and stretching the whole thing out. So here it is.. blemishes and all.