One last night of crying...

...and now he sleeps. The day Caleb quit falling asleep to a bottle at night was a sad day for us. Since that time, about a year ago, we have spent at least 1 hour and up to 5 hours trying to coax, soothe and force Caleb to sleep. We never could figure out why he couldn't fall asleep and never found a consistently effective method for putting him down to bed. However, almost always...once he was asleep, he slept for the night. Last Sunday night though, something woke him up and from 2 am until some time after 6 he was awake. He didn't cry the W-H-O-L-E time but enough that neither Nate nor I could sleep. It compounded our concern about our road trip this summer to full-blown dread. Then, unexpectedly, Monday night he let Nate lay him in his crib and fell asleep quickly on his own. Each night this week has been the same. We put the other two to bed, spend some good 2 on 1 time with Caleb and then we lay him down. REALLY!?!?! I am holding my breath, hoping this lasts.

As long as I'm sharing great things about Caleb...He's standing! He stands up on his own everywhere now. He still feels insecure but he is so steady. He doesn't use anything to pull himself up, just slowly rises up and then raises his hands to the air and squeals. Yep! He's a champion! One day he's going to start walking without letting me know. I'll wet my pants when I turn around and am startled by him standing right behind me or something.

Reading books has become more fun with Caleb too. We've been trying for months to get him to touch the texture books. What he prefers to do is bend the pages to see how they move and to test the strength of the binding until it breaks. But we have had some success lately getting him to touch the fake feathers or fur. Tuesday night I was reading him a book called That's Not My Truck. Caleb did touch the wavy ridges on the cement truck after I did, but then he grabbed my hand and made it so my fingernail went up and down the ridges. Ever since then, that is what he has been doing. It is funny that his teacher has been doing "hand-over-hand" movements for at least a year to teach him to do things on his own. But the lesson he has learned is that he can use someone else's hand to do the things he wants.