Caleb is now 15 months old, and he is a riot.

I’m off work today looking after him, as he is a little spotty and can’t go to childcare. Helen had a day off work 2 weeks ago when he had a cold, so it’s my turn. It’s rough having to not go to work and spend all day playing with your son. The things I put up with. Maybe I’ll draw some spots on him myself next week. I wonder how much family leave I get each year…

We don’t really know what the spots are, but pretty sure it’s nothing major. The doctor wasn’t sure what it was, maybe chicken pox, maybe hand, foot and mouth, but the symptoms didn’t quite match - I don’t think it’s either. They’re almost gone now so it’s just one of those things - kids get spotty.

I thought I’d give an update on his progress, on the off chance anyone still reads this blog, aside from the spammers.

He is 15 months old, and is almost walking… will be walking within a month or so. He walks along pushing his trolley, and loves it. When he reaches the wall he hangs onto the wall while we turn the trolley around, and then he walks to the opposite wall. He’ll do this for hours cacking himself the whole time. He’ll also take a step as he launches himself from the TV unit to Mum or Dad. We stand him up to see how long he can stay… his maximum is about 10 seconds - he could stay longer but likes being caught as he falls.

His laugh is incredible. He chuckles and cackles and squeals at almost anything, which is hilarious. His laugh is infectious so usually all three of us are laughing. I’ll try to record a clip of him laughing and post it.

He also pretends. I think pretending is pretty clever… he knows the difference between eating, and pretending to eat. I was eating a chocolate and giving him a little. When it was finished, he was reaching into the empty packet, and then putting his fingers near my mouth, and I’d pretend to eat it. When I tried to do the same thing back to him, he wasn’t pretending anymore, and was a little upset that no more chocolate was forthcoming.

He also pretend eats with a spoon, and has fed himself with a spoon a few times. It gets messy, but so does everything else, so it doesn’t really matter.

We had a difficult month or two where he was too old for two sleeps, but too young for one sleep. He is now coping fairly well with one sleep during the day.

In late June, I bought a new computer for my bike (i.e. a cyclometer), I figure it took 10 days to arrive, and for me to fit it to my bike, so it read zero as at July 2006.

It recently rolled over 1000km, so I calculated how much riding I’d been doing. 1000km in 7 months, gives 1715K for the year. Because it’s wireless, you have to wake it up before a ride, and sometimes I forgot to do that, and I also did some riding on my mountain bike, with no computer. So lets make it an even 2000KM for the year.

This seemed like a lot until I worked it out in other time-frames. It’s only 38K a week, or 5.4K a day.

Not bad, but not great.

Around the time of my birthday, I made a resolution - I will double my KM for this year. I will do 4000km between 18/2/2007 and 18/2/2008. I’ve made a slow start due to a cold and a sore wrist, but I will catch up.

In theory this should be easy - I’m resolving to do more of something I love doing.

4000 a year is 77 a week. My commute to work is about 6-7K each way, so that’s 13K a day. If I do that 4 days a week, that’s 52K. An evening and/or weekend ride, and I’m done.

I’ll also include a few organised rides, e.g. Spring Cycle Sydney, Sydney to the Gong. I’d also like to do NSW Big Ride, except it’s $810, which I think is excessive. I’d also like to do a metric century - 100K in one day.

My bike is an Avanti Blade 8 (with a few modifications), and I love it. If you’re after a commuting/hybrid style bike, I’d consider the Avanti Blade line of bikes. Tell them Brock sent you.

I have made a few changes to the blog.

Changed name.

The blog was called “A diabetic pregnancy”, but as Caleb is now 15 months old, that hasn’t been an accurate title for a while. I’ve renamed it “punctuated equilibrium” for a few reasons:

• I like the sound of the phrase
• The phrase is to do with evolution, which I post about occasionally
• It describes the frequency of posts to the blog

Enabled user registration

Due to excessive amounts of comment spam, I disabled comments recently. But, as I’d like people to be able to leave comments if they want to, I wanted a better solution.

Tonight I deleted 1787 spam comments, enabled user registration, and made it so that only registered users can make comments. It’s a little bit of hassle for you guys, but saves me having to wade through 1787 fake comments to get to the real ones. You can register using the link on the left-hand side of the page. If you have trouble registering, leave a comment letting me know.

Upgraded Wordpress

Wordpress is the software used to publish this blog, and I upgraded to the most recent version. Some layout may change as I play around with the new settings.

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Originally uploaded by entropical.

Taken at Sydney Olympic Park in the pouring rain. When it started raining I almost got back in the car and came home. I changed my mind and stuck it out, and got some good photos

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Originally uploaded by entropical.

After a storm a few days ago, the sky turned an unusual yellow colour. I’d also been talking about HDR photography recently, so I took this shot. I used 3 exposures, and merged them together.

I think it looks like the end of the world as we know it.

Congratulations to Jo & Chris on the birth of their daughter Caitlyn back in April (I did try and post a message on your blog, but I had some username/password issues so posting here is easier). She is beautiful.

I started writing this when Caleb was 5 months old, then never finished it! So (with a little prompting from 2 dedicated readers - Kate and Amber) I am finally posting!

7 months! The time just flies past - as people keep telling me, he’ll be going to school before we know it (nooooooo!!).

On the 29th of March, just after I hit the “publish” button on my last post, Caleb sucked his big toe for the first time - so cute! We started him on solid food on Friday 14th of April, and he got his very first tooth on Easter Saturday (15th of April)! Caleb now has 6 teeth - 4 up top and 2 in the middle down the bottom.

Caleb is just the most gorgeous boy. He smiles at everyone, and everyone comments how cute he is - we went out for dinner with friends one night and there was a group of girls standing in the foyer as we were leaving. One of them exclaimed “Oh my god, that is the most beautiful baby I have ever seen” which was quite funny. He is so laid back now - I am getting my teeth straightened and he comes with me to the dentist and happily sits in his pram looking around, sometimes for up to an hour. When he was younger he wanted feeding every 2.5 to 3 hours, and if he was already awake he would start screaming at 2 hours for food. Now he is going 3 to 4 hours between, and has been known to go as long as 5 hours, though I don’t normally let him do that. Even then he doesn’t start whinging until I try to get him into position for a feed, then it occurs to him that he is hungry and will whinge a little until he starts getting some milk.

He is rolling more now, but he just doesn’t see the need - why roll over for a toy when he can just look at the ceiling? It’s not that he can’t do it, he just doesn’t do it. He managed to push himself about a foot on his belly towards a toy… it took him about 10mins to do it, but it’s a start! He is getting really good at sitting up now too. He has said “daddy”, “dada” and “dadada”. No sign of “mama” yet. He is banging his hands on stuff - the table, our hands, my boobs when he is breastfeeding. It’s very cute (I say that now!).

Caleb puts himself to sleep now too. I used to have to rock him to sleep, but now I put him in his cot and leave the room, and he does the rest. Occasionally he will protest a little, but more often than not he will talk to himself for a bit then fall asleep, or just turn his head and fall asleep. He will also just close his eyes and go to sleep when we are out and about - we had him lying on Matt & Ashley’s lounge (with me on one side and Brock on the other) and he just closed his eyes and went to sleep when he was ready - holding Brock’s hand. It was so cute. Made me just want to pick him up and cuddle him (I refrained). I still can’t get him to sleep in a port-a-cot at Brock’s parent’s house though.

He is just a little thing - weighs 7.4kg and is about 65cm long. He is still in 00 size clothes, which I have recently noticed are very slowly becoming too small. Apparently neither Brock nor my brothers got their height until high school, and now they are all 6ft or taller, so I guess Caleb is following in those footsteps. He still has his big cheeks, and people always say “We’ll, he isn’t wasting away, is he?” which annoys me. His body is quite lean, which I guess you wouldn’t expect from his face, and his head is still big.

Caleb loves playing chasings. Brock holds Caleb so he is looking back at me over Brock’s shoulder, and runs (very slowly and gently) away and I chase after them. Caleb smiles the whole time and laughs when he gets caught - it is just so cute!

Today Caleb rolled over for the first time, from his front to his back. He laughed for the first time on Friday 24th March and again last night. And on Sunday 19th of March he reached out and grabbed a toy for the first time. Lots of firsts this month!

For those (Amber) who needed a Caleb fix…. Enjoy!