Dad!leb headcanons
Obviously we've now learned that Caleb is actually a very attentive/involved (and anxious) pseudo-dad to baby Bren, so now I feel like the Dad!leb headcanonners can go wild (or go even wilder)
So here are mine:
Caleb is obsessed with over-researching about parenting. Heard a parenting strategy/theory? Caleb already knows it. Beau has to stage an intervention when he breaks into the Soul using Essek's 'Seth Domade' employee badge to read books on child-rearing
Caleb's farmboy/assassin wizard school childhood means he has a total blindspot to childproofing. He regularly lets Bren Bren, Luc, and any other baby!gasts play in his and Essek's lab, much to Essek's dismay ("No, Caleb, children should not be allowed to 'play' with summoned fire elementals")
He is firmly in the children-should-be-raised-with-animals camp, but he spends a lot of time properly teaching kiddos how to be gentle. He insists the Brenattos also have cats despite Yeza having an allergy.
Baby Bjorn. Everywhere. Even to lectures.
Caleb is a total toy snob. All his kiddos will have Pock o'pea toys and nothing less (he's like a lego dad). He does have to reevaluate this when one of them breaks his wooden alligator.
He loves to polymorph the kiddos, especially because they love it too. His favorite forms are cat and orca, though he only does orca if they're at the beach.
Add yours in the comments or reblobs!
Caleb uses the The Dome as a base for a smaller protective sphere he can cast on babies. Translucent, Dismisses at his will, or after an hour (+1 hour fir every level above base casting), he decides what/who can pass through, and he can modify it to project images on it sort of like how he did with the dome the one time. Likes to project little cats and unicorns on it. Babies can roll in it like a hamster ball.
He and Essek have a little half drow baby, and as such the little thing does have an affinity for animals of a creepier variety. Caleb makes sure to ask Essek what sort of animals were popular pets in the Dynasty. This does mean that the Nein get a fright whenever they first come to visit and Little Baby Shadowgast is surrounded by a massive Orange/purple rosette patterned Snake, or strapped to a massive Ginger/purple Bat hanging from the rafters.
When/If Jester and Fjord procreate, he babysits often. Babysits everyoneās kids often, really. But he likes making/buying Fjord/Jester kids special jewelry for their horns/tusks/etc. When one ends up having horse-like hooves, he takes on the responsibility of getting them custom horse shoes so they can walk around on hard surfaces without hurting their hooves/feet. Cute ones. Essek knits hoof cozies for them to wear inside so they donāt damage floors.
Caleb somehow becomes the official Sex Talk giver of The Nein, as long he promises not to take them to a farm to see animals go at it as an opener/teaching tool (it was how he had learned as a kid so he didnāt think anything of it, did it to Luc. Hence the promise). Shockingly good at it.
Gives the Nein several collective heart attacks when itās time for his kids to learn to swim and he seems to teach them by full on chucking them into water and get themselves back to shore/edge. Itās how most people in his home town were taught, he did not tell anybody this before the first time he did it in front of them.
He and Beau try to teach the kids as many languages as possible. Most the Neinās kiddos end up knowing 4 languages. By teenage, Shadowgast and Beauyasha kiddos know 6/7. Little linguists.
Caleb cries at every big milestone, Essek pretends not to notice.
