Spidey Man

This picture was taken at school last Friday by Ms. Amanda.  Is it not the cutest!!!  Apparently another little boy brought the mask to school and all the kids were playing with it.  She said Gavin kept just laughing and laughing.

Aunt E's pics of Wild Adventures

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Wild Adventures!!

Last weekend, I got to have a Saturday off in celebration of passing the first of the big deadlines during tax season.  It was so incredibly nice to sleep until 7, normally I have to be up by 5 on Saturdays!  Well I decided that Clay needed a much deserved break from single parenting so Gavin and I headed out to a baby shower for a friend of mine where he was fawned over by all of the attendees.  Of course he ate all the attention up along with the blueberry muffins and mini chicken biscuits.  Then we headed over to Wal-mart to take care of another chore that has been left to Clay lately, grocery shopping!  Gavin LOVES Wal-mart, probably because there are thousands of people to look at and to give him attention.  So we enjoyed several hours of just me and him hanging out before we headed back to the house so he could take a nap before our big trip to Wild Adventures that afternoon.

Thanks to Aunt E inviting us on Bring A Friend Day, we were able to go to Wild Adventures for free!  For any of you that have been out there lately, you know what a savings that was!  Well, Gavin absolutely loved it!  There were rides he could ride, animals to look at, and even some animals he could touch.  And to top it all off, his friend Jackson bought him a fake tattoo of a rhinoceros that Gavin thought made him look super tough :-) .  Our stupid camera batteries died right after we got there so I only got a few pictures, hopefully Aunt E got some better ones and I can post those later.

I don't know if you can tell from the sweat on Gavin but it was hotter than the hinges of you know where.  This was right after we got there, poor baby!  He is also looking a little extra pasty because we had slathered him up with sunscreen that was so thick you couldn't rub it all in.

Our first stop was the merry go round.  I don't do rides that go in circles, so Clay got to take him.

Next came the small train ride, where Gavin seemed much more interested in what was going on in the car behind us, than the ride itself.  

 Then we rode the jeeps, which I am not sure how much Gavin enjoyed.  But I know that I didn't like it, even this tiny bit of a circle made me car sick :-).  What a wimp!!

The last ride in this little kiddie section was the Bee Ride.  I really wasn't sure about this, it goes way up high and in circles.  I wasn't so much afraid that Gavin would get hurt, because I knew Clay was blocking him from sliding out, but I was afraid Gavin would hate it and scream the whole time.  Well he proved me wrong, he seemed to really enjoy it.  This ride made even Clay sick!  They probably would have had to stop it then if I had been on there!!

Look at him holding on to the rail with his tiny little hands!! How cute!

After that we went to see the snakes, which Gavin enjoyed entirely too much.  I went ahead and let him know that a snake was not a pet at our house!!  Next stop was the aviary where they let a bunch of tropical looking birds fly around and you can feed them nectar.  You can't really see the bird in the picture below, look for the bright colors by the monkey grass.  It was pretty cool and very noisy!  Gavin really liked it and tried to grab any bird that he could get close to, so I know this will definitely be a repeat attraction next time we go.

Well, that is where the camera ended :-(.  After the birds we went to the petting zoo, where Gavin got to pet some sheep and goats.  Then we stood in line for days for this one last train ride, that Gavin got denied in because he didn't have his shoes on!!  I was so ill, but oh well, rules are rules.  We finished the wonderful afternoon with some excellent bar b que and beans.  Gavin barely made it out of the park and back to the car before he was dead asleep.  He had such a good time and we will definitely be getting some park passes soon!  What better way to entertain a kid when it is a million degrees outside, especially when the water park opens!!  Can't wait!

Gavin's first bad note home!

I was in such a good mood yesterday after I got off work, ready to pick up my precious little boy and head home! Everything seems fine when I arrive at school to pick him up. His teacher that is usually there in the afternoons isn't, but that isn't uncommon because she leaves early on Wednesday for church. So I pick up his belongings including his note home that lists what he ate that day, how many naps and for how long, etc.











This is what I see when I look at it! Now you know we have been having issues with him at home. We have tried 3 different kinds of juice, probably 5 or 6 different sippy cups, and even tried putting his milk in there. All with the same results, two or three sips max and then he refuses to drink out of it. Sunday we tried a new tactict and left the top off of the cup and helped him drink like that. He didn't drink the whole cup or anything but it was the most success we have had thus far.

My boy is SO stubborn and when you don't do as he pleases, the above is the result :-). BUT, only if you let him get away with it. At home on the weekends, there is no morning snack/juice time because 2 hours after he gets up in the morning which is 7 am 7 days a week, is nap time. But they started this bad habit with him at school probably 3 or 4 months ago, so now he expects to be fed at 9 am instead of taking a nap. I know that my child is not the only child there so that is why I haven't fussed about it, I know things are different there than they are at home, so many more distractions and other kids to throw into the mix. So I had to take a BIG step down off of my self-righteous/judgemental attitude box yesterday before writing a note back. Please either leave me suggestions as to how to get him to switch over or say a lot of prayers for Gavin, me, and his teachers. Prayers are probably needed even if you do have some suggestions.

Azalea Festival

I was so excited about taking Gavin to the Azalea Festival this year.  I just knew he was going to have the best time of his life, irregardless of the fact that he is only 10 months old and can't walk.  I had seen on the advertisement that they were having a petting zoo and of course in my mind I figured it would be a slightly smaller version of the one they have at Wild Adventures.  It is okay to laugh, loudly at my obvious lack of festival experience.  Boy was I wrong!!  These people had like 2 bunnies a hamster and maybe one other animal.  All in cages and then wanted to charge you $3 to pet them.  Ha!  Not I and most certainly not Gavin!  They had tons of other fun stuff to do but unfortunately it was all for kids at least a year older than Gavin.  So here is to hoping next year will be all that I hoped this year would be :-).

This is how our day started out, as you can tell not a good sign.

Gavin being "inquisitive" refusing to look at the camera

Us finally doing something he enjoyed

His squeals of delight

He is happier now, so he decides to reward us with a quick look at the camera

So then we try and kill some more time walking around hoping we can get him to hold out long enough for us to watch the frisbee catching dogs.  A very nice and well meaning lady at one of the local church's tents handed us a couple of suckers for "the baby"  well me being the "SUCKER" that I am, actually gave one of them to my child who rarely has any sugar that doesn't come from fruit.  And it was nap time, and he was bored.  Well the next series of pictures is of us attempting to watch the dog show after Gavin had his sucker.....

All he wanted to do was crawl into the middle of the performance ring and/or hold on to the small blue rope that was separating us from the performance ring.  And when we wouldn't allow that, he pitched a fit.  So we gave up and went home before the first dog was even done :-(.  Here is to hoping next year I don't mess up and give him a sucker :-).

Gavin may take after his Daddy in the looks department, but he unfortunately tends to take after his Mommy in the attitude department. (which thankfully isn't a frequent occurrence for either of us :-))  Fortunately he also, like his Mommy, wears his emotions on his sleeve so you never have to guess how he feels.

I mean seriously does this picture not say it all!  So funny, so very, very funny!  Poor little boy, has to put up with such exasperating parents! Must be very tiring!!

10 months

I have no idea if it is just the fact that I have an infant and it is tax season or if my brain is slowly just going south but I can not remember ANYTHING!  I think my memory gets worse and worse everyday! Good thing I have this blog or I might forget all the cute little things Gavin has done.  Actually I probably have forgotten a lot of them in between my sporadic postings :-(.  To add to my list of things forgotten we can add the calendar page that I always make Gavin have in his monthly pictures.  I'm quite sure Gavin shed not one single tear over this.  Clay had the bright idea of me just pasting the calendar picture on top of one we took that day.  I probably wouldn't have admitted this but I am no expert a photo editing and it is VERY obvious :-).

As you can tell from the above picture, his hair is really starting to turn blonde.  So I guess he will be a mini blonde version of Clay.  Although if he keeps growing at the rate he has been, he won't be mini for long!

Over the past month he has kept up his now usual pace of life, high-speed, he is pretty much non-stop from sun up to sun down other than naps.  He almost never wants to be held, unless you are standing up and moving.  This makes me sad because I love to snuggle him!  He wants to always be on the floor/ground exploring.  He is super inquisitive, always looking around, trying to grab things and usually trying to put those things he gets his hand on into his mouth.  This has proved to be a problem when Clay has taken him fishing at the pond by our house.  Clay will wear the baby carrier which puts Gavin right in front of his chest facing outward and Gavin insists on "helping" Clay with his fishing rod.  I wish I had some pictures of this but I am always at work when they go.

Some of the things he has done this past month that I actually wrote down the dates are:
2/14 - first success with sippy cup, and quickly thereafter many, many more failures.  We may have found a juice that will tempt him into drinking, Orange, Mango, Peach.
2/14 - first table food meal at the table with the family!! I am happy to say that we have kept up this tradition for the entire month with only a couple of relapses of the old habit of sitting on the couch watching TV.
2/27 - first separation anxiety episode was at church.  As soon as we handed him off he starting crying, which broke my heart!!  Good thing Clay was there to ease me out the door or we may never have made it to the service that day.  He has continued this practice each Sunday since although last night he was just fine, but that probably had something to do with everyone being outside on the playground.  I don't think he would have cared if I had handed him to a monster at that point.
Words?? 3/6 - ball, cat, clap - whatever you would call what he is saying, started before 3/6 or at least the gibberish we assume to be clap did.  Ms. Mae at school was the first one to notice it, so you can't say it is just us crazy parents making stuff up.  He still refuses to say Mama though.

He is getting really close to walking, I think.  We have noticed that sometimes he will crawl with one knee on the floor and then with one foot on the floor.  I wish I had a picture because I know I am not making any sense with the description.

Some other things he has done lately that I may or may not have already mentioned in previous posts:
- Pants like Doug the dog, so funny to listen to!
- Loves to bounce/dance to music.  You should have seen us getting down at the Azalea Festival to the Rolling Stones, good thing Clay didn't get any videos of that!!
- Gives me big hugs, which almost makes up for the fact he refuses to say Mama
- has complete conversations with us, his stuffed animals, random other objects.  You can not understand a word he is saying but he seems to talk in sentences and will pause for response.  It's funny to listen to he and I talk, him in his gibberish and me responding normally like I have a clue as to what he just said.
- his favorite toy, other than Clay, is his blue rubber ball.  He will even sit down and roll it back and forth with us for a few seconds until he gets distracted by something else.

Gavin is now on a 4 hour schedule for bottles which has him down to 4 8oz bottles a day.  He also has 3 normal meals and 1 snack.  He is on 100% table (real) food other than his oatmeal cereal.

For breakfast he eats either oatmeal cereal or Cheerios
Lunch: whatever school has
Snack: whatever school has which is usually vanilla wafers or graham crackers.  If he is at home then he gets Cheerios, plain kind not honey (mean Mommy)
Dinner: Meat (usually fish) or other protein (usually beans), a veggie (loves them all), a fruit (not picky here either), and sometimes he will have some kind of starch like noodles or a tortilla.

I can hardly believe that in less than 2 months he will be one year old!  We just ordered his birthday invitations and they are so cute!

I will post next about our trip to the Azalea Festival which didn't consist of much but taking some pictures and playing on the swing.

Random recent cute pictures

Poor Clay either needs a refresher course on the camera or else he keeps leaving it on the wrong button because every picture he took of Gavin and I was blurry on this particular day.  But since they are still cute pictures of Gavin I will post anyway.

Letting Mommy steal ALL his sugars

Paying close attention to Me-Me

Currently his FAVORITE food in the world - CHEERIOS!  I never thought he would go for the regular ones,  especially since he had already been eating the sweet fruit flavored puffs, but he loves these things, as you can see.

By far the cutest picture I have taken in quite some time.  My precious little boy and his 2nd favorite thing to play with, #1 being his Daddy.

this boy will chew on anything!

Grooming Clay I suppose :-)

Playing with Daddy!

Below are a couple of cute videos or at least I think they are cute.

The first one is just of the funny way he tries to crawl holding things in both hands and then him trying to get Doug to play chase.  Not sure how this link to YouTube works but I am giving it a try.

The video below pretty much explains itself, just look at his eyes searching for mischief!

One of Gavin's new sounds is to pant like a dog.  I guess that is about all he hears out of poor ol Doug!

Gavin's favorite past time, playing with his Daddy!

9 month check up

Gavin had his 9 month check up yesterday which was obviously a little late since he will be 10 months this Saturday.  I know I have said that Gavin seems to be slimming a little bit, well I was actually correct!

At his last visit on 12/28 his stats were:

Weight  23.4  95%
Length  28.25  75%
Head Circumference  18.5  off the charts


His stats as of 3/8/11:
Weight 24.5 95%   
Length 30.00 90%
Head Circumference 18.75 95%


First of all, I can not believe he has only gained 1.1 lbs in almost 2.5 months!  I am used to him gaining like a pound every two weeks!  It does make me sad that he is starting to loose all his cute little rolls.  He has almost completely lost all of his extra chins :-).  Second of all he has grown almost 2 inches!!  He went from being in the 75th percentile to the 90th!  And his big ol head is taking a breather in the growing department because instead of not even being on the chart, he is down to the 95th percentile.  I think it is safe to say that Gavin is going to be one BIG boy!  I already feel like he is bigger than most 1.5 - 2 year olds.  When he starts walking, no one will believe us that he is as young as he is.


Hopefully I will have lots of cute pictures of him on his 10 month birthday??  I have no idea what you would call it, should it be an anniversary??  Anyway, that's it for now.