Browning Boys: May 2011

Monday, May 16, 2011

One sided love affair part 2

The pictures below are pretty self explanatory, poor kitty! Gavin squeals with delight every time he sees Josh and then immediately goes after him.

I decided to have his birthday party the weekend before his birthday since Gavin's Aunt J and Emma would be in town. We started the weekend of celebration off with a trip to Cheehaw on Friday where the adults had more fun than the kids, but oh well.

I was not nearly as psychotic on Saturday as I had been expecting and warning Clay about. I guess all the prayers that he and I had said were answered :-). I had lots of lists and that helped keep me sane also. The weather was perfect, not too hot and definitely not cold. There were also no rain showers which was a blessing because we had the party at the park.

The party theme was "little monsters" which was made much easier by lots of nice people on Etsy supplying me with little monster clip art, ideas, and Gavin's shirt. Since no one actually sold little monster party supplies.
Clay created the invite for me using the clip art I bought from BabyStarDesign. I am so blessed to have a creative husband.

I was also blessed by finding this party planning blog http://makinmudpies.blogspot.com/2010/03/little-monster-birthday-party.html that just so happened to have the same party idea and gave lots of good suggestions. Although without my creative, handy husband and my cake decorating extraordinaire sister in law, I still wouldn't have been able to pull it off.

Here are some pictures of the fruit monsters Clay made for me, isn't he so talented!!

And here is the terribly delicious cakes that Lesia made:

Anyway back to the birthday boy. He was so good, I was afraid with all of the people that we invited, that he would be overwhelmed. I mean he really likes people and doesn't shy away from attention but he had never been around this many people all there to stare at him. But he handled it just like any other person who has to deal with adoring fans daily. And he dug right into the cake although he didn't make the mess we were hoping for, he just ate it like he would anything else. He also didn't have the huge sugar crash/meltdown that I had expected, which was really nice since we had dinner plans with friends later that night. I am sure the babysitter appreciated it also!

He got tons of presents that we decided not to open at the party, but the one from Clay's parents couldn't be wrapped for obvious reasons so he went straight for it as soon as he saw it.

All I know is he is going to be a legend/terror to the neighborhood children and parent's as soon as his legs are long enough to push the pedals. In fact the prop even spins when you pedal!! I can already hear the angry calls from parent's whose children have been mowed down on the street :-).

I have tons of pictures but didn't post them all, instead there is a link to the Picasa web album with all of them if you are interested. A huge thank you to all of you that were there, it was a wonderful time and we are so thankful to have shared it with you!

12 months old!!

Gavin turned 12 months old this past Thursday and I really can not believe it. It truly seems like the picture below was just taken a month or so ago instead of 12! He is such a blessing to Clay and I and we could truly not be happier. He is the sweetest little boy, 99% of the time :-).

Good thing that this was the last time I had to take a picture of him with the calendar page, because it is impossible to get a good shot of them both. He is trying to hand me the tape that was attached to the paper. We had tried taping the page to the chair in hopes to get off a quick picture, but he was faster than our camera.

I just love this expression he makes! It melts my heart every time!!

Gavin is fully into toddler hood, tantrums and all. He is off of formula and completely on whole milk, which is such a cost savings! He has 3 meals a day and one or two snacks. We went cold turkey off bottles for the second time on 4/16 and he hasn't been back since. He is doing really well! He took his first steps on April 20th and has been walking more and more ever since, especially at school. In fact until this last week, he didn't walk at home hardly at all but when I would go pick him up at school, they would tell me how much he was walking there! Little bugger!!

Talking: weekend of the 16th - used the word "uh-oh" in context. In addition he says and/or repeats the following:
Dada
Mama (rarely)
Dog
Cat
Ball
Clap - probably his most used word
No
Thank you
There is also a word we aren't really sure about, could possibly be baby, hold me or help me. He repeats it over and over again when he wakes up or is fussy.

He has just gotten into Sesame Street. We watch it on Netflix on the weekends while Clay is cooking supper. Pretty sure his favorite is Elmo and sadly enough after only 3 or 4 episodes I can pretty much sing any of the songs and know exactly what they are about to say.

He also loves to dance and bop his head to the beat of music, it is so freaking adorable, I love it! He also loves ALL animals and females. He holds a special place in his heart for our cat Josh. I have some pictures I will post later. It is incredible how patient Josh is with him.

Some scary things are that he has NO FEAR of heights and will either throw himself off or try and climb down absolutely anything. Apparently he has a fairly high pain tolerance also because he threw himself off of the couch last week and landed right on his head and never shed a tear. I have a feeling that I am going to have to start signing my paychecks over to South GA Medical Ctr soon. He will also put ANYTHING in his mouth and try to eat it. Paper is his favorite followed closely by cat/dog hair, yard weeds, sticks, pine cones, and various other dirty things. I have given up on trying to keep most of it out of his mouth and just try to focus on the things that are actually harmful.

Here are some other cute pictures from his birthday. I will post his party pics in the next post.

Gavin and Doug, our dog, have a deal worked out. Gavin either feeds him from his tray or leaves enough in his seat to feed Doug later.

As you can see from Doug's tongue hanging out of his mouth, Gavin had just finished letting Doug lick the icing on his fingers. Next stop, Gavin's fingers in his own mouth, yummy! Boys are so cute and sweet, but really pretty gross sometimes also. But I wouldn't have it anyother way!!

Happy 1st Birthday Love Bug, I love you so much!!!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Catching Up

Wow, I can't believe it has been 3 weeks since I have posted. Life around here has been super busy/crazy. I thought work would let up once tax season was over but instead it has just gotten busier. Thankfully though I am only working a normal 40 hr week though. Since my last post, Gavin has celebrated his first Easter, spent the night with Clay's parents so we could have some alone time, met his future wife Emma, gone to Cheehaw Park, and had his 1yr birthday party (save for another post). He has also started biting kids at school, just this week!! His teacher told us not to worry, that it was just a phase and they would work with him on it, but it still freaks me out a little.

So, Easter was kind of crazy. We got up and went to our normal church service at 8:45 but then instead of going to Sunday School afterwards, we came straight home so that we could celebrate our risen Lord with my parents, by eating tacos :-). Cheap, easy and tasty so I couldn't complain. They stayed and hung out for a few hours and then it was off to Clay's parent's for an after lunch Easter egg hunt. I really didn't think Gavin would have any idea of what to do or what was going on but Clay helped him pounce on a few and then eat them. His Nanny-Ma also gave him his first Peep, which turned his mouth blue and his attitude sour, but what are grandparents for but to feed them sugar and then send them home?

He also got a swing from his grandparent's and he really loved that!

After that we headed over to Aunt E's house for dinner and another Easter egg hunt. Gavin did exceptionally well considering all the sleep he didn't get and all the sugar he did. He had a great time playing with all of Jackson and Clare's toys and meeting all of the new people. He also had a much better idea of what to do this time for the Easter egg hunt so Clay put him down and let him get to it.

No pictures from the stay with Clay's parents but from what I hear they all had a great time. And so did Clay and I, we got to go to Jacksonville and lay by the pool, go have a great dinner and do a little shopping. It was so nice to have some time just to us to talk and catch up. After our fun in Jacksonville though, we all came down with the stomach bug and spent the next few days as miserable as three people can be! Luckily we all recovered in enough time to take Gavin to meet Emma and have dinner with some really great friends. I also have no pictures from this, because I forgot our camera again. Hopefully I can get some from Aunt E and Aunt J soon enough.

Gavin has been teasing us with the walking. According to one of his teachers, Ms. Mae, he does it quite frequently at school, but it is a rarity at home. Just a couple of steps here and there and never when we want him to :-).

I took the day off on Friday so that we could go with Aunt J, Uncle P and Emma to Cheehaw Park in Albany. The ride was pretty boring but it gave me and Aunt J some much needed time to chat and catch up with each other and the babies some time to nap. The adults were way more impressed with all the animals than the babies and Gavin was much more interested in crawling whenever we would let him and finding pieces of wood to chew on.

I am afraid my kid is going to grow up to be one of those guys that eats things to get into the Guinness Book of World Records!! He also thought Emma's ride was way cooler than his so he gave it a try and let her wear his hat in return to keep the sun off her face.