Jump N Jacks take 2

Well I am happy to report that the 2nd outing to Jump N Jacks was much more eventful than the 1st.  And there were probably at least 1,000 more kids there than last time.  We went on Saturday at 3, which is a popular time apparently.  Not surprising when it is 150 degrees outside.

Anyway, Gavin had a big time and I even got to participate this time since I remembered my socks.  Although he didn't participate enough so that I got to jump around a bunch which was disappointing.  I did get two battle wounds on my elbows though from helping him slide down one of the slides, man that hurt!

Soon some of the older girls got into this little kid bouncy and were knocking him all over the place so Gavin decided to check out

Then Clay wanted to try one of the big slides, which went better than I expected

Gavin had the most fun at the football throwing thing in the back even though he could barely get the ball over the edge.  He spent most of the time just chasing the footballs around on the floor.  A couple of times Clay tossed the ball to him and he caught it, I kept trying to catch it on video but all I got was video of Clay hitting him with it and it bouncing off.

Our camera wasn't working quite right so I had to take a lot of video instead of pictures so I won't waste your time with them all but needless to say this was a tired little boy after all his adventures!

 I just thought this last picture was so cute, I love the way he crosses his ankles, just seems so grown up to me for some reason.

Hopefully I will have lots of fun pictures to post next week of our July 4th adventures.  And if everyone would please pray for Clay's Mom.  She is hoping to have heart valve replacement surgery sometime in the next week.

Sweet little memories

Nothing big but it really made me smile so I don't want to forget it.
Last Wednesday Gavin's school called me and said that he had been screaming all morning and pulling at his right ear.  Gavin is an ear puller, he yanks on them anytime he is mad or tired.  He also has tubes but I was worried that one of them had possibly fallen out so I told them I would come and pick him up.  Well this was about 10:45 and the doctor's office closes at 11:30 for lunch, so I had to race over there and pick him up.  Well of course when I show up they are just serving lunch, and my boy does NOT miss a meal!  But we had to go so I picked up his ham and ketchup (yuck!) sandwich and tater tots and we shot out the door.  Of course there is no way I am letting him eat his ham/ketchup sandwich all alone unsupervised so I start handing him tater tots one by one.  Well each time I hand him one he says tan-too (thank you)!!  I was SO proud of him and it just warmed my little itty-bitty heart!  We always say thank you to him when he gives us something but I had no idea that it was actually sinking in!

My sweet little precious boy!

And oh, by the way.  He stops crying as soon as I pick him up, laughs at the doctor the whole time we are there and of course is the picture of health!  Little rascal!

Father's Day

The week after Mother's Day, Clay's Mom went into the hospital with blood poisoning.  Well after 3 weeks at SGMC, being released and then readmitted 2 days later, she was transferred to Emory on the 14th where she is awaiting heart valve transplant surgery for the 2nd time.  Poor Clay had his hands full down here with me and my mystery illness so we were not able to make it up there until that weekend.  In fact we hadn't even planned to go then, Clay was going to go up by himself the following week, but Clay had gotten a call from his Dad that made it pretty apparent that we needed to go then and bring Gavin with us.  Praise the Lord that she made a huge turn for the better that Friday night and was in great spirits when we showed up with the our little monster on Saturday morning.  I have to say that Gavin did SO much better with the traveling than I expected and was pretty much a joy to be around in the hospital which was such a blessing to all involved. This is the only picture I got of him the first day.  He was passed out before I even got out of the hospital parking garage!  All that playing and entertaining wore him out!

We got back up early Sunday morning and made our way back to Emory to see everyone for awhile before we headed home.

Clay's Mom is at the University part of the Hospital which is really nice for many reasons but the one that is relevant to Gavin's well being on this trip is the really nice outdoor areas.  There isn't any traffic so we can just let him run around and play and get rid of some of that energy that he has been trying to release all morning while he is sitting on various laps and with Clay's Mom on the bed.

I got a couple of really cute pictures of Gavin and Clay on his 2nd Father's Day.

Gavin attempting to pick up the granola bar he just dropped on the ground.

And running from Clay because he doesn't want to give it up.

Gavin and his Aunt Susan, they had a great time entertaining each other.

Gavin showing off his new tongue tricks

Gavin and his Nanny-Ma.  She was singing to him and he just loved it, it was so sweet!!

Gavin and his Pa-pa.  They have a lot of fun together also and I know Gavin really lifted the spirits of everyone there.  I was so proud of him and his good behavior.  I was worried all the machines and funny hospital sounds and smells would freak him out, but he adjusted quite well and pretty quickly.

Poor little exhausted boy, passed out with Gerry, his giraffe.

Birthday Parties

The next day we had two birthday parties to go to.  Gavin sure is a popular boy already :-).

The first party was for a precious little girl who was turning 3, at a park close to our house.  There has been like 100 days over 100 this year so we were SO happy when the morning turned out to be overcast and not miserably hot. Gavin doesn't nap very well at school and actually doesn't even take a morning nap anymore.  Usually though, he will still take one on Saturdays but of course this Saturday he decided he would rather scream.  So we were not holding out much hope for a good attitude but he was cordial but didn't interact with all the kids very much, he was pretty much only interested in swinging and eating birthday cake.

Funny face

 This boy LOVES to swing!

Pretty sure this is as close to the birthday girl as he got





So he completely wore himself out between the screaming, swinging and playing on the playground and as soon as we got in the car he fell asleep.  We only had an hour before our next birthday party and one lesson we have definitely learned is that once that boy goes to sleep DO NOT WAKE HIM UP!!!  He will almost never go back to sleep and you will dearly pay for it.  So we decided to just go into town and go through a drive-thru for lunch and let him nap peacefully in his car seat.

So he got about a 45 minute nap and was good and rested for the next birthday party which was great because he had so much fun and needed all the energy he could muster.  This party was at the YMCA gymnastics building and they let all the kids run wild and play on all the equipment.  It was perfect and even the adults had fun!
They had this super long trampoline that the kids could jump down, Gavin hasn't figured jumping out yet, but had fun stumbling down it.

I think he was considering implementing some of those "Toddler Property Rules".  He LOVED playing with these balls!  He loves playing with balls period, but these were ex
tra special.  I couldn't believe he didn't pitch a fit when we had to put them down to go eat cake.  He must have seen the cake and been momentarily distracted.



They also had this really great foam pit, that you could slide into, jump into from a platform, or swing into from a rope swing!  Some of the adults decided that this would be a great place to have an adult birthday party :-).

Gavin thought the foam pit was alright, but he was soon out and back to chasing the balls.  Clay figured out that he could get Gavin to do other stuff by using the ball as bait.  Not sure what this says about our parenting skills or about Gavin, but I choose to ignore it.

Gavin loves to climb things at home and I thought what better place to climb than here where they have soft squishy floors.  But alas he didn't want to so we had to use the ball as bait once again.

Success at last!!

Poor little thing, so tired!

He actually laid here for a while, or at least it was awhile for him.  This boy does not lay down unless he is asleep.

So as you can tell he had a BIG time and was properly worn out and ready for his nice, long afternoon nap when we got home!

Cute pictures random Friday

I finally remembered to bring my camera to work and download my pictures a week or so ago.  I could easily download them to Clay's laptop, but for my super organized (some would use other words like anal) personality, it suits me best to have all my pictures in one place, on my computer.  So these pictures may be almost a month old but they are cute none the less.  On another note, I have lots more cute pictures from the past week but again they are still on the stupid camera, which I actually took out of my purse this morning, right before I left for work!!

These pictures are all from a random Friday afternoon/evening early this month.

Gavin's t-shirt is listing out Toddler Property Rules, Clay found it when we went to Jacksonville.  It is really cute although not exactly the lessons we want him to be learning.  There are 10 rules:
1. If it's in my hands, it's mine
2. If I can take it from you, it's mine
3. If I had it for a little while, it's mine
4. If it's mine, it must never appear to be yours in any way.
5. If I am building or doing something, all the pieces are mine
6. If it looks just like mine, it's mine
7. If you left it at my house, it's mine
8. If I saw it first it's mine.
9. If you have something and you put it down, it automatically becomes mine.
10. If I can take it from you it's mine.

Like I said, cute, but not good life lessons.

We must have been watching some nature movie on Netflix or possibly Sesame Street, because he isn't looking at the camera in one single picture I have!

These are pictures of bath time the same night. I know this is a typical Mom thought, but honestly I think I have the cutest little boy EVER!!  What a sweet little face!

Gavin has a bathtub basketball toy game and Clay and him play with it every night.  In the pictures, Clay is trying to get Gavin to "dunk" it.  

Missed this shot

Trying again

Celebration!!!