3 year checkup

It is so nice to only have to take Gavin in for checkups annually now, I know in a couple of months I will be back to the monthly for awhile so I might as well enjoy it!

He had his vision and hearing tested along with getting weighed and measured.  He passed his hearing test and the PA said she had never seen a 3 year old with 20/20 vision before!

His stats:

	Birth	1 yr	2 yr	3 yr
Weight	9.5	26.5	32	36.875
Height	21.75	30.5	34.75	36.5
Head	15		20	20.25

I think the thing that has changed the most dramatically over the past year is his speech and language.  99% of the time he is completely understandable by almost everyone.  He does get shy sometimes and mumbles but he has the sentence structure and length of an adult.  His Aunt 'Pril says he talks better than most of her kindergartners.

He loves to sing and he and his Daddy sing about 50 songs before bed EVERY night. When its Mamma's turn to tuck in we limit it to 2 or 3 cause I just don't have that kind of patience :-).  He loves cartoon movies and his current favorite is Cars although the Lorax, Turtle Tails and all of the Land Before Time movies probably come in a really close second.

He is happiest when he is outside especially if it is at Wild Adventures or the beach.  At his checkup yesterday he had to get a finger pricked so when he starts crying he looks at me and says, "Mamma, we need to go to beach, it'll make me feel better" I cracked up

His current favorite things are:
Tractors
Trains
Slides
Coloring
Books
Riding his bike
Playing in the bath with Daddy, until it's time to wash hair, then the screaming starts.

His favorite foods are:
**Peanut butter and honey sandwiches**
Baked beans
Granola bars
Chocolate (pretty much in any form)
Most all fruits
Green peas/beans

He is very open with his emotions and most of the time is quickly and completely repentant when he does wrong.  He is currently going through an AWFUL bedtime/nighttime phase where he gets up 1 million times before falling asleep and then another half dozen during the middle of the night.  For such a normally good sleeper and for parents who are used to and expect a full nights sleep, this is getting super old and all I can do is hope and pray that this ends quickly because in less than 3 months we will have a newborn and I am here to tell you I can't handle two kids not sleeping!!

Other than that though he is super well behaved and one of the sweetest kids I know AND he loves to snuggle which I LOVE except for during the wee hours of the morning :-)!

His birthday party this year was supposed to consist of us and my parents, brother and his girlfriend going to Wild Adventures.  I just didn't have the energy or time to plan a party and it was bring a friend day so we invited them.  Well my brother had a couple of medical hiccups that day related to the brain tumor he was diagnosed with a couple of weeks ago so it ended up that I got almost zero pictures and a very shortened trip to Wild Adventures.  Amazingly enough Gavin didn't complain a bit other than sobbing when we left Wild Adventures and seemed to have really enjoyed his birthday and all that went with it.

Gavin on his new big-boy bike

Eating his requested birthday dinner of Peanut butter and honey sandwiches after our trip to Splash Island and Wild Adventures.  I swear that boy would eat PB&H sandwiches 3 meals a day every day if we would let him!

Playing with the new bubble gun Dave and 'Pril got him.  (I promise he does wear pants... on occasion)

 his party at school:

Riding his new bike

He is having trouble pedaling all of the way around, he keeps trying to pedal backwards for some reason.

This has been a super fun and wild year and I can't even imagine what the next year will hold.  I can only hope that I will be better at blogging so I can remember some of it after it passes....

Picture comparison

I've been perusing my old blog posts from before and right after Gavin was born today and noticed a striking similarity between Gavin at 3 months and at 3 years.  Look at that smile!!!



And This one from 3 days ago

Isn't he the most adorable thing EVER!!!

Gavin's new Big Boy Room

It all started here in January with Clay drawing what he imagined for Gavin's big boy "tractor" room.  I couldn't find anything I liked on Pinterest and was super happy that Clay had given it some serious thought and already had a plan! I love him more everyday!!!

We kind of came to a standstill then since the bedroom that was being transformed was filled to the gills with Clay's "stuff". Now let me stop here and tell you that this room was our guest room/my peaceful escape room.  Well of course it was only that right before and right after someone came and stayed with us because the other 360 days of the year it was overflowing with hunting gear and whatever else Clay wasn't sure what to do with but didn't want to throw away.  

Well in March I decided that we needed to have this completed by Gavin's birthday so that he would have plenty of time to get used to sleeping in a new room before baby brother came along.  I didn't want him to associate getting "kicked" out of his old room with the new sibling.  

So at the beginning of April I got Clay to promise that he would have everything cleaned out and got my brother to promise he would come and pickup all of the furniture we no longer needed in there by the Friday after tax season ended because that is when I wanted to take off of work and PAINT!!!  

Our plan for the paint was to do the bottom half the wall in chalk-board paint and the top half of the wall in normal paint with the huge tractor also being chalkboard paint.  I had researched and found that their are two brands of paint that sell tintable chalkboard paint. One being Rustoleum, which came in 12 colors and the other was Benjamin Moore which was available in any color you could think of.  So since we wanted tan/khaki and Lowes was an authorized dealer of Rustoleum we headed there first.  Big disappointment, not only did they not carry it but they wouldn't order it either... and neither would any of the other Rustoleum authorized dealers in this area.... So then I went to the Benjamin Moore website and found their list of authorized dealers and called all of them within 100 mile radius of Valdosta.  Finally, I found one in Thomasville of all places that carried it so we planned to make a trip there that Saturday to pick up paint at Sampson's Paint and Decorating.

In between the picture above and the picture below were HOURS of sweat and toil!  I LOVE to paint so I had volunteered to do the tan/khaki and Clay with his artistic skills would take care of the tractor.  Well either a lot has changed since the last time I painted or pregnancy has taken a much larger toll on me that I thought because it took 10 hours to paint the tan/khaki stuff on those grey walls.  Now granted the ceilings in the front bedroom are 15 foot high in some places so that was a nightmare but boy was I worn out!!! So even after 10 hours of painting there were still some places that needed to be touched up by Clay before we moved on.  

Clay's masterpiece!!  So proud!!

Next step was priming the chalkboard parts with chalk and that was another good upper body workout. 

 And then yesterday the crowning achievement of Gavin's new room arrived!! His made to order bunk beds by our wonderful and talented friend Chris Singletary!!  Before I realized he made bunk beds I had searched all over the internet looking for some sturdy but reasonably priced wooden bunk beds.  Everything I found was either cheaply made or super expensive so one night as we were eating dinner with them the subject came up and Chris said he could build them for us!! Hooray!!

I just assumed that Gavin would sleep on the bottom, silly Mama!  He headed straight for the top!!  The picture quality is pretty bad because for some reason Clay has a really hard time taking pictures with my phone and I was on doctor ordered bed rest for the day.   But as you can see Gavin is super happy with his new bed.  And as an added benefit he is scared to come down the ladder so it has cut the coming out of his room at night down to zero....probably won't last long though, unfortunately.

Now to get baby Wyatt's new room/Gavin's old room refreshed and organized :-) Well we have about 12 more weeks :-).