Halloween Weekend

I feel so guilty since I haven't posted in weeks, like I am somehow letting Gavin down or something.  Strange I know :-).  And I am way late with the updates because Halloween was like three weeks ago!

We were bad parent's and didn't take Gavin to the pumpkin patch until the Friday before Halloween, not that he really knew the difference but I would have felt awful if I hadn't gotten some pictures of him there for his first pumpkin experience.  He was overall not impressed in the least, could have been that it was his nap time or all the cars, trucks, and people going by, or that he just doesn't care about pumpkins.  Either way we subjected him to tons of pictures in various poses trying to get at least one with him smiling and/or looking at the camera.  We failed, but at least I can have the memory of him being there and some cute pictures, just not of him smiling.









On to Saturday, when Halloween was celebrated by our city.  Again, we were horrible parents and didn't bother getting Gavin a costume until.....you guessed it Friday afternoon.  So, all the was left in the several stores that were checked was either a pumpkin costume or a ballerina.  Obviously we opted to continue the pumpkin theme from the day before.  Maybe, just maybe it would be more successful.  Oh the other fact about the costume was that it was a 12 - 18 month and Gavin is still wearing 3 - 6 month clothes.

We decided to celebrate Halloween by going to some friends house to watch the GA/FL game and then possibly go with them to a few houses if the game got over early enough for Gavin to still be in an agreeable mood.  Well, the Dawgs sucked it up once again and the game lasted forever!  So during the 4th qtr we got all the kids dressed up so the older ones could go get candy and so we could get some pictures of Gavin before he got too fussy.  You can tell by his expressions he is not at all excited about the pumpkin AGAIN.  I think he must have something against them.

This one is probably my favorite, he looks like he is begging us to take him out of the costume!


So obviously over the whole experience


I would rather be asleep




And when he can't get us to take him out, he decides to leave


So in repayment for all the torture we put him through, we decided to take him to the park to swing after church on Sunday.  He loves to swing!  In fact he loves it so much he will wear his sunglasses with out screaming.  Such a cute little boy!!







I love this picture


After he got tired of the swing I decided to let him practice his sitting skills on something a little softer than our wood floors at home.
Right before the face plant


Right after the face plant


Bad Mommy! Bad, Bad Mommy!!

I can not believe my little love bug will be 6 months old in just 3 days!!  I promise I will post those pictures quicker than I posted these :-).

The weekend - Long Post (sorry)

So last week I made my first trip away from both Gavin and Clay to head to a tax conference in Atlanta.  I happened to get a stomach virus immediately upon arriving so instead of moaning and groaning about missing my boys, I moaned and groaned about how bad my tummy hurt :-(  I guess it served its purpose.  So of course all I wanted this weekend was to spend crazy amounts of time alone with them and that is exactly what I got!!  I was so worried that Gavin was going to start doing all kinds of neat things while I was gone but Clay promised that he didn't.  I guess he was waiting on me to get home to introduce his new moves/sounds because Friday night when I was changing his diaper he looked up at me and pursed his little lips and buzzed them.  So of course I thought that was super cool/funny and did it right back to him.  He looked at me kind of funny sort of like he was thinking, "hey, I thought I was the only one that could do that".  After getting over his initial shock, we did it back and forth a couple of times.

Saturday he decided to try it a little different.  He would stick out his lips like Donald Duck and then buzz them, it was so funny looking.  He would get this super serious face right before he did it.  So Clay and I laughed and laughed at him and he enjoyed the attention and kept performing.

He also came up with a new sound this weekend.  He has now learned to gasp, really loud.  He mainly does it when he is lying on his changing table.  It is so funny, I have no idea where he learned to do that, but he finds it very odd that we, Clay and I, can also do it.  He is such a funny little guy and he loves to hear his own voice.  He makes sounds and "talks" all day.

I guess he has been so busy concentrating on his vocal repertoire that he just took notice of his toes.  He didn't start that this weekend, but it has been really recent.   He now tries to stick his feet in his mouth no matter what position he is in or what is on them. I worried about it for awhile because all the books say that he should have done that months ago, but he is so far ahead with everything else, I guess he just forgot about them.



 He will kill me one day for posting this but he has also just recently discovered his man parts.  Every time you take off his diaper his hand goes straight for them, like he is checking to make sure they haven't gone missing.  You have to be really careful though when he has a poopy diaper that he doesn't get a handful of that instead.

One other thing he has just started - He clasps his hands together and shakes them from side to side, kind of like he is standing on a stage and just won a big award.  I know I'm not describing it in any kind of discernible way so here is a picture, albeit not a great one, to illustrate.  The problem with him doing this is, he keeps hitting himself in the face!  I'm afraid he is going to blacken his eye and we are going to get child services called on us.  I think it might be part of Gavin's master plan since we keep feeding him peas :-).

From 2010-10-23

So a couple of months ago we broke down and finally decided to try Net Flix since our favorite movie store in town closed it's doors and last summer we had started getting the DVD's of 24 trying to catch up so we could watch this past season on TV.  Well we got distracted and gave up around the end of season two.  So in between Net Flix mailing us our movies we noticed that we could watch all the old seasons of 24 instantly online, so we have been hooked ever since.  That is pretty much all we do on the weekend, when UGA or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers aren't playing.  So I was trying to watch Jack Bauer save the US once again from terrorists while simultaneously feed Gavin his cereal last night.  Bad Mommy, I know, believe me!  Well I paid for it as you can see from the funny pictures below.  Every time I would turn my head he would rub oatmeal/rice in somewhere else!



I know it is hard to tell from the blurriness but that is oatmeal/rice between his toes!


This is him attempting to retrieve that oatmeal/rice


Him trying to grab the camera and destroy my evidence


As you can see, it is all the way up to his armpit


A cute face full of cereal, he even got it up his nose!

New Food

Well we finally started on veggies 10/16/10, so he was 5 months and almost a week old.  1st on deck, green peas!!!! So we started on Saturday after the family shopping trip to Wal-mart. Gavin has started to get pretty excited (and demanding) when you put him in his highchair, he knows he is either getting food or getting to watch his movie (Your Baby Can Read).  Gavin was not nearly as excited once he got his first bite. After just a few spoonfuls he clamped his mouth shut and would NOT eat another bite!  I had a taste to see if it was super nasty and it wasn't, just tasted like green peas without salt or pepper to me.  I guess however when all you are used to is rice cereal and sort of sweet oatmeal, green peas are not high on your list of favorites.  

So on Sunday I thought I would try and bribe/trick him by having his cereal in a bowl right next to his peas and just every so often sneak in a spoon of peas.  Genius plan I thought to myself, I mean come on how smart can a 5 month be??  Smarter than me apparently!!  He caught on REAL quick.  I did however get him to eat most of the peas.  Here are some pictures from that day.   I even dressed him in his "Give Peas a Chance" outfit, hoping that it would inspire him :-).









Ms. Amanda his teacher says he is doing just great with his peas at school.  So apparently he is a much more agreeable eater when he isn't at home, imagine that.  This was reinforced this past Sunday when we fed him peas again and 30 minutes later he threw them up along with half of his bottle!  Apparently he wanted to make SURE we got the message!

5 month pictures

Sorry it took so long, before I could upload these pictures last week, Clay had taken the memory card out of the camera and put it in his trail camera which is for those of you non-hunting types a camera that you attach to a tree and it takes pictures of deer and other animals.

Gavin was not the most cooperative for his "posed" with the calendar page.  If you notice the wrinkles on the paper it is because he had already grabbed it and tried to tear it up, not sure he will be a good youth model like his Daddy was :-).  He had already had his school pictures that morning though, which left a bit to be desired unless the pictures come out a whole lot better than the proofs. Clay learned a valuable lesson this time, if your child's hair is sticking up and you don't take the time to wet it and slick it down, neither will the photographer.  Gavin had these sprigs of hair sticking out on the left side of his head and Clay just assumed they would fix it.  WRONG!  So our precious baby boy's first school pictures look funny because his hair is just a little bit darker than the background so it looks like there is a blurry spot on all his pictures.



I did get one almost smile out of him



This next series of three is immediately after the ones above.  I had just given him his favorite stuffed animal, Dairy Moo.  Look at the faces he is making at me!!  I think he is whispering hateful things about me and all the pictures in Dairy Moo's ear!




So of course I give up after that.  Well I walk in our bedroom later to find Gavin on the bed smiling happily while Clay takes tons of pictures!!  I think Gavin loves his Daddy more :-(  or at the very least Clay is a much better entertainer than I am.  He got some really cute ones though and that makes me happy!



This one is kind of blurry but the face he is making is precious!

5 months old!!

My little precious boy turned five months old yesterday!  I can hardly believe it.  He had been changing so much lately and doing so many new things that it seems kind of like we have a new child every week, except he is still the same sweet, loving, good sleeper that he has always been!

This past weekend he had his first non-family babysitter, Annabelle, and he seemed to have a great time.  We went to some friends of ours wedding.  It was nice to be able to get dressed up and go out for a few hours with Clay and not have to worry about what time we need to be back for feeding or naps.  Sunday after church he got to meet his long lost Aunt A.M. who moved to Montana right before he was born.  He took to her like he had known her all his life, although he does seem to have a thing for the ladies.  I think it might be because he knows all he had to do is smile at them and they will do whatever he wants.

We are still on the same food schedule as last month: 7 oz bottles at 7am, 10am, 1pm, 4pm 8oz around 7pm.  He has 2 Tbls of cereal at 11 am and 6pm.  We haven't started him on the vegetables because the doctor wanted him to get over this cough/runny nose situation first.  Hopefully we will get the okay when we go back next week to try and get his 4 month shots again.  At his appt last week, they decided that his cough may be from him spitting up and then aspirating a little.  They put him on some Zantac but so far, it doesn't seem to be helping.  I wish we knew what to do!!  I am getting so frustrated!  Clay is looking into getting a Hepa air purifier for his room to see if that will help clear him up.  The good news is that it doesn't seem to be bothering Gavin at all.

Our little boy is quite the talker and comes up with new sounds all the time.  His latest one is screeching like what I imagine a Pterodactyl must have sounded like.  Sunday morning he woke up at 4 and screeched for 15 min, then fell back asleep, did the same thing at 5 and at 6.  He never cried, he just screeched to himself and then fell back asleep.  Crazy kid!!

Gavin is now sitting up on his own but still having to prop himself up with his hands.  He doesn't do it for very long before he rolls forward and lands on his face.  So we have to be careful of where we let him practice.

A couple of weeks ago my parents bought the Your Baby Can Read set for him.  I was so excited because Clay and I had been wanting to buy it but just hadn't had the extra cash.  It is a lot more work than I had anticipated but we are doing pretty well.  It comes with a video, book, and flash cards and you are supposed to do each of them several times a day.  Well he watches the video in the morning a couple of times and then I usually read him the book before supper.  Unfortunately by the time we get home at 6, he is pretty much exhausted and not in the mood for anything much other than being held, playing with Daddy and eating :-).

He is getting so strong!  He can pull himself upright with his arms and when he stands in our laps he can jump up and down.  He doesn't usually get his feet off the ground with out some help but he is definitely pushing all his weight up and down.  And that says a lot because at his dr. appt last week, he weighed 19 lbs!!!!  He does look smaller than his weight though and still wears clothes that are for children that weigh lots less than him.  I guess he gets that from my side of the family.  We all weigh way more than we appear to, which can be both good and bad.

Gavin has also gotten really good at picking things up and holding them.  Which is really good when it is his toys but dangerous when he gets his sights on glasses or plates or the salt shaker.  His favorite toys right now are Dairy Moo his cow that one of his old teachers at school gave him, and two teether toys and his most favorite toy is his Daddy.

Gavin with Clay's parents and his cousin Kaleigh


I thought he looked so cute in this outfit, such a big boy in jeans!

A cute video of him trying to scoot across the couch.  Just click on it and it will take you to Picasa to view

From 2010-10-06

One of the many crazy faces he makes for the camera.  You have to be super quick and lucky to catch him smiling because as soon as he sees the camera, crazy faces come out!

The family

I'll post pictures I took of him yesterday tomorrow.  I forgot to bring the camera to work :-)

More trips to the doctor!

After our 4 month wellness visit when they put Gavin on the antibiotics and breathing treatments, we expected a speedy recovery.  Well by Wednesday he started getting worse.  I couldn't remember what they had said to do or how long to wait before coming back in if he didn't improve and Clay didn't even remember that coming up in the conversation so I didn't call immediately hoping he would make a turn for the better since he didn't act like he felt bad and didn't have a fever. I had decided to take that Friday off so that I could go shopping and buy some clothes because nothing fits me, which is a huge blessing but also means I walk around looking very sloppy in pants that I keep having to pull up to keep them from falling off.  I never want to go shopping on the weekends because I don't want to miss any time that I get to spend with Clay and Gavin and no one would enjoy a group shopping excursion!  So that Friday I was all super pumped to go find some cheap clothes that I could wear during this transition period that hopefully lands me back into my Pre-preg clothes.  Well Gavin woke up worse than ever and by the time Clay took him to school, he had decided that it was time to call the doctor and see what the next step was. So I called and of course they told me to bring him on in to the walk-in clinic and since I was already off work, I got to take him.  So Gavin and I spent a couple of hours at the walk in clinic with lots of sickly other kids.  There was this one cute little girl who sat down right next to us, turned our way looked at Gavin and then hacked/coughed on us!!!  The PA takes him off the antibiotics, adds a steroid, ups the anti-histamine and gives us a more frequent schedule of breathing treatments.  And then tells me if this doesn't work they will probably need to do a chest X-ray.

Well thanks to the cute little girl, or at least that is who I am blaming since she obviously can't defend herself, I start sneezing late that afternoon and my throat gets really sore.  By the next morning I am completely miserable and seriously dreading the MEGA family reunion that we were attending later that evening.  Clay told me I could stay home but I didn't want to saddle him with taking Gavin down there by himself and plus I didn't want Clay's parents to think I was avoiding them since the last time they saw Gavin I stayed behind at home to take a nap/watch Tampa Bay football :-).  So I dope myself up on Day-Quil and stuff a bunch of cough drops in my pocket and we head on down to the largest family reunion on earth, seriously.  Gavin did really well and spent most of the time enjoying all the attention he got safely in his Nanny-Ma or Pa-Pa's arms.  I think you would have had to fight one of them to be able to hold Gavin, it is so sweet, I love it!  Well while we are there, Clay starts complaining of a sore throat.  Clay NEVER gets sick and if he does by chance come down with something it only lasts hours not days.  I had taken note that Gavin hadn't been eating well that day and was fussier than usual but really didn't make much of it.  Well when we get home and are getting him ready for bed, I pick him up off the changing table and he just projectile vomits down the front/inside of my shirt, down my pants and all over my feet.  My first official vomit shower!!  How lucky for me!!  And it is so hard to be mad because not only do you feel so sorry for him but after he gets finished he gives me the sweetest smile like "Oooh, I feel so much better".  However that did NOT make me feel any less gross!  So after throwing up what little he had eaten earlier we are of course up with him through the night because he is starving but then we don't want to feed him too much because we didn't want him to throw it up again.

It is so different being sick when you have a child!  Before Gavin, I would just lay in bed and sleep all day or lay on the couch and watch mindless TV.  Oh no, not anymore!  As happy as I was that Gavin didn't "feel" sick even though he was, it made it difficult because instead of him sleeping a lot he was in a great mood and just wanted to play and be entertained.  And with Clay being sick also that just made it even worse.  And it took forever to get over whatever it was we had.  We stayed home from church on Sunday, all three of us also stayed home on Monday, and I stayed home on Tuesday.  Monday we should have sent Gavin to school so we could get some much needed rest, since he felt fine and actually never got whatever we had.  But we both felt so terrible that neither of us was willing to leave the house :-).  Well Gavin talked to us seriously the entire day.  From 7 am when he got up to 8 pm when he went to bed!  The only times he wasn't talking and making various sounds was when he took a nap.  I have no idea what got into him, he talks a lot already but this was craziness!  We just laughed and laughed at him when we didn't feel like crying that is.

Poor Gavin still is battling this nasty cough and runny nose though.  The steroids didn't seem to do any good and we are all finished with his breathing treatments.  We go back to the doctor again tomorrow for his follow-up well visit where his shots will probably get pushed off another two weeks and hopefully we will find a cure for his ailment.  A teacher at his school suggested that we get the test for RSV so I guess we will ask for that if they don't mention it themselves.  I would appreciate some prayers for Gavin and his doctors.

I promise to post some pictures soon!

4 month checkup

Gavin had his four month well visit with the Dr. yesterday and it was not a good time for either of us.
His stats -
Weight - 18 lbs 4 oz - 90th percentile
Length - 25 3/4 inches - 90th percentile
Head - 17 1/4 inches - 75th percentile

After all that the "fun" began.  Gavin has had a cough and a yucky nose for the past month and a half and has been on some medicine for the past month.  So I mentioned it to them when I got there because even though he hasn't had a fever, I felt like we needed to take a different course of action.  So the nurses attempted to take his oxygen levels with that thing that fits over there toes or fingers.  He is a restless little thing so it took many attempts and he got pretty ill.  Not to mention his is just in his diaper and it is FREEZING in the office and Gavin does NOT like to be cold!  Also to his credit, he hadn't had his morning nap so he was understandably a tad bit grouchy :-).

Then came the poking and prodding in his ears, the cold stethoscope listening to his heartbeat and lungs, and then putting that wooden thing in his mouth so she could look at his throat.  So by this time he was screaming with displeasure.  Then she took off his diaper to check and make sure he didn't have any diaper rash and then she inspected his circumcision.  Well as she was talking to me all the sudden she just ripped the skin back.  I almost fainted and I can not even imagine how much it hurt poor little Gavin.  Apparently his skin had started to reattach itself so she quickly and without warning detached it.  Poor little guy was bleeding and screaming at the top of his lungs!  Thankfully Clay was sitting across the room and didn't get the full view or he probably would have died right there.

Well after all that they decided we needed to do breathing treatments and start him on some antibiotics to see if we could clear everything up.  They wanted to go ahead and do one breathing treatment in the office so we could see how it was done.  So just after Gavin had fallen asleep on Clay's chest, they bring in this machine that is not particularly quiet to blow this medicine fog into Gavin's face.  Well the first minute or two went ok because Gavin was still asleep.  Then he woke up and realized what was going on and started screaming again!  So we had to hold his head still and keep that mist in his face for the next five minutes.

Thankfully because he was a little sick they decided not to give him the shots he was scheduled for.  I think if they had, Gavin might never have forgiven us.  

Below is a picture of him after attempting to give him his pink antibiotic.  You can't get the full effect because while I was getting the camera, he wiped the majority of the pink stuff off of his face.  He must have realized what I was about to do :-).