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.

Busy little boy!

Since my last post, Gavin has been a busy little boy.  He celebrated, well not really, Valentine's Day; had his first table food; started drinking from his sippy cup, sort of, and moved up classrooms. The first three happened all on the same day!  He is also increasing his daredeviledness, which is giving me ulcers.

I was worried that Valentine's Day would sort of suck this year for two reasons, one it was on Monday and who in the world feels romantic on Monday, especially during tax season. And number two, although I love Gavin more than life itself, a child does not add to the romantic mood, in the least :-).  But I should have known that Clay would go above and beyond as always and make me feel super special and loved.  We had a good time sharing our "romantic" dinner with Gavin and seeing how much he enjoyed his first table food and dinner sitting with the family.  Clay and I had tilapia and crab cakes with green beans, Gavin had to settle for green beans, cheese and fruit.  Not that he knew he was settling.

This boy LOVES cheese.  We had to start weaning him off by the end of the week because he pretty much stopped going to the bathroom :-).  Guess we went a little overboard, imagine that!

 I was really excited that he started to eat regular food because that meant that we could start eating together as a family at the table and not stuffing our faces from the couch while watching TV.  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE to watch TV, but lately I feel like that is all we do from the moment Gavin and I get home until we go to bed.  I don't want to be that family that has no idea what is going on in each others lives but could tell you the entire familial history of certain TV characters.  Clay thinks I am over reacting a bit but he is fully supporting me.  Which is CRUCIAL since it is he who cooks our dinner and now has to have it pretty much ready as soon as I get home to keep Gavin from melting down from hunger/impatience.

Gavin's favorite table food so far has been tilapia, cheese, black eyed peas, asparagus, and Smokin Pig BBQ :-).  These also happen to be some of my most favorite foods!  He still eats his fruits, but seems to be most interested in meat and veggies, also like his Momma.

Thought this was a funny picture of him with asparagus in his nose!

This is just a really good and cute picture of him and his favorite playmate Daddy!

Look at that shirt, isn't it adorable!!

Gavin also moved up classrooms last week, on Tuesday I think, not that it really makes a difference.  Apparently Monday he was trying to play with one of the babies that was in a bouncy seat and almost flipped him/her out!  So he got to move up to the creepers room, which made me sad because we all LOVE Ms. Amanda who has been keeping him since he started, she treats him like he is one of her own and has tons of great advice.  A plus to him moving up is Ms. Mae who has also kept him in the late afternoons since he started and we all LOVE her also, now she keeps him from 12:30 on. In fact Gavin loves her so much that he has separation anxiety if she leaves before he does in the afternoon!  How sweet!! Although, he doesn't even do that with us, so what does that say???

 An unintended downside to him changing rooms is that he has pretty much quit napping.  Normally he sleeps from about 9 - 10 and then from about 1 - 3.  His morning nap has completely disappeared and his afternoon nap was down to a whole 30 minutes yesterday!!  This is not going to work, I am not sure what the problem is but it MUST be resolved!!! I put Clay in charge of talking to them about it this morning :-).  I need my good napper back because there is no way we can deal with him getting into this habit and then not napping on the weekends either.

The weather has been so wonderful lately that we have been able to go on walks on the weekends and let Gavin have play time outside better known as Gavin eating grass time. Isn't he precious!!!  

One other thing I have failed to mention in previous posts is Gavin's love of his toothbrush which I count as a huge blessing.  He is stubborn though and likes to do it, or chew on it, himself, but what the heck, at this point I'm just glad that they are getting brushed at all.  Clay and I don't look so hot in the pictures but Gavin is so cute with his toothbrush, I have to post anyway.

9 months

Just keeping it real

Well, my big ole baby turned 9 months old on Saturday.  It is so hard to believe that he is growing so darn fast!  It really seems almost like yesterday that it was last tax season and I was counting down the weeks/months until he was born.  I know that people say you get pregnancy amnesia but so far it hasn't taken over yet.  Don't get me wrong, I would love to have at least one more kid, but leaning heavily towards adoption instead of birthing.

Gavin has seemed to really made a lot of progress this month.  I'm not really sure if it is just because this is a speedy development time for him or if he finally has felt good enough to get more active.  Don't get me wrong, he has never been a sluggish baby, he has always been a mover.  But this month he has taken it to an entirely new level.  It is like he is at 150% pretty much his entire waking life.  It is a lot of fun but also extremely exhausting and I know that this is only the beginning!

The tubes he had put in his ears in late January, haven't been a miraculous cure like they seem to have been for a lot of the kids we know, but the two ear infections he has had since then have been easily taken care of and I would assume a lot less painful since there is no pressure.  He did go almost an entire week without having a cough or a runny nose after they put them in, but since then it has been back to normal :-(.  Oh well, I know he will grow out of it eventually.

Gavin started trying to pull up when we took our trip to the mountains, but really mastered it this past month. A couple of weeks ago, I walked into his room after he woke up to get him out of bed and he was standing up in his crib holding onto the rails.  I knew it was on then. He pulls up on absolutely EVERYTHING, no matter how wobbly, how sharp or hard the corners are, and no matter what the risk of bruising.  He has also learned to cruise or walk holding on to things, he also does not care  what it is he is holding on to and if it will move as soon as he puts any pressure on it.  Clay and I just know that someone is going to think we are abusing our sweet boy since he is so incredibly pasty white like his Mom and bruises show up so easily.

Below are a few pictures I took with my phone which as you can see doesn't always get the clearest ones.  But I wanted to post as an example of just what he will pull up on and try to cruise on.  For those who don't know what that is that he is hanging onto, it is a jumper and that piece in the middle is as unstable as you can get!

One thing he has really started doing that is dangerous is flipping over and trying to crawl off of everything.  He really got to be a wiggle worm in the last couple of weeks and will seriously crawl straight off the couch and has absolutely no fear!  He has also become a handful on the changing table.  He immediately starts to flip over as soon as you lay him down.  Then he likes to get on his hands and knees on the end of it and stare over the edge like he wants to leap off.  To say the least diaper changing and putting on clothes has been a new test of patience for all involved.  Good thing I just started a Bible study on the Fruits of the Spirit, one of which is patience :-).

Gavin really loves music which is great, because so do Clay and I.  He watches his Your Baby Can Read videos every morning and just claps and claps his little hands when the songs come on.  It is so precious!  He also claps when we sing songs to him that he knows or just when he seems extra pleased with himself or something we have done.

He has also developed a bit of a sense of humor.  He has been saying dada for a while now but lately he says it non-stop.  He seems to take extra pleasure in saying it right after I ask him to say mama.  I wish I could describe well in words the pause he takes after I say mama and then his response with a mischievous glint in his eye, "Dada".  Little monster, you can tell he knows exactly what he is doing.  But he is so darn cute, that I can't possibly hold it against him.  Especially when I pick him up and he gives me a big hug.

I couldn't quite capture it in the video below but here is an excerpt of his daily conversation

His food has expanded to more finger foods.  He had his first cheese this month but his favorites are still veggies.  I have purchased almost every kind of sippy cup sold trying to get him to latch on, but as of Saturday no luck.  In the past week, he has really cut back on his formula consumption.  Our baby boy who normally loves to eat and never misses an opportunity to do so, has self reduced his intake big time.  It seems like he has become more interested in playing and getting into things than eating.  Don't worry, he is still getting plenty to eat believe me, but now instead of being at the top end of the spectrum for food intake recommendations he is at the lower end.  One item he has increased his consumption of is paper.  This boy likes to chew on paper like it is gum!  Which is kind of a problem because Clay has a bad habit of using half of a roll of paper towels and leaving them in various places.  So Gavin has quite a selection of paper to choose from.

First Cheese!  

Gavin wasn't in a particularly great mood when I took his monthly birthday pictures so I didn't get a lot of great smiles, mostly what I would call "thoughtful" expressions :-)  Since he insists on tearing up my paper each month, I decided to try something new and tape it on something he couldn't reach.  I think it is so funny how he rides with one arm on the handle bar and the other just hanging.  Like he is a teenager cruising in some car.

His "I am too cool for this" look

Finally, a sweet smile!

I imagine we will see this disgusted look many, many times in the coming years.

 And finally just some sweet and cute pictures from later that day when we were playing outside.  I couldn't choose which ones were my favorites so I just posted all of them.

Trying to figure out how he will get the paper out of Clay's hand.

Decides to just chew on Clay instead