17 months

Our baby boy is getting so big! Every time I think about it, it both amazes and freaks me out!
Gavin currently is:

• Into EVERYTHING.  There are no limits to his curiosity, to his determination, to his inventiveness in creating a way to get to something.  There is seemingly no limit to his strength, he can pull himself up on almost anything, including our stove.  Which he did in order to get to the kitchen drawer right next to it so he could see what was in there.
• saying at least one new word a day, no kidding.  Most of them are just repeating words we say to him, but he also has a lot of words that he uses correctly.  His favorites right now are truck (anything with wheels), ball (this has been a favorite since he said it the first time), outside, mine, stop it.  The last two are usually used together and then a fit starts.  He chants stop it over and over again whenever we do something he doesn't like, for example, change his diaper, put him in his stroller, etc.  He is really quite opinionated, I wonder who he got that from.......  
• REALLY into being outside, no matter the time of day/night or temperature or weather conditions.  He throws a fit if we tell him no and gives us the saddest little face.  Like we have just kicked a puppy or something.  
• seems to be in a Mommy phase. Which I love most of the time but becomes quite stressful when I am trying to get ready for work or something else of that nature.  I know that soon enough he will be back to being all about Daddy though, so I am soaking it up while it lasts.
• Loves to play with balls, trucks, trains, animals.  Is climbing anything that he can touch or get to stand still. 
• Gives lots of hugs, kisses, and BITES.  The latter is getting all of us in lots of trouble at school so prayers  would be appreciated!!!

I did find out during our parent/teacher conference (see above bullet) that he hardly talks at all at school which I find so strange because he barely stops talking when he is with us.  She said she didn't think he really pitched that many fits either, which is completely opposite from how he is with us.  Gavin leans a bit toward the dramatic side, also not really sure where he got that from......it must be some of Clay's ancestry........ :-).  

Anyway, I took some pictures of him this morning.  He looked so cute but did not want me to put him down to take any pictures so that is the reason for the sobbing in the first two.  I just had to post them though because I thought he was so precious AND for blackmail later.

 So I decided to bribe him by letting him hold Gerry.

Then he decided he needed to hold his monkey too.

Poor Monkey was callously tossed aside

In order for Gavin to get what he really wanted......the camera!!

 One last try!

Fun with Daddy and Fingerpainting

Last weekend, I went and stayed with my Mom on Friday so my Dad could go out of town and get some Continuing Ed and a little vacation.  We decided it would be easier if Clay and Gavin stayed at home so that we didn't have to drive two cars and so we didn't have to choose between spending $50 to board Doug or taking him with us to a house already overcrowded with dogs.  I know we could have asked someone to watch him, but truthfully we had both failed to even consider the situation until late Thursday night, poor Doug has obviously moved WAY down the priority list.  So even though I was sad to leave them behind I was secretly a little excited to have some peace and quiet and get some serious reading done.....

I don't think they got into much trouble on Friday night since there isn't much time between when Gavin gets home from school and bedtime.  But Saturday Gavin got all dressed up in his camo, thanks Nanny-ma, and the guy time began.  They did lots of playing inside and tearing stuff up, racing each other around the house pushing Gavin's lawnmower and tricycle, played kickball at the park with some other kids, harassed the animals, and various other things boys love to do.  Somewhere in between all the madness my wonderful husband found time to clean the house, another good reason for me to go to T-ville alone :-).

Gavin feeding Mommy's socks to Doug

You like our "knee-high" childproof cabinet, don't you!  For some reason he can figure out the ones we paid money for, but the random, weird things we used in a pinch, he doesn't seem to mess with.  Go figure.....

 Kind of blurry, but what a precious face!

I came home Saturday afternoon and took over parenting so Clay could go hunting and have a little peace and quiet himself.

Sunday afternoon, we had pretty much done everything we could do to entertain Gavin both indoors and outdoors and were getting a bit desperate when I remembered an article or post I had saved about homemade fingerpainting.  All you needed was flour, food coloring, and wax paper and lo and behold we had all the ingredients for once!  I assumed that it would be permanent since we were using food coloring, but I didn't care at this point.  I did care enough though to make Gavin take all his clothes off, I made the mistake of teasing him about being a naked baby, even though he still had his diaper and shoes on.  Well he assumed that meant he needed to be a completely naked baby and he proceeded to pull his diaper off.  It was too funny not to take a couple of pictures off since he really reminded me of that song about The Streak.  If naked baby bottoms offend you, scroll past hurriedly.

 Poor Josh, trying to escape and Gavin trying to catch him

Just feeling the freedom, swinging his arms around

So after I wrangled him back into a diaper, we got started and the painting of everything except the wax paper began. I tried to coax him into painting on the paper by painting myself but all it seemed to do was just get me messy.  He prefered to pour the paint onto the paper and then slap it around and splatter it everywhere.  Clay was not impressed but I figured it kept him occupied so it was a worthwhile activity.

As you can see, he has already "tasted" it.  Good thing is is nothing but flour, water, and food coloring.

Uh-oh, did I just pour it on the floor??  Oh yes, yes you did.

More, more, more!!!

He had some left over peanut butter toast from lunch that I thought we could use kind of like sponge painting, trying to work on my creative side.  Silly Mommy didn't think about the fact that he would probably just dip it in the paint and then eat it.

Mmmmmm, yummy!

A colorful, happy little boy!  I was wondering what everyone at school was going to say on Monday....

Thankfully, I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the food coloring sticks to the flour and not to the body, so after some scrubbing to get the (flour + water = glue) off he looked just like a normal boy and not a green version of a smurf.  It didn't stain anything else either, so I would recommend the project to anyone who doesn't mind a non-permanent mess and a few (many) extra carbohydrates consumed by their child :-).   

Trip to Cape Cod

Let me just say that spending time with Jenn and Emma and getting to see Cape Cod and Boston was wonderful!!  I can not wait to go back but I assure you that I will not do things the same way that I did this time.  Most importantly I will not travel without Clay, Gavin LOVES his Daddy and has never been more than 24 hrs without him until this trip.  Add to that, the plane ride, a new house/bed to sleep in and not his normal schedule equaled an exhausting first couple of days.  Gavin did love the plane ride and thanks to the tubes in his ears, suffered no ill effects from the changes in pressure.  What he did not love was being confined for 2+ hours or trying to fall asleep in my arms with his legs all scrunched up in my lap.  The poor man sitting next to us on the ride back to Jacksonville willingly sacrificed his iPad to a 16 month old in order to get some peace.  Well I hope the Lord pours out His blessings on that angel of a man because it worked! And Gavin fell asleep almost immediately after we started playing some Elmo app.  The other angels on our trip would have to be Jenn's Uncle Bobby and Aunt Coll, who slept in the other room upstairs and got much less sleep than they are probably accustomed to and way less sleep than anyone would expect to get on vacation!  Jenn's Dad and Patsy also were wonderful but they got to escape to a bedroom downstairs and were not subjected to the 1st night of no sleep all screaming and the remaining nights of interrupted sleep with screaming and 5:30 wake ups. Everyone was so sweet to Gavin and he absolutely loved all of them.  He was so good especially when you take into account all of the sleep he didn't get and not being on his normal eating and napping schedule.

Friday morning we struck out in the van and went to visit Plimoth Plantation in Plymoth MA.  Everyone there dressed up and spoke as if it were 7 years after they landed.  It was neat, and pretty funny at times.  Gavin enjoyed all of the rocks and chasing the chickens.

 Gavin and Grandpa Phil checking out the big cows.

 Gavin throwing rocks, his second favorite thing to do with them other than eat them :-).

After Gavin's nap in the car on the way home we headed out to the beach down the street.  It was a bit chilly but Gavin was appropriately in awe of all the sand and water.

Saturday we went to downtown Hyannis for a little shopping and lunch, which was not the best activity for Gavin since he needed to stay strapped into his stroller, but we all survived and had a super yummy lunch.  We also took a ride on the fastest carousel ever, that no one but Emma seemed to enjoy!

 Sunday I decided for the sake of everyone, me included it would be better if Gavin and I not accompany everyone on the day trip to another one of the towns on the Cape.  I told Auntie Jenn that her and Emma should go but she sacrificed herself to stay behind with us.  So we went to Osterville instead and ate lunch and took a bunch of pictures and then were home in time for Gavin's nap time.  After he woke up we walked down to the marina for some ice cream even though it was like 50 degrees outside with a 40mph wind.  It was well worth it, that ice cream was SO good!  I ordered Gavin an ice cream cookie sandwich thinking it would be one of those things you get at the grocery store.  Boy was I way off!  It was two HUGE homemade chocolate chunk cookies with 1/2 pint of vanilla ice cream in between. Needless to say he didn't get to eat much of it and was very unhappy when I took it away.

I was so surprised at how few pictures I actually took and I hope that Jenn got a lot more than I did.  Monday we headed into Boston for a bit of sightseeing and to stay at Jenn's house since Gavin and I were flying home EARLY on Tuesday.

There was so much to see and I can't wait to go back and see so much more.  I will be forever indebted to the kindness and hospitality that Jenn, Emma, Grandpa Phil and Patsy, and Uncle Bobby and Aunt Coll showed us.