Trip to the Mountains

Two weeks ago we made our annual trip to the mountains for a little pre-tax season relaxation and togetherness.  I wasn't sure it was going to be very relaxing since Gavin has no concept of quiet but I was pleasantly surprised.  No he wasn't quiet but as long as we didn't mind being outside in the rain, he was happy which makes everyone happy and much more relaxed.  Thankfully the temperature was very moderate so the rain wasn't that bad.  Clay and I got up at the crack of dawn and we actually made it there by lunch and with Clay rigging up his laptop so that Gavin could watch DVDs the trip was as pleasant as anyone could hope for.

Everything pretty much closes down after Christmas so there isn't a whole lot to do to entertain a toddler indoors, especially during the week.  Besides we all enjoy being outside so we decided to take a trip to  Amicalola Falls. Clay and I had been there several years ago with a couple of our friends and really enjoyed it.  We stopped off to get a poncho since I forgot my raincoat and headed out.  In the time that had passed since our previous visit, neither of us remembered that there were several routes to getting to the top of the falls.   So when we heard a group in front of us talking to one of the park rangers about the route they were taking we just assumed that was it and didn't bother to ask.  Well boy were we sorry, we unknowingly got on the East Ridge Trail which is a 1 mile hike straight up the mountain!!  Oh and did I mention we were CARRYING a 30lb tired and cranky toddler???  Needless to say the hike up was a bit tense and we had to take several breaks.  

Gavin was not interested in being held, riding on Daddy's shoulders or doing anything other than throwing rocks or getting close enough to the edge of the mountain to shave years off of my life!  Thankfully we are in decent shape and made the mile in less than an hour but when we got to the top, we noticed another problem...... FOG!  We couldn't even see anything!!  I wanted to cry!  I was soaking wet from both the mist and sweating like a BEAST, Gavin was super ill and I thought it was a complete disaster!  Luckily Clay did not give up so easily and as we started the descent down the man made steps (the route we took the prior visit :-)) we were able to really enjoy all of our hard work.  And Gavin LOVED it!!!  He has not quit talking about the "waddy" since then, it is his new favorite word.  We took tons of pictures so I apologize if you get bored, and this isn't even half of them!

After all of our hard work, we decided to reward ourselves with some roasted marshmallows!  Gavin loves them just as much as I do, which is evident in the picture below.

The remainder of our trip was fairly uneventful but absolutely wonderful, we are so blessed to be able to come here every year and so thankful to the people who make it possible!

Christmas take #2

Since Clay's Mom was in the hospital right around Christmas, we decided to postpone the celebration until the day after New Year's. Since there had been SO many scares with her health, it was a pretty emotional occasion.  Gavin was super stoked that he was again getting SO many presents and was a perfect gentleman the entire time, which was quite a feat since we didn't even start opening presents until about an hour after he is normally asleep.

Gavin's new rocking chair his Pa-Pa made him

Playing with his new kitchen from Aunt Lesia

And his present from my parents finally came in last week, and everyone (mostly April my brother's girlfriend) chipped in and got it put together in fairly good time.  I think we only surpassed the estimated time by an hour or so Lol!

Overachiever

Clay is what some might call an over achiever, or maybe that is just what I call him when he out does me in stuff and it makes me mad :-).  Gavin got some play-dough for Christmas so after we came home on Christmas Day we decided to break it out and have a family play-dough session.  Clay was on one side of the table and me and Gavin were on the other.  Here are the final results:

Clay's sailboat, with waves and everything

 

Mine and Gavin's creation.......

Christmas take 1

The last day of school before Christmas, everyone got to wear their pajamas and have a pajama party.  Well unfortunately we didn't have many choices of pj's that I would let him be seen outside of the house in, that weren't footie pajamas and he couldn't wear those because they wanted them to wear shoes also so they wouldn't be stuck inside.  A lot of his pajamas are either short in the legs, so they would look even more ridiculous with shoes on, or they are short in the waist so it looks like he is wearing a belly shirt.  So we opted for the camo pj's even though they weren't in the holiday spirit, but doesn't he look SO cute!!

As is normal, we went to Thomasville on Christmas Eve and spent the night.  We all went to the park and let Gavin play for a little while although the park in Thomasville that we went to, left a lot to be desired.  I guess I am spoiled by Lowndes-Valdosta Parks and Rec and the great playground equipment they have installed at all of our parks.  Then we had dinner and made some cookies for Santa, that I ate way too many of.  After we put Gavin down, the boys retired to the back to watch some gun show and me and my Mom watched the Sound of Music.  I haven't seen that in years because Clay would rather watch grass grow, so I was super excited to watch it with my Mom who loves it as much as I do.

Gavin did pretty good with the sleeping and didn't get us up until 6:30, which was nice.  We didn't really have the presents out the night before, so I was surprised that Gavin didn't pay more attention to them before we started opening them.  He was more into the Orange/Cinnamon rolls that my Dad was baking.  I have been super excited about Gavin opening presents this year because I knew he would be really into it and he did not disappoint!  He really dug into his stocking and enjoyed all the cars that Clay, I mean Santa got in all those Happy Meals he ate all year long :-)

Gavin also got some chocolate-covered raisins, from his grandparent's favorite health food store.  Not sure what is healthy about them, but I sure am glad that Raisinets aren't that expensive!

We were very fortunate this year in finding some really sweet deals and actually getting several of his presents for free!  In fact the two presents that we gave him that he loves the most, one was free and the other was like $3.
































Gavin is definitely into cars and balls right now and that is what the majority of his presents were.

The ball in the video below, wasn't a Christmas present, but he found it while we were outside playing with his other toys and he immediately claimed it.

My brother played soccer all through high-school so he was trying to teach Gavin some moves

My brother is so tall, it was hard to get them both in the same picture :-)

He is also getting a Climbing Dome like this from my parent's but it didn't make it in time for Christmas.  I know he will love it, when it arrives this week.  I just hope that my Dad is planning on delivering it and setting it up!



We are celebrating with Clay's family this weekend, since his Mom just got out of the hospital last Thursday.  So I am worried that Gavin is going to start expecting all these presents and sweet treats every weekend!  He sure woke up in a huff on Monday when he didn't see any new presents waiting for him under the tree!!

Random Update + 19 months!

Not much to report and unfortunately Gavin moves so fast, that our poor camera can't keep up and almost all our pictures turn out blurry.

We did end up going back to the crib....I knew as soon as I typed that last update and said that he had gone down easy the night before, that it was over for us.  And I was right, he pitched a bloody fit when we put him down that night.  I had realized earlier in the day that when we set up the toddler bed his mattress was even lower than it had been, so instead of actually putting the front crib rail back on and buying a crib tent, we decided to just turn the outside around so it was up against the wall.  He screamed even louder for about 5 minutes when we did that, I guess he was letting us know he did not appreciate his freedom being taken away, but after that it was lights out and he slept all night!  He is still waking up early but we are getting closer and closer to 7 every morning.

Clay's birthday is tomorrow and he wanted to celebrate by having Gavin spend the night with his cousin Landon so we could have a date night Friday.  Well I feel like I was the one who got a present because I slept until almost 9 o'clock on Saturday!!!  It was absolute HEAVEN!!  Now I know what I am asking for, for my gift on Christmas, my Birthday, Valentines, Easter, 4th of July, and any other holiday I can think of!  And after I found out what a wonderful time Gavin had, I didn't feel the least bit guilty!  He came home absolutely exhausted from all their fun and took a super good nap.

Yesterday we went and visited some friends of ours who just adopted a precious little boy and got to catch up with them while Gavin wreaked havoc in their playroom.  Good thing they already have a little boy a couple of years older than Gavin so they were prepared for the craziness that is a toddler boy.  I have no idea where all his energy and inventiveness for trouble comes from, must be his Daddy :-).

We decided to make some homemade Christmas presents for the Grandparents this year, using their favorite thing, Gavin.  I got the ideas from http://wholesomewomanhood.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/potholders/ and http://wholesomewomanhood.wordpress.com/2009/06/14/handprint-christmas-ornament/.  We started on the potholders last night......

Luckily we were smart enough to 1. Do it in the bathroom, where there is little to nothing to stain. and 2. do it right before he took a bath and take his clothes off first.

Gavin thought it was fantastic that we were actually letting him get paint everywhere!

The hand prints look better in the picture than they do in person, several of them are missing fingers or are all splotchy.  The fabric kept sliding across the tile and wouldn't stay tight so when he tried to pick up his hand or foot, it would drag.

My biggest mistake was not realizing that the paint would seep through the fabric onto the floor!!!  Thank heavens that I did this on the tile and was able to get it up with a little 409.  Our house will be hard enough to sell one day if we ever move, without having to explain that we didn't actually murder a small child in our bathroom.

Gavin also turned 19 months old today and he is talking even more than he was before.  I know almost no one believes me because he rarely talks in front of other people, but I promise it is true.  He is starting to say short sentences that we can understand and even longer ones that we have no clue about.  It's funny because sometimes he will say this really long sentence and then look at us like he is expecting a response.  All we can do is crack up and he rarely thinks it is as funny as we do.  I tried to get a picture of him this morning before we left but they were all pretty awful, below are the least awful.....

Big Boy bed

The weekend that Auntie Jenn, now known as La-la, came to visit with Emma, Gavin decided to master a new milestone of climbing/flinging himself out of his crib.  This resulted in us putting his toddler bed together to hopefully keep from having to visit the ER and Gavin mortally injuring himself.

Gavin had a big time helping Clay as you can see, he wanted to make sure he was "involved" in the entire process.

 I had high hopes, since it seemed like Gavin was super excited about his new big-boy bed.

  But alas they were quickly dashed that night.  Normally we would let Gavin self soothe, aka cry it out, however with La-la and Em in the next room, we tried to keep the screaming down as much as possible.  Not that it did much good.  So after attempting to sleep on the floor with him, I gave up and brought him into our bed so that we could all get at least a few hours sleep.  The next night actually wasn't so bad, but then the night after that he got up all night long and I think ended up sleeping on the floor next to the door.  I voiced my complaints on FB, and Aunt E had a great idea of getting a nightlight for him.  Well of course, I didn't make it by Wal-mart that day and then we left for Thomasville to celebrate Thanksgiving.  I thought for sure that they change in routine and him sleeping in his pack n play, would set us back even further when we got home, but it really didn't.  He was still fighting like mad during the day any nap attempts and usually ended up on the floor by the door for short periods of sleep.  But I thought we were making progress, but then I had to go out of town for continuing education...... If I haven't mentioned it before, Gavin has grown VERY attached to his Mommy.  I think it all stems from the week we spent together without a minutes separation in Boston in September.  Anyway,  me leaving really threw him for a loop and he and Clay had two very sleepless nights last week.  And even when I made it back late Friday night, we kept him up hoping that when he realized I was home and things were back to normal that he would rest easy, he still woke up numerous times and was up for the day at the crack of dawn.  Monday night putting him down, was awful, he kept getting up screaming at the door and finally fell asleep by the door.  Neither of us wanted him to sleep there all night, so Clay had to move him to his bed which thankfully didn't result in anymore meltdowns.  Yesterday morning he was up at 4:45 and no matter what I did, he would not go back to sleep.  Finally after a couple of 5 minute power naps laying next to the door, interspersed with screaming fits, he got up for good at 6 (or maybe more accurately put, I gave up at 6).  Needless to say we were all a bit cranky :-).

I subscribe to BabyCenter and last night they sent me this email....6 major sleep mistakes most parents make Look at #6!  I am worried that this is a problem.  Clay doesn't want to go backwards but I think sleep is more important :-).  I will say that last night went SO much better, he went to bed like normal and didn't wake up during the night at all.  He did get up at 5:45, but at least that is heading in the right direction.  Hopefully all he needs is to get used to his routine again, but if he starts the waking up and not going down problems again, we are going to have to do something. I guess maybe I should go get that nightlight, huh......


Below are a couple of pics from the visit with La-la and Em.


For some reason, that Saturday Gavin refused to nap so we put them both in the stroller and walked around for 45 minutes until he finally fell asleep.  We parked them in the backyard trying to get them to nap as long as possible!

This was Gavin and Emma enjoying an episode of Blues Clues on Netflix.