Aloha!

This morning at breakfast Gabe signed, "More crackers, please." Clearly, he is some kind of genius baby.

But I digress! So, once again I have been a slacker about posting. But I have a good excuse! We have just returned from a week on Maui! Oooooh, I love me some Maui. I could probably live there. If I could live in a hotel and get spa treatments and go to the beach and snorkel with sea turtles and tropical fish and not actually work at a job, I mean. Then it would be seriously great to live there.

We had an absolute blast. Gabe loooooved the hotel where we stayed. It had a giant lake that wrapped around the entire hotel, with multiple waterfalls and little rivers branching off. It was full of koi and swans ("ducks," according to Gabe), with parrots nesting around the perimeter, and he could pretty much have hung out in the hotel lobby looking at the lake for the entire week we were there. Every single morning when we stepped off of the elevator and into the lobby, he bounced up and down and pointed excitedly while proclaiming, "Wa wa! Duck! Wa wa! Duck!"

The hotel also had five gorgeous pools, one of which contained a little baby waterslide. After some initial uncertainty, Gabe decided that going down the slide on mommy's or daddy's lap was maybe the most fun thing he'd ever done in his life. We went down the slide and into the pool over and over again until Gabe was so cold that his little teeth (ok, mostly gums) chattered.

He also loved digging in the sand in shady places on the beach. He even ate a little sand, just as an experiment. Not so yummy, but very funny, as it turns out.

He ate other things too! Yogurt and fruit every morning for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch, crackers and snacks all day long, and quesadillas or chicken fingers or bites off of my plate for dinner. He ate vegetables, people. Vegetables. I know, I can't believe it either.

The only thing he did not do in Hawaii was sleep. He never really adjusted to the time change, so he decided that waking up at 4:45 a.m. each morning was perfectly acceptable. But he woke up in such a good mood that we couldn't even be upset about the wicked lack of sleep. Instead, we would bring him into bed and he'd snuggle between us and then laugh and say hi and poke us. It was so great.

And then, just to cap things off, our good friends J and G were on Maui at the same time, and we managed to coordinate schedules and meet them for dinner on our last night there. They hadn't seen Gabe in a while, and were properly appreciative of his charm and good looks. And Gabe loved them...he happily sat in J's arms for much of the evening, babbling and eating goldfish crackers. So the end of our vacation was filled with easy conversation and laughter and good old friends.

The real magic of the trip was that I was able to just step back from our usually rushed routine and simply enjoy being with my husband and baby. No rushing off to daycare, no checking the blackberry every ten minutes, no worrying about nap schedules, even. There was just no point. We slept when we were tired, we ate when we were hungry, and we giggled and played a lot. Because we are so lucky. So very lucky and blessed.

A Brief Love Letter

Upon re-reading my first post I realized two things: (1) I may have accidentally depicted my husband Matt as unhelpful and disengaged; and (2) those were some really unflattering pictures of Gabriel.

The second item is easily remedied: here, everyone, look at my preshus wittle baybee! He is sooooo cute! I mean seriously, do you see those fat little cheeks? Don't you just want to smooch them? And trust me, the back of his neck smells so good. It makes me a little giddy just thinking about that powdery, slighly milky smell.

The first item is perhaps not so easily remedied, but I am going to try. The thing is, Matt is pretty much the best dad ever. Seriously. We have many friends who also have small children, so I have observed many, many dads in action. And these guys are good dads; they help with midnight feedings, they read books to their kids and do all of the voices, they coach winless AYSO soccer teams.

Matt just smokes them all.

It began while I was in labor (a rather drawn-out affair, lasting approximately forty-seven hours and followed by an unplanned c-section). Matt spent two solid days and nights in my hospital room perched on the most uncomfortable bench in all existence, rising only to bring me ice water when I needed it, to hold my hand when I felt scared, or to update our parents on my progress ("Three centimeters dilated." "Three centimeters dilated." "Three centimeters dilated." "OK, they give up, they're going to cut her open now."). He was brave for me during the c-section itself, making little jokes to keep me calm and cheerful.

When they actually lifted Gabe over the surgical draping so that we could see him for the first time, that was it. Matt was a goner. I have never seen a daddy so thoroughly entranced by his child. While I recovered, he spent that first evening trailing along behind a nurse as Gabe was weighed, measured, and bathed, all the while with this crazy, goofy grin on his face, his eyes locked on this new little person.

Six and a half months later, that grin still hasn't gone away. Every morning, when Gabe begins stirring in his crib, Matt is up like a flash to go see him and kiss him and change his wet diaper. Matt has replaced all the "rock en Espanol" CDs in his car with children's music (including a particularly painful "Mickey Mouse Sings the Hits" CD that I purchased on a whim and found unlistenable), and he sings along heartily because "Gabe likes to hear my voice in the car." Matt, formerly the biggest social butterfly I've ever met, who used to have dinner plans with various friends no less than six nights a week, now dashes home just on the hope that Gabe will still be awake and ready for a bedtime story.

In short, Matt's entire universe has shifted to put this one tiny person at the center. And sometimes I look at them in the mornings as they sit on our bed, Matt and Gabe both bent over the sports section (Matt not even trying to read about his beloved USC football, but instead letting Gabe crumple up the newspaper because "Gabe loves paper, isn't that funny?"), and I am so overwhelmed with love and gratitude that I can hardly breath.

I am blessed to have this wonderful man as my husband, and Gabe is blessed to have him as a father. We are so very, very lucky.