Four Quick Things

1. Gabe is totally patriotic. Check out his getup from the Fourth of July (extreme closeup edition):


2. Does marinara sauce count as a vegetable? If so, then Gabe ate a vegetable tonight! Celebration! Party time!


3. Gabe moves from the Infant Room to the Toddler Room in three weeks. Sob! (I have no picture to illustrate this one. Just picture me with sad, sad tears as Gabe toddles off into the sunset to go play with the more exiting Toddler Room toys, or something.)

4. Gabe very much enjoys playing the ukulele these days.

Running Down a Dream

I am so far behind that I can't even attempt to catch up. Suffice it to say that since my last post, we've had many social outings (including Baby Loves Disco with my fab friend J and her husband S and their delightful son B) plus we celebrated an excellent Father's Day. Gabe bought his dad a customized Sigg water bottle reading "Peace, Love & Gabe" and matching shirts for himself and his daddy. They both look very handsome in the shirts, in case you were wondering.

But now onto the big news: Gabe took his first real steps yesterday!!! (At least I think they were his first real steps. Sometimes I think daycare lies to me and says they've never seen him do things like waive "hi" and say "doggie" and take steps because they don't want me to think I'm missing out on milestones. And this is fine with me, by the way. Ignorance is bliss and all.)

Anyhow the steps were highly amusing. Here's how it worked: I sat on the floor and helped Gabe get into a nice solid standing position about arms' length away from me. He pushed my hands away to prove how good he was at standing all by himself. The he grinned madly, hesitated, and lurched forward for two whole steps before crashing into my arms and screaming excitedly. We repeated this sequence several times.

AWESOME.

I know everyone says you shouldn't encourage your kid to walk because it unleashes a new level of chaos into everyday life, and I totally believe this is true, but I still think it's super exciting that he's trying to figure out how to walk. I can't help myself - I have to encourage him. He just looks so proud and he gets so excited! (And he's getting sort of heavy, so it's nice to think that one day I won't have to carry him absolutely everywhere and give myself arm cramps. Because I am LAZY.)

I have to go find myself some dinner now because I am SO HUNGRY and because feeding myself is clearly more important than documenting my baby's life and milestones and precious moments in detail. (LAZY and SELFISH, people.) But I promise to not wait weeks and weeks before posting again. Maybe I'll even throw in some pictures next time. Mwah.

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.

Out With the Wash

Gabe has two new favorite activities: standing on the open dishwasher door, and standing on the door of our front-loading washing machine and watching the clothes go around and around.

He is particularly fond of the washing machine. He will watch, his compact body tense with anticipation as the machine fills with water, and then burst into applause when it begins to spin the clothes. Best of all, once the spinning is really going strong, he will dance to the washing machine's rhythm like it is some sort of ultra-cool percussive instrument.

When the machine moves on to the rinse cycle, he will look up at me with sad eyes and demand more. So our clothes go through a lot of spin cycles these days, is what I'm telling you.

I cannot find my favorite picture of him watching the washing, because I am seriously that level of disorganized these days, but here is a quick example of how the dishwasher is super fun:

Why do we even buy toys for toddlers? I mean, we had major home appliances in place long before Gabe was born! And it's not just the appliances that amuse him. He also likes emptying out my dresser drawers, reorganizing Matt's shoes, and crumpling up empty granola bar wrappers. No trip to the Juvenile Shop or the Target toy department necessary!

I never, ever realized a washing machine could be so fascinating. And never has my baby seemed more delicious and full of wonder than this afternoon when we sat and watched the clothes go around and around and applauded for the spin cycle.

From Lime to Full-Grown Cocker Spaniel

We have a framed picture of Gabe's twelve-week ultrasound that sits on our bookcase. Here, I'll show you:

The bottom of the two pictures is a shot of his miniature spine. If you look closely you can see it clearly; it looks like a tiny string of pearls. As amazing as that spine is, though, the top picture is the one that gets me every time. His little body is so perfectly formed at just twelve weeks old. I glanced at that framed picture this morning as we were playing in the living room and for a moment it took my breath away. I cannot believe my Gabe has gone from that bobbleheaded creature, so very tiny and growing in my body, to this big, strong almost-toddler wrecking havoc in my living room.


OK, admittedly he looks a little ridiculous here because his hair was spiked up for Crazy Hair Day at school last Wednesday. But all ridiculousness aside, it is simply amazing to me how fast a child can grow from little twelve-week-old fetus about the size of lime, to a seven-and-a-half pound newborn mewling in his mama's arms, to a twenty-pound one-year-old bruiser terrorizing the cats and demanding more graham crackers.

We had a great day today. We played at home, and we even had company - we watched Cousin Parker for an hour or so, which was excellent fun! Then we had lunch with friends and went to the park. We watched the ducks in the duck pond, played on the swings, rode on the seesaw, and played in the sand. It was perfect. I am so blessed.

Where are the teeth?

The first birthday was excellent. Gabe was a great sport - he tasted frosting, feigned interest in his gifts (although he really preferred the wrapping paper and empty boxes, of course), and smiled obligingly for photos. He even wore a ridiculous hat and played along as we blew out the candle on his cake. What a great baby. (Toddler. Sob!)

But I have to move on to a more pressing matter. (Literally.) WHERE ARE HIS TEETH?

Normally babies get their bottom two teeth first, followed by their top two teeth. Gabe's bottom two arrived a few months ago, pretty much right on schedule. The top two? Not so much. They refuse to appear. Oh, and he has decided that he's too cool to just get two measly top teeth at once. Instead, he has FOUR top teeth that have been trying to poke through for over a MONTH now. The gums are white, they are swollen, and yet the teeth refuse to break through. What is up with that? Seriously, biology, WTF? How is this a good system?

The teeth are painful-looking enough that even his pediatrician commented on them at his twelve-month (sob!) checkup yesterday. I believe her exact words were, "Yow. Those are no fun."

No fun indeed. They were definitely no fun at 1:47 a.m. last night, when Gabe decided the only logical thing to do was scream inconsolably for an hour and a half. Matt (trying for Husband Of The Year) got up with him first and rocked him for a half hour. Then I rocked him for a half hour. The Matt rocked him for ten minutes. Then I rocked him for another twenty minutes, and he finally went back to sleep. Goodness gracious. I forgot how rough that up-for-two-hours-in-the-middle-of-the-night thing is. Hard on the baby, hard on the mommy and daddy. I don't even have anything witty to say. I'm just kind of sleepy this evening as a result.

So anyhow, teeth, if you're listening, COME OUT ALREADY. Enough is enough. The kid is tired of gumming down bites of food, and he's definitely tired of being in pain. Plus mommy and daddy are lazy and want to sleep for seven consecutive hours tonight. Let's make it happen. (Then again, that toothless grin makes him look like he's still a baby. My precious little baby! Will never be a toddler! Never be a big kid! Never be a strapping teenager! Right?? Sob!)

ONE

Gabe's First Year from Erin Matzkin on Vimeo.

We love you, baby.