End of year wrap up

Forgot (and was too sick) to post this earlier:

Enjoying the nice weather on Wednesday:

 Twice Gavin got off his motorcycle and turned it over. His explanation: "wanna transform!"

Santa's visit

Santa Clause was nice enought o visit our house a day early (Friday night) so that we could spend all day Saturday playing with toys and then go to church on Sunday.

 For the past month every time we asked Gavin what he wanted Santa to bring him for Christmas he said "big fire truck." Every single time. So he was quite pleased with this gift. It took him a while to open his other presents because he kept going back to play with the fire truck. If you ask him now what he got for Christmas he will tell you "Big. Fire truck. Ever!" I'm not sure if he means biggest ever or best ever, when questioned further he agrees to both.

 Thank you Wake and Leslie for the awesome digger!

This is a toy phone you take apart and fix by assembling all the pieces with a screwdriver. Once you fix it it rings and various characters call asking for help fixing things. One of the characters is named Kelly, which freaked Gavin out the first time he heard her name. He looked at me with a suspicious, quizzical look. What's funny is that Kelly calls and says she needs help because her shelves are falling down. Every single time Gavin thinks she says her shoulders are falling down and points to his shoulders (or sometimes he gets confused and points to his elbows).

 Giant spiderman and batman wall decals, also courtesy of Jake's parents:

 Elmo laptop:

Later in the day my good friend Robyn stopped by with a present for Gavin - lincoln logs. I didn't realize Gavin was ready for them yet but once he figured out how they work he was on a roll building all kinds of huge structures:

 According to Jake Gavin spent a great bit of the day on Sunday (Christmas day) building with lincoln logs. I saw one of his creations and it looked just like the example fort on the box - quite complex. No pictures because the camera battery was dead, and Gavin likes to "crash" his creations as soon as they're done. I spent just about all day Sunday in bed sick with some viral tonsilitis type bug. Jake has it too, but he had had the worst of it a couple days earlier. Jake was well enough to take Gavin to church while I slept. I think I might have had my first migraine. For about 24 hours my head hurt, ibuprofen didn't help, and any light, noise, or movement made it worse. I feel really bad for people who deal with that type of pain often. Jake and I are both still a little sickly today but so far Gavin is ok. He had his first bought of pink eye a couple weeks ago, and colds off and on this fall. Hopefully that will be the extent of his illness.

Gavin is lucky enough to have a 3rd set of grandparents in his life - from his birthmother's family. In my sickened state I forgot to check the mail on Saturday so their present was waiting for Gavin when I remembered to check the mail yesterday afternoon. A cars pez dispenser and a glow in the dark bumblebee shirt. Here Gavin is wearing the shirt over his pajamas because he demands to wear it nonstop. He also carried the car from the pez dispensor with him all day today.

What I find most remarkable about this Christmas is that every single item Gavin got was a winner. Nothing was too frusterating or hard for him to play with, and he has played with everything he received. I think he's growing up.

Getting ready for Christmas

This year Gavin was able to better understand the nativity story and could name the key players. His favorite are the 3 kings.

 Gavin even occasionally arranged the nativity scene appropriately. He did, however, like to pretend to make the angels eat the bale of hay no matter how often I reminded him it was for the animals.

 Mee maw and Pop pop came to visit for Christmas bringing gifts of transformers. Mee maw was able to find a type that Gavin was actually able to transform all by himself. 

 Ready for Santa with new batman pajamas with cape courtesy of Jake's parents (he also got a spiderman set of pajamas):

Our latest

New suit:

 The past 6 months or so have been really tough around here, but it seems we're starting a new chapter in Gavin's development. His behavior has been much improved this past month. His fits are much less frequent and of shorter duration, and he's easier to reason with. He seems to understand things better, and is a lot more fun to be around. His speech has improved immensely, with him mostly speaking in incomplete sentences now. He tends to leave out prepositions, the word "the," and sometimes the first word of the sentence. His attention span has also changed. He's always been attentive to things that interest him but now it's easier to predict what will hold his attention. I was able to clean the whole master bathroom and put away laundry last week while Gavin watched a Care Bears movie on netflix. He watched the entire movie without wandering off. This was the first time since we've moved into this house that I've been able to clean that bathroom while home alone with Gavin. Usually Jake watches him whie I clean, because Gavin can't be trusted to wander the house, and wouldn't stay put long enough in our bedroom. This sounds like a little thing but it makes my life a lot easier.

 Gavin is also starting to make good use of the motorcycle Uncle Tom bought him a couple years ago - he can steer it pretty well on his own now:

Star Wars

First of all, here's Gavin's impression of an ant using baby carrots:

 Next, Gavin has been really into all things Star Wars the last couple months. Here's his "C-Pee-Pee-Poe-Poe (C3PO)" made out of blocks:

Here he is as a stormtrooper. He usually makes a gun out of blocks to go along with the mask, but this day he used a lightsaber (the feather duster). Gavin often times pretends to be Darth Vader in the mask and cape too, and he sings the darth vader song while doing so "bah-bah-bah-bah buh bah-bah buh bah" Sometimes he's Darth Vader without the mask, and puts a scowl on his face and does the breathing sound effects.

 Also, Gavin has not been happy with the angel on our tree. He has noticed that every other Christmas tree or picture of a Christmas tree that we see has a star on top, and he wants one on the top our tree too. It seems to really bug him. So I put the star he made at school on top of our tree. He wanted me to remove the angel completely. I did, but he wasn't happy with how I was putting the star on the top of the tree. He kept saying he wanted me to "hitch" it on the tree. He even showed me his toy truck trailer with the hitch on it to try to illustrate. I wasn't sure what he wanted, and couldn't make him happy, so I just put the angel back on. In retrospect maybe he wanted me to use one of the ornament hooks to "hitch" it on the tree. But he hasn't fussed about the star since the night I put it around the angel's neck so I'll let sleeping dogs lie.