Conference weekend

Gavin did pretty well during General Conference this weekend. He loves hearing the choir sing, and danced to almost every hymn. I got out his duplo blocks to keep him occupied, and discovered he is now old enough to actually put them together and play with them, which kept him occupied through a lot of conference time. Gavin keeps making what we can only guess are guns out of the blocks. He puts them together and holds them like he's shooting a gun. He doesn't have any toy guns so we're not sure where he picked that up. He also made a brush out of the blocks and combed his and my hair with it. He thought that was pretty funny. Notice the tongue of concentration:

Gavin's biggest meal of the day is breakfast. A typical meal is 2 whole wheat eggos and a banana or 1 and 1/2 cups prepared oatmeal and some fruit or a whole wheat bagel and fruit. He gets very impatient for his breakfast and usually is screaming by the time he is strapped into his highchair. He is perfectly capable of feeding himself oatmeal with a spoon now, but I have to feed him the first few bites because he can't do it fast enough when he's hungry and gets mad. Sunday he ate 2 pumpkin pancakes in his playpen while I was cooking, and then 3 more once we all sat down at the table.

Gavin's favorite toys lately are cars and trucks. He spends a good bit of time crawling around pushing them everywhere. We've been told he also spends most of his time in nursery doing this.

Sadly, we think Gavin is done with his morning naps now. They were nice while they lasted. We're still figuring out the best time for his 1 nap a day. He seems to do all right taking it around 2. This still gives Jake a little time with Gavin before he goes to work.

We've been trying to get in the habit of doing our daily family scripture study and prayer with Gavin after lunch. We're reading out of Old Testament Stories. Most of the time Gavin just wanders around and plays while we read, but some times we can entice him to look at the pictures if there is an animal involved - and in case you haven't noticed there are a lot of animals in the Old Testament. We figured out the only way to do our family prayer so that Gavin doesn't fuss is to stand up and hold him. He readily folds his arms when we do this, because this is also how we have done his prayers every night since we got him, standing by his crib. Yesterday after lunch Gavin was playing in the living room and he actually folded his arms and walked over to me. When I asked if he wanted to read scriptures and say a prayer he got excited and ran over to the bookcase. Hopefully starting this habit early in life will pay off.

Time for an update

A couple of weeks ago we took Gavin to Monkey Joe's for the first time. It's a big indoor play area for kids with a bunch of inflatable moon bounces, slides, and play areas. Gavin was scared at first, but eventually enjoyed himself. Here he is riding an inflatable seamonster:

His favorite part of Monkey Joe's was the coin-operated rideable vehicles and merry-go-round. He got scared when they actually moved, but liked just sitting on them when they were still and playing with the steering wheels:

Gavin has been learning his body parts lately:

And dancing as usual. His latest favorite song is the "ice cream-and-cake-and-cake" song from the Baskin-Robbins commercial:

Checkup time

Monday Gavin had his 18-month checkup. He now weighs 24.26 lbs, is 32.5 inches tall, and has a head circumference of 19 inches. This puts him in the 50th percentile for height and 25th for weight. The Dr said everything else looks good.

Nursery

Since Gavin is now 18 months old he got to officially start nursery at Church on Sunday. He goes to Sacrament meeting with us for the first hour, then spends the next 2 hours in nursery playing, singing songs, eating a snack, and being taught brief lessons. I had been taking Gavin into the nursery to play for the hour after Sacrament meeting for a couple months now, so I knew he'd be ok. The report on his first whole day in nursery was that he did fine, got pushed down a couple of times and was tired.

Florida

We took another Florida trip July 31-August 4. Gavin spent a lot of time home with Grandma while Jake and I tooled about town, which was really nice. One day while we were there I pulled out my old Katie doll and gave it to Gavin to play with. He immediately walked over and threw it in the trash. Guess we don't need to worry about being gender neutral with our toy selection. Here are some of the highlights of our trip:

Swimming in Dr Q's pool Saturday morning:

At the beach with Grandma:

Gavin spent a long time filling and emptying sand from buckets at the beach:

New hat with Daddy:

Playing in the fountains at Destin Commons. Gavin also enjoyed the trolley ride here and kept trying to run back to it:

Playground at Destin Commons:"Painting" the fence at Grandma and Grandpa's house:

If he'd had a knife...

I came home from work today to unexpectedly find this:



Seems Jake decided to give Gavin a haircut with the clippers today. He did an awesome job, especially considering he's never done it before. Of course, I'm already calculating in my head how much money we're going to save in haircuts. Jake's comment about the ordeal: "I think if he'd had a knife he would have stabbed me." Luckily for us, Jake took a couple of pictures while in the process:

Jake later told me the reason the haircut was moved inside was because Gavin started screeming and Jake was afraid the neighbors were going to call the cops.

No fun at our house lately

Gavin has been teething. Last Thursday I noticed he had 3 new teeth coming in, which explained why he was so crabby. This brings the total to 14. We've been keeping him medicated, but he still has a short fuse and gets easily frusterated. Last Wednesday Gavin woke up at 5am vomiting with a 102 fever. This was our first experience with a puking kid. Jake was still up and heard Gavin crying. When he got Gavin out of bed, with vomit-soaked hair, he kinda freaked out and started yelling for me. Luckily my mommy instincts kicked in and I remained calm and took control of the situation. We put Gavin in the tub and let him play until he started fussing to get out, about an hour later. All the while vomiting about every 15 minutes or so. Then I held him on the couch for awhile, but as soon as he started trying to get down to play I put him in the kitchen to save the carpet. He played in the kitchen for a couple hours before getting sleepy enough for a nap. He kept vomiting throughout the morning, but really didn't seem too phased by it:

Luckily he was done vomiting by about 9:30, and his fever was gone by the next day.

Bowling for babies

Saturday while I was at work Jake and Gavin went to Ryker's 4th birthday party at the bowling alley, with Gavin dressed as usual in mostly hand-me-downs from Ryker and his little brother Phoenix. I didn't expect Gavin would actually get to bowl but they have this metal ramp where Jake could put the ball on top and all Gavin had to do was push it down the ramp. Jake said Gavin had fun running down and back in front of all the lanes, but Jake had to catch him a few times when he tried to run down the lanes. Gavin enjoyed the food that day too - he ate a grilled cheese sandwich, 2 pieces of pizza, and 1 and 1/2 pieces of cake over the course of a couple hours.

New tricks

Yesterday I went into the kitchen to get something and when I returned to the living room found this:

Gavin standing on top of the tv stand:

Turned on the Playstation and ejected Jake's game:
Looking at the game:
Doing a little dance:

Gavin's Pool

Today we filled up Gavin's new pool. I think he had more fun with the hose than with the actual pool. He threw a fit when we made him come inside, and then threw a little fit at dinner because he could see the pool outside the window. He enjoyed playing in the pool once it was full and the water warmed up some, but what he really liked was running around the backyard then cooling off in the pool and running around the yard again.






This week was pretty productive. Monday we got Gavin's new birth certificate. That afternoon we went to apply for a new SSN for Gavin. The SSA lady told us his adoption final decree was wrong, that it had to have his date of birth on it. She said we either needed a corrected decree or some other legal documents with Gavin's old name and DOB, which we do not have. I called our lawyer, and finally got to speak to her on Wednesday. She said it's common to have problems with the SSA, and that depending on who you talk to you always get a different answer. She also said she'd check with our adoption agency and then if necessary have the decree revised. Thursday we went back to the SSA with the same documents as before. A different lady was there, and she processed our info without hesitation. We'll have Gavin's new SSN in 2 weeks. Guess it really just depends on who you talk to. I couldn't help but think about what life will be like dealing with the nationalized health care system. What really sucks is that we'll probably get an unnecessary $300 lawyer bill because of that little escapade. In other news Gavin's big trick for the week is that he learned what to do when I say "Simon says touch your head." He's also into the wheels on the bus song lately. He tries to do some of the hand motions, but isn't coordinated enough to do them correctly. He mostly just moves his arms up and down. It's pretty cute. Wednesday we went out to eat for lunch while our house was being shown. A lady there jokingly said to Gavin "you're so pretty you should have been a girl."