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.

Happy Days

Today all is well in the world. We are healthy, I am rested, and feel more stress-free and at peace than I have in months. It is 77 degrees outside and sunny, and Gavin is enjoying digging in the dirt. Life is good. Time to blog.

Deep Thoughts

When I was a kid one of the funniest segments on Saturday Night Live was "Deep Thoughts by Jack Handy." Many were hysterical, but my family favorite has always been:

"One thing kids like is to be tricked. For instance, I was going to take my little nephew to DisneyLand, but instead I drove him to an old burned-out warehouse. "Oh, no," I said, "DisneyLand burned down." He cried and cried, but I think that deep down he thought it was a pretty good joke. I started to drive over to the real DisneyLand, but it was getting pretty late."

Occasionally events in life have caused this quote to come to mind. Saturday evening was one of those times. It was time to put up the Christmas tree. Gavin was super excited, because we had told him that this year we would put a big tree on the floor where he could see it, rather than the Gavin-proof mini tree we've put out of his reach in all his Christmases past. So we get out the box that contains our big tree and start assembling it, branch by branch. Gavin helped by fluffing up the branches. He was excited. And then we realized something got lost in our move last year:

 
Yup, the top portion of our tree is lost. What's odd is that I can remember cleaning out our attic in our old house before we moved, Jake asking me "what's this?," and me telling him it was the top of the Christmas tree. Somehow it just got thrown away. Or maybe its hidden in our attic somewhere and we'll find it when we move out of this house some day. Either way, we didn't have it for Gavin on Saturday. Epic Fail. So, we go online and find a great tree at Walmart that was easy to put together too, assembling in only 3 parts instead of having to insert every branch seperately. Jake went to go get it while I cleaned up the old tree. He got home, we opened the tree, and there were 154050493494848437478423874378 loose branches in the box to be assembled. It would have taken hours to assemble, every Christmas for the rest of our lives. Turns out we were wrong about the easy assembly part. We put it back in the box to return to the store. Epic Fail #2. It was at this point that I was glad I had been raised by a mom that always knew how to deal with situations like this. We got down the little 4 foot tabletrop tree, and I sat down next to Gavin to talk to him. I told him that he was going to have his own personal Christmas tree that he could decorate any way he wanted, emphasizing that this was going to be his tree. His eyes got real big, he inhaled deeply, and exclaimed "thank you Mommy!" while throwing his arms around me. After we assembled it (in 3 easy pieces, prelit!) Gavin looked up at it (it's about 6 inches taller than him) and said "hooge tee (huge tree)" Epic Win.

Pilgrim

I love how Gavin's imagination works. When I picked Gavin up at school one day in Novemeber this pilgrim had no face. The teacher said we were supposed to put a picture of Gavin in place of the face. Gavin, however, had a different idea. On the way home he took the belt buckle and shoe buckles off to make the pilgrim into a "wobot."

Architects at work

A week or so after Halloween I found a gingerbread village on clearance at Target for 90% off, $1. We made Gavin's house first:

 His didn't get a whole lot of decorating because he couldn't wait to do this:

 I finished mine next, and it was a perfectly acceptable house:

  Meanwhile Jake, whose dream job is to be an architect by the way, got fancy:

 I'm thinking maybe Jake should be decorating Gavin's birthday cakes from now on, he's got skills. Jake's house lasted about 3 seconds before this happened:

 

Yay for family fun.

Eatin'

Gavin's favorite "trick or treat" are suckers.

 He is not always a good eater. He usually picks around at whatever I cook for lunch, which is exacerbated by the fact that at lunchtime he's still full from eating a snack at school. But he still likes his canned veggies and raw baby carrots:

 I can totally remember being a small child and eating cheerios in front of Saturday morning cartoons. What a great time in life:

turkeys

Today at school Gavin made a turkey out of a pinecone. This afternoon we were sitting on our front porch watching a house being built on the end of the street. Gavin looked up at the pinetree in our front yard and said "lots turkeys up high."

Halloween