10

Gabe is 10 months old.  And yes I am feeling very cliche about it - as in "I can't believe he's almost a year old, where has the time gone" etc. etc.

Doesn't this look like one of those poses they make kids do for senior portraits? 

This is what I know about him right now.  And yes, this is the cliche part of the post where I make sweeping generalizations about the habits and character of my child, based on very little historical knowledge, so that I can someday say things to Gabe like "You always loved Cheerios, even as a baby" and to VH-1 Behind the Music like "Oh I knew my son would be a talented drummer...as a baby he would bang spoons on pans and even then, he could keep a steady beat".  (because, anyone can keep a beat if there are only 2 beats being counted)

• Gabe loves cats.  He squeals and screeches in delight whenever he spots Smedley. 
• Gabe prefers to eat from a metal spoon over a plastic spoon.  My mom and I have done experiments on this and tonight was the most blatant display of this preference of Gabe's I've seen yet:  I was feeding him dinner and bites offered from his plastic baby spoon were emphatically refused while bites of the same exact thing, seconds later, from a metal spoon, were happily accepted.  We think it's because he sees us eating off metal silverware.
• Gabe adores Bret.  But I've mentioned this before, haven't I? 
• Gabe's eating preferences are very urgent (that's the only word I can think of for it).  Once in his chair, he does NOT want to wait to eat.  Once done eating, he does NOT want to wait to get out of his chair.  And once he spots his bottle, he will go from completely fine and happy to whimpering (and screaming, if he has to wait for it to heat up).  And this one's my favorite:  if I'm carrying him upstairs with a bottle in my hand and he spots it, he will contort himself in an effort to get his mouth on the bottle nipple, with no thought to how he might be working himself out of my grasp/arms.  so, calling it my "favorite" is highly sarcastic.
• He now has 5 teeth, and the three upper ones all arrived in the last 2 1/2 weeks.  Good times.  Oh, and his front teeth are growing in with a huge gap in the middle:

I understand that these are only his baby teeth, but this gap has already got me thinking about the costs of orthodontia.

• And finally, I think Gabe probably needs a haircut, because the hair over his ears is long and awkward.  But somehow it just seems too early to cut his hair (see my previous comment about how I'm feeling very cliche about him turning one soon).