More

Recently got some more pictures from Mandy of the November festivities and thought I'd share a few more of my favorites:


Love my boys!



Anna provides proof that pretty much anyone who feeds a baby subconsciously encourages the process by opening their own mouth!

Miriam, on the other hand, is the epitome of complete concentration with her expression (either that or she knew we'd been laughing about Anna the night before!).



This was the night Gabe started walking, and obviously I was REALLY EXCITED about the events transpiring.  Bret looks dignified-excited.  I look maniacal.  Here's hoping no one has a camera trained on me the first time Gabe competes at field day in elementary school!



November

(Yes, I realize it's January.  I think if the last 6 months of this blog have taught us anything, it's that I'm not exactly timely with my posts.)

November was a big month for Gabe!  Sure, he turned 1 in October...but November is really where the action was at.

He finally got to meet Paul:

And Caleb:

And Miriam:

And Anna:

And Micah!


Gabe and Micah, headbutting hello


Whew!   And it took me 3 days after they left to realize I needed to change our bedtime prayers from: "...and please bless all my aunts and uncles and cousins, even the ones I haven't met yet..." to "...and please bless all my aunts and uncles and cousins, even the ones who live far away that I don't get to see very often..."  because I'd been saying the first version for 8 months since we started Gabe's bedtime routine!

And this is a cute picture of Bret, Gabe & Grandpa, just because:

Actually, the reason I included that picture was because of Christina in the upper right hand corner.  I didn't notice she was there the first time I saw how the picture turned out.  She's a sneaky one, that Christina.

November brought Gabe's first trip to the zoo: 

Grandma in heaven - all her grandkids together at once!

...and Gabe's first official sugar high thanks to his personal birthday cake:

What *is* this glorious nectar?

Wait, it tastes good AND it's fun to play with??



I think my work here is done...waiter, please clear my table!

But what topped off our 'November to Remember' was that Gabe started walking!  It was really neat that it happened when Paul, Mandy & the kids were here to see it in person!

Love how he stands back up and claps for himself...love that I had the camera out so I could catch this on video...and love most of all that this first pass of multiple steps together was Gabe walking to me!!

One

Gabe turned one last Monday!  We celebrated with a couple gifts from Grandma in the morning...

"A card?  For me??"



He found the curling ribbon pretty entertaining.



And of course, he was really interested in ripping the wrapping paper...the magnetic animal puzzle book was a secondary attraction.  (Although now that we have it home without wrapping paper for competition, he loves it!)

Awesome truck with jumbo legos!  Gabe likes to push cars and trucks around and make engine noises at the same time; it's really cute.

...And then Gabe and I took a road trip to the Tri-Cities to see Lindsey & Lydia who were in town from WA DC.

Both Gabe & Lydia were not feeling very cooperative for a group picture, so we decided to just take what we could get!

Lydia's Grammy Sherry showing us how to keep two squirrely kids entertained...the talents of a Grandma!

It was an eventful day!

I'll leave you with a collage of monthly pics from Gabe's first year (idea courtesy of my friend Annie!).  I think I already said in a previous post that all the cliches I've heard about parenting and having kids seem to be pretty true (so far as my whopping year of experience in that area goes), and the part about how time flies and how they grow up so fast is perhaps the most bothersome truth of all. 

Then again, lately I've been really looking forward to Gabe walking, getting molars, and being potty trained...so at least in those respects I'm not so bothered by time flying!

Happy 1st Birthday to my precious baby boy, who makes me laugh and melts my heart and teaches me about myself and brings me such great joy - love you love you, buddy!

Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth...

One of my favorite poems is High Flight, by John Gillespie Magee, Jr:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things

You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air...

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark or even eagle flew --

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

Recent high flights:

- Bret and his dad went skydiving!  It was Bret's parents' gift to him for his birthday in April, but they had to wait to go until their schedules and the weather all cooperated.  They went on a beautiful, HOT day in August...perfect blue skies!






Jumping out of a plane...just your average father/son bonding activity.

 


Gabe helping Bret practice the freefall position.





Coming in for landing.




Bret's tandem instructor was a guy I went to highschool with - small world!





- In September, we went to visit Sara in Idaho and her boyfriend Jared took us flying!  We did loops and went weightless and I'm pretty sure I giggled like a maniac for 90% of my flight.  There was even knee-slapping.

Yes, I said knee-slapping.  Because apparently, my spontaneous instinctual reaction to having extreme amounts of fun is to slap my knee like a 1940's grandpa. 

Anyway, I would love love love to get my pilot's license. Bret's dad has started lessons to get his...so maybe I'll talk him or Jared into teaching me someday.  Now there's an idea! 



Landing




That's me in the back.




- In early October, I got to go on my third hot air balloon flight!  Perhaps not the kind of fun that inspires knee-slapping, but amazing nonetheless!  My parents generously expanded their "romance aloft flight for two" and invited the rest of us along for the ride.  (Though really, how romantic could it have been, with the balloon pilot there as well?  It's not like he could step away and give a couple any privacy...)

We helped hold the balloon open in front of a big fan so it could begin to inflate, and Mom and Dad took this job very seriously.  The bottom of the balloon opening was lifting up and blocking the inflow, so Mom went in to remedy the problem.  So cute.

Phase 2 of inflation - heating the air inside the balloon.

I was a bit concerned Dad wasn't going to let go (remember, I said my folks were taking our roles in getting the balloon off the ground very seriously).

The basket turned out to be roomier than we expected...we could've easily fit a few more!

It was an eventful few months for us!

New (and old) friends!

We got to visit with the Brooks family last weekend!  So fun to have them over for the day and introduce Gabe (9 months) and Lydia (just turned 1!).

Gabe's been pulling himself up on furniture, and Lydia is wanting to let go of furniture and stand on her own.  It was funny to see how excited we parents were about their respective triumphs in development (...as in:  I stopped Lindsey mid-sentence to exclaim that Gabe had just pulled himself up on the outside of the playpen and he'd never done that before and I had to get the camera (thank goodness Lindsey is a great friend and sympathetic new mom who understands the importance of stopping all adult conversation to exclaim at something profound and simply earthshatteringly brilliant your child is doing, haha!) and later both Lindsey and Thomas had separate outbursts of proud parenthood as they watched Lydia let go of her handhold on something and try to balance on her own).

Was a great visit with great friends!

Blankets

Gabe is the recipient of two new blankets!

This one is from my mom - it's soft and cozy and I love it for snuggling both Gabe and I into during his 5:30 AM bottle.

This one is from Juliann - she makes super cute, super hip baby blankets and I was so excited she made one for Gabe! 

Jul and I got to visit recently and it was so fun to catch up for a bit! I got to meet her daughter, Lucy, and see her baby belly which currently contains daughter #2, due in August. Jul and I have known each other since the third grade in Mr. Clingen's class. Mr. Clingen read Where the Red Fern Grows out loud to the class and I do believe that even the boys were a bit teary-eyed at the end. If you haven't read it, please do. It's such a good story! Makes my top ten books of all time list. Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice is also on that list. As is the Bible. And, let's be honest, Stephenie Meyer's Twilight. Is it sacrilegious to have the Bible on the same list as Twilight?

(Please note that though this post may lead you to believe otherwise, we do actually dress Gabe in more than a diaper from time to time.)

Taking it to the next level

We went to visit Jane and Jack & Emma today. Gabe tried to complete his traditional greeting and acceptance ritual but Jane was too fast with the burp rag and so remained spit-up free. Not to be out-foxed, Gabe stepped it up a notch and peed on her.

He thought it was very funny.

In other news, Gabe has dimpled elbows and rubberband wrists.



Quite a change from the skinny wrists and extra elbow skin at 12 days old!

Surprise!

We were having dinner at my parents' last night when - SURPRISE! - in walks Mandy! She's on a whirlwind visit from home base in Hawaii, helping her parents get their house ready to put on the market.

Mandy and Gabriel got to meet for the first time. As part of his greeting and acceptance ritual, Gabe smiled at her and spit up on her. I'm beginning to think that I should just let people know that if they'd like to smile and spit up on my kid in return, that seems fair.


I learned four things from last night's suprise:

1) It is GOOD to be with family. I miss the Hawaii Halversons a LOT. A lot a lot.

2) The card game "Golf" is fun.

3) I really don't enjoy the sound of my voice captured in a video.

4) Gabriel gets really grumpy when over-tired. Prolonged grumpy. I had hoped that he'd be one of those kids who's grumpy but then gives in pretty quickly and zonks out. So far, that does not seem to be the case. He's apparently quite concerned with making sure we know that he's really, truly, I'm-not-kidding-here grumpy. And then just when you think he's calming down, he ramps it up again just to drive his point home.

My First Christmas

by Gabriel Totten

This was my first Christmas. I was really excited for it because I heard a lot of talk about family get togethers (where I get held constantly and so I never have to have naptime alone in my crib) and also a lot of talk about food.

On Wednesday before Christmas, Mommy took me to Aunt Lisa's and Aunt Sara was also there and we decorated sugar cookies! Well, I mostly watched but a couple times I made suggestions about how to decorate and Mommy seemed to understand me (sort of...one time I very specifically said "ahh cahh", which of course means 'use red icing and draw concentric circles'....but Mommy used white icing and drew lines. I was sort of frustrated but I'm really trying to be patient with her because I've heard that it's hard to learn a new language when you're an adult). I heard Mommy, Aunt Lisa and Aunt Sara say "these cookies taste really good!". I thought I'd be able to try some, after being part of the team that worked so hard to decorate them, but -

Mommy gave me formula.

On Christmas Eve we went to Grandma and Grandpa's house and I was held pretty much the whole time (yesssss!!) and then it was time for dinner and I heard Mommy and Daddy and everyone laughing that we were having lasagna for dinner instead of turkey and everyone was saying it was really yummy and I thought I'd be able to try some, but -

Daddy gave me formula.

So I spit up A LOT all over my Christmas outfit, just to let everyone know how I felt about the injustice of the menu differences. Grandma and Grandpa gave me another Christmas outfit and Mommy was really excited that I would have another one to wear on Christmas Day, since I spit up so much on Christmas Eve (good! she noticed!).

Christmas morning we woke up and Mommy said I was so cute she had to do a photo shoot. I'm used to this by now so I gave her a few smiles (at first I thought Mommy had a weird black thing attached to her face but then I heard Daddy say "Gabe's going to think that camera is attached to your face" so I figured out that the black thing was a camera, and also Mommy talks a lot about "pictures to remember this time" when she's using it so I try to be good about letting her take lots of pictures. Thank goodness Daddy explained what was going on...he does that a lot and I sure am glad! Like the time when Mommy was holding me and I smiled at her and she started crying and hugged me really tight and I didn't understand how smiling and crying go together and I was getting starting to get a little squished by Mommy's hug but then Daddy said to Mommy "Are you crying? Gabe's going to think it's not okay to smile if you cry every time he does it" and then Mommy said "He's just SO PRECIOUS!" so then I figured out that she was crying because she was happy.)

Christmas morning Mommy and Daddy heated up a breakfast casserole that Grandma made and it smelled so yummy, but -

Mommy gave me formula.

I gave Mommy a really cool picture frame where she can put pictures of me during my first year of life (I figured she needed a place to display all those pictures she takes!) and I gave Daddy a really funny card and a couple of new black shirts that I can spit up on because Daddy loves it when I spit up on his black shirts.

Christmas day we went over to Aunt Lisa's and she was cooking a turkey and it smelled so yummy and everyone agreed with me and there was garlic mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and roast and sweet potatoes, but -

Daddy gave me formula.

AND - Mommy showed everyone my backside because apparently it had a reindeer on it!

I really hope that next year I get to eat some of the yummy food that everyone is talking about!

Too cute to not post!

Last Thursday & Friday Bret and I headed up to Friday Harbor to celebrate his youngest sister Sara's graduation. Here are a couple pictures that are just too cute to not post: This is Sara and my mother-in-law, Mary (soon to be "Meemo", which is what Bret & his siblings all called their Grandmother when they were growing up). This picture is so adorable I can hardly stand it! Seriously, how cute are these two?? And, talking about what we called our Grandmothers got me thinking that maybe I'll have our kid(s) call my mom "Myrtle". What do you think of that, mom? Judging from how annoyed you'd get when I was in high school and would call you Mary instead of Mom, I'm guessing you're protesting aloud at your computer as you read this. But if a cute little toddler calls you Myrtle, can you really object? Mwah-ha-ha-ha!

Below is a picture of Sara & her boyfriend Jared (also an adorable picture!)

I will admit that I completely did the older sister thing and told Sara that I thought Jared was a keeper.

One of the interesting side effects I've noticed about being married is feeling older-sister-y toward three additional people who I've only known for 4 years, and who are grown adults! It's like it just automatically happened, which seems so odd when previously the requirement for being an older sister was actual shared blood and performing the role for the younger siblings' life span to date. And actually, when I describe it like that, maybe it's been presumptious of me to add three more notches to my older sister belt. I can't help it though - Bret's their older brother so my perspective is an extension of his.

The last afternoon we were up in Friday Harbor we sat outside on the deck and enjoyed the sun, breeze, and conversation. And then I got home and noticed I was sort of pink. And then a bit later I noticed I was really getting rather red. And then finally by bedtime, I was more of a blazing hot tamale color. And tonight I started peeling. Darn that breeze for being a distraction while the sun did its dirty work!