Bella, Gabe and Josiah

This morning Gabe got stuck in a wine rack. (Well, a wine rack that we use as an end table.) It was so tight that I had trouble getting him out. He's getting faster and more curious about everything. My house is no longer safe...  

Gabe found Max's toys. Max is not amused... Reading the church bulletin... All dressed up and ready to do some work! As a sidenote, I have no idea what tool he was eating, but Pat was right next to him... Look Mom! I found my socks! Doesn't every baby play with Cheeriors and a paint roller??? Good Morning!!! Wearing Gramps' apron from when he was little. Max usually jumps on Pat's head when he walks in the door. Not mine...            

This whole standing up thing has gotten completely out of control. Gabe stands up on every single thing he can find. For example... Don't worry Mom, I got the laundry! Oh look! Dishes! Let me out!!! Look what I found! At daycare there's a little shelf that is the perfect height to pull up on. The ladies at daycare told me that they'll be feeding the other kids and suddenly hear a little giggle. They look up and see him ducking behind the shelf grinning, only to pop back up again. He's figured out how to play peek-a-boo all by himself!         

All the ladies love my little Gabe. To be fair, he's turned into quite the little flirt himself. We went to a party on Friday night and every time he saw one of the other little girls he would grin really big and flap his arms. To be fair, the only three babies there were all girls and he could have been excited to see someone his own size... Then this morning I took him to daydare and two of the girls crawled over to say hello. They laughed and smiled at him, and he smiled and flapped his arms right back. It was adorable! Then I pulled Gabe out of his carseat and sat him down on the floor. One of the girls gave him a huge hug, which really turned into a takle and Gabe ended up on the floor. They're all pretty adorable! In other news, Gabe decided to help me with the dishwasher. He was very excited about it! We got a new blender. It's very fancy and does an amazing job making baby food for Gabe, but it is very loud. We can't run it if anyone in the house is sleeping. Th

When we got married three years ago, I moved into Pat's house. It was, well, a bachelors house. Let's just say that I had a lot of work to do to get it ready to be lived in nicely. The furnace had a leak and had leaked a bunch of soot into the house. The leak had been fixed, however, there was still soot on the walls and it was gross. So we had to repaint everything. We were ready to work on the living room when we discovered that there was leak in the roof which was leaking into the living room and rotting the sheetrock. That turned into needed to wait for better weather to fix the problem. Then we had to wait for nasty weather to see if the problem had been fixed. Then we had to get another contractor to try again. Basically, it took us a year to fix the leak. The Gabe showed up and everything got pushed back. Then we had to find a plaster guy, which ended up being complicated. Basically, for the last two years, my walls have been painted, but the ceiling was not and the line

He's wearing 9-month-jammies tonight. This pretty sums up how I feel about it also... Stop growing kid. It's not good for your mama's heart.  

Gabe is 13 months old today, 9 months adjusted. His monthly photoshoots are getting a bit more complicated since the kid does not want to sit still... Here is his official picture: And here are the outtakes. The poor moose... Maybe he's helping the moose read the book??? And then he went to sleep, all angelic looking... I love my little 9-month-old 13-month-old baby.                

Well, someone may be ready for the church nursery. Usually we leave him in the service with us until he starts squawking and then one of us takes him out. He entertains everyone sitting behind us also... Today he never squawked, so we left him in the service. However, he spent the service doing this: In case that's unclear, Pat and I are sitting like normal people. Gabe is upside down. I have a deathgrip on his foot so that he doesn't land on his head. I think it's time for him to go to the nursery... In other news, he's slowly figuring out how to crawl on all fours. He flips to his belly after a few steps because he's faster, but I've caught him doing the actual crawl a few times now. He really wanted to play with my pump and I told him no and moved him, so he figured out how to get to it anyway. I actually had trouble getting him out of there. It was a tight spot!  

It's been quite the week up here. Getting back from vacation is always hard, and Gabe seems to be taking it the hardest. He is way more cranky and emotional than he normally is. Maybe he just misses getting to spend all day with Gram and Gramps? I also thought I saw a flash of a tooth, but I can't find it now, so either it went back on or I really didn't see anything... But maybe that's some of the crankiness? One of these a tooth actually will pop through. Work has been pretty crazy for me this week. The busy season officially starts next week, but it's all been ramping up this week. My boss has been out of town all week, which has made things a but crazier. (Seeing how much time he's been without me in the last year, I really don't fault him for being gone...) Pat managed to get the cold that I fought with for three weeks. He's only one week into it, so my guess is that he's goy another weeks to go. Now Bella's complaining of a stuffy nose, so

The problem with having a cousin close in age is that Katilyn and I are going to spend way too much time getting them dressed up in matching outfits to take pictures... The day we left Phoenix we had another photo shoot. Clearly the floor was more fun...            

Bella and I decided that we needed some girl time, so we left Gabe at home with Gram and went to the zoo. It looked a lot different than it did when we were there for zoo lights. But it was a lot of fun to hang out just the two of us.              

Gabe has a super fun new game he likes to play. It's called "Dive Headfirst off of the Couch while Someone Holds your Ankles." It can also be played on the bed, a chair, a lap or an airplane seat. It's particularly fun when the other person doesn't know that you're playing the game and they have to scramble to grab your ankle. As a side note, that may have been Gabe's only trip to the Grand Canyon ever... We've had a pretty quiet week. Seth and Bryson did the Cheerio Challenge. There was lots of time for crawling around the house. Gabe perfected his new favorite face. We discovered Bryson's true identity. I got to hang out with both boys at once! Gabe got stuck figuring out why he can't read his book...