Clapping Video

At a grandfather's request, I got a video of Gabriel clapping. His hair is curly because I just gave him a bath and fluffed his hair instead of brushing it. He clapped his hands after almost every bite of food at dinner so this was fairly easy to capture.

Blog Log

While Gabriel has been napping, I've been working on a blog log.
What's a blog log? Since I haven't been keeping up my journal (it's just more fun to type and upload stuff here), I thought I should at least print this stuff out so it can be saved permanently. So I copied each blog entry and put it in Word (Google makes it easy to get the pictures now too). With a little formatting, the blog entry looks pretty good on the page. Now I can put all this stuff in Gabriel's baby book.
Here he is sleeping in his bed.

Standing and Clapping

I just wanted to record that Gabriel clapped his hands for the first time today. Lately, whenever I've praised him I say Yay and clap my hands. He picked up on that. He has also been trying to stand on his own during these last few days. He was climbing around Paul late last night and kept pushing himself up on Paul and then standing on his own for a few seconds. It was so fun to see his look of accomplishment!

P.S. As soon as I posted this, Gabriel walked across the living room using the walker toy. He loves doing this. When he got to the other side of the room, he let go and STOOD on his own for a long time in order to figure out how to clap his hands with happiness!

New Things

Gabriel woke up extremely happy from his nap yesterday (which is a rare thing), so I had to take lots of pictures. He kept smiling and laughing. At first I thought it was because he was happy to sleep on his own bed (not in a crib or with me in our bed), but I think it was just that day. Today he was back to normal. Still adorable, but sleeping and waking are not our strong points.

Here is a video I just took of Gabriel. I've been trying to teach him to press down the button on the top himself for the last few days. He screeched with delight when he finally did it today! I tried to get his excitement on video. See how he tries so hard?

Crash!

Paul got in an accident this morning. He is fine, thankfully!!! Paul was driving the very windy highway 17 to work in Santa Cruz. As he was going around a blind bend, he swerved to avoid a 3-car pile-up and drove up an embankment. He appears uninjured so far (other than a little shaken), but the VW Bug is pretty much totaled. Front two tires are damaged, the radiator and oilpan are hanging down and the floor of the driver's side is raised so there's lots of damage. We're waiting to see what the insurance company's assessment of the car is.

We cleaned out the car, just in case it is considered totaled so we don't have to go back. Gabriel helped. :) I'm a little sad, I loved my bug. And this will be the only picture of Gabriel with it. But I can't help repeating how thankful I am that Paul is okay.

Peek-A-Boo

This has got to be the winner of the cutest Gabriel video! This took a while to upload, but I think it was worth it! What a cute age! I feel so lucky!

Daddy

Paul has had to work a lot of late nights for his job because of a tight game deadline. We miss him but appreciate all he does for us. Gabriel LOVES his daddy. He gets a huge smile whenever Paul is around. He practically leaps out of my arms in excitement if he's still awake when Paul comes home or in the morning when we watch Paul get ready for work. They sometimes get to spend a little morning time together, which is so precious to see because Gabriel is extra smiley. What a cute picture (though a little fuzzy) of my two cute boys!! Yay for Fridays, it means the weekend is almost here!

New Stuff

I just posted something yesterday, but I can't help it. I love this little boy and want to post some of the pictures I took today. We went to the park. I couldn't get him to crawl in the grass like before. He was more interested in hanging out with me and playing with the water bottle. But as soon as he saw a big kid on the swing, he got really excited and made noises like "wheeeeee" which is the sound I make when I push him on the swing. So we went over to the little kid's swing and I got a shot of his teeth. (And I was wrong, there are TWO more teeth coming in on top. They're going to poke through any day.)

9 Months

Gabriel turned 9 months old on Saturday. We went to the pediatrician's appointment this morning and found out that Gabriel weighs 21 lbs and is 29 inches long. The doctor sees a fifth tooth coming in (the upper incisor) besides Gabriel's two front teeth on top and bottom that have already come in.

Gabriel can crawl quickly and practices pulling himself up and getting down on anything he can find. As you can see from the video below from last week, he can walk while holding on to something, but is otherwise unsteady still. He is quite eager to get places and do it on his own. He gets a huge smile and laughs at the song "Popcorn Popping on the Apricot Tree" and tries to do the popcorn hand motion. He loves music and will "dance" to it. His favorite color seems to be orange, since he prefers orange toys or plastic and reaches for the orange on our t-shirts.

He is generally a very happy little guy! He growls and makes all kinds of noises with his mouth. He has been practicing a frown (lowers his head and eyebrows and puckers his mouth), but immediately smiles at this trick afterwards, especially if he is imitated. He learned how to shake his head "no" a while ago and is just starting to nod his head. He brings great joy and happiness to his parents (and other relatives!) and we enjoy him every day!

Gabriel the Explorer

Here are some of my favorite recent pictures of Gabriel.



(Yes, he did indeed discover the toilet paper roll in the bathroom all by himself.)

Cups

Gabriel smiles here after drinking from his sippy cup at lunch the other day. He also enjoys drinking from our adult cups too, though with help. Sometimes he just likes chewing on the rim and is surprised by the water that goes into his mouth. Sometimes he plays with the water and spits out a mouth-full and promptly smiles at this trick (thus this picture).

Laughter

I love Gabriel's laugh. He makes every day beautiful!

Wrestling

Okay, last attempt at a posed photo. After this one picture, he promptly twisted around and fell head-first onto the carpet. Thankfully, he didn't have far to fall. He's usually more coordinated these days, but these pictures were taken just before nap time.

We have rearranged Gabriel's room several times now. This latest version is more fun and kid-proof. Gabriel very much enjoys wrestling with the big pillows ... and with his mom!