Who Needs Toys?!

We ordered most of our Christmas gifts online this year. Naturally they come to our house in boxes. This box had great big streams of plastic bags of air... to Gabriel's delight.

Alphabet

Just a quick note. I wanted to record that Gabriel recognizes letters now. He has been mimicking and saying the alphabet as short syllables "eh ah eh eh" and such. This weekend he started pointing to signs (Exit) and letters on books and boxes and doing the same thing "eh ah."

Reading is still his favorite thing to do. Today I cleaned up his room and found "The Gingerbread Boy" book hidden under stuffed animals. He must have missed that book because he wanted me to read it... 3 times in a row! I tried to convince him to read a different book, but he insisted. We compromised and read it in between each of the next 2 books!

You Better Watch Out

My little elf helped me get out the Christmas decorations on Monday. He loved it when I put the Santa hat on him, and laughed out loud when I bobbed my head up and down with it on me. He also loves the Christmas lights (who doesn't?!).

He's so proud of himself. He can now climb the ladder all by himself to get up to the slide. When he needed my help before, he'd go down the slide once and then move on to other things. Today he went up and down the slide about 6 times in a row without my help! He had a big grin the whole time.

Rolling in the leaves. Gabriel is so big now. Gabriel is wearing size 18 pants (some are still a little big, but 12s are way too short), his new size 6 1/2 toddler shoes, and the jacket we got him for the snow. We took a bath after this.
Gabriel is also learning to speak more words every day. (We already know he understands almost everything we say.) This morning he pointed to my glasses and said something close to "gasses."

Thanksgiving

Paul's dad rented a cabin in South Lake Tahoe for Thanksgiving. Here we are enjoying the fire in the living room. It rained hard all day Wednesday on our drive up there. We saw it snow Thursday morning, but it melted before we ate breakfast. We came prepared to play in the snow and we were sad that there wasn't any snow, but we were grateful we didn't have to drive in it.

Gabriel found the light switch which was just at his height in the breakfast nook. He impressed us by talking more and saying "on" and "uff" every time he switched the lights. He enjoyed climbing up and down the stairs several times a day all weekend (he helped Rachel burn off those Thanksgiving calories!).

We had great views of the lake and forest.

16 Months Old

Gabriel is such a little boy now, running around the backyard, playing with sticks, and rolling in leaves. Happy Fall!
(I love his face in the video as he goes down the pile of leaves the last time. He looks at me, anticipates with side-eyes, then goes down.)

Teething

We thought Gabriel might have a cold, but I think it's teething. For a long time he had 4 front upper teeth and 2 lower teeth. Then he got all 4 molars in at once (oy, that was fun). Recently, 2 more teeth came in on the bottom. Now, poor Gabriel is being tortured with all 4 canine teeth coming in at once. He's drooling and biting everything. At least he is able to chew more food now. He loves crunchy apples.

He Talks

Gabriel blows raspberries at the camera.

Gabriel loves to do what I do. At first he was afraid of the vacuum and had to be held by one parent while the other vacuumed. Then I could hold him while vacuuming. Recently, he'd playfully crawl away from or in the path of the vacuum. Now Gabriel insists on taking a turn pushing the vacuum around!

In other news, Gabriel is talking more and more. Most times he moves his tongue and lips and makes noises that he frustratingly intends as words but that come out as gibberish to us. He will even repeat the exact same sound multiple times to try to get us to understand! (That part amazes us.) Sometimes we actually understand him. He said "again, again" this weekend when doing something fun. He said "manana" and "I got the manana" when he grabbed his banana over breakfast. He has said "I got it" for a while, but now sometimes it's "I got dis" and he adds a word. He has a high-pitched moan he uses for cat and a closed-mouth "woof woof" for dog.

Baby sign language has been great. We have been teaching him the sign for dirty diaper and he'll tell me when he needs to be changed. Gabriel completely understands our spoken words and is aware of his surroundings. At church the other day, a lady got up to speak and Gabriel signed to Paul "where's the music?" Paul understood Gabriel because that was the lady who led the nursery children at music time.