Puppet

Gabriel loves to put his hand in a puppet, or an oven mitt or a sock. He is playing pretend now. He fed Kermit the Frog some crumbs off the floor the other day. Gabriel also grabbed one of his shirts out of his basket and tried putting it on his stuffed leopard. Gabriel continues to talk to us and we try our hardest to understand him. His favorite consonants are "s" and "z" (snaps and zipper). I love how he says "scissors."

Merry Christmas

We had a wonderful and busy Christmas week. We enjoyed seeing so much of our families! Among the highlights, we went up to Paul's grandparent's house and enjoyed a few inches of snow! It was Gabriel's first experience with snow and he loved it. We are so grateful for the fantastic presents we received and for the good quality time we got to spend with family.

Apples

This evening I peeled an apple for Gabriel to eat. I sliced one chunk out for him and started cutting it in bite-size pieces. When I offered it on a plate for him, he grabbed the whole apple and had a great time biting into it. Such a big boy now!

Gabriel continues to amaze us with his talking, gesturing, and associations. We were reading a book today and he pointed to the picture of raspberries. I said, "raspberries" and he jabbered excitedly and pointed to the front door. I didn't know what this meant at first. "Oh, you had raspberries at grandpa and grandma's house the other day?" More jabbering. Then he went to the front door and pointed like he wanted to go. He was sad when I said we weren't going back today to eat more raspberries out of the garden.

We sing songs with hand jestures. He can do almost all the signs of Itsy Bitsy Spider. He stretches tall and goes to the floor for "Once there was a snowman." Lately I just started doing "Little Rabbit FooFoo" (a song I learned as a Girl Scout and a favorite of the kids I babysat as a teenager). Gabriel can do the sign for rabbit now. He even signed rabbit when I read about the rabbit in a book.

Gabriel tries hard to communicate with us. Many times it is deliberate syllables, sometimes with added mushed fingers in an attempted at a new sign. I'm sure he is just as frustrated as we are.

Christmas Craziness

A picture to tide you over. Gabriel loves to wrestle with his tiger, especially with his dad. Riding the tiger is a new thing he just discovered yesterday. Tonight, he hopped on Paul's back for a ride!

Things have been pretty busy around here. I think this is the first time in my life that I've done Christmas shopping the WEEK BEFORE. (I'm usually done by early November.)

Back to work!

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."