5 months and 5 days

5 months and 5 days is my clever way of excusing myself out of being late on Gavin's 5 month blog. It's been a rough few days here in the Gillespie household. Gavin came down with a cold on Saturday, which he promptly gave to both Ryan and I. So although Gavin can sleep through the night like a champ, Ryan and I are tossing and turning and going through pounds of cough drops.

Ryan and I have both been very busy at work this week, so coming home to play with Gavin is a nice escape at the end of the day!  But because we're so busy, we haven't had Gav's 5 month appointment yet, and won't until next week after I'm done with every teacher's favorite activity: parent teacher conferences!  I do wonder now that I'm a parent myself if I will one day turn into one of the crazy parents that is convinced their child is a genius even though their kid still can't pronounce my name, or shares way too much infomation regarding their marriage at conferences.  Yes, these and many other strange things have happened to me at conferences.  At least we get a day off when its all over!

But back to Gavin! Despite having a cold, Gavin is in a very pleasant mood. He did a great job taking his 5 month pictures, and fending off attacks from Rufus and his posse. We already posted the slideshow/movie of Rufus' revenge, but here are a few still shots that were my favorites, followed by our letter to Gavin.

Dear Gavin,

It’s your 5 month birthday! It’s a new year, and a new you. You’re doing so much more in 2010 than you were just a few weeks before. Now you’re sitting up on your own (although you still tumble over sometimes). You CAN roll over, but you seldom choose to do so. You love laying on your side, but we think you just get a little shocked when all 19 pounds of you goes rolling from one side to the other!

You’ve also made a lot of discoveries this month Gavin. Just a few weeks ago, you found your feet! We don’t know if you’ve realized yet that you have an amazingly large big toe, but you have decided that your feet are just as fun to eat as everything else in our house! You also discovered “solid” food this month. Since you’re now eating 8 oz bottles, we thought it might be time to try some rice cereal, but you don’t seem too interested just yet. For now you hold the cereal in your mouth, smile at Mommy and Daddy, and then spit it right out on your bib. But you do like to sit in your high chair and watch Mommy and Daddy eat their dinner, and we love having you at the table with us Gavin!

In the last month you’ve also found many new ways to play! It doesn’t hurt that you were very spoiled during your first Christmas, and received lots of new toys to play with! You’ve learned that it’s always more fun to knock over a tower of blocks than it is to build one. You’re starting to realize that balls can be rolled back and forth, and that sometimes they roll out of reach. But you’re just beginning to find the right moves to scoot yourself towards objects you want! It’s the beginning of your independence Gavin! Soon you won’t need Mommy or Daddy to take you where you want to go, and bring you the toys you want to play with. We used to think it would be so great when you could do things on your own, but now we’re not so sure. It’s nice to be needed :)

You’re also much more entertained by Mommy and Daddy these days. Daddy makes up all sorts of songs and dances that make you smile and laugh. You love any word that contains the long o sound, and Daddy seems to think that means all his songs should involve the words poop or booty! You also love to grab Mommy’s face and inspect her accessories. You’re especially fascinated with earrings and Mommy’s hair. Both are fun to grab and yank on with all your might!

Every month Gavin you’re becoming more of a little boy and less of our tiny baby. It’s exciting and bittersweet to watch you grow and learn. But it’s also amazing to realize that every morning, when we walk in your room and see you smiling back at us, we love you even more than we did the day before. We don’t know what new things you will have learned and discovered next month, Gavin, but we do know that we will love you more and more! Happy 5 months Gav!

Love,
Mommy and Daddy

Gavin Vs. Rufus - Part V

Letter to Gavin for 5 Months is on its way but thought I'd post this video for now.

A week of firsts

I have to admit, this week I'm just not in much of a blog writing mood. And I don't have a lot of cute pics to post, so that doesn't help either. But I've been good about blogging weekly-ish since Gavin was born, and since that seems to be the only thing I can be consistent with, I'm not giving up now!

Besides, this week was pretty exciting for Gavin. He had two major "firsts:" He found his feet for the first time, and he had his first taste of "solid" food.

I'll start with the food experience. If there's one thing you should know about Gav, its that he loves to eat. And since he is struggling to stay satisfied for more than 2 hours at a time between bottles, and since I caught him trying to take a bite of my Quizno's the other day, we felt it was time to try some rice cereal.

As a new mom, I honestly thought that this rice cereal I had read about in all my Mommy books was basically going to be a more expensive version of Rice Krispies, but thats clearly not the case. Its basically rice dust that you mix together with water or formula to make something thats even more runny and less appetizing looking than oatmeal. So I get why Gavin isn't that into it just yet. He eagerly opens his mouth for the first bite each time, having forgotten how much he disliked it the day before. But then once he gets a taste, he scowls and while staring straight at you, spits it out on his bib. So we'll see how it goes. We have the first food experience on video, but its on our fancy camera and I don't have the technology know how to post it just yet.

For now, here's a pic of Gavin enjoying his high chair before his first bite of cereal:

And before we get to Gavin finding his feet, I have to include this heart meltingly cute picture of Gavin and Daddy loving each other

I actually took about 10 pictures of them in various poses here, but a bunch of them ended up blurry. Sigh.

Also, here's a pic of Gav hanging out in his pack and play, proving that he still loves that bears mobile

And here is the video of Gavin finding his feet. Now that he's discovered these marvels of the human body, he is determined to get his feet in his mouth. Make your bets now on whether he is successful or not...

So when is the first day of spring?

Its that dreaded time of year...the holiday hangover.  Christmas and New Years have come and gone, and now its just another 3 months (or 4 or 5 when you live in Illinois) of boring, cold winter.  Today is the last day of winter break, and I have mixed feelings about it.  It was great to spend a lot of time with family and friends, but I had also forgotten in my 2 months back at work that spending the day alone with Gavin is still a full day of work.  Granted my co-worker is pretty cute, but its still a long day, especially when you're trapped inside.  Gavin and I are very much looking forward to summer break when we can get outside and do all sorts of fun things.

But I digress.  Gavin and Ryan and I had a wonderful holiday season.  We started off the holidays with Christmas at our house.  Santa brought some presents for Gavin, and he was mildly interested in them.  I made the mistake of telling Ryan to make a fire for our present opening experience, and Gavin was far more interested in watching the flames than looking at all his new loot. 

Here's Gavin laying in the aftermath of Christmas morning.  This was always my favorite part of Christmas, wallowing in the avarice and greed, and eventually falling asleep amid a sea of torn wrapping paper, like Randy in A Christmas Story.

Of course Gavin's favorite present was the $2 rattle/teether.  That and the wrapping paper. 

After Christmas at our house and the most crowded Christmas Eve mass I have ever been to, we headed to my parents house.  Here is Gavin entranced by Grandpa, and Ryan entranced by college football.

Gavin and Grandma on Christmas morning.  Like a typical excited kid, Gavin woke up at 5am this day, but was only interested in eating and then taking a nap.  I don't think thats going to be the same story next year.

Gavin checking out some of his new loot.  This particular toy seems to both delight and frustrate Gavin at the same time, and I can see why. In my sleep, I still hear some annoying woman's voice say, "Roar like a lion, roooaaarr.  I'm a lion."  *Shudder*

Next on our Christmas tour was the Gillespie's house in Geneseo.  Here's Gavin playing with Grandpa.  Gavin is still in his pj's at 2 in the afternoon, but in his defense, so was everyone else. 

Gavin being very cute with Uncle Shane.  Gavin and Uncle Shane were locked into many staring battles during our time home in Geneseo, but they are clearly still good friends.

Gavin also went to visit Great Grandma Pettit while we were home.  This is the only picture that even sort of looks like Gavin is happy instead of throwing a huge fit.  Which is unfortunate for Ryan since he has that insane smile on his face.  This will also completely embarrass Gavin when he's old enough to read this blog, but this picture was taken just before Gavin started making his modem noises.  Which was shortly followed a noise that can only be descibed as the sound of coffee percolating.  Which was then very quickly followed by me using the back up onesie for the first time.  Good times.

This is Gavin relaxing with Grandpa after a bottle.  Gavin looks like I do after a meal at the Cheesecake Factory: no longer able to move because I'm this close to a food coma.

Uncle Bren and Gavin bonding.  Uncle Bren wants to "borrow" Gavin for a night so that they can woo the college girls.

While we were in Geneseo, Ryan's parents offered to watch Gavin for a night so that Ryan and I could have a short getaway.  We went to the casino CJ works at and had a wonderful 24 hours!  We napped, we had a nice dinner with Allison and Kyle, we gambled, and we slept some more.  Being a parent has made me much more appreciative of the small things in life like a dinner I didn't make myself and consecutive sleep.  It was great to have a day to hang out with the hubby and remember how much I love my little kiddo.  Thanks to Uncle CJ for the gift certificates, and to grandma and grandpa for watching the Booger.

We've been back at our house for almost a week now, and we've done a lot of relaxing and enjoying the rest of break.  Below is a picture of Gavin "enjoying" his jumper:

Lately Gavin is becoming frustrated very easily.  I think its because he would like to be more mobile and active than he can currently pull off.  And since I don't speak Gavin, I don't know where he wants to go or what he wants to do, and nothing could make him madder.  This picture above is a pretty good representation of the face I see a lot of these days, usually accompanied by a high pitched squeal of pure PO-ed ness.  I'm going on record now as saying that I'm looking forward to the day that he can crawl and move around on his own, but I'm sure I'll eat those words later.

And although Gavin can get worked up in 2 seconds, he can also go right back to being a cute, happy baby again.