You Make Bath Time So Much Fun...

Gabriel has such a good time in the bathtub. He's always enjoyed his baths right from the start. And now that we have good bubble bath, I actually can get enough bubble coverage so I don't get obscene baby tub photos and videos to post. He doesn't mind having water dumped over his head. He likes to kick his feet, and then eventually he got into splashing his hands in the water too as he got older. Now he seems determined to play with the lever hardware in the tub that releases the water down the drain. He likes to watch us blow bubbles at him with the bubble wand that came with the California Baby bubbles. He plays with his Star Wars bath tub toy set. It's a nice end to our days.

7 Months Old

Our baby turned 7 months old today.

There's mostly brown now in Gabriel's eyes. Just a little blue hanging on at the edges. So my hope that Gabriel would have Daddy's beautiful light blue eyes is long gone now. But they are not as dark brown as Mommy's yet.

Gabriel sits like a champ now. Rarely does he topple over. He even sits up in the tub all by himself these days.

He is interested in what is around him and wants to move to explore. Sometimes he becomes frustrated when he's on his stomach and can't get to things. The care givers at The Learning Center have been holding him up by the stomach in a crawling position to try to show him how to crawl. I prefer to not encourage that sort of mobility at home. He seems to be a people watcher too when he's out and about in his stroller. I can only imagine what he's thinking. And the dogs are some of his favorite things to watch. Even better when they pop up in the chair next to him to say hello and give a kiss.

The Learning Center has proved to be a smooth transition. We still need to secure some days of alternative day care before Gabriel is officially permanent full-time starting 10/5/09. But otherwise, all three of his teachers are fantastic. And Gabriel seems excited to be at The Learning Center when I drop him off in the morning. And on Monday when I picked him up, I almost felt like he wasn't happy to see me and to be going home. They do walks and water play, and paint. Yes, paint! They are quite brave with a whole room of infants. And the staff are always doing something creative with the babies like adding color to the pool water or freezing Jell-O for them to check out. And my favorite is the communication. Most days I get an e-mail, often with photos attached. And I get a little written log of what went in my baby, and what came out, when Gabriel slept, and cute comments about his day on it. And at pick up I am also assured to hear cute antidotes of how the day went in the infant room. I don't know where the teachers get all of their patience.

Gabriel shows interest in toys and seems to get that they are for fun and to be explored. Favorites so far are his Taggies football and his V-Tech baby laptop computer. Gabriel likes to close the lid on the laptop, which makes all of the lights and sounds stop, and then we have to open it back up for him so he can do it all over again. And again. And again. And again. Gabriel also seems to like to spin the wheels on vehicles. And of course the doorway jumper and his exerciser are still main stays, but he's so much more active in them now. Any tag on any item is of interest to be touched and checked out.

And most heart warming is that in the past few weeks, Gabriel has started to actually snuggle back. He has always partaken in snuggling, but now he buries his head into the crook of my neck and his little arms are starting to hug back. And he's started to put his arms into the air in anticipation of being picked up.

He makes parenthood fun, so far. It's hard to believe that someday he will be a teenager and he may never speak to us and definitely won't want to be seen in public with us.

More Photos of Gabriel- Too Cute Not to Share

Shopping Like A Big Boy

Mommy and Gabriel were out on the town today! After cleaning out some outgrown clothes in Gabriel's bedroom, we headed off to knitting with the ladies at Borders. Gabriel flirted, laughed, and pooped through knitting- and seemed to have had a really good time. And I worked about 3/4 of an inch on one of his blue toddler socks.

Gabriel has gotten to be a good enough sitter now that today we tried our first shopping trip without using his infant car seat in the shopping carriage. Instead, I found a shopping cart seat cover at Babies R Us. It lines the dirty carriage seat, and the version I bought has two pillows on the side to help him stay upright. Gabriel really seemed to like sitting up and being able to look all around. We started down the diaper aisle at Target and he was awake, and then after loading in some new cruiser diapers and some old Target stand by diapers, I looked up and he was passed out on one of his puffy side pillows. I pushed him around finishing my shopping having to endure all of the people ahhing over how cute he was.

While in the baby section at Target, I also found California Baby calming bubble bath. It's all natural and gentle on sensitive skin, but also has aromatherapy that is suppose to promote calming. It smelled good, and it bubbled up quite well. This impressed me because the Method bubble bath didn't bubble up for me. Gabriel really seemed to enjoy the bubbles in his tub! I like the bubble wand in the bottle so I can blow bubbles at Gabriel while he soaks. Not that Gabriel doesn't fall asleep without much trouble at night in the first place, but sleep seemed to come to him even faster and gentler tonight than normal.

We LOVE chunky organic apples!

I went grocery shopping on the way home Friday night with Gabriel. Gabriel was patient while I found organic apples, and picked out a few of the more milder flavored apple types. And then I cut up those apples on Saturday morning, and steamed them in the microwave. Then I put a quarter of a Golden Delicious apple in my food chopper with organic cinnamon. I tried to get it really smooth, but I wanted to keep the skins since they are nutritious. So the result was some chunkiness in the apple mixture. I added a little organic multi-grain cereal and was able to give a small portion to Gabriel while it was still warm from cooking for his breakfast. And this was Gabriel's response to all of that hard work! The whole body shutter is a nice touch. For all of his expression, he did eat the whole bowl for breakfast.

How Do We Stand All Of The Cuteness?

Elleigh, Lucas and Gabriel asleep
Originally uploaded by sarah_knit

Another busy weekend! It seems like it takes all weekend to get caught up on the week's worth of the laundry and all of the bottles and dishes that the baby goes through. I spent much of this morning making more puree: spinach, yellow carrots, broccoli, zucchini, peaches with cinnamon, and banana oatmeal. It just does my heart good to make Gabriel food. I like knowing what goes into it. Apparently, it was an exhausting weekend for Elleigh, Lucas and Gabriel too. They all fell asleep together on the couch, sharing The Boppy.

14 years!

Today is my 14 year anniversary working for Concord Hospital. Some days it seems like just yesterday I started at the hospital, and other days seems like it's been 100 years of hard labor. Once an employee has put in a decade, annually we get a longevity bonus in our date of hire month. I'm not getting rich on the bonus by any means, but I do have a little mad money now... which will probably be spent on my darling little boy.

Great News!

The Learning Center just informed me that they can now keep Gabriel full-time in day care, Monday through Friday, until 8/21/09.  That's a two week reprieve!  And then he has the two days only (Monday and Friday) guaranteed from 8/22 through 10/4 still- and then permanent full-time from 10/5/09 on.  If we take out Wednesday's with Grammy A., that now gets us down to only (12) days (Tuesdays and Thursdays) that we don't have child care for between the end of August and the beginning of October.  And there is still the possibility of Gabriel getting additional days in between 8/22 and 10/4 as other kids take vacations and days off.  I don't have an official vacation myself on the books for this summer, so I know I can easily cover several of those days as my vacation days.  Being out of the office one day a week isn't as big of a deal as taking a whole vacation week off since nobody really has to "cover" for me when I am out of the office for just one day at a time.  And I have plenty of paid time off so I will still get paid.  And Michael will be able to cover some of those other days too.  Things just keep looking more positive on the day care front!  Things always work out for the best.

The Daily Scoop

Today was Gabriel's first day at his new child care center. I think we are going to really like The Learning Center at Concord Hospital. Drop off was much more calm and quiet than it was at our last day care. And Gabriel goes to a dedicated room for infants now, so there is no mingling of older children at drop off and pick up. It felt like Gabriel was moving in with all of the accessories I had to bring in for him: milk, frozen milk, bottles, yogurt, crib sheet, sippy cup, swim suit and towel, 4 changes of outfits, diapers, permission slips, etc. When I went to visit him at lunch time, he was tickled pink on a blanket playing with a whole basket of toys with two staff members doting over him. I noticed one of the teachers had already had a change of clothing herself, which I bet we can put our money on Gabriel being the cause of that. All of the older kids were on their nap mats and sound asleep. Everything just seemed so under control! Later in the afternoon, the lead teacher sent the following e-mail to all of the parents of children in the upper house infant room so we would know how the day went.

"This morning we welcomed a new friend to our classroom. Gabriel's first day was today and all of the children helped to welcome him. We spent the morning exploring the classroom and the new materials in the room. Many of the children enjoyed exploring the ball maze. Some of the older children joined the toddlers for some water play and outdoor exploration.

This afternoon we will be spending time on the deck and maybe the playground. We are also hoping to get some time to paint with brushes. If not this is something we will do tomorrow."