Gabey the climber

Our Gabey is growing up fast.  He likes to laugh and have fun, and is a very social little boy.

He, of course, is always copying what we do.  Here he is eating noodles and trying to use a pair of kid chopsticks like his sisters.

Something that he came up with on his own, though, was eating watermelon with his fork.  He loooooves stabbing things with his fork and is quite good as using a fork and spoon now.  As proof, here he is using a fork to eat a ginormous slice of watermelon--his favorite food.

We're not sure what we're going to do when fall arrives and watermelon goes out of season...

He also likes to eat seaweed, which we thought was very interesting because neither of our girls will eat it.  (Although Karina likes to get a piece and lick all the salt (she calls salt "saltines") off of the seaweed.   Then she will hand you a soggy piece of seaweed.)

Gabey is also likes reading books.  His current favorites are Waddle, Waddle where the pictures move if when you flip the pages.  He also likes to look at photo albums.

He likes putting on gloves, such as these gardening gloves that Elvin got the girls, or oven mitts.

I guess it's fun making your hands seem like they're really big.

And like the girls, Gabriel loves to play outside.  He is steady enough now where he can manage to walk on the uneven ground without stumbling.  He enjoys rummaging around, finding objects, and playing in the dirt.

Here are Gabriel and Karina shoveling soil.

The kids also like taking turns on the swing hanging from our apple tree in the backyard.  (The girls are in their gymnastics gear because they are doing gymnastics camp this whole week.)

In the backyard one day, Emily attached the hose to thing toy called the Water-pillar.  It's a caterpillar that squirts out water in all directions.  The girls put on their swimsuits in anticipation.  Eliana thought it was fun, Karina stayed away (because she didn't like her face getting wet, she said), and Gabriel absolutely loooved it.  And he was not deterred even when the water squirted directly into his face.

Gabriel's been taking only one nap during the day as of late.  Every once in a while he takes two naps, but he is definitely transitioning to just one.  Also, he has been sleeping a lot better at night.  Last week, he slept through the night on 4 days out of the 7.  Woohoo!  And about time, Gabey--you're 14 months old!

As you probably know, Gabriel is always rearranging the items in our pantry.  Recently, he has taken to emptying Daddy's beer bottles from out of the 6-pack cardboard carrying case.

What surprised us though, was that he then wanted to take the cardboard 6-pack container out to recycle.  First, he tried to flatten it like he'd seen us do with other boxes.

Then he tried to go into the garage because that's where our recycling bin is.  Gabriel has been observing us very closely!

Here is Gabriel showing off his reach again.  It always surprises us when he grabs something right off of the counter.  In this case, he is using the counter to pull himself up to the stool.

He is quite the climber now, which we are still getting used to because neither of the girls were.  If there is a step stool in sight, he will try climbing on it, even if it's at the risk of falling and hitting his noggin on the floor.

He also tries climbing on to the piano bench.  He can't (yet.)

And here's our boy climbing onto the coffee table.  Then he will stand on it.  And then he tries to walk off of it.  Needless to say, we've turned our coffee table upside down in the middle of our living room so that he won't get on it.  It's very attractive.

And he likes climbing onto chairs.  Is the chair already occupied?  Not a problem!

For the baby gates, we used to have two chairs--one on each side--so that the girls can get over the gate.

Well...he's found a way of getting onto the chairs.  

So we've replaced one chair with a very short step stool.  Karina can barely get over with it and Gabriel can't--for now.

So there's our boy.  He's very active, very silly (notice his silly face, which Eliana is copying), and keeps us very busy!

Summer fun...

Summer is in full swing right now!  The weather is warm and the kids have had lots of free time to play outside and do fun things.

Our church had a week of Soccer Camp and you can't tell from this picture, but Eliana was really excited about it.  She got a pair of new sneakers because all she had were cutesy shoes.  These, of course, have pink on them.

At camp, Eliana played with the other 5 year olds and learned how to dribble, pass, and trap the ball.  At the end of the day, the kids would divide into teams and scrimmage.  We were not surprised that Eliana was not super aggressive and generally did not like getting into the mix of things.

Gabriel visited one day and enjoyed playing with a ball.

At the end of the week, Eliana got a certificate of completion.  

Eliana is growing up fast.  She is getting more clever every day and comes up with creative ways to get what she wants.  For example, both Eliana and Karina have library cards.  Karina, however, lost hers so we got a new set at the library.  The new set, however, were actually two cards (a normal sized one and a little one you can put on your keychain.)  Eliana became secretly jealous of her sister's new card and so, in a scheme to get a new set for herself, she threw her old card into the garbage and then told Mommy that she "lost" her library card and needed to go to the library to get new ones.  Emily thought it was too much of a coincidence and probed Eliana, who under the weight of interrogation confessed that she staged the whole thing.  We told her she doesn't have to scheme and lie; we can ask the librarian for a new set of cards if she really wants new cards.

She's certainly creative.  Who knows what scheme she will gin up when she's 15 years old and wanting to take the car out for a spin without us knowing?  Here she is holding both sets of cards.

Does she look remorseful to you?

So when they do have their library cards, the girls go to the library about once a week.  They looove reading books and can spend hours doing that.

Speaking of being devious, the girls also know how to beg really well.  When they want something, like dessert or a special treat, and they know we are on the fence about it, they will say, "PLeeeeeease?" in a really high voice.  It is actually quite cute and sometimes works (on Elvin only though.)

And you might have noticed that the girls are wearing matching pajamas.  With summer, the nights are warmer and so the girls switched out their fleece jammies for these lightweight cotton ones.  They love it when they match!

We thing we did was go to the mall to run some errands.  We don't go very often, and so the girls are absolutely enthralled with all the STUFF (junk?) on sale there.  It really is sensory overload for them and we kind of don't like taking them there because they end up coveting everything they see.  What makes it worse is knowing that the girls already have dozens of toys and hundreds of books and games and blocks at home that they could play with.

We did stop by See's Candies.  Eliana, with her keen sense of smell, said "This is a chocolate factory!" when we stepped inside.

They each got the free sample for the day...the first time they've had See's.

Other activities include extemporaneous dancing.  We have a tape player in the living room that will play old cassette tapes of Disney music and such.  Here is Karina doing a little performance.

Or the girls will play with their tea set, or wooden food toys.  However, they have learned that need to play somewhere where Gabriel can't reach--or else...  In the picture below, you can almost hear Karina saying "Noooooooo!"

Gabriel have become much more stable walking, which lets him go more places and do more things.  For example, now he is very good at standing on his tippy toes.  Because he is only 13 months old, we forget how tall he is and that he can actually reach things that are quite high.  Such as the door leading from our kitchen to the garage.  We now have to keep it locked because he can open that door quite easily.

He can also reach things that are on top of tables.  For example, we had recently gone out to Cold Stones, as we do once in a while.

Everyone were enjoying their ice cream when we realized that Gabriel could reach not only to the top of the table, but could also scoop out ice cream from the cup sitting in the middle of the table--all by standing on his tippy toes.

Gabriel is into everything.  We keep the kids' silverware in a drawer that is knee-high so that the girls can reach it easily.  Gabriel can also reach it and empties it multiple times a day.

He's also started to climb on things more.  The girls have a kid's sized lounge chair in their room.  Gabriel has seen them sit on it and can now climb up to it, then turn around and sit on it too.

The problem is that sometimes he also wants to stand on it too.

And in addition to sitting and standing on it, he's not that stable when he tries to get off of the chair,which is a little too high off the ground for him.

You may have noticed in some pictures that he is wearing a necklace and we've had some questions about it.  It is a special necklace made out of amber from near the Baltic Sea.  Supposedly, it has some substance in it that gets absorbed in the skin that helps with pain, such as teething pain.  So when Gabriel when through a 8-week spell when his four molars were coming out, he wore the necklace everyday.  They use this a lot in Europe, supposedly, and some people swear it works.  We're not 100% sure it helped, but I guess it can't hurt.

And Gabriel's little personality is coming out too.  We can tell that he is quite the ham.  He's learned how to scrunch up his face and now does it purposely to make us laugh.

We hope you're having a good summer too!