Gabey is two years old!

Our little Gabey turned two this past week.  He has changed quite a lot the past couple of months.

He is talking a lot more and can string three words together.  He will say "more corn please" or "where Mommy shoes?"  He is also very good at picking up phrases from his older sisters, such as "I had it first!" This one comes out when he is trying to wrest a toy from Karina's hands and he copies what she says.  He has no idea what it means really, but knows that this phrase only comes out when there is a struggle for the same toy!  He also is getting a hang of singing songs.  He can sing the whole song of "Happy Birthday to you", which he sings multiple times per day, putting in various family member's names as he goes.  He also sings "I've been working on the railroad", "Jesus Loves Me", and - a true testament to having big sisters, can sing the full chorus of "Let it Go", from Frozen!

We have bought a real bed for him and he now takes his naps on there. 

This means that when he wakes up, he climbs down from the bed by himself. Then he goes to the other side of the room where his white noise machine is.

 He climbs up to where he can reach it and will turn it off by himself.

 Then it's time to go downstairs…we are still working on how to climb down the stairs.  One way is by scootching down each step on your bottom.

It's more fun doing this if you do it with Daddy!

For now, the baby gates are still up.  He is usually reliable on the stairs, but sometimes gets carries away when he gets going and we are afraid he might try to leap off the stairs or something.  He looooves running fast...

Gabey also likes to roam around the backyard.  He can open the back sliding door himself and will let himself out if he feels like it.  He will dig around the dirt, carry rocks from one place to another, and pull leaves off of bushes and collect them in a bucket.  Here he is helping Daddy repot some plants.

He has also discovered that one of his favorite fruits is now is season.  Last year, Elvin planted 3 dozen strawberry plants and this year planted several dozen more.  So Gabriel roams around looking for strawberries to eat.

He has not quite mastered the art of checking for ripeness.  You will notice that one of the strawberries he is holding is barely red.  They get eaten anyways.

He also loves the sugar snap peas we have in the backyard.  Unfortunately, when Elvin planted six of them months ago, the slugs decimated them.  Only two plants survived so Gabriel will have to settle for only being able to eat a couple of snap peas each day as they ripen.

We have a water table in the backyard and like most kids, Gabey loves playing with water.  

Here he is completely soaked from head to toe.  We found one of his shoes floating in the water.  Maybe he was making shoe soup?

Yes, he even tries to get INTO the water table.

Gabriel seems to like puzzles.  We have a puzzle for toddlers, where you match the baby animal with the mommy animal.  He can pick out the correct pair and even put them together.

More and more he likes to be read to or flip through books by himself.  As part of our night time routine, while Emily reads a story to the girls before bed, Elvin and Gabey will go through books that Gabriel picks out.  He's learned the name of each thing, often in both English and Portuguese.

Last week, when it was Gabriel's birthday, we decided to do a little celebration.  Grandma and Grandpa came over for dinner.  Before dinner, Grandpa (who Gabriel calls "Ga-pah") was reading to the kids.  Apparently Karina was very tired, because she drifted off to sleep.

We had watermelon (Gabriel's favorite) and salmon ("Bleh!" he said when we put it on his plate.  It's a bad habit he picked up from the girls.)  In the picture, he is reaching for the salad because he wanted cucumbers.  He really likes fruits and vegetables, which we are not used to given our girl's carnivorous tendencies.

After that, it was time to open presents.  We had to call him in from the backyard, where he was foraging for strawberries.

He really had no idea what was going on, or why opening this packages could possibly be more fun than eating strawberries outside.  Mommy decided to lend a helping hand...

And as he opened the packages, he realized that these things were for him.  Here he is with a backpack he got from his Aunt Jenny in Colorado.  We tried to put it on him but he wanted nothing to do with that.

Here is a note that Eliana wrote for him. 

 His most favorite present was a Melissa and Doug wooden birthday cake where you can stick birthday candles on top and they stick on with velcro.  That was fun for him.  And what did he immediately do with it?

 Put it on his pan of course.  He wanted to flip it like a pancake but couldn't.  Then Elvin showed him how with a spatula and eventually he was able to flip the whole thing with one hand.  Too bad there is no Iron Chef for babies…he would win for sure.

As we normally do in our house, we had cupcakes as the birthday cake.  We sang him "Happy Birthday!"

And everyone enjoyed the cupcakes with some ice cream.

 So our little Gabriel is definitely not a baby anymore!   He has grown up so much in the past year.  We are blessed to have such as happy and healthy boy.