Gavin

I have not been able to talk much about Gavin these last few weeks so I am going to remedy that right now. He has changed and learned a lot, some of it good -some of it bad.

The Good: He has been giving kisses for a couple of weeks now and it is the sweetest thing (when he wants too that is). Jacob taught him to give high fives and Ellie taught him to blow kisses. I taught him the where's Gavin game. He 'hides' and when I say "where's Gavin?" he will jump out with an excited face. We also play a modified version of it when he is in his high chair, he covers his face with his hands and uncovers them to show where he is. The only problem playing is that he will want to continue playing long after I am bored of it. He is really, really smart (I know every parent thinks that of their kid, but I swear it is true) and he learns things extremely fast. Sometimes I will see him doing something and I will have to remind myself that he is only 14 months. The only problem is that he will use his smarts for naughtiness, which brings me to the bad

The Bad: He is having serious eating issues. He will either refuse to eat or will take a bite and spit it right back out. It drives me crazy. The thing that upsets me the most is that he doesn't do this because he is not hungry, I'm pretty sure that he does it because I am telling him to eat so he doesn't want to do what I want. I can't complain too much because my mother said that I was the exact same way at his age but that thought does not help much when he spits out a mouthful of chicken noodle soup everywhere. Luckily this does not happen every meal but it happens often enough. Breakfast is the worst. I try to just let him do whatever (he is a big boy so eating a little less certainly will not hurt him) but it is a really frustrating situation.
When he wants something he isn't supposed to have he plays a bait and switch game- he will go for something else that he isn't supposed to play with and while we are distracted dealing with that he will run over to the thing he really wanted and grab it. He is so sneaky!
He also will not say real words anymore. For a couple of weeks it seemed like he was on his way, saying a few words here and there but now he gave that completely up to just speak his own language again. He will talk for five minutes straight in his own version of English. My theory is that all he hears from us is a bunch of sounds and he has learned to understand what they mean so he figures if he just uses a bunch of sounds we should be able to understand what he means. It is so funny to hear him just go on and on, sometimes he will laugh in the middle of it like he is telling a joke or something. In a way I can wait till he says real words because he already talks back a lot (he's one and thinks he knows everything!!!) and at least now I don't know what he is saying.

Our blog will be moving. Jacob has started a web site for our family and though it is under construction right now we will very soon start posting on it. It will still need work but we will be able to do so much more than we can now on blogger. It should be really great.