now we're ready!

pictures

The blue of his eyes.

The points of his teeth.

quiet neighborhood

Can I just say how much I hate comment spam? Really. These people need to get a life. At least the blacklist script I have seems to work pretty well. It's only the odd spam now and then, except of course about every two weeks when I get a spam on every single freaking entry I've made in this journal! I don't have to tell you how annoyed I am to go through and delete 40+ spam comments. Grr.

Enough about that.

Today Gavin and I took a walk outside and I noticed after a while how quiet the neighborhood was. Usually there are a couple dozen kids running around outside playing, but today, there was one single, solitary boy riding his bike up and down the street. I finally realized that school starts for almost everyone this week, hence the lack of children.

Happy birthday to my sister Aileen!

the cutest

Jason is getting Gavin prepped for football season, in case you can't tell. As I type this, they are downstairs watching the preseason Monday Night Football game. I got up to come upstairs to the computer and Jason was holding Gavin saying, "Now the guys in the white hats are the refs..."

That's a Buckeyes hat he's got on. Of course.

Gavin is sitting up better and better every day. He sits up fairly vertically without support now for a few minutes before he slouches forward kind of tripodded on his hands. This morning he was sitting and I was supporting him by holding his hips, and he fell backwards a bit but actually caught himself and leaned forward!
It won't be long before he's sitting perfectly!

Daddy Art

Jason has taken to creating art with our child, a la Oolong the rabbit.

Exhibit A.

Exhibit B.

sweater

I never thought I would utter the phrase "I wish I had a sweater on" in the middle of August! But I did just that both yesterday and today. The temperatures have been so incredibly mild all week that it has been downright cold at night, by summer standards at least. Today the high is barely 70 and I I think it's around the mid-60s right now. Not that I'm complaining, really. Not much anyway. I'm sure we'll pay for it with high 90s through October, though!

Gavin just has to type when I type these days. This is his message to you:

MN B,0411111111111110000000000000000000000X9F9720515

?300;;?P.L/S00O0;P9I NN

Oh! and two other things... First, our Week from Hell has ended, finally. I hadn't written about it yet as I was too busy dealing with Monsieur FussyButt who was working on his second tooth this weekk. Well it finally, finally, FINALLY broke through today and he is much happier. Which isn't saying much considering how miserable he's been. Adding 100 to -4000 on the happiness scale is an improvement, but doesn't mean he's a peach, ya know?

Second, congratulations to our friends Debby and Phil on the birth of their sonearly this morning! We're so thrilled for you and can't wait to meet the little guy!

Mr grabby

Gavin is all about grabbing these days. Everything he can reach, he grabs, and just about everything he grabs goes into his mouth. Lately, my hair is a favorite target. He just loves sinking his fists into my hair with his vice-like grip. Yank. Ow. He has also started reaching up to my face and touching it. This seems to be a deliberate action - he isn't just accidentally making contact with my face. I think he might sometimes try to hold onto it and bring it to his mouth.

Rolling over is something else he has gotten quite good at recently. If we put him down on his back, within five minutes, he has flipped himself over onto his tummy. He loves being on his tummy. Last night we noticed that he is starting to scoot around in circles while on his belly, and he's starting to look at toys that are out of his reach and you can just tell he is frustrated by not being able to get them.

something stinky

There's something stinky around here, and it's not Gavin. That's what I was saying to myself nearly every day this week when I was in our garage. Seriously, it smelled as if something had died in there. Yesterday afternoon as Gavin and I were walking up the driveway returning from our walk, I noticed that some of the boxes in the garage were moved around. Closer inspection revealed a couple of pork chop bones and other choice morsels sitting on the garage floor, and hoo-boy did they reek. The night before we had inadvertantly left the garage door overnight (still getting used to the whole garage concept, apparently, especially the part about closing the door), so I deduced that some creature, likely a raccoon, had ripped open the bag of trash that had been sitting in the garage, in a box (still getting used to the whole trash can concept, too, it seems).

The mess was cleaned up later by my darling Jason. Trash day is today, thankfully, because that stuff is quite raunchy. We didn't put the can out last night, though, since we realized the racoon would likely be back to see what other delecacies he might be able to find. Last thing we wanted to do in the morning was to clean up a mess of trash all over the yard.

At 2:00 this morning, I was awake. I had to pee, and I could have sworn I heard a noise. I lay there for a while, listening for the noise. After a while I heard it again, and then again. It seemed to be coming from Gavin's room, but I knew it wasn't Gavin since he was in our room. I got up and crept into his room. The sound was coming from outside. I peeked through the blinds. And saw this:

There was a raccoon on the roof outside Gavin's window! And as if that wasn't bad enough, he was chewing on the house. Chewing on the house! I watched for a moment, then tapped on the window, trying to scare him off, but all I did was make him curious about the window, so then he alternated between supping on the siding and peering in the portal. I peed, then went back to bed. Jason woke as I crawled under the covers, so I told him about the raccoon. He got up and eventually managed to scare the critter off. There was a time of fear that the raccoon was dead as a result of being scared off the roof, but in the end he was alive and well, and sauntered off into the night. I am now having horriffic visions of him (the raccoon, not Jason) returning tonight and eating through the side of the house with a vengence and stealing Gavin from his crib. As if I needed more things to worry about.

a slice of home

So it's not home now, but it was home for a time. There is a guy who keeps a daily photoblog of pictures of New Hampshire, where Jason and lived for the first four years we were married. I happened upon this blog shortly after we moved back to Ohio two years ago, and periodically I go look and get all nostalgic. Occasionally there are pictures of places where we went, like the Rye beach or Nashua. I kept waiting for something more personal to pop up, and finally it has. This is the strip mall where we did our grocery shopping and the Blockbuster we frequently rented movies from. And this is the DQ we went to a lot. Both of these places are just a couple minutes from our apartment. Incidentally, he has them mislabeled, too. They're actually in Hudson, not Nashua. I know you care.

Another fun, slightly personal photo is this one. I took photos of this building one day, though I can't seem to find my versions online anywhere.

And here, so this entry is not completely devoid of any Gavin, is a picture of Gavin and his daddy tonight.

guardian angels

Whether you believe in them or not, sometimes things happen that make you look around for your guardian angels. Two such things have happened to me in the last week. Last Thursday or Friday I was going out to get the mail, carrying Gavin in my arms. I lost my balance on the part of the driveway that slopes gently up and turns into the curb. I was there, teetering, just barely keeping my balance, and using everything within my power not to fall over, a feat I just barely managed. I didn't fall over, but I'm not sure how, and I escaped with only a slightly twisted ankle and a banged up hand from where I hit it on the mailbox in an attempt to grasp something for support. Today I was in our closet, rearranging the plastic tubs of off-season clothes. I lifted one of the tubs - a very heavy one, I might add, as I could barely manage it - up onto the closet shelf. I turned around and leaned to the side to I could see if Gavin was okay on the floor, and just as I did that, the tub came smashing down from the shelf, just grazing my arm and hand. Either one of these things could have been so, so, so very bad, but they weren't. Gavin could have been squashed into the pavement, headfirst, probably with me falling on top of him. I could have had thirty pounds of clothes land on my head. Thank God for those angels.

finding feet

Hands, hands, mmmm, lovely hands.

Huh. What's that?


Hmmm....

Hey this is kinda fun!

Mmmmm, feeeet....

Wha- huh?

How'd I get here?