bug

These days Gavin is very interested in the world around him. When we're outside playing he walks around and frequently squats down, exclaiming "Oooooooooh!" while pointing at some mysterious tidbit on the ground. Usually a leaf or a bit of twig or an ant. Sometimes he does this inside too, although thankfully he finds far fewer mysterious tidbits inside than out.

This afternoon he found one, squatted and exclaimed. I glanced down but didn't really pay attention to it. I responded to him with a typical, "I know, very interesting, isn't it?" He continued to look at it, then I saw him poke at it and pick it up. Unsure what it was, I asked him to hand it to me. Which he did. I looked down at what he had so dutifully deposited into my hand and saw a partially squished bug, of the variety having nasty looking pincers. It even had bits of bug guts on its side. How appetizing. I suppose I should be glad that I was there to make sure he didn't decide to test the edibility of said tidbit!

arg

I had an entry all typed up (okay, partially typed up) but restarted my computer last night, forgetting the entry was here and hadn't been saved! D'Oh!

I don't even remember what I wrote. Except one thing, the part about Gavin being jealous of my attention. More on that in a second. I have been rather busy lately. Feeling more scattered and disorganized than anything else, really. I feel spread thin, as if I've got too much going on. In reality I am not sure I do, but it feels like it a lot lately.

Jealousy. If I pay so much as a hair of attention to anything other than Gavin he freaks. Which means if I make breakfast, he tugs at my pants, whines and whines and cries. If I talk on the phone, even if he was previously playing happily by himself, instantly he neeeeeeeeeeeds me to play with him (plus, he loves the phone and wants to play with it too). Me use the computer? Forget it. And if Jason and I spend a moment's worth of attention on each other and hug or kiss, watch out. Yesterday Gavin gave us a big laugh. We were all on the floor and Jason leaned over and kissed me. Gavin pushed him away from me, then leaned over and kissed him full on the mouth!

I keep meaning to take some time each day to write a little bit about what we've been doing, but apparently that is asking far too much of myself. But one exciting thing is my garden. In early May I dug up a plot by the fence and planted a number of vegetables - tomatoes and onions and lettuce and beans and zucchini and cucumbers (plus a bunch of herbs scattered around the yard: basil, chives, thyme, sage, oregano, lemon balm, tarragon, mint, chamomile, lavender, and stevia (the latter one was by seed and hasn't taken, I am sad to report). I'm thrilled at how they are growing. Some even have buds and blooms!

On June 3, it looked like this:

On June 13, it looked like this:

(While searching for these pictures, I had deja vu. Everything was familiar - the song on the radio, scanning down the folder of thumbnails of pictures. But the funny thing is that I remember seeing a couple specific pictures Before and wondering vaguely where they were taken, as I didn't recognize the location. But this time when I saw them of course I know where they were taken. That kind of detail is usually missing... really makes you wonder about that deja vu, doesn't it?)

Here's a bloom on one of my zucchini plants (or is it a cucumber? I can't remember now).

words and teeth and all things mouthy

One of Gavin's favorite noises recently has been "buh", as you know. Sometime in the last week he began exclaiming "oh buh!" at random intervals. It sounds a lot like "Oh Boy!", so Jason and I started repeating "oh boy!" after Gavin anytime he said "oh buh!" Soon it became a game of repeat, repeat, repeat, which eventually evolved into him trying to put the -oy sound at the end of "buh." Now he actually says "oh boy," although the "boy" comes out as "buh-ee" or "beee" or "boh-eee." This evening he began trying to say "belly." It comes out sounding an awful lot like "boy" but with a slight extra pause in the middle.

About a week ago, we discovered that Gavin's fourth molar finally broke through. We breathed a collective (does two make a collective?) sigh of relief that, for now, teething was (we hoped) drawing to a close. We hoped wrong. For tonight, I discovered that Gavin has another tooth coming through, this time one of his eye teeth (upper left). Oh lovely. At least it helps explain the crankiness lately. And at least we bought some Hyland's Teething tablets the other night, along with some baby orajel (which he HATES with a passion because of how it makes his tongue feel, but ohmygoodness is it funny watching his reaction to it!).

Along with this new vocal and dental development, Gavin is growing increasingly mouthy. Really, he's just turning into more and more of a Toddler-with-a-capital-T, particularly when it come to screaming and throwing a fit if things don't go his way. I have to laugh sometimes because it is so funny to see him getting so utterly bent out of shape over what is in my eyes such a minor matter. This morning, for instance, we were outside. He had a long skinny pole that you use to stake plants to in the garden, and was walking around pushing it in front of him. It kept catching on cracks in the sidewalk. Each time it would catch and he couldn't make it go forward his face crumpled up angrily, heart-brokenly, and he bent forward at the waist 90 degrees and screamed and cried for about three seconds, then stood up and tried again. Two feet later, it would catch, he would bend over and cry, stand up, try again. Over and over like that, all the way down the sidewalk. After a bit I went to try and help him because the pole was stuck in the grass. The instant I touched that pole -- WHAM!!! -- tantrum hit like a Mack truck. And, since I'd interfered, it raised his overall frustration level a notch. In the end I picked him up, pole and all, and carried him back to the house. We went inside and had some crackers, and things were better (for awhile anyway, until the next meltdown).