three stories, quickly

Excuse Me

We were shopping and Gavin was pushing a small kid-sized shopping cart. He stopped suddenly and looked up, realizing he was about to run into a couple of people. He watched them step aside to get out of his way. Then he said "Dee-mo!" (Gavinese for Excuse Me)

Monkey Sad

At dinner the other night, Jason said to me, "So after he's done eating, it's time for the monkey to go to bed."

Gavin picked up his cup, which happens to have a monkey on it, and looked at it, then said, "Sleep." He looked up at Jason and said, "Sad." And planted a kiss on the monkey's face.

Got Your Nose!

Jason started playing the nose stealing game with Gavin a few weeks ago. This afternoon while getting lunch ready, he took Gavin's nose. Later, while we were all eating, Gavin reached out toward Jason's face and said "Nose" and brought his fingers to his mouth and made chomping sounds. "Eat," he said.

"You ate my nose!" Jason exclaimed. "Can I have it back?"

Gavin giggled and took the 'nose' from his mouth and put it back onto Jason's face.

raising a good little consumer

Gavin loves to go shopping. He pretend shops at home, saying "ok bye! back!" as he hoists a purse up onto his shoulder or pushes his shopping cart. Then he runs back toward me, shouting "oh no! money!" So I give him some "money" and he goes shopping and disappears around a corner. A minute or so later he walks around the corner and says "back. missed you." Then we talk about what he bought (usually cookies, sometimes broccoli), and after that the whole process begins anew.

Last night we went to Whole Foods, where they have the small kid sized shopping carts. I decided he could probably handle pushing a cart, as he isn't quite as prone to running away from me anymore. He was thrilled. Thrilled. I had him help me put the items into the cart that we were buying. Soon he was walking up to shelves and displays and looking at them critically. Then he clearly made a decision to either buy or not. When he wanted it, he would pick it up and say "Buy" as he put it into the cart. Naturally these were random things - jars of capers, bags of expensive croutons, a carrot, lemons, boxes of cereal.

Today we were in a store buying a birthday present for a friend's baby who just turned a year old. I was deliberating over a couple of toys and looked over to find that Gavin, who was standing in the back of the cart, pulling one plastic toy truck after another off the shelf and dropping it into the cart. "Buy!" he exclaimed as he dropped in a dump truck. "Buy!" and in went a school bus. "Buy!" as he added a bulldozer. Oh dear. What a good little consumer I've created. Ay yai yai.

stitches out

This afternoon I took Gavin to have his stitches removed. I expected it to be fairly difficult for him, but he was such a trooper. The nurse had to soak his foot for a couple of minutes to soften up the gunk and dried on bits of gauze. While we sat there with his foot in the bowl of warm water, he was just chattering away. He pulled his foot out of the bowl a couple times but each time put it right back in. He never once tried getting down off my lap. And while Dr C was examining the toe and stitches, Gavin was curious and interested in what was going on. He never cried, never pulled his foot away; if something hurt, he said "hurt" but didn't pull away.

Throughout this whole thing he's done so incredibly well. After the first 24-36 hours he was up and running around almost as if nothing had happened at all. Of course that isn't all good. He keeps forgetting about his toe kicking balls, and then he's definitely not happy, the poor thing!

injury report

Gavin acquired his third serious injury this morning. This one required a trip to the ER... the real ER this time, not the Children's Close to Home. We were up early this morning because I had a client being induced at 8. Gavin was playing around upstairs in the hall while I came down to start my coffee. I hear a thump then crying.

As I went upstairs I knew what had happened. There was an end table in the hallway, a very unstable end table that was waiting to be moved into the office. Gavin tipped it over when he tried climbing onto it. Trouble is, this particular end table has a heavy, thick slab of slate set (unattached) in the middle. Said slate slid from the table onto Gavin's big toe.

Some racing around ensued. There was blood and crying and screaming and getting dressed and holding of towels to the wound. There was hurried bandaging and whisking the boy off to the ER. And there was a mama left alone in the house wondering why she couldn't be with her baby when he so obviously needed her. But he managed fine with Daddy, and later with Aileen and Brad and later still with Grandma. He was still up when I got home from the birth, too, so I got to cuddle him and see that he was okay and had survived his traumatic day... apart from the one broken toe and a bunch of stitches.

we made it!!

Every year on March 1, I breathe a sigh of relief. We made it. Winter's nearly over. It might as well be spring now, as far as I'm concerned. Any winter storms we have? Well they're just a pre-spring tussle. Besides, with as incredibly mild as this winter's been, it's felt like spring here for, oh, pretty much the entire winter. Wooooooo! I can handle winters like this. Today for instance, its already 40 d egrees outside, and its not even 10. Ahhhh, bliss, winterstyle.

Gavin has been emoting like crazy. He'll smack the floor and say "mad" with a frowny face. Or he'll look like he wants to cry and say "dad" which means sad. Sometimes he'll want to cuddle when sad and other times he seems embarrassed and runs off to a corner and hides.

It's odd, how self-conscious he is, really. He gets embarrassed when we ask him to sing or dance, or if he catches us watching him sing or dance when he thinks he's alone. It's a little funny, but it's odd. We /aren't sure where it comes from, as we've never laughed at him fordoing that. Is self-consciousness an in-born trait? Are we all naturally that way?

Well we're off to the store now to buy a few things. besides I can't keep Gavin off the desk and he won't stop trying to help me type!