all about gavin

It has been quite awhile since I wrote about Gavin, having been absorbed by the changes brought to our lives by the wee Dermot. The picture to the right is of Gavin doing his binoculars. I can't remember how the binoculars started anymore, but it was a pretend thing from a tv show he watches most likely. At any rate, he makes binoculars (he pronounces it "bee-awk-wee-ars" which makes me smile every time he says it) with his hands all the time. Sometimes he vocalizes pretend play with them, other times he just does it, almost as if it's a habit and he doesn't notice he's doing it. Lately I've noticed that when he does something and gets yelled at, the binoculars go up, as if they make him feel safe. No one will see me if i have my binoculars to my face.

He continues to be a good big brother, for the most part. He has his jealous moments, but it isn't the big problem we thought it might be. For the most part, Gavin is affectionate and sweet with Dermot, and loves to give him hugs and kisses --- sometimes way too much, too often, and he doesn't seem to understand that if he would let Dermot stay sleeping instead of whacking him on the head, he would get more time alone with Mommy.

Right now he's in a very affectionate mode with everyone. He's giving hugs and kisses spontaneously, to me, Dermot, Jason, our neighbors, everyone. He has also recently started saying "I love you" to us, and randomly throughout the day he gives me a big hug and tells me he loves me. He is also on a kick of calling everyone his friend or his best friend. One day this week he held his arms open wide and said "Mommy, you're my best friend. Come hug me!" But he also pulls this friend card out when I'm mad at him... "Don't yell at me Mommy! You're my friend!" As if friends never get mad at each other.

A new thing of late is the question "Why?" This started several weeks ago, except instead of asking why, he would ask "Otherwise what would happen?" Gradually this changed and now we hear "why" almost exclusively. It's fun having him ask why, but exhausting at the same time. My brain isn't used to having to think about things this much! And he's persistent too. He keeps asking until he gets a real answer -- there isn't much room for flip answers with Gavin! So I now get the beauty of "because" as it relates to answering "why" questions, but it comes back to bite me in the behind now. Gavin has started using it when I ask him questions. "Why did you dump that on the floor?" "Just because!"

Gavin is getting better and better with letters and numbers. He can count to eleven and knows all the letters and the sounds they make, although he is still often confused about the vowel sounds and about the letters which duplicate the sounds of other letters. But for the most part, he gets the sounds matched to the right letters. He can even correctly identify the letters that start words, but mostly this is with the "easy" sounds, like B D and P. He loves to have us read words to him and is always asking us what words in books or on signs are.

We found a copy of hi ho cherri-o at the thrift store the other night. G loves it. LOVES IT. We played no fewer than five games when we got home, and several more today. He gets the whole thing, the taking of turns, the putting cherries onto and taking them off of the trees, the spinning of the spinner, the counting, everything. His favorite part is when the spinner lands on the bucket that is spilled. Of course he doesn't always play well and he does need redirection, like when he randomly takes cherries off his tree, but overall he plays remarkably well for not even being three yet.

Oh and the other thing that Gavin's doing now is singing. He makes up the cutest songs. And the funny thing is that he remembers them. Even weeks later, he'll sing one if we ask him to, if he's not feeling shy. One of the first ones he made up was the snow song. He was looking outside at snow falling and sang this: "Snow is falling from the sky. Because I don't know what it is." Almost all of his songs end with "I don't know what it is"... odd, but oh well, eh?

Ok that is enough about our eldest son. I think you're caught up enough.

Poop and other funny gross things

I'm amused at how certain things seem to have an inherent ick factor to our little boy. Gavin is grossed out by Dermot's poop and spit up. if Gavin happens to be holding Dermot and then thinks Dermot has a poop, if for example he hears him fart or even burp, he panics and wants the baby off his lap as quickly as possible. I explain the poop is inside a diaper (whether there really is a poop or not), but it doesn't matter, he acts like he's about to be smothered by poo.

On the other hand, farts and butts and poop have an inherent humor factor. I do not understand where it comes from, or why it's there, but there you go: Gavin finds these things hilarious. He likes to say "Butt!! Hahaha! What did I say? Hahahaha! Butt!" And when one of us farts, he laughs and says "What was that?" in a silly tone of voice, and when I say it was a fart, he giggles. If Gavin thinks that Dermot has pooped and he's not holding him, suddenly the poop is fascinating and funny. He'll try to turn his brother over so he can look at the poop. Because clearly poo is visible through not only diaper and cover, but clothes too.