Sleeping Angel

Guess who skipped his nap at daycare? Our poor little tyke has been having a hard time lately. He's been sick for the last four months and the pediatrician has finally thrown in the towel. We see an allergist on Monday. Hopefully she will have some answers for us, and Gabriel can go back to breathing freely and sleeping well. Right now it's more snuffling and coughing than anything else, making for a generally grumpy toddler, not to mention a sleep deprived Mommy.

It's Alphabath time!

X marks the spot! Gabriel just loves his bath, and especially his BUH-BULLS! Every evening we say "Gabriel, are you ready for your bath?" and nine times out of ten, he jumps up, runs down the hall toward the bathroom yelling "Oh bath! Oh bubbles!!"

Have we mentioned lately how cute he is? ;)

CELEBRATE!

Whee!! What a wonderful month March has been so far.

Of course, it always starts off happily with Gabriel's birthday, but this year Howard pulled into the driveway on March 3rd marking the end of a five day, 2200 mile road trip and fifteen months of working away from home.
Finally, we were all in one gather again.

Naturally, on Saturday we celebrated properly with cake for the Birthday Boy and lots of love all around.



...a boy

his cake

and a balloon...


After twenty minutes of carefully studying all the physical properties of frosting, Gabriel finally licked his fingers a few times. I don't believe any cake actually entered his system, although perhaps a teaspoonful of frosting was consumed.

Most of the cake ended up in Michael and most of the frosting on Gabriel.

The Birthday Boy was far more adept at tearing into his presents than into his cake.

For a complete slideshow of the eventful evening, check out the Birthday Bash Slideshow.

I'm TWO!

Gabriel is very two. Very. He's a perpetual motion machine. A picky eater. A tantrum thrower. A determined engineer with selective hearing. An escape artist.

And an accident waiting to happen.

On the day this picture was taken he had a split lip, a bruise on his forhead and a bloodshot eye.

He's also exploding with language after having gotten off to a very slow start. Probably the two words that get him the most mileage are "want" and "help" or "howp" as he says.

want nana (banana)
want daddy
want nilk (milk)
want song
want bath (yes, he actually says that)

And yesterday - the first three word sentence that I've heard "Wannna watch Jojo!"

Happy Birthday, Gabriel

Yes, March 1, 2006, is Gabriel's second birthday. I took the day off from work and we had a great time hanging out at the mall with our good friends Aimee and her son Ethan. Ethan turns two on March 5! In fact, Aimee and I met only because we both had babies due in March of 2004.

We took the boys on a big, old fashioned carousel at the mall. Niether one had been on it before. Ethan, who is about eight pounds smaller than Gabriel, sat up on his horse, laughed, yelled and generally had a wonderful time. Gabriel? Clung to me and whimpered every time I even tried to put on his horsie. I was just laughing at him ... poor "little" thing!

Except for being terrorized on the carousel, Gabriel had a good day too. Later in the day, he ended up with a really great nap and a haircut. We are saving the cake and other Birthday Stuff for when Daddy gets home for good.