Crawler on the loose!

Wow! Our little crawler is on the loose! He started crawling about two weeks ago, and that boy is definitely keeping us on our toes. Do you notice how well he's sitting up too? Here are some of Gavin's latest discoveries:

-Oh, I get it! The drawers go in and out and in and out....and the cabinets open and close and open and close...

-It's fun to try to stand up on the flimsiest, most unstable furniture in the house....even if it does tip over on me sometimes...(Believe me, we still have quite a bit of baby-proofing to do around here.)

-Those cords are so much fun to pull on, but for some reason Mom & Dad don't like me yanking on them...

-The plastic tray on my booster seat comes off! Why would I ever keep it down again?!

He is so much fun and is giving us both a work out just trying to keep up with him! You'd think that with all of his activity he'd be needing more sleep, but he's recently decided that he may not need his late afternoon nap at all, which can make for a very long afternoon sometimes. Poor Brent often gets an especially rough shift on Thursday's when he gets home and I immediately hand Gavin off to him so that I can go to my aerobics class. Today Gavin didn't want to sleep at all during Daddy's shift and apparently shed lots of tears in and out of his crib. (Brent had to lower his crib all the way today, too, since Gavin just figured out how to stand up in there! He's one smart cookie.)

Some recent pictures and thoughts...

*Dad's shoe is about 3/4 the length of Gavin's whole body! Of course, he finds the dirtiest stuff to be the most fun to play with!
*He loves to have his tongue hanging out of his mouth!
*Here Gavin is playing with his giraffe finger puppet from Noah's ark. I find that it is becoming more challenging to entertain him for long periods of time--and monitor him while he entertains himself--at this stage in his life. I am reminded of what a sweet, elderly woman, Wilma, said to me the other day at the park. (She takes care of her great granddaughter every day...and has since Grace was born four years ago!) She was talking about young people and their view of parenthood--and even "grandparenthood" as she referred to Grace's grandma--and she said, "They know how much work it is, but they don't know that it's the most important work that they'll ever do." I am humbled by these words. I know that Gavin is certainly a precious gift from God, and I will choose to remember that my "work" with him every day matters to His creator and to all of you who love him.

Rockin' Baby!

*Here's Daddy & son in Gavin's new backpack on Easter. Thanks for such a great gift, Grandpa Koel & Grandma Carter!
*Check out Gavin's big eyes in this picture! He cracks us up.



*So these were more for show than anything else, but direct your attention to the man-sized baby shoes Daddy put on Gavin recently. (He does have big feet, but they're not that big!)

*Christine and I took the kids on a very chilly walk the other day, but it was so good to get outside. I'm so glad that Colorado has so many sunny days...even when some may be a bit nippy.

This baby is dangerously close to crawling, and Mama may bawl when he does! Why does he have to grow up so darn fast?! Brent already put in the safety gate at the top of the stairs, which was no safeguard against Gavin falling off of our bed yesterday :(...cuz we had no gate there. Talk about scary! Thankfully, God protected him, and I learned that I can't afford to turn my back on this busy baby. As you can see in the video clip, he is rocking back and forth on all fours a lot these days, and Brent and I were commenting today that he's actually mastered the art of crawling backwards. He looks like he's doing the Gavin Mooncrawl. I can hardly get him to stay still long enough to put a diaper on him these days! His other new tricks that we'll have to try to catch on video are waving--not that he has a real clue yet as to when to do it--and shaking his head "no"--and, again, I don't think he really gets that either. But, man, he's cute doing both of these new things!