What a week

It's been another busy/ good week. We went to the Orem Owlz baseball game on Monday with some friends of ours in our ward. I hadn't been to a baseball game since high school. We really enjoyed it and Gabe did really well too.

I made my first ever zucchini bread this week as well, from a great recipe I got from BJ's mom. YUM. (Thanks, Suzanne!) We even used some zucchini that we picked from our garden. I froze the rest of the zucchini we had for easy zucchini bread- making in the future. Oh, I got a bunch of flowers (Zinnias) from my garden too, which I love!

Another "highlight" of the week was taking our old white car in for what we hoped was a minor repair, and ending up having to pay nearly $700 to get it fixed. Boo. That was not news we were happy to receive.
On to more important things:
Gabe is 13 months old today. He started standing up by himself with no support several weeks ago, for just a few seconds at a time, and now he is able to stand for quite a bit longer. Last night he took three steps by himself toward me. It is so funny to watch him as he does this. He laughs and gasps, as if he is just thrilled that he is doing it by himself, but also a little scared. Besides walking, he is very mobile, crawling all over the place. He still frequently crawls with one knee down, and his other foot on the floor, if that makes sense. He loves to play roll the ball with us, and crawls after his ball as fast as he can to roll it back to us. One of his favorite toys is still the push cart/ walker thingy. He loves to push it down the hall at a run! When he runs into something and can't go forward anymore, he gets really upset and will sometimes scream until I come turn him around. I guess we will have to work on teaching him to turn himself around. Haha.

Last week he started teething again. He popped three teeth through all about at the same time, and one more is about to cut through. All on the bottom- 2 canines, and 2 molars. He has been remarkably cheerful.
Gabe has also finally consented to holding his own sippy cup while he drinks. For the longest time he would throw his arms behind him and make us hold the cup while he drank, but now he's got it all figured out, and he has even branched out to a couple of new kinds of sippy cups too, although the ones with the straws are his favorites.
One of the sweetest things Gabe does right now is if you tell him you love him or ask for a kiss, he will start smacking his lips, lean forward, and kiss you- sometimes with a smack, sometimes open- mouthed. Then he says "tiss, tiss, tiss." That is pretty much his only word that he says consistently that we understand the meaning for. He understands lots of words and responds to them, but he doesn't use much verbal language himself yet.
This seems to be an age of curiosity. He is in to anything and everything. It is stressful to me at times, as I am realizing I have some more baby- proofing to do, but I am loving watching him develop and learn. Like most babies, he is doing an in- depth, independent study of gravity. Haha.
I love this kid!


Thanks for letting me record this here- I know not everybody likes to read this kind of stuff, but for me, at least right now, it is how I am journaling Gabriel's growth and so it is important to me.