Every day Gabriel

Gabe is developing quite a personality. He does things and says things that surprise us almost on a daily bases. For a brief example of this, I'll relate a couple of stories that had Rochelle and I laughing.

In the morning, as I get ready, Gabe often takes interest in what I'm doing. As I get dressed, he's usually watching, as I brush my teeth, if he has anything in his hands he often puts it in his mouth and mimics my actions, but the thing that really got us was how interested doing hair he was. I use pomade for my hair, it comes in a little round container with a screw-off lid, and the substance is kind of a oily waxy substance that you need very little of. So in the morning as I do my hair, Gabe often stands about a foot or two away from me and just stares at what I'm doing. So occasionally, I'll take a tiny dab of it and spruce his hair up too. Usually after doing this, he gets a big smile and he walks as tall as he can to go show mom his hair as he runs his fingers through it repetitively. One day, Gabe had a cold, and Rochelle and I had been using vicks to help him breath a little better, but we had accidentally left the jar open and in his reach. Rochelle was in the office, and suddenly Gabe comes in with a huge smile, and smelling very strongly of vicks. Evidently, he saw the jar, and took a not so little dab out of the middle of it, and rubbed it into his own hair. He didn't mind one bit the smell, but oh it was hard for Rochelle to hold Gabe at all until he got a bath.

Aside from learning to imitate us, Gabe has also learned to love animals, especially dogs. He has a stuffed dog that he just loves. It's currently one of several animals that he can make the sounds for and one of the only ones that he says the actual word for (although the word sounds so much like many other words he says, it can be hard to distinguish). One night, Gabe wasn't particularly excited to go to bed. He was whining and crying a little as I put him in his crib. He didn't go down with any difficulty, but he was letting me know he wasn't happy about it. But to try to console him, I decided to leave him his stuffed dog in his crib, and so I grabbed it and put it down in front of him. As I put it in the crib, as soon as he saw it, he said "wuff", and was silent from that moment on as I left and closed the door behind me. I guess sometimes all he needs is a little puppy love. ;-)