Growing Gabe Stories and Fall Photos

There I've gone again....waiting nearly two weeks to put up a new post. Let me just defend myself with this statement though.... In the past ten days, I've only spent three hours at my house not sleeping. Last week we were gone to my parents' place for Thanksgiving and then this week I've been one hard workin' lady. Basketball season has officially begun which also means my concession management job is very busy.

Gabe is changing and growing so much so quickly. This last week he has seemed to have had an incredible vocabulary explosion. He repeats EVERYTHING. It's so hilarious conversing with others in front of him. It's like having a really bright little parrot in the background. On Wednesday I was telling my mom that Gabe had a vocabulary explosion and Casey says to Gabe, "Gabe, can you say vocabulary?" To which Gabe replied, "uh-uh....I don yanna say vo-abu-wary." (translation: No, I don't want to say vocabulary.)

And, while he's making great advancements with the pronunciation of most words, his request for "Bull" has seemed to regressed. When he asks for "Bull, please." it sounds more like "Boobies." Good thing we don't take Bull anywhere in public.

Gabe is also still testing the discipline waters (not that he'll ever stop doing that....). Just this evening he opened the off limits desk drawer and I asked him to close it. He replied, "I don yanna close dwoor." To which I replied, "Close it. Now" And, he repeated himself. Then, I pulled out the extremely stern Mommy voice and said, "Gabriel Alexander. Close the drawer right now or you will sit in time out." And, he turned around immediately and closed the drawer. So, I guess you can call that progress in that he did close the drawer without needing a timeout. However, it was a serious reminder to me that my baby really is growing up and it's time we started training him to respond to the first request instead of the "serious tone" third request.

A couple of weeks ago we made a last minute trip to the duck pond to take some fall pictures. I wanted to get a nice shot of Gabe for a baby photo contest I've entered him in on Facebook. If you're a friend of mine on Facebook you'll probably be getting a message soon about how to vote for Gabe.

Many of the pictures turned out pretty well, so I'll share them all here and of course the one I used for the contest too.

Lip sucking. He does that a lot.

Playing with the leaves.

Watching the ducks and

not being happy about sitting on the bench.

Oh, now he's happy.

"Quack. Quack."

Aww....I just love this face.

And, this one makes me want to laugh.

Now, I am laughing.

"Ducks."

This is the one I used for the contest.

Casey thinks he's so funny.

Sweet little boy.

We don't live in Arizona. Promise.

Getting a little help through the jungle.

Sweet, sweet smile.

It's out of focus on purpose, Dad.

Hope you enjoyed the photos and hopefully I'll get to do some more frequent blogging this upcoming week!