Bryan and Stacie Huelsbeck

These days Gavin is full of new tricks.  He started sitting on his own last week.  He’s still a little wobbly, but he’ll have it down soon enough.  His current favorite toy is his walker.  He hasn’t really figured out how to move forward in it yet, but he can certainly make it go backwards!  Then he’ll get backed up against a wall and start screaming.  He really likes to just sit in it and watch the cats and dog.  They crack him up.  All they have to do is walk in front of him and he shrieks with glee.  He’s also started blowing rasberries again.  He had stopped for a while and had adopted this weird grunting sound- but now we are back to rasberries.  Oh, and he wil make this high-pitched shriek that goes into that octave only dogs can hear… Duchess goes nuts. 

 He is sleeping really well now and we are very happy about that.  He goes to sleep at 9 pm and usually stays out until 5 am.  That works perfect for us.  He is eating lots of baby food now and so far he has liked everything we’ve tried… apples, bananas, pears, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, peas.  He must be going through a growth spurt b/c he drank a whole bottle yesterday and then cried for more.   We have to go to the Dr next week for his next round of shots- so I’ll post his stats after that.

Yesterday was his Baby Dedication at church.  Poppie got to say a prayer and Gavin tried to remove Pastor Ike’s microphone.  Then we went home and had hamburgers and hotdogs (well, Gavin had peas and cereal :-P).  All in all it was a nice weekend.  Labor Day is this coming week and we are going to the lake on Sunday.  Hopefully the weather will cooperate- its rainy and yucky today.

OK, well I guess that’s all.  I’ll try to upload some pics some time this week.

I tried to wait until the 1 year mark, but there was just no way that was going to happen.  His hair was out of control.  So Aunt Laura gave him his first haircut last Saturday and now he looks so cute!  Here are the before and after pictures… including his cool mohawk!

Before:

During:

After:

Mohawk:

How’s that for being decisive?  I just made Bryan take down the sign.  After a month of my heart breaking every time we turned into our driveway and I saw the sign again… and not a single call of interest.. and one of our neighbors undercutting our price by 15K…  we’re taking this as our sign from God that we need to stay put!  Which actually makes me happy- because I love my house, especially in the fall- its the best time of year!  Although we still haven’t solved our time issues- and with school starting back this week, our commute is sure to worsen.  But oh well, we’ll deal with it somehow.

OK, so on to the good stuff.  We have been very busy- as you have probably guessed from my lack of posting.  Last week, I went to Palm Coast, FL for a week of training.  Thankfully, my mom came too and took care of Gavin so that I didn’t have to leave him at home.  They stayed at a really nice condo with Uncle MawMaw (I mean Robbie) and Aunt Dottie.  Gavin had a great time and was spoiled rotten by the end of the week.  Gavin went to the pool for the first time which he was pretty indifferent about.  He did, however, really enjoy chewing on his float… Here are some fun pool pictures:

Gavin also went to the beach for the first time on this trip.  He’s not a big fan.  He did like watching the waves and watching the other kiddos playing, but as soon as I put his feet in the water, he cried.  It was really cold though.  Here’s a few pics from the beach:

Gavin has learned a couple new tricks… the first one is how to blow Rasberries.  He spits all over the place and is so proud of himself… especially when he has a mouth full of food.  Also, a not so cute trick- he will make this terrible cough/gagging noise to get our attention so we’ll pick him up.  Not cool.

He is very close to sitting up on his own.  We practiced a while tonight and he did pretty well.  He’s rolled over a few more times, but really doesn’t seem too thrilled with that maneuver.  And crawling… yeah right.  This kid has no desire to move anywhere on his own.  He is completely content being as immobile as possible and totally dependent on us for all transportation.  My mom says I was the same way- so I guess he comes by it honestly.  Here is a video of him attempting to sit up and play with his bunny… which he thinks is hilarious:

He will be 6 months old this week (how can that be???) and is growing like a weed.  He weighs about 18 lbs- maybe a little more.  And I’m thinking he’s probably about 27 inches long.  It’s definitely getting harder to carry him in his carseat.  Here’s a video of him pigging out on some applesauce and cereal:

And just for good measure… here are few other cute pics and one more video of him playing with his current favorite toy.  Notice how he uses his giant monkey feet to hold the ball?