Thursday, April 21, 2005

Our Social Butterfly

Today, Gabriel took his mommy running at Piedmont Park. It was a nice day for a run, and we got back just in time to miss the drizzle. Patty's new running shoes, Mr. and Mrs. Brooks, are treating her very well. Mrs. Brooks is doing a good job of correcting the overpronation of the right foot. Pushing the stroller, we only went a couple of miles before getting worn out, but it was a total body workout.

New canopy 1

New canopy 2

When we got back, we had a package waiting from Mom and Dad K. It was a canopy for our Kelty baby carrier. It's going to be extremely useful and has some really cool features. It's lightweight but has a rain shield that can fold down if it's raining or fold up if it's nice, side panels that stow in the inside top of the canopy if it's not raining, and netting in front, back, and at the top of the sides to protect against the sun. This is going to allow us to hike any day, rain or shine, and also to go camping when we aren't sure of the weather.

After playing for a while, listening to his newest CD (which he loves), and eating lunch, Gabriel took a very long nap. He cried before he went to sleep, but it was still better than it had been for so long. He got up, nursed, and got dressed to go out on the town.

We went to the Post-sponsored happy hour at Acapulco Grille and Cantina, just a block from our apartment. We each had a drink and some snacks, and we got to talk to a lot of people, some we knew, and some we didn't. Gabriel was the star of the show, and it was almost like having a babysitter - our friends Suzanne, Tanya, and Isi took turns playing with him, and we got to drink and converse. It was fun. He was even more social then he's ever been. He reached out for everyone who stopped to say hi. A man named Juan recognized us from church and stopped to say hi, and Gabriel didn't want Mommy to take him away from him. Juan's friend came by, and Gabriel instantly reached out for her to hold him for a while, and then we wanted to go back to Juan. Eventually, Mommy convinced him to come back.

Suzanne taught Gabriel to wave, and we were amazed. He's never waved before. He's also lately started saying Dada and Mama when we ask him to, and yesterday, he learned to climb. We turned around when he was standing in his playpen, and he had pulled himself halfway up the side. His feet were about 6 inches above the floor of the playpen. He's become quite good at crawling, even though he uses his stomach, and a couple of times, he's sat up from laying down, most recently this morning. He's really making great strides, and we're excited about all of the new things he is learning.

We finally got smart a couple of days ago and replaced the contents of the front of his favorite bathroom drawer with blocks. Now when he wanders into the bathroom, he comes back chewing on a block and not bath salts. [That's actually happened. They were blue.] We're still working on making a baby-friendly apartment, and little by little, we're making progress.

We added a pretty neat feature to our blog, but we're not sure yet if it works on all browsers. It's a favicon, which is an icon that appears next to the title of the page in the address window at the top of the browser. You can drag this icon to your desktop to create a link to our webpage, which is quicker than opening a browser, going to the bookmarks list, and clicking on our address... as if the 15 seconds it takes to do that was really slowing you down! Anyway, the icon is a picture of Gabriel, of course, and we think it's a really neat feature.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The pictures of Gabe are precious! You can tell he's got quite the personality from his facial expressions.

Love,
Mom/Grammie