Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Oops- forgot a year.

So it's been a year since we've documented Gabriel's exploits here. A bad thing, but also an indicator that we really love spending as much time doing things with Gabriel as possible-- and that doesn't leave a lot of time for documenting things.

In two days, G will be three years old. We'll have a small morning party at preschool with Dagim friends and Grandma Jan, who's in town for the week.

I keep waiting for indications of the "Terrible twos," and of course we're running out of time. The most unpleasant thing he typically does is holding a grudge against mama when she goes on a work trip. Last trip, Alison came home late at night and went in his bedroom to greet him when he woke the next morning and got "go away" as a response. This fades immediately, but is still no fun for her.

He's forming longer and longer sentences every day, usually indicating a detailed plan of action: "go to preschool with Dada and Mama and go to the park and take a nap and go to the firehouse."

He likes having a "dance party," which means we put "C is for Cookie" on the stereo, pull all the sheets and pillows off our bed, and he jumps up and down naked on the bed.

He sings or hums songs unprompted, as part of his regular play routine. He'll be playing with cars by himself and will just start humming "Itsy Bitsy Spider," usually in a pretty consistent key.

He went through a Mary Poppins phase a few weeks ago, in which he really wanted to watch the entire movie on Alison's computer as much as possible. Long before he knew there was a movie, he loved the music. We haven't been encouraging the movie thing at all, and right now he's not even asking for it. So he's seeing very little in the way of movies/TV. No TV at all, really, except for the few episodes of Sesame Street I downloaded before our Cancun trip in February.

Typical day:
G wakes up between 6:30 and 7, calling "mama mama!" or less frequently "dada dada!"
If we try to put him down again, we get "I want to wake UP!"
Play downstairs until 8:50, when Gabriel walks to preschool on dad's shoulders. This is a 7-8 minute walk to 16th and P, and always a pleasurable one. When he's too big to travel this way (a day which maybe is quite close) or when we're no longer walking distance to school (at least a year away), I will miss this a lot.
G gets dropped off around 9. Preschool all day, with naptime from 12:30 to 3:30 or so.
I usually pick him up around 5:15 on average. Then we walk home on shoulders, or if he wants we walk to Stead Park to play first, or to a local restaurant for a snack.
If he hasn't eaten his lunch (which is common), he usually wants dinner by 6. Then if the weather's nice we'll take a walk around the neighborhood, most often to the construction site a block away.
Then a bath or shower at 7:30 (he currently prefers showers almost always, but we alternate), then we read a couple of books and to bed.
Bedtime remains 8:30 (ideal), slipping towards 9 sometimes if we have a good outdoor expedition after dinner.
The latest development post-bedtime is that he'll call out several times demanding milk, or water, or just to "make me cozy" by tucking him in.

Will try to be better about regular updates in this space.

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