Gabriel 18 Months

(after getting baby powder all over his face)

Gabriel is 18 months, soon to be 19 months. He is growing up so fast. There is definitely days where I can see the difference from one day to the next. He is still my little angel, with little devil horns sometimes. He has the best temperament and personality. I am in love with him more and more everyday. Gabriel is still super smart and advanced for his age. His pediatrician is always amazed at his little self.

Most recently, our lives changed drastically with Gabriel. Now that i'm in graduate school we had to find child care for him. He's at a really great day school that follows the Reggio Emilia school of thought, founded by Loris Malaguzzi. There isn't very many private institutions that follow the Reggio approach here in the U.S., so I just consider us really lucky to have one in Richmond! I cannot begin to explain how much I love this educational approach (so just follow the above link if you want to learn more), particularly because I was already raising Gabriel in the same manner as the Reggio approach. Thus, I feel like his day school is his home away from home and it makes me feel so much more better about his transition. He has transitioned very well. The first couple of weeks were hard for us. Gabriel would whine or cry(for a minute or less) every time we dropped him off and it just broke my heart to pieces. He was always happy and fine once we left though, and that always reassured me. We did a few surprise drop by's on different days where we could observe him and he couldn't see us, and that's how we knew that he was happy there (aside from the reports from the teachers). Now, in his fourth week, he can't wait to get there in the mornings. The closer we get to school, the more excited he becomes and he excitedly repeats "School's Cool" in his super happy voice. I love it. His teachers, Erica and Dana have grown to love him so fast. They rave about how smart he is to us and everyone else. Erica calls him her sweetie pie. In fact, I always have a whole bunch of the other teachers talk to me about Gabriel. They have so many positive and sweet things to say about him. He seems to be the big man on campus, everyone knows his name and his special character. I love that he is in a very loving and caring environment. We get a daily report of everything he learned, experienced, and did while there. Even though I am not physically there with him like I used to, I feel just as connected to him, because of how great his teachers are about involving me in his development. Everything is so far so good with Gabriel (and us) transitioning into child care.

Alright, so now more about what Gabriel is like these days...Gabriel is really obsessed with Thomas the Train. If he ever watches t.v., he is only concerned with watching Thomas the Train. My sister bought him one of the basic train sets a couple of months ago, and he was been obsessed with all things Thomas ever since. He even hears the trains by our house and says train, and loves to see them going on the tracks. It get's him so excited. He loves all of his cars and trucks and scoots them around the house all the time. He is a total boy. Likes to climb on everything and jump down and create chaos. He loves to crumble his food and it creates a nice little mess for us on our wood floors. He is really active. He is also really into lining things up, usually in size order. He will take all of his books and lay them flat on our floors and create this long line of books, from smallest to biggest, when he runs out of room he just redirects the line in other directions or creates multiple lines of books. It's fascinating to observe. I'll have to post one of the videos. You can literally see his brain ticking, because he is thinking so hard about making his line of stuff work. At school, the teachers tell us almost every day how he lines up all of the toy cars there after his morning snack. He lines them up in size order too and he concentrates on his task for really long periods of time. They are always amazed at his approach to things. They keep saying, "he just thinks different, his brain works a different way". I think it's so interesting that they also notice. Another cute story was something that happened this week, Erica was telling me that he would carry around this baby all day long. He held it close to him and would take it everywhere he was playing (he also slept with it during nap) and at the end of the day he would find books to read to the baby. They took pictures of him just going about his day with his baby. How cute, huh?

Gabriel also loves blocks and legos. He loves building the legos up. He also loves the outdoors. When we take him outside he likes to get into mischief and wander around in our neighborhood and get into other people's driveways. All of the neighbors know and love him so they don't mind that he wanders into their driveways to find rocks. Rocks are another fascination of his. There was a time where rocks were his security objects. He would refuse to get into the car unless he was holding one of his rocks. He would hold the rock during the entire car drive and as soon as we had to get out, he would just let go of the rock and leave it in his car seat. So we have quite the collection of rocks in our car! Another cute thing he does is sing. He sings the ABC's (in his own way of course) and it's really neat to hear him go through the different letters. At night we usually hear him sing and talk himself to bed. He is generally a really content child. He is still very kind to us and others. He says I love you mama (sounds like "I Ove u Mama") and it just melts my heart. I love hearing him talk and love looking into his eyes. He has such a special sparkle in his eyes. I see so much life in those big brown eyes. We are loving being his parents. Below are some pictures of what he has been up to:




So happy and proud of his lego tower!


Love my handsome and preppy son.


after his first haircut

At National Night Out with his neighbor buddy


The day his love for Thomas the Train began. At Barnes & Noble.


He LOVES all kinds of slides

Gabriel and his Aunt Josselyn

Words/Phrases that Gabriel Said by 18 months:
car
truck
train
bus
who's that
what's that
where's mama/dada
there's mama/dada
i love you mama/dada
ok
oh oh
oh boy
fishy
butterfly
fly
airplane
cracker
no
more
slide
sky
boat
horsey
goat
cow
sheep
elephant
one, two, three
school's cool
ball ball
good night
good bye
beans
hi, hello, hey, bye
it's stuck, i dont know
all gone, all done