Beds, Car Seats and Sleep Overs, Oh My!

They say things happen in threes – we had three milestones happen three days in a row!

1/20/11 – First, Giselle crawled out of her crib so we placed her mattress on the floor and with a big smile, she happily clutched her baby doll and slept in a "big girl bed" for the first time. She didn't come out of the room even once.

1/21/11 – The very next day, I noticed her legs were beginning to become squished in her rear-facing car seat. They recommend to keep rear-facing until age two nowadays, but seeing her birthday is just a month away I went ahead on a whim and turned it around in a Lowe's parking lot. She seemed to like being able to face forward like her big brother.

1/22/11 – The very next day we had some friends children come to visit whilst they went out on birthday dinners, respectively, and ended up having one of Gabriel's friends, Sean, sleep over. It was Gabriel's first time having a sleep over – and oh my goodness, you would have thought I bought him a pot of gold, he was so excited. In fact, both of them were excited – they were so cute.

I tucked them into bed and was surprised they both were quiet. At one point, Gabriel came to me saying he needed some lotion because he was itchy. I asked if Sean was asleep and he said, "yep, he's asleep, but I'm still, um, er... alive." Jim and I busted out laughing. I hope you're alive! Another classic Gabriel-ism.

Here they are together the following morning in their adorable p.j.'s.


1/23/11 – On the fourth day, we went and bought a bunk bed from someone I found off Craigslist. It was the perfect color, style, sturdy as a rock with Brazilian Pine wood and most of all the perfect price. Jimmy and Matt spent 2.5 hours putting it together while the kids ran around it jumping up and down with excitement. Gabriel said, "I finally have my bunk beds that I've been wanting. It's the first time I've had a bunk bed, ever!"

Ok, I guess that could officially count as four, but you weren't really counting, were you?

2011 Junior Spelling Bee

Gabriel participated in the Scripps Junior Spelling Bee for the first time (and just for fun) today. There were about 20 children grades 3 and under. They each spelled their name first and then progressively spelled harder words each round. Gabriel made it the third round. He spelled Rat and Hip, but was dismissed on the word Must. We had fun. I got a lot of comments on how cute he was and one precocious.

Winter Storm of 2011

Atlanta usually gets at least one snow day a year with which the snow melts by the next day. This season we were blessed with 6" of snow which turned into ice. Atlanta isn't equipped but with approximately 700,000 snow equipment (according to GaDot) and ill prepared to plow or de-ice pavement, therefore, the entire city was shut down for a whole week. Wherever you were, you were stuck there. It snowed on a Sunday evening - our office was closed Monday through most of Friday although we all tried to work from home as much as we could. We took advantage of the event dubbed "snowpocalypse" by sledding down the street and our neighbors sloped driveway. Giselle wasn't quite sure what to make of it, but warmed up to the ice by weeks end. We certainly got to know our neighbors a little bit better with my only regret being my neighbor friend Erin who was 32 weeks pregnant and under the weather being unable to join us. Hoping we'll have another opportunity like this next year when she'll have three little snow bunnies.

Here is a video of Jimmy pushing Gabriel down the street in a laundry basket.


Slideshow of our January "Snowpocalypse"

Mid-year Report

We are required to do 180 days of schooling which means we are upon the half-way point. I'll save the in-depth report for the end of school year when I'm supposed to write one, but just wanted to say how very proud I am of my son. His reading has clicked and can read chapter books now, willingly. His math is exceptional and has most of his multiplication tables memorized. The other day I asked him how many steps we had on our stairs. He counted 14. I said what if we had two sets of stairs side-by-side, how many stairs would we have. He said that's easy just add 14+14. I said yes, or you could just do 14x2. He says, oh yea, and without hesitating he said 28. Blew me away. We're learning geography with a fun website he can snap any country or state shape into place. He still loves science and conducting "tests" and is enjoying learning Ancient history (and so are we!). But the one thing I'm most happy about at the very moment is that he is finally drawing his "O's" in the correct direction (counter clock-wise). Ack, it's been killing me so one day I just had him do it over and over and over and over, quizzed him on it and then over and over again until it became second nature. Good reason to learn how to do it right from the start.