Gavin's trying to be a typical toddler

This morning I was trying to get Gavin dressed to go outside, and we had gotten his snow pants and boots on. All of a sudden, he took off and ran down the hall to his room. I was curious but didn't say anything. He ran back out with his hat in his hand--he had been playing with it earlier and apparently left it in his room. I hadn't said anything about where his hat was, because I assumed it was with his coat in the dining room. Good thing he remembered leaving it in his room! I was just pleased that he remembered to go get it without me saying anything to him!

In feeding news, Gavin is starting to just act like a typical kid. We've been working on getting him to eat more carbs, like pasta, and Terry bought some wagon wheels pasta thinking Gavin MIGHT like those. Turns out, he does. He likes the shape, and doesn't mind the texture as long as he gets to play with it first. So he plays with it, and sometimes even decides to eat a couple pieces. He still doesn't eat much of it though, but we keep trying.
Yesterday, he indicated that he was done with his lunch, so I took a pretzel stick and put it through the center of a piece of wagon wheel pasta that he had on his plate. He decided he wasn't REALLY done then, because he grabbed the pretzel stick, and used it to put the pasta in his mouth, then stabbed another piece of pasta to eat. He did the same with raspberries this morning. He said he was done, until I put a raspberry on the end of a potato stick. So I guess we're going to be putting food on sticks (pretzels or potato sticks.) It convinces him to eat just a little more. Just like a typical kid, he doesn't want to eat unless it's fun!
YAY for Gavin acting like a normal kid! I'm so proud of him for trying non-preferred textures (like pasta) all on his own!

Who's on the phone?

We've seen Gavin picking up random objects (calculator, Ipod, remote, computer hard drive) to use as a phone to "talk" for a while now (as well as using the real phone.) However, he will not talk to someone when there is actually someone on the line with him. I figure that will come with more experience. Here's the funniest part--he never actually says "Hello" or "Hi" or anything resembling that when he picks up a "phone" to use. However, after listening to him a few times recently, we figured out what he DOES say to start the conversation--he says "Terry." That's right, he says Terry, as in, his Daddy's name. To confirm this, we asked him tonight where Daddy was, and he pointed to Terry and gave him a hug. I asked him where Terry was, and he pointed to Terry. So even though he won't actually call Terry "Dada" (even though he's able to say the word, since he has said it before), he's apparently talking to Terry on the phone when he has his conversations with no one!
I just think it's really funny that he has whole conversations with Terry, whether Terry is actually a part of them or not!

fears?

Gavin has been having trouble going to sleep recently, no matter if we start in his room or downstairs. So even though he was sleeping better with the light off in his room, I wondered if he was becoming scared of the dark, so we've left his light on again some nights. I still don't know if he's scared of the dark, but he does seem to like the light being on.
He has a sound machine in his room that you can set different sounds, and Terry started it on the sound of ocean waves, which Gavin has gone to sleep really well to in the past, but tonight, as soon as we put him in his crib, he burst out crying. I thought it was just because he wanted to continue being held. But, since Gavin has been falling asleep to a different sound recently, I mentioned to Terry that he could change the sound machine to the "rainforest mode" which is the sound of birds of the rainforest, since Gavin has been sleeping well with that on recently. He settled right down, so I'm thinking for some reason maybe the ocean sound was scaring him. That's what it seemed like. I hear from other moms of 2 year olds that they develop fears around this age, and maybe that's part of the problems we have with him sometimes. I guess we won't know until he gets to talking better so he can tell us.

Oh, let's see. It's been a week since I posted, so let's see what to update today.
The other night, Gavin ran around with a kleenex in his hand blowing his nose. He really was blowing it, but no mucous came out, so he wasn't doing it hard enough. However, I'm really impressed that he figured out how to blow from just his nose.
Daddy has been playing "got your nose" with Gavin, so the other night when Gavin was sitting with me, he grabbed MY nose to play. Guess he really did get the hang of what the game is about.
Yesterday, he put his pants on mostly by himself. I just needed to help him pull them up. Funny, considering he started pulling his pants down a good 6 months ago, but now since we've been doing it for him, he doesn't seem to remember to pull them up or down by himself. (We started pulling his pants up instead of waiting for him to do it, when he decided he didn't want to wear pants and would have happily gone all day without them. While I don't object to that idea, it's the middle of winter, and it's far too cold to go without pants. For that matter, now he doesn't mind wearing pants, but he really objects on a daily basis, to putting a shirt on. Again, it's too cold to go without a shirt! Especially considering the tough time we've been having with getting him to gain weight. Gavin can now put both socks on himself, although it is MUCH easier for him to put the left one on, and he has to spend a lot of effort and time to get the right one on. But he CAN do it if he doesn't mind sitting there and working on it. Sometimes it's just too much to sit there that long though, apparently, so he'll run around the house with one sock on (which is actually better since he doesn't slip as much on the wood floor with just that one sock.)
Gavin has discovered a problem when it comes to his clothing. It's in drawers that are a little bit too high for him to reach on his own. He can't even reach his sock drawer, which is the one he wanted to play with yesterday (although, since those darn little socks get lost so easily, I guess I don't mind that he can't just get into the sock drawer and play with them whenever he wants!) However, when I asked him if he wanted me to move the socks to the drawer under the bed that he could reach, he shook his head no. He wants them to remain where they are, just the problem is that he can't reach them. What to do, what to do? If he was a bit taller, he could probably reach them better, but he's not, so I guess he'll just either have to let me move them for him, or go without playing with them on his own!
We had Mahi-Mahi (fish) for dinner last night, and after watching me eat some (he has tried it before, but it was months ago and I was sure he didn't remember), he did take several big pieces off my plate to eat. Both Terry and I are really impressed when he does that.
Terry gave me flowers for Valentine's Day, and Gavin really liked them. He sme
lled the roses when I showed him how to, but he really likes the small lillies, and the little purple (filler) flowers, so I gave them one of each that he rubbed against his mouth and face for some amount of time that first day. Then at lunch yesterday, he asked for another flower. He seems to really like them!
I think there was something else to update, but I can't remember it right now, so maybe I can come up with it and post it later.

Everyone snacks when they shop!

We went to Walmart the other night to get groceries. I always give Gavin a cup of water to have with him through the store, and I had a bowl of snacks for him (Cheerios, Kix, potato sticks, whatever.) Apparently, it wasn't good enough. As soon as we got a cucumber for our salad, he turned around in the seat of the shopping cart, grabbed the cucumber, and started to try to take a bite out of it. We took it from him and continued shopping. Next was fruit for him, so we found raspberries. Sure enough, he turned around and grabbed the box of raspberries, got them open and started eating them. Normally I would wash them before giving them to him, but they just looked too good to pass up apparently.
Terry and I never snack while we're shopping, but Terry said it's because I always give Gavin a snack bowl while we shop that he thought he should start eating the foods before we buy them!
At least he was going for the healthy foods!

In other news, we had eggs and toast this morning. Normally getting Gavin to eat toast is hit or miss, but I put raspberry jam on toast the other day and got him to try just a bit of the jam. He recognized it when I put the jam on our toast this morning, and he took his fork and swiped it across my piece of toast, taking most of the jam from MY toast! He then put his fork in his mouth and ate the jam off of it. At least he was getting a good taste of it!
He decided he could manage to have some toast, since it had jam on it. He wouldn't touch it with his hands, but did spear it with his fork to eat several pieces of toast this morning. YAY! If all it takes is raspberry jam to get him to eat bread/toast, I'll put it on for him every day!

A new Gavin?

Today for lunch, I gave Gavin pretzel sticks, yogurt melts, juice and apple slices. For my snack, I took out a blueberry muffin that Terry had bought me a few days ago (pack of 4.) I put a little bit next to Gavin's plate, and poked a pretzel stick through the tiny bite of muffin. Gavin saw it, and put it in his mouth to taste. He then picked up a couple more bites of muffin to eat. WOW! Gavin NEVER eats anything as soft as a muffin! He started dipping his pretzel sticks into his juice too...reminds me of someone dipping a doughnut into their coffee or something. After he got up, he still had a pretzel stick, so was running around carrying that, and got out one of his favorite toys--the bag of multiflavor (and multicolor) mini marshmallows. Normally he just likes carrying them around and squishing them occasionally, but this time he did spear one with his pretzel stick and ate a bite. Not sure he liked it so much, but he did try it willingly, and it didn't kill him! Like I said before, Gavin never eats anything soft like that. Maybe he's getting over his texture problem all on his own?
Last night he found some french fries downstairs (from a few days ago), and started eating those. Again, normally he never likes french fries because even though they're crunchy outside, they're soft inside. But of course, if these were a few days old, they were probably hard all the way through. However, now that he's tried them and decided they were good, MAYBE, just maybe, we can get him to try them again when they're fresh. Maybe I can give him sweet potato fries, and he and Daddy can have french fries together. (Normally I don't make fries for us to eat, since they're something that I can't really have. So, Terry usually goes without them at home, if he wants some, he has them during the day at work.)
The other day, I made some wagon wheels pasta for Gavin, and he actually picked a couple up and took bites out of them. Not big bites, but that's a huge step for someone who normally won't touch pasta because he doesn't like how it feels! Terry had bought them to try with Gavin, since Gavin is obsessed with wheels, and I guess it works. It's the first piece of pasta he's tried willingly! And not once, not twice, but 3 times! (Granted, he wouldn't try any the next day, but maybe we're getting somewhere occasionally.)
Anyway, my little boy is experimenting with "non-preferred" foods this week at least. YAY Gavin! I can tell from watching him that it takes a lot of courage for him to try those soft foods, so he's being really brave trying them all on his own. I'm extremely proud of him!

Climbing Mount Everest

Ok. Not really , it's just that Gavin has the same focus trying to climb in and out of his crib recently as people have when trying to climb a mountain! He is REALLY determined. He was so determined with it yesterday evening, that we ended up eating our dinner in his room watching him try to climb into his crib. He's actually more focused on climbing INTO the crib, than out! It seems that his crib has become one of his favorite places to play recently, after realizing that cribs can be more than just for sleeping! A week or two ago, all of a sudden, he learned how to fall asleep on his own in his crib. AFTER playing in it for a while though. But still, that's fine. The point being is that he can sometimes fall asleep on his own without being held! But it seemed that the more we did that (put him in his crib to fall asleep on his own), the more he realized how much fun it was to play in the crib BEFORE falling asleep. And because he's got quite a bit of energy, now he's really having a great time jumping up and down in the crib holding onto the rail. He did it for about half an hour straight today. Actually, that was after his nap, but still, lots of fun for him apparently. It's good exercise and good for leg strength I suppose. I guess that's probably one of the reasons he's trying to climb INTO the crib, because he can jump up and down for a lot longer than I'll hold his hands and let him jump on the couch!

Luckily, his legs are just a bit short to climb into and out of the crib. I'm still kind of surprised he can't quite do it though, since he learned a week or two ago that he can climb in and out of the playpen (Pack and play type) downstairs. He learned to climb IN first, then figured out a safe way to climb out. I thought they were the same height as the crib, but apparently not. His legs are just an inch or two too short to get out of the crib, so if he was a normal height for his age, he'd have no problems. We keep thinking he'll make it, then he doesn't, so we have to help him. But I'm figuring within a week or so, he'll figure out a way to do it, even with his short legs! But for now,we'll just know that every day we'll probably have "crib-time", a regular scheduled activity for physical fitness! I'm glad he's found something he likes to do until it gets warm enough outside to go out again!