Dear Gabe,

You are becoming such a little man… with each set of clothes I “retire” for you, I have to face the fact that you are growing up, making me laugh (and cry!) through all of your milestones. Here’s a couple things I thought you’d like to remember:

1. You are enjoying Bob the Builder in book and video form. You love to play with your toy tools and when something breaks you say, “Fick it like Bob”

2. You love to play with play-dough and chalk. We spend hours outside drawing a train track and trains and then running around it.  We have added many elements you love… like the “shaky bridge” and the station where you “get ticket for all aboard.”

3.  It has been a very rainy summer so you are pretty well versed on rain-related songs: Rain Rain Go Away, Drip Drop, Gum Drops, etc.  There was even one night when there was loud thunder booming over head and you ran to the window and yelled, “NO! AWAY!” At least you love your puddle jumping.

4. You are in the process of learning to sleep through the night in your big boy bed at night, but you do still come in to bed with us when you wake up… and you need to bring everything but the kitchen sink in with you… pillow, blanket, stuffed animals, books, sippy cup…etc. There is barely enough room in the bed for you too! Also, you LOVE being read to at night. When we are done you give us puppy eyes and say, “more book, peez.”

5. When someone sneezes you say “blesh”; when you see anything that resembles a pool you call it “papa’s pool”; and when someone is upset you say “I hug” and proceed to put them in a well-meaning headlock.

6. You LOVE to do something you invented called a “circle hug” which involves everyone in the room getting into a big circle to hug (as the name suggests.) You just call out, “circle hug” and everyone falls in line =)

7.  You have discovered that the ice cream truck indeed delivers ice cream and is not just a “music truck” as other children in the neighborhood still believe. You get so upset when we can’t get it… I have to lock the doors to keep you from running after it sometimes!

8. You are capable of counting to ten; however, sometimes I worry that you’ve bumped your head because you will occasionally count, “1,2,6,9…”  What? You have your colors down though and especially love Purple (Jeff) Yellow (Sam) Red (Murray) and Blue (Anthony).

9.  You are fairly fearless (check the soon to be posted pictures of Alex sending you down his slide inside a tunnel!) but lately you don’t like to too high on swings so you first ask to go high, then when you cross your comfort zone you follow with, “little high! little high!”

10. Grandma Barbie once told you that when I was little I used to say “All gone, have to buy more” when something was finished. Well, you have followed in my footsteps and say, “uh oh, have buy more!” whenever we are done with anything… even if you finished a slice pf pizza and there are five more pieces left in the box… or it isn’t something you can actually buy… like at the end of music class when we have to put the instruments away.