Little Underwood, Big Harte

The first month of the year has been great ... for the most part. Here are some great Gavin moments! He sometimes prefers to take his bib and shirt off when eating breakfast. If he has a onesie on, then the food goes down the front of that! Playing hide and seek under the table. Getting ready for bath time. Since purees are quickly becoming a thing of the past, Daddy made this buffet of steamed and roasted finger foods for the week! Spoiled little guy :) (TOP: apples, beets, potatoes BOTTOM: carrots, green pepper, peas). And then we hit a snafu in our month. A few reckless teenagers hit us on the way home from the grocery store. Everyone was thankfully okay, so it is now just an annoyance, but it was definitely scary at the time! We are waiting for their insurance company to get this fixed now, but it is drivable in the mean time. That is the biggest issue, causes the door to not open or close very well, but it is scraped from the front bumper all the way thro...

A few Gavin and Stefan moments I had to share! Yes it totally looks like Gavin is eating chips with his Daddy! And if you know us, you know he definitely is not! This is a baby kale, broccoli and cheese version of a cheese puff ;) Daddy gets the oh so exciting gallop crawl when he gets home, too!

A huge thank you to one of our best friends, Tamara, for taking these family pics while we were visiting in Canada. Tamara is extremely talented at photographing little kiddos, and I've always been a little sad she couldn't do newborn pics of Gavin given we live so far away. So the first chance we got, we took her up on her offer to get into her studio. She even offered to set up this card for us to use this year.  Rob and Tamara's home in High River, Alberta was damaged badly from the floods last year. After a rough year and a lot of time not in their home, they finally are back in and her studio is quite lovely. It is the bottom floor of their 4-level split, has new floors, a storage room for all her props and soon will have its own bathroom fixed back up. Thankful they were able to get back into their home!  Here are some of our favs! Check them all out>>

11 Months (A few days late, I had this ready to go and forgot to publish it, oops!) Gavin loves to give high fives and knuckles Always gets a kick out of riding on someone's shoulders His favorite thing to do is take books off his shelf or any shelf and throw them on the floor. Over and over again. Pretty much he likes to take anything out of where it belongs. Laundry out of the basket, clothes pins out of the bag, stuffed animals out of the box. He did just put clothes pins back in the bag this morning, so maybe progress toward picking up after himself? (i know, i've got a long time to go before that.) He can cluck his tongue and kisses the babies and characters in his books. We can even get an open mouthed kiss from time to time. He can also motorboat his lips, but not as often yet. I love this ... He has started to OM back to me at night when I'm getting him ready for bed (more of a hum/mmm from him, but oh so cute!) Peekaboo is still his favorite game, alo...

Yes this is a little late, but we were excited to see Michigan State Spartans take the Rose Bowl win this year, GO STATE! Pre-game pic Thank you everyone for all your presents for Gavin this year. He is really enjoying them and we are, too. We really appreciate your generosity and thoughtfulness. One present, one of the new bamboo bowls and spoons that Godfather Andrew got him. We have been using them every day. Less plastic, yay! I had to include this pic of course because of his famous CHEESE smile. Yep, he's still doing it and it cracks us up every time! Gavin has become quite the "helper" while Mom and Dad are working in the kitchen. Maybe we will get some more cabinet locks if we get sick of picking up the dishes/pots/pans/appliances, but for now we are letting him play. I sent this to Grandma U and she sent back the picture below - life father like son! Gavin - Jan. 2014 Stefan - Feb. 1982 Florida has had record low temperatures getting to th...

We had a great time in Calgary and made it home safe and sound (very tired and a little sick, but home none the less). Gavin did okay on the flights back and all went smooth. We spent New Year's Day doing some life maintanence (laundry, groceries, etc) and are looking forward to the weekend after just two days of work. It'll just be us three for the next month and a half until Gavin's first birthday, wow, one is coming so soon! We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year. Below in the link are the pics from our trip. Here are some of our favs ... The rest of our vacation pics>>

We made it to Calgary on Dec. 21 after a long day of traveling and just going with it. Gavin did really well although he is so fidgety now that was quite tiring for us.  We were stuck in a holding pattern on the first leg to Houston so landed a bit late but had enough time during the layover to get everything done. On the second flight we got stuck on the tarmac due to high wind and rain for over an hour. Of course that was when Gavin took his nap so then he was as wake pretty much the whole four hour flight. He made friends and we just tried to keep him distracted.  Once we arrived we got through customs quickly but that is when our luck ran out. Neither of our bags or our car seat made it on the plane. It took a long time to get it all sorted out and enchrouched on Gavin's normal bedtime. The airline loaned us a car seat and our bags made it in the morning despite promises they would come that night. Gavin got to bed at bedtime in the new time zone and then slept well! He wa...