The Finke Family

A couple weeks ago Chris’s cousin Rachel and her son, Bennett stopped by for a visit. Gabriel doesn’t get to be around other kids very often, so I think it’s great when he has a chance to interact with other babies – especially cousins! Bennet is a little over 13 months old and Gabriel just turned 11 months old. They seemed to enjoy playing with the same toys, and they are still young enough that they don’t get angry when a toy is grabbed away from them (or maybe they’re just perfect gentlemen).

Playing with Gabriel's toy car

Sharing? Ha! What's that?

They both really liked this ornament-shaped rattle that is actually a cat toy.

Not sure if this was sharing or stealing. :-)

Here are a couple videos of Gabriel. In the first one, he is “dancing” (which involves moving his head and shoulders back and forth – he takes after his dad). Occasionally, he will make humming-like high pitched noises while he does it (singing maybe?)

In the second video he is doing a bunch of other things. When he does patty cake and starts flailing his arms around, he’s doing his idea of “roll it” (before I actually say “roll it.”)

Gabriel can now say “bye bye”. We’re considering it his first words besides mama and “nanny” (his word for daddy, although Chris is convinced that Gabriel actually thinks he’s the nanny). Here’s a video of this amazing feat:

Here is a photo-essay on Gabriel’s newest hobby: stripping in his crib.

Caught in the act

Are those your pants on the floor?

Pants AND socks on the floor?

Happy to see that a pantsless Gabriel is still a so big Gabriel

We didn’t do anything too terribly exciting this year for Valentine’s Day. After church we went out to eat at the Chinese Buffet and then geared up for the season premier of The Amazing Race.

Chris got me “Flours” for Valentine’s, which he used to make blueberry muffins from scratch. I got him these Miracle Berry tablets that you let dissolve on your tongue and they make everything you eat taste really sweet. They were fun to try. We just squeezed a little lemon juice in water and it tasted like very sweet lemonade. Kiwi tasted like candy, and blueberries were too sweet to handle.

Miracle Berry Tablets

Flours From Chris

Gravity has been one of Gabriel’s favorite discoveries. He enjoys nothing more than seeing things fall long distances. In the following pictures you can see him throwing his blocks down the basement stairs. He throws just about everything down there. He also likes to drop food from his high chair. We theorize that he might be dropping it down there so he has something to snack on later.

Dropping his blocks

He also enjoys playing with Chris's drumsticks

Say Whaaaat?!?

For whatever reason, Gabriel tends to make some rather interesting faces while eating. Here are just a few for your viewing pleasure:

Last month I celebrated my 26th birthday. Chris kindly brought to my attention that I am now closer to 30 than to 20 so I might as well round up. I didn’t do anything especially fun or crazy to celebrate the day, but the weekend prior to my birthday, we got together with my family for dinner at Green Mill and then bowling at Brunswick zone. We also celebrated my brother-in-law, Chris’s birthday which was on the 12th. Here are pictures from the evening:

Gabriel wearing Chris's gloves. As you can see, he is enjoying himself.

Bundled up and ready to go

Dad and Gabriel watching the bowlers

Mom, Laura, and Gabriel

Laura, Gabriel, and Chris

Quite a while ago, I think I mentioned how Gabriel enjoyed splashing in Pedro’s water dish. We were trying to figure out how to keep him out of it. Our solution was to put the water dish on a kitchen chair so he couldn’t reach it. As you’ll be able to see from the forthcoming photos, this did not last long. As soon as he started pulling up on things, he was in that dish again. One day, I decided to just let him grab the bowl and see what would happen. I figured that he would spill the cold water all over himself, he would cry, and then never want to touch it again. Tell me how you think that turned out:

Approaching the dish

lifting and looking UNDER the dish

Must...touch....the water

That's the stuff

The aftermath

When we were making Christmas cookies this year, Gabriel had a little “incident” with the sprinkles (these particular sprinkles are actually for Valentine’s day). We let him shake the sprinkle bottle because he liked the sound it made. Then, of course he decided it would be fun to bang the bottle on the ground, and here you see the aftermath: