Yum...Noodles

This summer, Gabriel became much more independent in his eating. He really has his preferences in eating, both with food and utensils. If it was up to him, he would eat everything with a fork or spoon. He doesn't enjoy his hands dirty. When they get food on them, he grunts until one of us notices and then he waves his hands for us to see the dirtiness. He is showing us where to wipe. As you can see from the photos below, he is certainly happy when he gets the tools to work for him. He still needs a little assistance with noodles, but other than that, he is pretty darn good. My thinking is it is a second child thing. He wants to be like Charlie in all ways!

Des Moines Marina and Beach

On one of the rare cool, cloudy days this summer, I took Gabriel down to our local marina/beach. This is something I used to do all the time with Charlie, but haven't done alone with Gabe much. So, it was special. He loved the water, especially throwing rocks. 

 The following photos remind me of a little Nordic boy waiting for his ship to come home.

Glasses

At Charlie's checkup after turning four, we learned that he had Amblyopia or more commonly called: "lazy eye". We were surprised to hear this as we hadn't noticed any issue for him in seeing. We were thankful his doctor sent him to get tested. His left eye is in need of some catching up to his right. From what we have been told, we are lucky this was caught at this point in his life. This being that he has a chance to have his eye catch up and be corrected. We will have to see if he will need to wear glasses the rest of his life, or if it will be short-lived. I guess it can go either way. 

As you can see below, he took to the glasses right away. He loved getting them and has been wonderful at wearing them every day. We've only had one mishap where he talked a teacher into letting him keep the glasses on his nap bed at school. He finally came clean in that he decided to pretend the glasses were a train. They didn't survive that play. However, they are back together and he learned a lesson that I hope he doesn't have to repeat!

Here are a few more pictures from this summer. Since getting these glasses, Tom and I have both been told on several occasions how we need to get him into commercials. He is darn cute with these glasses. Although socking away money for his college tuition sounds great, we aren't looking to put him through the paces of modeling (at least at this moment!)

Let's Play Ball!

To Tom's delight, Charlie has become a lover of playing sports. Possibly with a "small" bit of coaching from Tom, Charlie loves to play baseball and watch baseball on TV. One day Tom told me, with a giggle, "I finally have a baseball buddy". It is quite fun watching these two play sports together. As you can see from some photos below, Gabe also joins in on the sports fun.  

 This is a photo of Tom and Charlie at Charlie's first Mariners game. They are super happy!