A Glimpse at the Gilpins: 2011

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Brody - 13 Months

Brody is now in his second year of life. Wow... It really has gone by fast. He is learning so much and so quickly. He is the smartest, cutest, sweetest boy I know. In my opinion, of course. :)

-Brody is in size 3 diapers
-He is in 12 month clothing, even though he needs shoes and a belt to keep his pants up!
-He can sign - cow, horse, duck, bird, drink, eat, more, all done, thank you, dog, cat, car, milk, bear, shoe, water, he can wave bye-bye, blow kisses, and I'm sure I'm missing others
-He can say - no, up, diaper, something that sounds like "yeah", more (which comes out "moh"), wow, and bye. And sometimes I think I've heard him say Bo, but I'm not positive that's what he's meaning to say.
-When you say "love you" he says "bye"... I guess we talk on the phone a lot around him!
-He can tell you the sounds that a frog, sheep, goat (he laughs and thinks that's the same sound), duck, elephant, cow, (elephant, cow, and sheep are all the same... just "mmmm" in a high pitched sound), fish (just smacks his lips together), lion, bee, and snake make.
-He smiles and shakes his head for the sound a zebra makes and he waves for the sound of a car and motorcycle.
-He is walking and running everywhere!
-At church, when the song leader goes up to sing, Brody will move his arm like he's leading singing.
-He loves to be scared. We will hide behind corners or chase him and scare him and he just giggles so much! He will run back behind the corner and then come back to be scared over and over again.
-He loves to "fight" with mommy, daddy, Bo, Hokie, it doesn't really matter who!
-He still loves his crib and sleeps from 9:30-10pm until 8-9am.
-He is only drinking whole milk, juice, and water and only from sippy cups! Yay!
-He has been giving peanut butter and seems to do just fine with it.
-He still loves his blanket and paci. He has 3 when it's time for bed - one in his mouth and two on the crib. He still sometimes wakes up and can't find one and I have to wait until he falls asleep and sneak in there and put one next to him. If he sees me it takes forever to get him to go back to sleep. But, we try to only give him his paci when he's sleeping or really cranky.
-He helps out a lot now. He will help us put silverware away from the dishwasher, will hand us stuff when we ask, and he loves to throw things away for us.
-Brody LOVES to be outside! He loves to go and check the mail or just walk down the driveway. He loves to ride in his Cozy Coupe. He cries when it's time to come back inside!
-He knows how to turn the TV and the XBox on and then will hand you the controller to turn one of his sign language DVDs on.
-He knows where we keep his food and snacks and will open the cabinet and hand us what he wants to eat - Tomato Munchies, Mac n Cheese, Chef Boyardee Spaghetti and Meatballs, yogurt melts, cereal, grapes, and Pringles are favorites!

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Pumpkin Patch

Brody's 1st trip to the pumpkin patch!

He loved the petting zoo!

Camp Wetoga 2011

Every year our congregation goes on a Family Retreat to Camp Wetoga. We spend Friday night - Sunday afternoon together at a camp site that has a kitchen attached to a large multi-purpose room, cabins, bathrooms, and pavilions. Our speaker this year was Brooks Boyd. Some people choose to sleep in the cabins and others choose to bring tents and camp in a big field. Kyle went the first year, we both went the second year (we camped in a tent), then we missed last year because Brody had just been born. This year was Brody's first camping trip and, yes, we decided to sleep in a tent!

Brody started the weekend off with a bang! He was being passed from one person to the next and being as sweet as he could be. One person was holding him but noticed he had something wet on him, so they handed him to the next and said "He's wet. What is that?" Well apparently he had a diaper blowout! His first in many months! So, it was a trip to the sinks for Brody. He had a blast!!

He had an audience!

He was shivering, but loving every minute!

Our tent is the green and yellow one in front of the van.

We had went to Walmart and bought a heater for our tent before we left. We should have tested it before we took it down there though. We opened the box and realized our heater was missing its igniter button. :( Joe and Jonie, the nicest friends ever, let us borrow their heater and they slept in the cold. We owe our warmth to them!

Denise made these cute onesies for our babies! She's so talented! I think there was probably a better picture that had been taken, but this is the only good one I had on my camera.

Emily and Charlie, Denise and Hannah Kate, Me and Brody

Kyle taught a lesson to the teens about the effects of alcohol on our bodies. His illustration was an egg that he had poured Vodka over. The vodka had cooked the egg by the end of the lesson.

I love that we have so many people that love our little boy so much!

While I wasn't looking, Brody had taken a big handful of Pringles out of the can.

And this was the resulting mess!

We had a great time at Camp Wetoga this year and can't wait until next year when Kyle's parents will be the speakers!

Brody's First Birthday Party! Part 2

I thought Brody's birthday party went great! It was a little windy and cold that day, but we still had a great time.

We were running late (as usual). The party started at 1pm and we were going to try to be there by 12pm so we could get all of the decorations set up. When we finally got there at 12:45pm there were 2 families already occupying the pavilion that we had rented. One family was almost finished with their party and asked if they could just finish their cake and open presents while we got ready. We said absolutely! They were sweet and even opened presents in the grass to get out of our way. They totally did not have to do that because they were not in our way. The other party was for a baby shower and those people were not so nice. Long story short... they left. We finally had all the decorations up at 1:45pm... 45 minutes after the party had already started! Whoops! Maybe I had over-planned a bit?