Our internet has been broken...lots to catch up on!

"Ugh! Our internet has been broken and my mommy hasn't been able to blog!"
Sorry I haven't been keeping up on my blogging...but our darn computer modem broke so we've been offline for the past few days :( They sent us our new one and it got here today so I had to be sure to catch up before the big holiday weekend! Wayne is here from Virginia right now (he was our old roommate when we lived down there and was one of the groomsmen for our wedding) so he is getting to meet Gabrielle for the first time. But really....your wait for me to update the blog was worth it because Gabrielle is officially crawling and talking! She can take quite a few crawling steps in a row before falling down. Her favorite thing to do is to be on the carpet and just roll and crawl around. And I guess that is why we now own this beauty:

That is such a hard opening to work with because of the banister, handrail, and the the odd molding near the floor. This gate is the only gate I found that might work with what we had but I still don't like it. And it has already chipped the paint on our wall...grrr :(

Oh well. Anyways, Gabi has also started saying some "words". Mostly it is either "mama", "mmm-ba", or "baba". She only says those things when she is in a half-way whiny mood but still, it's something. Here are a couple of videos of her first "words" :) Sorry for the extreme boring-ness but we're so proud that she finally has started saying some stuff! We are going to have a very busy holiday weekend but I'm really looking forward to it. There is the huge party on the lake over the weekend like usually, then my brother will be in town so Gabi and I will get to spend the day with him on Monday.

Hmm...other randoms about baby Gabi...she started eating Cheerios a few days ago and really likes them. She can't feed herself quite yet, but she plays with them and then I'll help her eat a few too. It is the cutest thing ever to watch her gummy, toothless, little mouth squish up a Cheerio :) She also has been eating spinach, apples, apricots, and cherries. I put the fruit in her oatmeal and she doesn't mind, and she eats her spinach puree all by itself.

I think I have also made the decision to start making Gabi's baby food pretty soon. I don't mind her eating the fruit and veggies purees from the store (the ones I buy at least...they actually make a lot of junk food for babies) but I don't think I can bring myself to feed my baby turkey and gravy out of a jar or macaroni and cheese probably made with white noodles and "cheese product". I'm not sure when we're going to introduce any meats or cheese but I'll be sure to let you know how it goes....

Little miss has been on a sleeping strike lately too. She just started feeling like staying up until 10pm or so. Awesome. She is just so wired and ready to go she won't go to bed. She is getting more assertive too - if she doesn't want her bottle she will hit and swat it (and you) away. No mixed signals there :) Here are a couple of short video clips of her talking and some pictures from the past few days.

I've decided that Gabi needs to start getting used to wearing shoes. I've never really made her wear them, but soon enough she'll be walking and need to wear them (probably a little ahead of myself, but oh well.)

As you can see, she wasn't a fan and tried to eat them off :)
Wearing Dad's hat
She uses her head like a fifth appendage. Her little forehead is so red and chapped because she does this all the time :)

Happy 4th of July!!!