Seven months

It's hard to believe that Gabe is more than halfway through his first year. Doesn't seem possible! On the other hand, it seems like he's always been here - it's hard for us to imagine life before his arrival.

Since the last update, Gabe has been very busy. Some highlights:

• Gabe learned how to canonically crawl (though still mostly prefers to scoot)
• Standing up is now an automatic activity. Anything is fair game for something to pull up on, and his new goal is now getting on top of said object. So far he's been successful with stairs, but tables and chairs are too tall for climbing.
• Tooth 1 has emerged! Gabe was a champ about this, only fussing a bit. We have yet to actually see it, but the tooth definitely broke through as we've both felt its wrath already :)
• Gabe continues his US travels, adding TX to his list of states visited

I spent my 30th birthday teaching and then flying, but the day was still a good one. We had a nice dinner at the airport (mmm, California Pizza kitchen), flew to Dallas, then spent a couple of hours with family (Mike's parents, Aunt Marilyn, and crazy Uncle Cliff) and friends (Tommy, Ted, Ed, Deb, and Dan). We even had cake! Gabe stayed up long enough to meet everyone (quite late for him!) but went to bed soon after so that we got some time to catch up.

The rest of the trip was quite a whirlwind, but very enjoyable. I spent the second half of it (and currently still am) sick, but we still managed to see almost everyone we wanted to. We had a very enjoyable Wed night Thanksgiving (of course Gabe was the hit of the night), a nice family Thanksgiving, caught up with more friends, Gabe met some more babies his age (Parker and Sam) and ended the weekend with a big reunion by seeing the Archer, Bracy, and Hoffmann families simultaneously!


Gabe's new friends: Erin + Gabe and Natalie + Sam, Mike + Gabe and Ali + Parker

Since I've been sick all week, we've tried to get festive for Christmas to make things a little more pleasant. We bought our first Christmas tree on Thursday at a little family-owned lot down the street and are enjoying the smell of our frasier fir in the living room. So far Gabe has shown interest (especially in putting lights in his mouth!) but we've avoided disaster. Zoe does love to drink the tree water, despite our best efforts.

As always, you can find updated pics in the web albums.

Happy end-of-November birthdays to Amanda H and Mike G. Happy early December birthdays to Jacob and Sara. And happy 6th anniversary to Meg & Lucas yesterday!