3.5 years old!

where does the time go? i look at gabriel, and can't believe the little man he's become. he's 37 inches AND 37 pounds :) looks like when he's 4, he can switch to a booster seat in the car...yippee!

new things - where to begin! in addition to his first trip to the dentist, we also went for his first appointment to the optometrist. when the technician was trying to take pictures of gabe's eyes, it looked like a downhill appointment before we even started. but once he found out that dr. jessica was going to let him watch thomas, he was super cooperative. i got a bit anxious as he was reading letters aloud and noticed that he was getting a few of them wrong. turns out gabe has astigmatism - blame it on me :( he'll eventually need glasses, but we're going to re-assess in 6 months at his next appointment. and now that we know about his vision being slightly off, i am more aware of his 'problems'...he does blink and rub his eyes a fair bit, and now i've noticed a bigger problem - when he writes in his workbook, he is literally 3 inches from the paper when he traces things. it could also be a lighting factor, so we've moved him from his usual spot at the table. fingers crossed, he doesn't get worse before september!

i took gabe ice skating a few weeks ago. thankfully we went with sofia, so he had a friend to observe. the 2 of them were super cute balancing on their skates :) once we got on the ice, gabe stayed glued to the little plastic chair. it took about 30 minutes before he finally tried standing and holding onto the metal bars and i would push him around. then at one point i realized his skates weren't even on the ice - he had been resting them on the horizontal bar in front of him for a free ride :P smartypants!

the hopes of taking ski lessons went out the window this year. between me being sick in january, then birthdays galore in february and march, there just wasn't time to commit. however, we will make a concerted effort next year. the ski show & swap is in october, so we'll see what kind of deals they have for gabe.

our little parrot - be careful what you say around gabe! we know kids are sponges, but to hear everything you say come back to you...not cool!

development - we've done music together classes since gabe was 6 months old, and this past session he FINALLY embraced it - typical...he's now 'graduated' and will move onto piano lessons in september (maybe...i'm still thinking about it).

while i have no imagination whatsoever, chris is awesome and plays with gabe and they pretend play and tell stories about everything. the downside is that gabe's been telling my parents some pretty wild stories in such detail, they can't help but believe him. then they ask me about whatever the situation is, and i have my 'what the?' face on.

through the scholastic book orders, i've gotten some great cars and disney workbooks for gabe. so he's really been enjoying writing his letters, numbers and colours/shapes. usually he'll do 2 or 3 pages a day before he gets "tired" of writing. it's hard work - and each page has an "activity" to do.

preschool - he is doing so well at school. he won't willingly tell us about his day, but after about 20 questions, we know who he "played with", what he had for snack, and whose mom/dad was on duty. i've forgotten how expensive school can be - between the cookie/pie sales, monthly scholastic book orders, winter fundraiser, purdy's easter chocolates, and now the spring plant sale - i can't wait for the summer to arrive so we can give the cheque book a rest!

pottytrained! - yup, it took us awhile to get here, but a few months ago gabe started wearing underwear at home. he was definitely ready for it because the idea of wet pull-ups was really bothering him. even a slight tinkle in his pull-ups would cause the "funny walk" and he'd scream for a new one. we'd still "go out" in pull-ups because gabe wasn't liking the idea of public washrooms - the loud flushing and hand dryers freak him out. but for the past 2 months (or so), he's been fully trained. he's even used to using public bathrooms - but its not pleasant for any of us. i don't know about other mom's with little boys, but gabe has to take his pants and briefs off completely (therefore his shoes are off too) because he can't spread his legs wide enough to sit and pee pointing down. so to help with the problem, i figured teaching gabe to stand up and pee would solve the problem, but he's still too short to pee without a stepstool. i just can't win. we haven't tackled the nighttime yet...but we're close - 90% of the time he has dry diapers!

speaking - gabe is still having trouble enunciating his words. the hard consonant c's and k's really baffle him (eg., cookie comes out tootie or cake is tate), he's getting better at his hard g's (he can say cheeseburger vs. cheeseburber), and his l's are getting better (yellow is starting to sound better vs. yeyow) but he REALLY has to work at it. we do a lot of repetition and exaggeration with some of our words to get the point across - my mom's working hard with gabe :)

the most exciting news for 2012 is that we're going to disneyland right after gabe's 4th birthday! it's a family vacay, and we can't wait! i think my dad might be the most excited - it's pretty funny - he can't stop talking about it :)