Our Little Chatterbox

I haven't been able to get very much video of Gavin lately because he is so into looking at the "babies" (himself) on the playback. On this day in particular, I was wanting to catch my new favorite word that he says ("tissue") on video. He ended up cooperating for a lot longer than usual so I trimmed the video to give you an idea of some of the words he is saying now - believe me, these are just a few in his chatter repertoire. :)

He's been putting two words together more and more lately, which is neat. He's also doing a lot of parroting - which isn't always the best. Like today, I wasn't where he could see me and so all of a sudden I hear from around the corner "TEFF!! TEFF!!" He also yells for his daddy by calling him by his first name - I guess Jared and I try to talk from different rooms a little too often, eh? I think the most hilarious thing that he does is that when he's calling for Jared he will sometimes pair it with stomping on the floor (I have been known to hit the floor with my foot when I'm rocking Gavin to sleep and I need something from Jared who is on the floor below). So when I ask him to go get daddy, he will sometimes just stop in the entryway at the bottom of the stairs and stomp on the floor yelling "DARED!!! DARED!!" It's amazing how you can get an idea of what you look like through your child's mimicry!

Other than that, life at the Royer homestead is great. We're excited to have Matt living with us. ESPECIALLY Gavin, who never fails to ask where Matt is within a minute or two of waking up...I mean, we're talking prime chatter position - right up there with Elmo. :)

I hope everyone has a great weekend - Thanksgiving is just around the corner!!

Halloween Fun

We had a fun Halloween Week. There are so many fun Halloween things to fit in, that the festivities seem to last all week!

We started out by making caramel apples for FHE on Monday.

As you can see, the washed apples (complete with sticks) sitting on the table were too much of a temptation for Gavin - Mom and Dad were taking too long to get the show on the road!

Yeah, kind of a scary picture - sorry about that.

After we got the apples dipped, we decorated them with Reese's Pieces - Gavin loved this part, especially since he didn't figure out he could eat the decorations until later. Otherwise, he would not have been so cooperative to let go of the candy.

Then later on in the week we made popcorn balls - a family tradition. This is Jared's forte - the sticky mess is not my thing.

Gavin spent most of the popcorn ball extravaganza dancing in the living room to music on Jared's phone. He wasn't overly interested...

...until he realized there were goodies just sitting there waiting to be eaten! To those of you who got one of our popcorn balls, don't worry - any of the ones Gavin got to were wrapped up and put in our own family stash. They weren't handed out to anyone else :).

Then on Friday, Mamaw and Pappy came for a visit. I didn't know until they were on their way that our town was having a trick or treat on Main Street. So Gavin was able to go trick-or-treating with Mamaw and Pappy.

These are the only pictures I have of Gavin in his Woody costume - I carried my camera around with me everywhere on Halloween but never took it out!

His boots were actually slippers, so it was slow going. Pappy picked him up for any long stretches of walking.

We didn't get around to carving our pumpkin until the day of Halloween. Gavin seemed to enjoy getting all of the gunk out of the pumpkin.

Like I said, I didn't get pictures of the rest of our day. We went to Grandma Lucy and Grandpa Trump's houses and then we went to the church trunk or treat and carnival. After that, we went home to hand out candy to the masses. Gavin's cousin came over and we went trick or treating up and down our street. He didn't want anything to do with me - only his cousin could hold his hand!

Overall, we had a great Halloween and look forward to the rest of the holidays coming up!