Cousins

After spending Wednesday and Thursday with Quinn, Gavin was lucky enough to spend yesterday evening with his other two cousins, Audry and Travis.  It was fun to see Gavin try to keep up with the "big kids" -- and it was even more fun to see Audry and Travis interact with their baby cousin.  They kept building towers for him to knock down (a favorite pastime for him) and showered him with lots of hugs and kisses.  He was loving all of the attention!  Gavin sure is fortunate to have such great big cousins to watch out for him.

Thankful

On Thanksgiving last year, I was 40 weeks pregnant and hoping the big feast would kickstart labor (it didn't).  Quinn has just been born a few weeks earlier, so I gave him the cutie pie outfit I had planned on dressing Gavin in had he made it in time for the holiday.  It was a lovely celebration, and though I had desperately hoped Gavin would be in my arms and not in my belly by then, I was pretty thankful we didn't have to spend Thanksgiving at the hospital.

This year's celebration was special in a different way.  It was Gavin's first Thanksgiving, and it was nice that he was old enough to eat some of the traditional holiday fixings!  His favorite foods were turkey, stuffing, and tiny bits of pumpkin pie.  :)  He and Quinn had fun toddling around the playroom and visiting with family.  Gavin especially loved swinging at the park with Aunt Erin and reading books with Gigi.  It was so nice having Grandma Nancy in town this year, as she hadn't been able to come last year on account of my due date being so near.  The food was great, the company was great, and we were able to reflect on how thankful we are for the many blessings in our lives.  This year has been filled with some serious ups and downs, but generally speaking, we are lucky to have a strong marriage, a beautiful son, a roof over our heads, and opportunities to better ourselves through education, social and family relationships, and work.

Here are some photos of perhaps our greatest blessing, Gavin Robert, celebrating his first Thanksgiving with my family:

A huge THANK YOU to my parents for again hosting such a beautiful celebration.  Feeding nine adults, two babies, and five dogs is no easy feat!  :)  Here's to many, many more Thanksgiving feasts together!

Eleven Months

How did it happen that in a few short weeks, our favorite little boy will be ONE YEAR old?  It's crazy to think about, and even crazier to look at pictures of Gavin as a newborn and realize how much he's changed and grown in such a short period of time.  Anyway, I've enlisted my sister-in-law to help with Gavin's one-year photos (I think balloons will be involved, and that's a two person operation for sure) -- so these might be the last monthly photos I take of Gavin on my own!  But first, here's a family photo we had taken last month.  I love it because it's rare I actually get to appear in pictures with my two loves, but even MORE rare that all three of us are smiling and looking at the camera!   

I took Gavin's eleven month portraits at the Loveland Bike Trail last week.  The park has always been special to us (we had our wedding photos taken there), so any opportunity I have to take pictures there is a good one.

  

A bit late...but HAPPY HALLOWEEN and other late October happenings.

October is my favorite month of the year -- I love the weather, the celebrations, the pumpkin spice lattes -- but two of the main reasons I love the month so much happen on the very last two days.  Stephen and I got married on October 30, and Halloween is on October 31.

To celebrate our second anniversary, we went to Melting Pot for dinner (yum) and then to Dave and Buster's for an hour or two afterwards.  These are things you get to do very, VERY rarely as a new parent, so an evening out to reminisce about how special our big day had been two years ago was really lovely and much-appreciated.

Next up was Halloween and all of the pre-Halloween festivities.  Gavin had a great time with his girlfriend Alli at King's Island (his first visit), then dressed as Mickey Mouse for Brooklyn's Halloween party later that evening.  We thought he might want something a little warmer for ACTUAL Halloween, so we got him a tiger costume we also figured he could wear to stay warm at Bengals games, but honestly, it was too cold and rainy to take him out much for trick-or-treating.  Still, we had a nice time eating pizza and chit chatting with the Tudor family before Gavin had the meltdown of the century and we had to take him home.  (Turns out, he was sick!  We landed in the ER at Children's last week with a fever of almost 104, vomiting, and severe lethargy.  Something must be going around Linford, because a few other families with babies were dealing with feverish kiddos too.)  It's been a rough go of it here in the Dowd household, but a few doses of antibiotics seem to have Gavin on the mend.  Here are some photos I snapped pre-illness...

Here's hoping next year's Halloween is a little warmer, a little less rainy, and most definitely fever-free!