The World According to Alisa: Transitions

January has been a month of transitions...back to work for me, Jon transitioned to his new job as a manager in an AT&T store and back to school and play for Gavin. Another big transition? Gavin now sleeps in a big boy bed!! I hadn't been anti big boy bed, but it did take a village to make it happen! We had been looking for furniture since before Christmas and just didn't find "the one". Then Jon ran into Costco one day and told me they had a cute set. Sure enough, it was pretty much what we were looking for. The next hurdle? Getting the furniture OUT of the spare room, getting the new furniture in and figuring out what to do with the couch in my office so the bed from the spare room could go in there, yada, yada, yada. Basically any minor move required a major move of more furniture. But thanks to Jon and his buddy Nick, the furniture got hauled in, up and put together. In fact, the couch that was in my office is now in the garage as it did not fit through the doorway to the basement! Ugh. But despite all the logistical snafu's, Gavin once again made a seamless transition. We basically came home from a 2nd trip to Costco with a new mattress, threw some sheets and blankets on the bed and he climbed in and never looked back! He still asks to rock every once in a while, but since that is in the "baby" room, we try to side step that issue. That's one of the reasons I wanted to get his "big boy" room set up - a pregnant belly and a restless 3 year old do not do well in a small rocking chair! Plus, I wanted to get him settled in his new space in advance of someone new taking over his old space, so it didn't seem as if we were pushing him out. The room isn't quite completed - we still need to hang pictures on the wall and get some curtains up, so I'll post pictures of the completed room soon (I hope)!
Did I mention that Gavin is a bit of a toe walker? One of the suggestions from an occupational therapist that came to visit was that sometimes toe walkers walk on their toes because they do not have enough opportunity to expend energy. I took this message to heart because really, Gavin does only play in our living room and as it has been too cold to go outside, he's been stuck! So I signed Gavin up for My Gym (a local kid's gym) for the Saturday morning 1 hour session. He gets to run, jump, balance, climb and hang during his hour there and he loves it. It's funny, because I think I have always balked at paying $60 for a months gym membership for me and yet I didn't hesitate to sign him up for 4 classes for $60!! Priorities I guess. Another reason is that Gavin struggles a bit with following direction and gets in trouble at pre-school for not listening, so I thought another opportunity for him to be involved in a class setting where he as to take turns and follow direction might be good for him!
Gavin's tantrums seem to come and go, but I think we are getting better equipped at handling them so they don't seem to go on and on and on and on. He's started to play games and actually finish them, so we play Yahtzee and Uno quite often and he often wins! And that's one thing I don't do, is lose a game on purpose. I figure you have to learn the ups and downs of game playing right from the start, so if you play a game with me, just know I go for the win EVERY time (and no, I don't care if you're 3)! Gavin has a lot of favorites now too:
Favorite color: Blue
Favorite number: 3 and 9
Favorite food: chocolate
Favorite yogurt: Raspberry dannon
Favorite highway: 141
He comes up with a "new" favorite something daily, but those above remain a constant.
He has started entertaining himself a bit better too and can play with his toys by himself for 20 minutes before he starts begging you to jump in. His imagination has really come into play lately too - he has many phone calls where he talks to Papa, Grandma, Miss Ella and he'll just walk around the room on his pretend phone and have a conversation with whomever is on the line. He also has his favorite "toy" (which is missing at the moment) - Little Guy. Over Christmas time there was a Santa that hung on our door and he had bells on his hat. Well, one of those bells fell off and Gavin adopted him and named him "little guy". He would take Little Guy with him everywhere, Little Guy would cry and need to be rocked and Little Guy would go to sleep with him! Now, imagine the stress of trying to find Little Guy when Gavin misplaced him...talk about a needle in a haystack! I have a feeling Little Guy is trapped somewhere along the wall of his new bed, but I haven't had Jon pull it out yet to look.
On the pregnancy front, so far so good. Starting to get tired at the end of the day and need to take a break to give my extra girth a rest. I've decided that whoever invented maternity pants and underwear had a sick sense of humor - they all suck! Last time I was pregnant during nice weather so I wore skirts and capris often and they didn't cause me this much grief. I am CONSTANTLY hiking my pants up - it's driving me nuts!! I've always said that one day I am going to design "cute" boys clothing as it's hard to find things that aren't plastered with trucks or cars or skulls or snowboarding or you name it. Classic little boys clothing is hard to come by and apparently so are maternity pants that actually stay up. One of these days...

Gavin and I headed to The Magic House on my last day off from work. It's a children's hands on museum and here were a few of his favorites...

They had a building exhibit where you could pretend to build a house, dig in the yard....

and ride a Caterpillar!!

This is him trying to get one of the "magic" balls suspended in air. He was a bit scared at first but eventually grabbed all the balls off to play with (they are blue after all!)

We ran into our friends Myles, Charlie and Sylvia there!

The pretend market was a big hit too!

As was climbing the giant beanstalk from floor to floor!

Grandma and Gavin reading all about John Deere tractors. This book is not a kids book and talks about torque and engines and other engine type stuff and Gavin can sit and read for hours!