Nugget Update

**Note: This post has been written and meant to be posted for days.  I kept putting it off, thinking that I really needed some more pictures to include.  But, as it so often happens, my picture taking has dropped off considerably as the months have passed, and I just don't have any other gems to include.  So enjoy the update with the few photos that I've included, and I promise to photo bomb you someday soon.

Since my little man turned one, I've stopped with the monthly updates.  After all, he's a big boy now, and while the milestones are wonderful, they're not so massive and frequent as they are during the first year.  Plus, I'm out of monthly stickers, and a post without a stickered onesie just seems wrong, ya know?

BUT, for those of you nugget lovers, I thought I'd post about a few of his recent goings-on.

• He's talking.  Not coherently, mind you, but the boy is very verbal.  Lots of mamas and dadas and nanas and badabadas and sprfffllshpps...you get the idea.  He has recently added both intonation and facial expression to his babbling.  He clearly has a very important story to tell, and it is delightful to listen to him tell it.
• He's moving.  FAST.  Yesterday, I had to actually run a little bit to catch him, as he was running away from me carrying something that he shouldn't have.  I don't even remember what it was.  Which brings me to my next bullet-
• He's into EVERYTHING.  Cabinets, drawers, baskets, bins- he wants in.  And he gets in.  And he destroys.  Things are constantly strewn about my house, because as fast as I can pick them up, he's into another cabinet pulling everything out of it.  And how is it that the kid has one million toys, and yet all he really wants to do is chew on his shoe?

Did a tornado pass through the kitchen?  No, just Gabe.

• He's loving the outdoors.  He wants to be outside all. the. time.  Luckily, the weather has been gorgeous, so we have been playing in the yard overtime.  This really just means an extra lot of poop-scooping from me.  But hey, a mom's gotta do what a mom's gotta do.

At the park, trying to figure out how the big kid swing works.

• He's understanding.  It seems like everyday, there is another new word that he clearly understands.  He knows outside (his favorite place to be), upstairs (his second favorite place to be), Yo Gabba Gabba (we usually only watch one episode a day, just before his nap, but he knows it and loves it), eat (he runs to his high chair), and milk/juice (he gets his sippy cup).  The boy is learning.  Amazing to behold.
• And finally, he's playing games.  He L.O.V.E.S. to be chased, especially by Daddy.  He will laugh and laugh and laugh, and he never wants to stop.  He also likes to play peekaboo, and up/down.  He'll stand on one side of the table and look at me.  When I say down, he crouches down, and when I say up, he pops his head back up.  Too cute.

An "up" in the up/down game.

Couldn't you just eat him up?