Prebble Family Tales

Gareth’s birthday celebrations stretched out for an entire week around his actual 2nd birthday (no, he’s not spoiled!)

We had one party at his Nana’s house on Thanksgiving Day. The first gift Gareth opened was a Little People bus; he loved it so much that it was hard to persuade him to open the rest of his pile of gifts (he eventually did open them all, but he kept one eye on the bus the entire time!) <%popup(20031205-bus.jpg|640|457|The best gift)%> | <%popup(20031205-heard it.jpg|410|640|Hey, I heard my bus! )%> For the entire week, anytime someone sang “Happy Birthday” to Gareth he’d laugh and smile like crazy! <%popup(20031205-singing.jpg|640|448|Singing)%> Gareth dove into his Thomas cake with great enthusiasm–and ended up quite a messy (but cute) boy. <%popup(20031205-cake.jpg|640|407|Thomas Cake )%> | <%popup(20031205-big mess.jpg|480|621|Big Mess)%> | <%popup(20031205-mirror.jpg|640|431|Checking out the Mess)%>

The second celebration was with the Berkey family. Gareth’s Pappy, Great Gram, Aunt Arlene, and Aunt Karen joined us for the party. Gareth had fun with many of his new toys, including his Tigger from Pappy and his steering wheel from his great Gram and Pap. <%popup(20031205-tigger.jpg|500|498|Bouncing Tigger)%> | <%popup(20031205-steering.jpg|640|495|Driving his walker)%>

We had one more party–a dinner with Grammy Anne, Aunt Carey and Keegan. And finally Gareth opened his presents from Mommy and Daddy on his birthday morning. Whew! We are birthdayed-out!

Gareth had surgery in mid-October. His tonsils were incredibly large and his ENT suggested that perhaps removing them would decrease Gareth’s drool and might increase his ability to swallow. So, we headed to the hospital for three procedures on one day: a tonsilectomy, an adenoidectomy, and placement of ear tubes. The surgeries went fine and Gareth was released from the hosptial the next day. He was cranky for a few days, but doses of Tylenol and gifts from family certainly improved his mood! So far we’ve seen Gareth trying to swallow a bit more, but he’s still drooling buckets. We’ll just continue to see what happens as Gareth’s muscles get stronger.

The big news from this fall is that Gareth is “talking”. He has a speech book full of 60+ pictures that he can use to communicate with us. He can choose what activity he wants to do, what toy he’d like to play with, and what song we should sing. He can also answer any ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question or tell us he wants more or is all done. It’s been so great to watch him making choices and letting us know what he wants. Through his speech assessments and activities we’ve also been able to determine that Gareth knows a lot of information and is a pretty smart cookie!

Another great development was seeing Gareth in a walker. We borrowed a walker from some friends for a trial run and Gareth loves it! He zooms backwards and sideways (he hasn’t quite figured out forwards) all over the kitchen floor. It’s fabulous to see him moving all around!! We are in the process of ordering him one of his own; hopefully it’ll arrive soon.

Trick or Treat, Smell my Feet, Give me something good to eat! Gareth really enjoyed Halloween this year. He had two books that we had to read EVERY day for weeks before Halloween. One was Five Little Pumpkins; Gareth chose one of the pumpkins from the book as his inspiration for his Jack-O-Lantern. <%popup(20031205-yucky.jpg|640|429|Yucky! )%> | <%popup(20031205-inspiration.jpg|640|365|Gareth's Pumpkin)%> Trav, Gareth and I each made a Jack-O-Lantern to greet our crowds of trick-or-treaters. <%popup(20031205-family.jpg|640|446|Our Family of Pumpkins)%> Gareth looked adorable as Eeyore; he dressed up for a family gathering and for a Halloween party at my school. <%popup(20031205-Eeyore.jpg|417|640|Hello, I'm Eeyore.)%>