Welcome to Vreeman Family Website
Musings, media, and miscellany from the Vreemans in Fishers, IN
Expecting a new addition
We are very happy to announce that we are expecting Baby #2! Lorrie is now 20 weeks along, so we're halfway there! Baby's due date is January 9, 2011.
Back Online
I'm happy to report that we've finally got this website back online. Just before we left for Brazil a storm took out our power and killed the hard drive in my webserver. After a new hard drive, an upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, and a couple of new Cyberpower UPSs I got the server rebuilt and ready to rock. Unfortunately, my backups we're as reliable as I thought and I was only able to restore posts on this website back to August 2009. Fortunately, our media was stored elsewhere in the cloud, so that is all back. So, we'll start things back up here again.
First things first, you'll want to head over to the photos and videos to check out the latest uploads.
11 Months
Gavin finished off month 11 today after surviving 4 days with Dad. The Vreeman boys had fun together while Lorrie saw kids at the hospital and went to a peds continuing ed course. There was the infamous "zip tie" event and the first push toy excursion. Gavin was pretty disappointed that he wasn't able to rock out with me and Uncle Phil at the Creed concert Saturday night, but we did listen to their music all day at home and I showed him how to use drop D tuning. At this point though, Gavin is mostly concentrating on his percussion and DJ mixing skills.
Last year at this time we were thinking he could be coming any day. We definitely didn't know all the adventures that lay ahead...
Practice and breakthroughs
Gavin's 10 month old nervous system loves to practice. Squatting up and down, playing catch, investigating how straps and buckles work, splashing in the tub. Ad infinitum. And that's how it was with the first step on our staircase. In June, Gavin started to take an interest in the living room stairs and just kept practicing going up and down the first step over and over. This continued for about a month or so until one night when had the Sellers and Taylor families over for a cookout. Inspired by the older kids going up the stairs and the larger audience, Gavin took off and climbed the whole flight (with me spotting behind). It was a breakthrough moment and now he can't leave them alone. In the time I've been trying to write this post he's gone up them at least 6 times. Here is one of the runs on video (though 2 min 30 secs is one of his slower times).
The last few weeks have been filled fun adventures with family and friends: Mike and BZ's 40th birthday, an afternoon adventure at the Indianapolis Museum of Art with Uncle Joe and Aunt Rachel, visits from both sets of grandparents, fun at the Indiana state fair. Here is the full media collection for the last few weeks:
Gavin waxes poetic and eats some rice
Gavin does the sit n spin with a tape measure- Gavin learns to use a fork
- Gavin climbs the stairs
August 2009 gallery (Gavin 10 months) : slideshow here | thumbnails here- August Indianapolis Museum of Art adventure (Gavin 10 months) : slideshow here | thumbnails here
Family vacation - round 2
All of us thoroughly enjoyed our extended weekend vacation up at Houghton Lake, MI - especially Gavin. As you can see from the photo gallery below, he certainly didn't lack for attention. I guess that's what grandparents are for. The weather was beautiful, the setting very peaceful, but most of all we loved getting the time to spend with family to enjoy stories and laughs, good food, kayaking, late night bonfires with s'mores (every night), and all sorts of other fun. We've added a couple of videos and a photo gallery of the trip:
- Houghton Lake, MI Vacation Gallery: slideshow here | thumbnails here
Now that Gavin has turned the corner on 9 months, we've also started a running collections of photos over on Picassa. After a couple of days with constant attention from many people, Gavin has really started to perfect his showmanship.
- Gavin 9 Months Gallery: slideshow here | thumbnails here
His latest motor development (which he learned up at Houghton Lake) is pulling to stand. It's still a bit of a challenge for him, but he keeps practicing more and more each day. Cruising is not too far away!
Teething biscuits are a bit messy
We've just arrive up here in Houghton Lake, MI for a couple of days on the lake with Mom and Dad and Phil. The weather is beautiful and we're looking forward to a relaxing couple of days. Last weekend we had a great time at the Fisher's Freedom Festival. It was Gavin's first fireworks display. Funny enough, he decided to go to sleep just when they started. (It was about 10:00PM). We've added a few last photos to Gavin's 8 month gallery. The other highlight is a series of photos for another messy experience with teething biscuits. Gavin gives a little after dinner commentary in this video:
Baller
I'm here in Baltimore for a PT conference, but wanted to make a quick post here to mention a couple of new videos we shot of Gavin. He is particularly fond of his new basketball and, for some odd reason, this Halloween straw:
(Oops...just noticed I had bad links up there before. It's corrected now)
