Brekken

In a few days Brekken will be 14 months old. It doesn't even seem possible that he will be that old. :) But the past two weeks have been a major growth spurt for him. He has started walking, learned to wave bye (I think he def. coulda done this earlier but we never did it really), started blowing kisses, and blowing on his food and toys to make them work. It has been really fun to see all the fun things he has learned in the past few weeks, because while we all know our kids learn every day, you can't always see what they picked up. :)

He mainly only says mama, dada, and no. Although I am pretty sure he has been trying to say dog, Razzle (our dogs name), and I have heard him say ball, and a few other words, but right now his brain is all about the physical activities he is learning. I am sure one of these days those will slow down and he will pick up talking at a rapid rate. :)

He loves to be outside, loves to play with Marlee, doesn't really play with baby toys...he wants the big kid stuff. He is usually a very happy, mild tempered little man, but he can throw a fit when he thinks he needs to, and he will def "yell" at you if you aren't doing things the way he would like.

My favorite (not being mean) is when the door is open for something, and it's not time for him to go outside, but he really wants to, so he crawls as fast as he can over to the door (usually while I am shutting it), and while he is crawling he is yelling at me the whole time. It makes me feel bad, but it is seriously the funniest thing to me. :)

 He loves to be in these chairs...

 and to play in the dirt...

 and to laugh...often...

 and his first (or maybe second) owweee. He fell out of a chair kinda like the one before...straight onto his face. He had a bloody lip, and I am pretty sure it may have broken his nose. He didn't catch himself, and I couldn't get to him fast enough. :(

And my little walker...

Brekken turned 1 (in February)

We had a fish theme...or rather a fish cake.

We shared a birthday party with our good friends who their son turned 1 a day before Brekken. It was a good time! :) We opened presents...well more like the big kids helped him, because he had no interest at all.

And of course we had cake...



And one of all of us. :)

Kids..

Brekken turned 11 months near the end of January, and Marlee turned 4 a few days after. I can't believe I have a 4 year old! And that my baby is almost a year old. It's so crazy to me how time is just flying by!
Brekkens favorite word is no...and that is about the only word he says any more. Little turkey. He says mama and dada sometimes, as well as oh and he used to say hi, but I haven't heard that in a while. He crawls like a speed demon, and will walk if he can push something around...so some of his toys are bigger, and he will stand up and push them around while walking. He babbles all the time. He didn't inherit the quiet gene from his dad! He's gonna be a talker like Marlee and myself. :) He definitely tells me if he doesn't like something, by either screaming or crying. I think he is going to be harder to wean from nursing than Marlee. I had to go to Walmart last night to get diapers and they were still eating dinner when I left. Mike got him all ready for bed, and they were all playing just fine until I walked in. I tried to put some stuff away and he just followed me around crying until I sat down to nurse him. There are other times that I will have waited longer than I normally do (because we are either out and about or something else like that) and he will climb all over me, trying to eat my shirt. He reminds me of a little bird. It's cute! :)

Marlee...she is my big girl! She is usually so helpful! She likes to play with Brekken, although she has her moments of wanting nothing to do with him. She still loves dinosaurs, but I do see a little more "girly" side coming out of her. She now likes to play princess more, and twirl and dance. She has pretty much stopped taking naps now...which is a real bummer for me! She still has quiet time, because lets face it, every mom in the world needs a few minutes to themselves during the day.
She loves to go sledding, which is what we did for her party. It was a blast! We went a few days later with some friends and Marlee and her friend finally went down by themselves. She also learned how to go down a bigger slide at the park. It's cool to see her growing, learning and trying new things! She is really coming out of her shell!

I have an interview I want to do with her...and am hoping to get it done soon... :) Then I will post that too.

Brekken 10 months

Brekken turned 10 months right before Christmas...so I guess I shoulda titled 10.5 months. As of 10 months he had 4 teeth. Two on top, two on bottom. As of now, he has 4 teeth, and is getting his 5th tooth on the bottom.

He loves:
Marlee
Our dog
balls
trucks/cars
his sisters dolls for her doll house
anything Marlee has
the remote
my cell phone
keys (real keys...he doesn't play around with the pretend ones :)
outside

He says on occasion hi, mama, dada and oh. Although none of those are said all the time, or with very much rhyme or reason. He likes to talk, and babble.

He and Marlee share a room. If I lay her down first and she's sleeping, and then lay him in there (during nap time) he will stand up looking at her and say "Hiiiieee" a bunch of times. It's super cute, and cracks me up! :)

He says oh for almost everything. If he sees the dog he will say oh and crawl over to the door. :)

He is in 12 month clothing. He is a super happy boy. He loves food. He barely eats any baby food any more. I usually just give him whatever we are eating.
He can crawl. He can pull himself up. He is creeping along furniture a little bit. He can go up and down stairs...well, down one stair, I haven't let him go down more than one at a time, although he loves to try to get to the stairs and wants to go down them if the gate isn't closed. He is super fast too, so he has almost went down them...little turkey!

He plays peek a boo with blankets, and claps his hands.

We love him very much! :)

Brekken

Brekken is now 9 months old. He turned last Friday. Crazy how fast time is going!

Last week, literally he learned:
how to real crawl
sit up from laying down
pull himself up to a stand
master the stair between our kitchen and living room (we have a sunken living room) and he learned that before he started real crawling.
say mama

We had his check up today and he is 20lbs 15 oz. and 27 (I think) inches long. At 6 months he was 19.9 pounds, and I thought for sure he would be at least 22 or 23 lbs. He did jump about 2 1/4 inches which is amazing to me. It may be more...I thought it would tell me how tall he was last time, but it did it in feet and inches instead of just inches, which in the Dr.'s office I couldn't do the math in the short amount of time I had. :)

Anyhow, Brek is eating solid foods and still nursing. We are starting to give him some regular foods like crackers, and some types of meat also. We will probably start introducing more of that soon.

He babbles all the time, and is a super happy baby. He still randomly wakes up in the middle of the night, but it's not as often as before. He def. has my number in the middle of the night. He cries and says Mama...and it melts my heart, but I have been trying to not give in to him.

I was going to post a bunch of pictures, but apparently ran out of storage, so I will figure out that, and then post more pictures.

Halloween

I know this is late....but I finally got my pics off my camera. :)

Pumpkin carving...




Minnie Mouse
My little elephant


We packed a lot in, in a short amount of time...We went to a "carnival", came home at 4:30 ate pizza with Grandma and Grandpa, then went trick or treating from 5-6, came home, fed Brekken and took him to the babysitters...then went to watch the UW game, because amazingly they were here. Marlee loves UW. So we had fun. It was just a lot of business all at once. :)

Marlee loved trick or treating this year. And Brekken stayed home with Mike while I took her trick or treating. Amazingly it was a super nice evening so we didn't even have to wear coats...YAY!

Beautiful!

Today, well actually this whole week has been beautiful! It's been in the 60's, which is awesome and oh so scary at the same time. But I guess we can't change how the climate is being affected by the world, (well we can IF everyone did something...but anyhow), so I try not to think about it. And just go with the flow.

I got to teach my class today, so we did scarecrows, and a Thanksgiving countdown chain. It was fun...I have no photos of it, but we essentially did this craft from No Time for Flash cards. And obviously just a chain of cut papers, and glue on one end. We also read two books...The Scarecrow boy (or something like that, and a countdown to Thanksgiving one. (I don't have them in front of me.)

Anyhow, afterwards, we met up with some friends at the park and took a lunch. I can't believe it was nice enough for us to do that...to be able to hang out in sweat shirts and have the kids play. We were there from about 10:45-2:00 it was so nice. We met some new friends also, which is awesome!!! I love meeting new people with kids Marlee's age. And actually I met this girl who her daughter is 4 (just turned 4) and then her other daughter is 9 months. Which is awesome!!!

Marlee has been really into wearing sunglasses lately. In fact we were at the park for about 2 hours and she comes up to me and says the sun was getting in her eyes, so she needed her glasses out of the truck. It cracked me up. And she has also been into wearing her hoodie with the hood up. So this is what she walks around looking like all the time...

 And this is her doing her pucker up face. She cracks me up! :)

And here is Brekken at the park.

While he can army crawl, he doesn't usually go far if we are outside. He was content to play with a toy, and a sippy cup for an hour or so. I also of course fed him, and when we had gotten there he was sleeping. We also tried the swing, and not thinking about it, I swung him a little hard, and he was done. I almost had a heart attack. But I was also swinging Marlee, so she was saying higher, higher, and I just started pushing both of them, while talking to a friend...yea. Mother of the year award right here. lol

doll houses...

I have been thinking about Christmas for a while now. I start thinking about it in about August...well the end of it anyways. I don't usually buy stuff, but I start browsing to see what I want to get the kids, and pricing things out, and start making lists of things I want to do/get for everyone. And I also start some of my hand made projects...and when you do handmade with two kids, you have to start early to get them finished in time! :)

Well, I found this doll house probably in August, on our FB kid swap. If you've looked into doll houses, they are not cheap. Mike thinks I still got ripped off, but then we went to Walmart today, I showed him that the one they had there was $90. And I got mine for cheaper. There are a few little scuff marks that I couldn't get off, but really, Marlee is 3 and doesn't care if it's used, or if it's brand new.

Well, I had planned on having that be her big present for Christmas. And then a couple weeks ago, my mom came and she saw it. She never asked about it after that day, but I knew she knew about it. And has probably spied it a few times since then. Mike and I talked about it, and decided to give it to her now. Today was the day. I went downstairs, brought it up, and cleaned it. She played with it from 9-6. I had to force her to go outside for a little while (which is really unusual-especially if Mike's out there).

We had some shopping to do also, so when we got back, she was excited to get to play with her dolls again. I am super excited she likes it so much, but kinda surprised she didn't play with her dinosaurs at all today. She has been a dinosaur girl for so long, it throws me off not to have her play with them. Mike even tried to have her dinosaurs use the house along with the people, and she told him that was not okay.

Brekken even likes the doll house. He was trying to see inside there, and Marlee would talk to him from one side and he would laugh and laugh and laugh. And she would start laughing too. I am excited to see the interaction between the two of them! It's been so fun!

And I even got some of it on video...I swear they don't do as much once I get the camera out, and you can't see their faces very well, but it cracks me up!

Are you thinking about Christmas yet?

Brekken

Brekken giggling

And him "crawling." :)

park fun

I am trying to suck it up and play outside more. It's not that I don't like being outside, it's just that my friend who always went for walks with me and my BFF moved. And once you get used to walking, playing at the park, and all those fun things with someone, it's so much harder to go by yourself. Some days I am really good at it, others not so much.

The other morning I made plans with some friends to have coffee at the park so our kids could play, and we could still have time to chat, without having to keep our kids in check the whole time we were at a resteraunt having coffee. Kill 2 birds with 1 stone. Yep, that's how I roll. :)

Anyhow, I didn't take my camera, but have been trying to take a picture every day of things we do, or in general...so I used my cell.

His fingers are super dirty from playing in the wood chips. Thankfully he doesn't really try to eat the wood chips. But he sure does have fun! Marlee and her friend, were running around like crazy kids, so I didn't get any more pictures of her. :)

This past week

Of course there was the crazy aspect of the week, that I just wrote about, but then there were a lot of fun things. Mike was off all week, and we got to hang out at home. It was nice. We got some things done around the house that we needed to do, and also did some things I have been wanting to do...:)

We had our first snow of the season last weekend. So we were all bundled up and outside at 8am last Saturday. If I haven't mentioned it before, Marlee's favorite book is Snow Day. We have been listening to Christmas music (well she has in her room), since last Christmas, and we have been reading snow day since this summer. She has been super excited for the snow. :)

So we had a snowball fight, made snow angels, and they rode in the sled...

Then Marlee and I went to get our hair cut...

And now we match...we both have bangs. :)

Then we got our family pictures. I am so bummed that i completely forgot to get pictures of just Mike and I. I don't usually pay for pictures...and the one time I did, I forgot to do that. I even thought about it before and had a whole list of things I wanted, but then some stuff happened and they were post poned,. and then I forgot. :(

Then we went fishing. We had a lot of fun. Although we didn't catch fish, and it was freezing that day.

 The only thin we caught was this big stick. lol

Then my sister came and we went to the pumpkin patch.

 My children don't cooperate very well with pictures of them together. Brekken was interested in the dirt, and Marlee wanted to go back to where her cousins were, because they were picking out tiny pumpkins. :)

 Then we went shopping and found this cute hat. :)

Brekken 7 months

Brekken is 7 months old today. And of course, I thought it was tomorrow, so I don't have a picture of him. ugh. The 2nd child sometimes gets the shaft!

Anyhow, he has been rolling all over the floor for a couple of  months now, and today he learned how to drink out of  a sippy cup. I am so glad I didn't buy any of the other kind for him-the soft top ones, that leak every where. I just randomly decided to give him a hard one today to see if he would use it, and he did. And he even figured it out, and drank quite a lot.

He is eating 3 meals of baby food a day. He is in size 3 diapers. His little legs are starting to thin out. He is holding his arms up for you to pick him up now. He knows the words mama, daddy, and Marlee as well as up and more...as far as knowing that they have meanings. Not actually saying them. :)

Tonight is his first night in his room. Tomorrow night I told Marlee she could probably sleep in there too. I was going to give Brekken a few days, and still might since he is not really loving it in there right now, before I put her bed in there with him. I am hoping by putting them in the same room, both kids will sleep through the night, in their own room. :) Brekken is going to have to learn the crying it out method in the next few days, because the past two or three weeks he has been waking up any where in between 2-6 times a night. I think one week it was because he was teething, but I didn't realize it until the week was over, and then he got used to being near me...so now that's his preferred way to sleep.

He is a happy boy. He smiles, and laughs a lot. He is definitely wanting to move, and to do "big kid" things with Marlee. :)  He loves books, and being outside. He also loves Marlee's toys. And I am pretty sure he learned to roll onto his belly because he wanted to see her, when she would be playing across the room. He watches her a lot. She can make him laugh so quickly. It's so cute! And she talks to him a lot. She will walk by and talk to him, and he just grins at her.

We feel very blessed to have him in our family! :)

Brekken 3.5 months

I just love his grin!

June

Playing catch up. I thought I had put my pictures on the computer last month, but then I was going back to figure out when I took a particular picture, and it was in June. The middle of June. Ack!

We were all dressed up for something...in the middle of June. I have no idea what now...maybe breakfast with Mike's parents for his dad's birthday, but really I am not sure.







These are typical, I guess when you have more than one person in a picture. I really wish Brekken's eyes would have been open in the first picture because it is such a good picture of Marlee.

I'm going to play catch up for a while...we are now in relaxing mode of summer...all of Aug. I still have things I need to get done, but we are done with soccer, and swim lessons, and all the other little classes Marlee did. Which were all fun, but now we get to have lazy days of swimming, playing at the park, raspberry picking, and probably going back over the mountain at least once to do some canning with my family. :) So I plan on being able to blog a little more.

Brekken 4 months

Brekken is now 4 months old. I have been horrible about taking pictures with the darn frog. I have also been horrible about blogging, reading blogs and anything really that has to do with the computer unless it's been about Random Acts of Kindness...and some fun ideas I will share soon. (after the recipients receive their stuff).

Onto Brekken. My son is getting so big! He is now 17.2 pounds at 4 months old. Which is so crazy to me, because Marlee wasn't 17 pounds until she was much older...like 9 or 10 months. :) I have no idea how long he is because I wasn't in there for that part. (there was another child in our family who needed a potty break.)

He is healthy as can be, with the exception of one thing...he has the early signs of torticollis (I have no idea if that's how you spell it) which is where one side of his neck isn't as strong as the other...but we have exercises for it, and unless I told you, you probably wouldn't even know that about him. So, we are practicing these stretches, and then a PT will come 2 times a month to show me more exercises and to assess how well he's doing...because even since yesterday of doing these stretches, he is doing so much better (which I know it won't be taken care of over night, but still). :)

Otherwise, he is a super happy baby. He smiles all the time, barely ever cries...more fusses when he's hungry or tired...and then smiles some more. He is happy to play by himself, or to play with someone (of course) and he loves to be outside. He even likes grass...which is surprising, because most kids I know have to learn to like the feel of grass. :)

He is starting to sit up by himself, and can sometimes do it for about 15-30 seconds at a time, which is pretty awesome! He has rolled over a few times, but he's such a content baby, I don't think he cares to do it. He loves to stand, or sit up and look around. If you are holding him he doesn't like to be laying down.

He has found his fingers, and loves looking at them, at mine or chewing on his or mine. He lights up when he sees Marlee, and she loves him too. She "reads" him stories, or plays games with him....like dinosaurs and other silly things,...that she is really playing alone, but she likes to think he's playing with her also. It's super cute.

Here's a picture of him one day when we were at the park. He was on my lap, and i was taking the picture. 

"camping"

Marlee is all about camping right now, even though we have only went to a cabin in the mountains, and haven't actually went camping yet. She was pretending she was fishing out the back door on the step. She had Mike "fish" with her too. Then we all had to go to bed in the tent. So all four of us went into the pretend tent and slept. She wanted to pretend to call Mike Dad and me Mom...I think because she usually calls us Daddy and Mamma. :) So Mike decided her pretend name was going to be Barbara. And she wanted to call Brekken Brokus.

The next day, she was all about pretending to camp. She had kind of a funky week...she threw up one time each night for 2 nights. It was so weird. So we stayed inside that morning to make sure she was still good. While we were inside we made a fort with blankets. And all day she wanted to be called Barbara. It was cracking me up.

Mike was thinking about setting up the tent in the yard (since we never tent camp any more...we only go in the camper since there are so many grizzlies up in the mountains now). But now there are a million mile winds so I doubt it will happen tonight. Hopefully tomorrow will be nicer and we can do it. :)

I am looking forward to making more "forts" with her in the near future! :)