Fall Traditions

Lots of leaf exploration,

 and some leaf-eating,

  

getting measured at Tanner's Orchard,

 driving a "corn tractor,"

(yes, he picked the pink one)

 eating pumpkin pancakes,

(do you see the one I accidentally made?)

getting pictures in the front yard,

(This is what I get when I ask Collin to smile)

and carving jack o' lanterns.

* * *

And a goodbye smile

from my favorite jack o' lantern (with 5 teeth of his very own).



9 Months

Okay, first his stats from his well-check appointment today...
Height: 29 inches (76%)
Weight: 19 pounds (25%)
Still seems to be pretty normal - long and lean like his parents. And just for the fun of it, here's my nine-month post on Collin. It's so fun to see them both at the same age, since of course I usually only see them for their current ages. (Still cute though!)

Length: He seems really long to me. In fact, his 12-month onesies don't seem like they'll make it all winter. I may have to invest in some of those extenders, which will be easier than replacing his wardrobe. It is so awesome to just pull out the crate of Collin's clothes each time the season changes. I hope they keep the same growth rate.

Weight: His car seat is finally getting to the point where I can't really heft it anymore. Ryan even complained about hauling him around at church on Sunday. While away from home, we use the carrier as his high chair, so it goes to the park, museum and church with us. (Hey, this one has had to learn to eat on the road! Funny how I never had Collin do that. Our schedule certainly doesn't revolve around his routine, that's for sure.)

Routine: Speaking of routines, here's a typical Brennan-day:
5am Wake up, nurse, go back to sleep
6:45 Wake up and watch PBS with his brother (while Mom exercises and Dad gets ready for work)
8am Nurse and nap
9am Wake up and go where ever the day takes us (C's preschool, Story Time, grocery shopping, Playgroup)
11am Eat lunch
12:30pm Nurse and nap
2:30pm Wake up and play
5pm Dinner
6:45pm Nurse then...
7pm Bedtime

Naps: He just doesn't seem to need much sleep, about 10 hours at night and usually less than 3 hours during the day. When Collin was this age he was sleeping more than that just at night - not counting his daytime naps. In fact, Collin sleeps more than Brennan does on a daily basis, and he's almost three!

Eating: He's still a very picky eater, and he is really only interested in eating what we are eating now (pizza, spaghetti, tacos). I understand why my mom said that she always gave up on baby food before our first birthdays; I'm done with the battle, and he'd much rather eat snippets of our meal than anything I've prepared (ie opened the jar of) for him.

Movement: As far as moving, Brennan is no longer content to sit and watch the world go by. He gets up on his hands and knees constantly, rocks and rocks back and forth, but has yet to master the left-side/right-side alternating. I know he'll get it soon, and I sure hope he does - His whining to get something out of his reach is killing me.

Something I want to Remember: Alright, I sound pretty whiny in this post, so I will now share a sweet moment I had last week with the B-Man. Now Brennan has never liked to be held. He has never let us rock him to sleep, and he's not a cuddler AT ALL. Here's what happened...

He was so fussy last week (teething, I assume) that I thought I'd try to hold him for a little while. After nursing him to calm him a bit, I put him over my shoulder to burp him, and he laid his head down. He totally fell asleep!

(The other handful of times this has ever happened in his life, I've always laid him down in his bed and left. But for some reason, and because the C-Man was napping, I decided I probably really did have time to hold him.)

For 30 blissful minutes, I held my "little baby" while he slept. It's the only time I've ever done that with him. Is that bad? Life is coming at a mile a minute, and that doesn't allow me to hold my baby much, what can I say. Not to mention he doesn't usually like it either.

Anyway, I have to admit I got a little weepy, and I have truly felt far more compassionate and bonded to him ever since. What a little thing with such far-reaching effects.

Conclusion: I love this little guy. He's crazy, and I don't think I'll EVER figure him out, but I love him. He's mine, in all his psycho (aka passive aggressive) ways, and I wouldn't have him any other way.

Tri-decade Birthdays

We've had a birthday.

Shout Hooray!

You should have wanted to sing to us this week,

One year older,

 

and wiser too!  

 

Happy birthday,

to us!  

  

Festivities the last 5 days have included -

blowing out candles, eating and making a mess with lots of chocolate goodies, having a bonfire with friends, eating out with and without kids, and having a word scavenger hunt. 

What Scares You?

Happy Halloween-month!

Things that Scare Collin to tears

cats & dogs (and almost every other animal), especially...

spiders

pickup things (aka forklifts)

fire trucks

most toys that make noise (including all toys that move on their own)

fireworks

vacuum

lawn mower & weed eater (and all of Daddy's tools)

our slide

Makes you wonder what DOESN'T scare the Big C Man, eh?

It also makes me wonder about the origins of my little wuss. For instance, I don't like animals, especially dogs, cats and spiders. Did I pass this fear to Collin through his environment devoid of living things, or did it come about because of my reaction each time one bugs us?

On the other hand, his fear of forklifts, vacuums and lawn mowers seems completely irrational - and certainly not inherited from Ryan or me. Most of his fears seem to center around loud noises - battery-driven toys, fireworks and fire engines - which makes me wonder if he has some sensory-sensitivity.

And the fear of our slide... just bizarre.

I just hope he grows out of most of it., particularly the fork lift fear. You wouldn't believe the tantrums we've endured outside Home Depot and in the checkout at Walmart (Bet you didn't know that the beep of the scanner for groceries sounds like the backup beep of a fork lift?)

Visiting Daddy's Work

This past weekend the Caterpillar Tech Center hosted their 50th Anniversary party. To have the entire facility open to families of employees is a huge deal.The entire facility is fenced in with barbed-wire coils along the top. Employees must swipe their badge to enter and exit turnstiles, and all visitors (usually) must be at least 12 years old, have their picture taken at the admistration building, and wear a name badge. If you try to google map it, it doesn't exist! Needless to say,  Collin was so excited to get to go inside the gates!

They really out-did themselves for this party! For lunch, they had the usually hamburgers, hot dogs and barbeque chicken sandwiches. We ate under one of 5 big white tents and then headed to one of the three inflatable bounce houses. I wonder how many people were there; it was a mad house.

For some BIZARRE reason, Collin was super outgoing and brave and wanted to do EVERYTHING. It was awesome and very unlike him.

After the bounce house, we headed to the big dump truck, which despite the huge sign asking people not to climb on it, the men running the station were letting all the kids climb around. Collin sat in the driver's seat for a few minutes, but the line was so long, I made him get down to let others take a turn. Then we headed to the passenger side where he sat for a while pushing all the buttons and handles too. The rest of the time we were inside the fence, he kept BEGGING to return to sit in the dump truck. So cute!

Every family got to have their picture taken in front of one of the machines. Here's our little group in front of a bulldozer.

Then we headed to Ryan's building. We got to see his desk, which he thought was rather boring (and it was quite honestly), but I really wanted to get to see his little cubicle. The best part was seeing all the pictures and crafts I've made for him sitting prominently in the corner.

Unfortunately, Ryan's engine was part of the restricted portion of the tour, so we didn't get to see what causes all his headaches. This is us outside his building. (We forgot our camera so all the pictures are from our phones, hence the supurb quality.)

This is what we were trying to get in the background.

Next we headed to the ice cream stand and fire engines. The Tech Center has their own fire department (good thing since Ryan has caught two engines on fire in three years). Remember Collin was being super brave? No other kids were on the fire truck, so I told him his wasn't allowed. Then a fire fighter came up to us, and COLLIN asked him if he could get in the seat. He NEVER talks to strangers. And honestly, who could deny this little face? Anyway, they let him climb up, and he pushed more buttons and pretended to drive for a few minutes. Kid heaven.

The last place we stopped by was at a lab where they test paver-quality. They dumped a bunch of blacktop gravel on a piece of plywood, and then ran a miniature paver over the top. The employee explained that his job was to test how long it took the machine to auto-correct for depressions and such. The same room also had a miniature dump truck being loaded with dirt and dumping it to mimic a real load, and even a place where employees mix different types of dirt in order to practice for different regions of the world. I never could have imagined dirt was such a science.

This is how the B-man spent the afternoon. He couldn't have been better behaved. And by the end, we'd each acquired a bag filled with goodies, all pasted with the Cat logo: water bottle, pencil, rubber hat and eraser, poker chip (!), antibacterial hand sanitizer.

What an awesome day, especially for a two-year-old whose favorite activity is driving to seeing the "new houses" being built. He calls everything with Cat's logo on it "Daddy's work mud things."

8 Months!

So now that Brennan is eight months, we are definitely getting a better idea of his personality.

Top Ten Quirks of Brennan

10 - He doesn't like to be an only child (ie awake when Collin is napping). I'd say the only time I ever see him fussy is when Collin is missing.

9 - No matter how much he eats before bed, he'll still be hungry before 6am. Anyone want to join me at 4:30am?

8 - No matter how full he is, he will continue to eat fruit (bananas, strawberries, applesauce, kiwi, pears) until he throws up.

7 - He bites with incredible strength if I try to nurse him less than 5 hours apart. No more convenience-nursings for me, since the painful bites are firmly etched in my mind.

6 - This little one can devour Cheerios, pretzels, Goldfish and puffs endlessly. He never fills up. You'd think only have two teeth would hold him back...

5 - He prefers to be ignored by his Mom, but he is quite offended when Daddy or Collin leave him out of the fun.

4 - "Airplane" is his favorite game. He lays on his tummy, sticks his arms straight out to the sides, and kicks his feet in the air as if swimming. It's far from the best method for movement. He does finally sit well on his bum (10 minutes or so before tipping), but he gets around best by rolling and pivoting. He sometimes chooses to scoot across the floor on his forehead (looks like carpet-burn-central to me). Bottom line: He's quite a long ways for having the strength to lift his heft up to crawl.

3 - No matter how hard you try, he still wants to be swaddled before bed - even though his first goal before falling asleep is to wriggle out of the swaddler. Guess we'll be teaching his wife that trick.

2 - No matter how tired he gets, he doesn't cry, fuss... or fall asleep. He just gets smilier and gigglier. He rolls his ankles and wrists incessantly, and ever more intently the more tired he gets. But sleep? Only swaddled in his crib.

And the most bizarre thing about my 8-month old boy...

1 - Don't even try to feed him homemade baby food.. unless you plan on spooning into a store-bought jar first. Picky, picky.