Moose Muffins is 4!!!

Our little guy is 4 and we've all survived thus far!!

B had a fun day at the Aquarium and with his Cousin Noah.   After the Aquarium, we came back home and had a family party.  He had this cool Lotus candle that had fireworks, spun, and sang happy birthday.

B is a fun guy.  He likes to party, have fun  playing with Sister, ride his bike, and help Momma cook.

He had a really fun Summer with Sister, we did lots of playing, camping, and bike riding.

Brennan rode about 30 miles or more on his bike this summer over various family rides.  We took him on the SF river tail a lot as well as Daddy rode with the kids to the Costco park several times.

He also started violin a few months go.  Although he is very young, he has made really good progress.  It's going to be a long road but we are at least starting down the path.

Ramdom pics from the Summer :

Sp Art Museum

We got a bunny.  Sometimes she likes B and sometimes if she's had enough she will nip him, not hard but just enough to say he dude, chill.  He does not even seem to notice.    

At the parade and carnival :

It's been a wild and woolly Summer with our little buddy and we love him lots.  He is so very sweet and equally mischievous.  We found him a pre-school and he is really looking forward to going.  The class is mostly boys and he really wants some kids to play with.

Little B gives the best kisses and hugs and is super cute!

2015 a busy year

Brennan is having a busy year.  He got into preschool, so he goes Tues and Thurs.  In the fall he will go Mon,Wed, and Fri.  He LOVES preschool and gets upset if he's too sick to go.   This makes me really happy.  So far he does not seem to be as engaged with it as Sara was but I'm sure he'll figure it out.

He also started violin lessons.  He has a really good teacher.  So far he's just learning the basics, like how to hold the bow by making "bunny fingers" on his bow hand. He has a pencil with a little divot for his thumb that he holds like a bow.  Also the teacher let him borrow a small foam violin that he practices holding.  She wants him to learn to respect the instrument before we rent a real one.  He also has to listen to his Suzuki music a lot.  When we aren't listening to his, we are listening to Sara's.   I'm excited to see what the future brings, it would be cool someday if I could play duets with him or if Sara could play accompaniments on the piano.

We've given up on swimming for him until next fall.  So in the mean time I am trying out gymnastics and hip-hop.  I'm not sure we'll keep going both but we're checking it out.  He loves both the classes.  He's a real card at hip-hop. 

We've been skiing, hiking, and biking so far this year.  I love taking pics of him, so there are a lot of pics.

We had a really fun hike out by Topaz Mtn.  He had fun looking for rocks.

We also went out to the Great Salt Lake and Stansburry Island.  At the GSL, he ate salt and splashed around in the water a lot.  When we hiked to the top of Stansburry he went nuts picking all the Juniper berries.  He easily hiked about 4 miles that day, some of it running down the trail.

Brennan can be really mischievous but he is also very sweet and thoughtful and polite.  He gives us lots of hugs, kisses, and snuggles.  He is helpful around the house, he does the recycling and cleans up the playroom.  He also is pretty nice to his sister over all and gets really excited when she comes home from school. 

One of his favorite things is running errands with Daddy on Sundays.  Very often just the two of them go out.  Dan says he really enjoys their time together running errands too.

Lastly,  he loves the trampoline and I love taking pics of him on the trampoline.  In some of the pics it looks like he's defying gravity or flying.  Those are my favorite.  Also when it snows, he loves to jump too, funny kid.   I want to take more trampoline photos and make a canvas montage.

End of the Year 2014

Tonight for our Christmas Punch Calendar activity we did an end of the year list and asked each kid some questions.  Brennan had the most entertaining responses (yes I spelled Mommy wrong).

I hope I can remember to do this survey again next year.  I think it will be entertaining to see how their responses change and to read them the ones from the previous years as they age.

Also tonight, we did a coloring activity, it was easy to see which one was Brennan's he's still very much a scribbler but he never passes up a chance to color, although his favorite thing is cutting with scissors.  He never passes up a chance to cut up anything he colors.

I won't say it's been an easy year with Brennan.  He is a far different child than Sara. I think my expectations suffer a little based on what I thought raising a child was like based on my previous experience with Sara.  Sara made it easy peasy with her more laid back, easy to go along and get along attitude.  Brennan can be a real challenge at times and I've struggled off and on.    I wish I could say it's been all roses but I can't.

The latest and greatest difficulty is trantruming.  He's discovered it and is good at it.  Putting on a sweater or jacket of any kind sends him into an all out rage, he even held his breath and passed out once just because I put his sweater on.  He starts telling me early in the morning, before breakfast and before we even get dressed that he's not going to wear a jacket and will continue to tell me that he's not going to wear a jacket all day long, to the point where I've told him I don't talk about jackets any more.   Inevitably when we go outside and the cold wind is blowing he complains about being freezing.   I'm not sure how this is going to resolve, but I'm assuming either he will get frostbite or grow out of it.  His personality can be very intense and unrelenting.

Also. lately we have a real potty mouth.  I'm not sure how much of it he learned from Sara or Dan and I.  One night I was reading him a book and he leaned into my ear like he was going to say something nice and said, " Mom, kiss my butt crack".  He thinks saying butt crack, poop, stinky, and words like that are hilarious as well as burping and farting. It's become an every day occurrence.  I told Dan I feel like he acts like a mini-frat boy, Dan says he thinks it's just normal boy behavior.  I'm not really sure if it's normal or not or how worried we should be about it at this point. Once again, something I wasn't really prepared for. 

I'm hopeful that in 2015 he'll learn to sleep better, stop tantruming and holding his breath, and he'll mature a little and not be as difficult, I have my doubts though that it will happen right away.

He is cute and he can be quite nice at times and that makes up for it to some extent.

I'm glad I finally got him in a pre-school. that gives both of us a break and him a new outlook during the week.  He really enjoys it and that makes me happy that he's happy there.  I just hope he does not tell the preschool teacher to kiss his butt crack. 

This is his very first school picture:

Also, here is a cute selfie the other day :

3 years old!

We celebrated Brennan's birthday this year with a bang.  I had the crazy idea of renting a huge water slide and pitched it to Dan who gave the green light.  We found one that had a bounce house/ water slide.  It was a huge hit at the family party and a lot of fun.

Sara and I also had fun decorating the house for the party.

Then he opened presents. He got a bunch of new cars that he was excited about and some new huge trucks from Nanna. 

His favorite present was his new bike though.  He has been riding his balance bike since he was one and a half.  It took him about 24 hours to be able to ride his new bike without training wheels and another 24 hours before he was riding it and doing tricks with his feet up on the handlebars.

He also graduated to his big boy bed.  We went to the store with the intention of getting him a bunk bed but when he saw this car bed I knew we weren't going to be getting the bunk. 

Brenny has been extra busy so far this year.  When sister went back to school he started toddler tunes piano and swimming.  It's the same thing that Sara did at that age.  After almost 2 years of coming to her lessons and watching her, he finally gets a turn.

 He loves doing swimming and piano and is doing really well.  He's more of a wildcard than Sara was at that age, so I never know what he's going to do at class. Recently he started squirting his swimming teacher in the face with water toys and would laugh and wouldn't quit.  So far, he has behaved perfectly well at piano too.  They even moved him up to an older class.

He is staying busy but really misses his Sister while she is at school too.  He gets upset if she forgets to give him hugs and kisses before she leaves for school.  Also he complains a lot during the day that she is not home.  They are used to playing together quite a bit.  When she gets home from school he always tells her that he missed her.   He also really complains when she goes to play with her friends.  He desperately wants to play too but the girls really don't want him to tag along, so he sits at home and cries at the window like a dog when its owner leaves.  I've been using the time to read to him or play a game with him or color when sister goes to play with friends, to help distract him.



I'm really glad he has learned to love reading so much lately.  We spend quite a bit of time doing that every day.  Also he loves to paint and sometimes we even go to Novell for lunch dates with Daddy and to feed the ducks.   Also, I take him on a bike ride around the neighborhood every morning, he really loves zooming around the neighborhood and stopping at the park on the way home.

Brennan had his 3 year old checkup today.  He weighed 34 pounds which puts him in the 50th percentile for weight and 38 inches that put him in the 70th percentile for height.  He has really caught up on his growth and has gotten quite tall.  Maybe he will even be 6 ft tall someday or taller, who knows.  They say you can double a kids height at 3 years old and that will give you their adult height.  So that would be about 6 feet 4 inches if true. 

Brennan's doctor asked him this morning if he eats meat or grass. Brennan replied that he does not eat grass because it makes him puke but that dinosaurs do eat grass, even though sometimes it makes them puke too. That's what you get for asking a 3 year old a silly question.  He can be a real cut up. 

My favorite things about Brennan right now are that he loves to laugh, loves to read, ride his bike, loves to cuddle and give kisses, and loves his sister most of all.   We never could have imagined this little guy in our lives 7 years ago and now I can't imagine our family any other way.