We have walking!

A couple of weeks after his first birthday, Brennan started to walk.  We were excited that Nanna got to be here to witness it.

Evidence that Brennan and his sister have fun with his new car.

It's not very graceful but he can get into his car by himself by climbing over the side.

At his last doctor's appt we found out his slightly anemic and we also mentioned to the doctor that when he gets angry and cries he will sometime hold his breath, turn blue, and pass out.  The doctor said that being anemic correlates with that behavior and makes it worse.  We are treating him for the anemia and hopefully the breath holding spells will lessen.  So far, he has a passing out spell sometimes once or twice a day, and some days not at all.  Seeing his Dad walk away into another room seems to set him off the worst.

He is a very intense little dude.  He really knows what he wants and when he wants it.  He likes things all his way.  He's also really observant and smart.  He has already figured out how to drink his bottle and hold it by himself.  He maneuvers obstacles really well and he repeats sounds and makes up funny games.  He turns the turn signal on on his little red car and turns his head back and forth with the clicking sound and looks at you and wants you to do the same.  Also, he likes to blow raspberries a lot.  He will also give little toys and dolls rides in his scooter.

He is getting a ton of attention for walking and he really likes it, it has encouraged him to practice a lot this week.  He can take about 25 steps consecutively when he gets on a roll.  It's strange to us to see him walking and we'll miss the turtle crawl which is getting less and less common.

Other random videos :

More scooter pushing   

Brennan pushes Sara in the car

Mr. Moose turns 1 : has hot wheels and rainbow cakes

Dan stayed up late last night putting Brennan's car together and we all waited anxiously in the living room for him to come out and see his present the next morning.  He was surprised and very attracted to it right away.  The first thing he wanted to do of course was push it around, then Daddy put him in the driver's seat and took him for a spin around the house.

I worked long  hours putting together a special cake mix for Brennan.  I've always wanted to try a rainbow cake and I decided to make a snake cupcake with rainbow cupcakes.  It's complicated but I'll get the final pics up and all will be made clear.

Here are the preliminary pics from putting it together.  Sara and Nanna had lots of fun watching me make the different color batters for the cupcakes and then put them all in layers.

One color down, 5 more to go.  It took me about an hour to layer all the batter carefully into the 12 cupcake wrappers.

This is what they look liked baked.  I'll get a cross section so you can see the rainbow when we eat them.

Dan is making a special lemon/lime frosting that tastes amazing and then we'll decorate them to form a snake!!!

Scooter Dude

Brennan is almost a year old and he really gets around.  Anything he can do to scoot around or push on things he will, so that he can ride them around. We recently got this little airplane out from the basement and he's been having a blast pushing it around.

Sometimes he rides this little cart on wheels too.

His favorite thing to ride though is this little cart on wheels.  We even took it to Lisa's when we stayed with her because he can't go without it, he rides it all day all over the house.

 I took some cute vids of him riding his "scooter" as we call it.

Scooter 1 vid
Scooter 2 vid

He also pushed Sara around on the airplane.  They had fun chasing each other and taking turns pushing.

we got him a little shopping cart for his birthday, I hope he likes pushing it around too.
 Brennan really likes anything involving motion, he much more of a "doer" than Sara was.  He constantly has to be on the go where as Sara would sit still with you and was more socially interactive.  Brennan lives for the thrill of the wind in his hair.

He is different from Sara in a lot of ways. He can be pretty insistent and demanding, he for sure knows what he wants.  He will scream really loud in restaurants which is something we didn't expect  because Sara never did that.  However he is also very friendly and loves to laugh and smile.

 He always has to be around people. Wherever Sara and I are, that's where he wants to be, he will rarely play in a room by himself.  Usually he's under our feet.  His favorite thing recently is to be held and especially if Daddy is holding him.  He's gotten the idea that Dan comes home at night and about two hours before Dan is due home form work, he starts saying dada in anticipation.  He really loves his Daddy's attention.  

He eats everything now except for recently we tried peanut butter and he did break out in a rash, so we're holding off all nuts for now.  We just switched him over from formula to whole milk and he's doing well with that.  

It's hard to believe that his first birthday is coming up.  It went by so fast.  He is such a great addition to our family, we can't imagine life without him.  I feel really lucky to have him here since having kids for me is not that easy and he was a big kid.  Getting him here and making it to a year for me feels like a big milestone.  It was a lot of work but it just gets better and better and hopefully easier in some respects, from here on out.

Dancing with Sister

Moosey likes to dance with Sister.  Sara takes him all around the house holding his hands.  Especially when we play the waltz music on Dan's piano, she grabs him and makes him dance with her.  He laughs the whole time so I think he really likes it too.

Here they are cutting a rug.

When he falls, she just helps him back up and they start jiving again.

They love to wrestle and roll around on the floor too.  This is a daily activity.

I'm glad that both of them are so happy and healthy.  They both are getting pretty good summer tans too.  We are spending a ton of time outside every day.  Really we are not in the house very much at all.  That might change some if it starts getting up into the 100's like it has been the last few days.  It's too bad really because we are having a blast hanging out in our nice yard, going for walks and hikes, and going to the splash pad, they also like to ride/walks in the wagon. 

Brennan is changing so much, he has gotten so much bigger and looks like a toddler almost now.  He will let go and stand up on his own for about 3-5 seconds, his eyes always get really big when he's just standing there balancing.  He is also getting more of a sense of himself and things he wants.  He has learned to scream if he's not happy and he apparently feels he has to be louder than Sara to be heard so sometimes it gets really noisy here.    Also they have gotten in their first few little tussles, usually it starts if Sara tries to take something away from him and he protests.

Overall though he's still really easy going and mellow.  This week I gave him something that he had a big allergic reaction to.  I am feeling really disappointed because we were sure he wouldn't have any allergies.  It was either peanut butter, which I think it probably was, or avocado.  I'm not going to give him either one of those things for a while anyway.  His lips even swelled up. 

Here is another round of Moosey and Munkey pics that turned out really cute!  I like how smiley he is, he always has a quick smile when you look over at him.

Getting so close now!

Moose is getting so close to a year old we can't believe it.  He is growing up so fast now too.  He really listens to us when we tell him things and he's very in tuned to what's going on around him.  At the same time, he has learned to laugh at things more and complain about things more.

Recently he has decided he does not want to take his nap in the afternoon. He had already long since given up his morning nap, which I was happy about because it gave us more freedom to go to Sara's activities in the morning.  However in the afternoon, Sara still takes a 3 hour nap and Brennan cries for 2 hours of that.  He acts like we're killing him when we put him in his crib.  However I've tried keeping him up and he cries and acts pitiful then too, so there's no winning.  We are just doing the though love and leaving him in his crib.

I remember that Sara went through several of these types of phases and they were tough to get through but we made it and she is a great sleeper now.  Only three more years of this until Moose is too :P

Moose also is eating everything under the sun, he's getting heavier, and taller and he has more hair.  Today he ate peanut butter and did just fine with it.  Sadly though, I'm probably not going to give him peanut butter any more, he smeared it all over himself and then Sara kissed him.  It just made a huge mess and it's like a toxic substance in our house.  Otherwise, he loves to eat whatever we are eating and will beg for things off our plates, tonight he ate lasagna and chocolate cherry muffins.  We will probably switch him over to cows milk soon and be done with the formula hopefully.

Sara and Brennan entertain each other a lot during the day at the house.  They play in closets, roll around, chase balls, play in sprinklers, and play with Sara's wagon.

Sara loves pulling Brennan in the wagon in the back yard.  Brennan thinks it's hilarious to bump around and go fast.  Luckily the wagon has a seat belt and we only let Sara pull him on grass, not concrete and only when supervised.  She tends to get overly excited and his laughing only encourages her. 

I wish youtube would let me upload videos, I've taken some cute ones of them.  I hope my account works again someday :(

I love this one with his hair blowing back!  Too funny.

They are cute together, I'm glad they are having fun.  They are lucky to have each other and we feel lucky to have them.

Playing with Sister in the closet

Brennan and Sara have decided that playing in the closet is fun. The love to play in Sara's closet as well as ours.  It entertains them for hours.  I got some pics of them playing in our closet today.  The go back and forth and roll under the clothes.  Moosey knows what "go get Sister" or "go play with Sister" means.  He heads right for Sara.

Sara likes to stand him up and walk him around.  He gets lots of exercise this way and he thinks it's hilarious too.  You can really see how tall he is when she walks around with him like this.  Dan thinks by next year he might outweigh Sara.

Then we took group pics, or tried to, it's really hard to get them to hold still....

Then a cute pic in our car seat.  He really is growing up so fast.

The Family Dog

Sara jokingly calls Moosey the family dog.  He can be stinky, he eats grass, he loves to play in toilets, he searches for scraps under the table, and he slobbers.  He's much better than a dog though I think, he's the best of both worlds!

Moosey is in to everything lately.  He loves spending time in Sara's room.  He likes getting up on her bed and rolling around in her soft blankets and stuffed animals.  He likes playing with (chewing) on trains and tracks and legos.  If her door is open he loves to sneak in there as fast as he can. 

He's really interested in the piano.  Any time Dan is playing it he begs to be picked up to play it.  Also he reaches up all the time to play the keys.  He seems much more interested in it than Sara did at that age.

He likes to get all Sara's books and use them to scoot around the floor on and for chew toys.

Sara and Brennan play so funny together.  They look for each other every morning and the tussling starts.  Sara likes to hold him on the floor on her lap while he lays upside down rolling back and forth.  She says to him"Good doggie".  I got a video of it today.  She sometimes gets rough with him and he actually will tolerate more than he should.  We still have to watch her really close to make sure he's OK, generally though they are fine to play together and they do really like each other.  When Sara recently had a sleep over, Brennan noticed she wasn't there to play with him and he pouted all morning.

Moosey also had really cute feet so I made sure to take a pic so I could remember them.

Also, he has sprouted a little mohawk overnight it seems so I tried to get a few pics of him with his new do.  Dan and I have tried to decide if we want to get Brennan's hair trimmed but we decide to let it go a little bit longer.

He is growing up so fast we can't believe it.  He will stand on his own for a few seconds now but still is not trying to walk by himself.  He did walk down the couch while holding on to it the other day.  He is getting more and more interactive and trying to talk more.  We think we've heard him say "Hi" in addition to Mama, Dada, Baba, and we've heard him say Nana before too.