Brandon is Three!

Brandon had a birthday last week! We kept it fairly low key, no party or anything, but I made him a cake and he got some presents that he loves.

It's been a big year of a few big changes for Brandon- obviously we had a big move, he's lost Andrew as a regular daytime playmate, and he's become a great little traveler!

He's just barely started potty training recently too, so that's exciting!

In the next year Brandon is looking forward to becoming a big brother, doing more traveling, and starting preschool.  It should be a fun year!

Brandon is Two!

Our little guy is getting so big! He is always trying to keep up with his big brother, and often succeeds.  It's been so fun to watch him grow from baby to toddler, and a real playmate to Andrew.

Brandon's vocabulary is really starting to grow.  He's started to put two- and three-word sentences together and it's really exciting to have some more communication with him.  He can identify nearly all of his uppercase and lowercase letters and can count to "tooteen" (haha, that's thirteen, by the way), which are both super impressive for his age.  His favorite songs to sing are "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" and "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Once I Caught a Fish Alive."

He is a very determined little kid.  Brandon (much like his brother) has a tendency to decide that it's time to do a certain thing or clean up the toys, whether everyone else is ready or not.  He knows where something "should" go and will get quite upset if you try to put it somewhere else.  Likewise, he believes he has sole ownership over many things in our house (nearly all are not actually his alone) and it's not pretty when Andrew (or anyone else) wants to use it too.  But his determination is also so cute and has helped him become really good at puzzles and figuring out how to get things that are just out of reach.

We also moved Brandon out of his crib just a couple of days before his birthday.  He's done pretty well so far, though we regularly find him sleeping on the floor next to his bed when we check on him before we go to bed.  Once he's gotten the hang of the big boy bed it will be time to work on eliminating the pacifier!

We sure love this little guy and are really excited to see him keep growing!

One Year Old!

Brandon is a whole year old! Time sure passes quickly sometimes.

Just a couple days after his eleven month birthday he walked across a room and hasn't stopped walking since! He's such a determined kid, I'm not too surprised that he just took off.

Other than that Brandon hasn't had a lot of new experiences this month.  We were cooped up for a while because of snow, and we've otherwise been busy with normal life stuff.  We're working on phasing out the bottles in favor of sippy cups and getting ready to replace the formula with milk. He's measuring at the 50th percentile for weight, 80th for height (what?), and 30th for head circumference.

We just did a small celebration for Brandon's birthday with our little family. We went out to dinner, where Brandon got his first free birthday meal, and ate cake at home, which he devoured.

We love our little boy and are loving watching him grow from baby to toddler.  He's had a great year!

11 Months

Well, Brandon is now eleven months old!

We've had a couple of big milestones this month so it's pretty exciting!

Brandon had his first Christmas!  Obviously he didn't really understand what was going on, but he loved having his Brayley grandparents, two sets of aunts & uncles, and some older cousins to hang out with.  He even spent his first night away from his parents since he and Andrew went with my parents to their house the night before Aaron and I joined them for the holiday week.  And on Boxing Day, his first two teeth finally broke through the gums.  It seemed a little on the late side for them to arrive but I seem to be blessed with good teethers so I can't complain too much!  And then of course Brandon had his first New Year as well.  That was a big week for this little guy!

I'm writing this a little late, but as of his eleven month birthday, Brandon had taken up to four steps in a row.  Well on his way to real walking.  He is so proud of himself every time, and always has a big smile on his face as he falls into our waiting arms.  He's also mastered the ability to crouch for a toy and stand back up without help.

Brandon is in kind of a weird place with his naps right now.  He sometimes sleeps in until 7:30 or 8:00 in the morning (yay!) which means he's not ready for his morning nap until around 11:00.  On a good day he sleeps for two hours, and then he's not ready for his second nap until close to 5:00 pm.  And sometimes he just decides he doesn't want that one at all.  And whether he takes that (short) afternoon nap or not, he's ready for bedtime at 6:30.  I think we're nearing the end of the two-nap era.  Now if only the boys would nap at the SAME time...

We're looking forward to celebrating ONE YEAR with this amazing boy in less than a month!

New things for Brandon this month:

First night away from mom and dad

Christmas

New Year

Teeth

First Steps

Ten months

Brandon is ten months old!  In the last month he has made some major physical developments. 

While we were at my parents' house for Thanksgiving, Brandon started clapping! He would just sit in his high chair and clap at us. He looked so proud of himself. 

He can stand up without support! He's been standing up and walking while holding on to furniture for quite a while but now he can stand on his own!  This first happened when we were at church waiting for a meeting to start and Brandon was playing with my keys, standing in front of me. I had my hands under his armpits and I realized that he wasn't actually using me as support so I just let go and he continued standing there. He was so distracted by the keys that he didn't even notice right away what was happening. Since then he has taken a mini step without support, and has even bent over to pick up a toy and was almost able to stand back up on his own. He's a pretty fast crawler though so I'm not sure he'll really start walking until he thinks it's more efficient than crawling, but I think he's almost there!

We've had to make some alterations to Brandon's diet this month because of constipation issues, but he's still a great eater. He loves his finger foods and most of the baby food we give him too. We need to start working with him a little more on mastering the sippy cup, but he does well with it as long as we're helping him. 

We sure love our little guy and love watching him grow.

New things for Brandon this month:

 Standing up without support

Clapping

Waving

9 Months Old

It's strange to think that Brandon has been with us in the world for as long as he was growing in my belly.  I love this kid so much.

This month Brandon had his first Halloween!  I bought his costume a year ago and it's what inspired the whole family costume theme.  He was super cute so people gave us candy "for the baby" even though he was obviously too young to eat it.

He is not a picky eater at all!  We have given him a pretty wide range of foods now (still mostly puree, except for his puffs/wagon wheels/misc snacky foods that he eats regularly) and he does great with everything.  He eats everything we put in front of him.  I went into this with the intention that I would make all of his baby food like I did when Andrew was this age but really, pouches are so easy!  I didn't totally fail though, I have made Brandon several homemade purees but I've also been able to find some amazing deals on baby food pouches so I don't feel quite as bad :)

Brandon got his first haircut!  Aaron had been asking me to do it for a few months and I finally agreed that his hair really was getting in his face.  I was sad to see the cute baby hair go but it really does look better now.  I think we'll still have quite a while between haircuts for a while though- now that it's been evened out it shouldn't get so scraggly as it grows.

He is starting to show interest in a lot more than just whatever toy is closest.  He likes to head over to the play kitchen now and get out either the play food to chew on or the pots and pans to bang together.  He has also adopted the dining room as his personal jungle gym.  Now that I have painted my new kitchen chairs, the dining chairs are back where they go and Brandon has a great time crawling and climbing between the legs of the chairs and table.  One time I even found that he had brought a ball over there and was essentially chasing it around.  He was suspended on the rungs at the bottom of a chair when I found him, reaching for the ball he had swatted just out of reach.

I love seeing his little personality come out as he grows.  He and Andrew are definitely brothers and yet they are totally unique little people.

New things this month:

Halloween

Pouches

First Haircut

8 Months

Guys.

Brandon is 8 months old.

It's been a pretty busy month for this little guy (and all of us).  He rode on an airplane for the first time, met lots of cousins, aunts, and uncles for the first time, mastered crawling, and tried to walk.

Last month Brandon was making his first attempts at crawling with his belly off the ground, after a while of successful army crawling.  Now he's a master crawler and has moved on to cruising.  Not only that, but he also loves to walk while pushing a toy around.  We bought him a walker and he loves getting around while pushing it, or he just uses a big toy truck and pushes that around.  He seems to think he's a big kid and tries really hard to keep up with Andrew.

We've started to introduce the sippy cup to Brandon this month.  He's not terribly interested in it though- he prefers his bottle for sure.  I gave him some juice in a sippy though and he loved that, but only as long as I held him like I hold him when he has a bottle.  He's done okay when I put some formula in it and have him sit in the high chair but he sometimes just chews on it instead of holding it up high enough to drink.  We'll have to keep working on it if we want to stop using bottles at a year like we did for Andrew.

No sign of teeth yet.  Aaron seems to be a little anxious about this.

And no haircut yet either.  I think we'll do that soon though, since Brandon's hair is getting so long in the front that little whisps are getting in his eyes pretty regularly.

New Things for Brandon this on Month:
Airplane ride

Sippy cup

Some new foods

Juice

Crawling

Cruising

Walking with walker