Brandon- Six Months!

In some ways, these six months since Brandon was born have totally flown by.  But I mean it when I say that it also seems like he has always been a part of our family.  Weird how that works.

This month Brandon has really been working on his motor skills.  He can now hold up his bottle consistently (for basically the whole feed if it's a small bottle, or part of a feed if it's a bigger bottle).  He's also been practicing sitting up without support!  He started out using the boppy for help but now he can do it on his own for several minutes at a time.  I think he's really enjoying his new vantage point.

Brandon can crawl!  Well, crawling with his cute little baby belly still dragging on the ground.  It's not really an army crawl since he does use his legs too, and he can make it pretty far when he's going after something.

I love to see my little boys together... usually!  When they're both in good moods, Andrew and Brandon can just sit and giggle at each other for seemingly no reason and it's pretty much the cutest thing ever.  Brandon adores his big brother and usually lights up when he gets some of his attention.

No teeth yet, but that's not too surprising since Andrew didn't get his first one until he was almost 8 months old.

Brandon is now eating solid foods!  Not consistently (not even every day yet) but so far he's had applesauce, rice cereal, carrot puree, peach puree, and banana.  He's done really well with all of it so far.  He even made a really good attempt at getting my pizza the other day.  Sorry buddy, I don't think you're quite there yet!

New things this month:

Sitting up unsupported

"Crawling"
Solid foods

Fruit Picking Day!

Andrew got really excited about this once we told him it was fruit picking day, just like on Daniel Tiger.  Seriously, that kid loves Daniel Tiger.

My mom was visiting while my dad was out of town helping my brother move.  We decided to spend a day picking some peaches and blackberries.  It was really fun and now I have a whole bunch of fresh and frozen fruit to snack on!

We did blackberries first.  Andrew was loving this part.  Some of the best berries were within his reach and it was easy for him to tell which ones were ready to be picked.  And of course he got to snack on some :)

Next we got peaches.  We ended up with way more than I had originally intended, because we just kept finding more beautiful fruit!

All in all a great (and a little expensive...) day!

Fourth of July 2015

We went to my parents' house for the 4th of July weekend, as we have often since moving here.  My sister's family and one of my brother's family also came.  It was an extra special weekend because it was my niece's first birthday!

Andrew had a blast playing with his cousins and enjoying all the time outside.

He wasn't adventurous enough to do the zipline, but he enjoyed swinging, playing in the playhouse under the deck, watching Kookoopa fly his drone, using sparklers, and seeing fireworks.

On our last day there, Andrew fell while he was running around in the yard and was came back in, holding his arm.  He didn't cry, but he wasn't interested in doing much of anything.  We put him down for a nap and decided that if he was still hurting we would take him in to get the wrist looked at.  We headed home that afternoon and I dropped Aaron and Brandon off at home and took Andrew to the urgent care near our house.  They x-rayed his wrist and decided it was a sprain.  They wrapped it and Andrew instantly perked up.  A couple of days later he was just fine.  So not too bad for his first injury!

Singing Andrew

Andrew has been learning a whole bunch of songs from nursery at church and from singing with Daddy at bedtime.  These videos are from a couple of months ago but I can't resist sharing because they're so fun!

One day Andrew came into the kitchen with his little stool, set it down in the middle of the room and announced that he was going to sing a song.  After an extended rendition of Old McDonald (seriously, the video is almost 5 minutes long and I didn't even get the beginning) he sang a few shorter ones for me.  Enjoy!