For some strange reason when something gets over-hyped, I have a tendency to avoid it. This is especially true with T.V. shows. I refused to watch Friends until about 1998 when I realized that my Mom was watching it. I didn’t want to watch Dawson’s Creek, but Kelli made me. I distinctly remember Amy and I making fun of American Idol in the first season, but then I watched the finale when Kelli was at my house and had to watch it, and I was hooked. Each of these shows eventually went on to become one of my favorites once I gave them a chance. It even happened with Harry Potter, and you’ve read my post about how addicted I became to that. Patrick was on book #3 or #4 when the 1st movie came out. I thought, why would I want to read a kids book? And then I watched the first movie and I quickly caught up.

It’s happened again. All last season people kept saying that Heroes was better than Lost, and I thought, no,that’s not possible. I even tried to watch a few minutes of an episode once, I think maybe when we were on our cruise and we only got a few channels. Patrick caved in to the advice of his friends at the start of the summer and bought the first episode from iTunes to watch while he worked out. He was quickly buying the 2nd and 3rd. And then he started in about how I needed to watch it and how much I would like it and soon I was getting a daily countdown of when it would come out on DVD. I told him great, put it on Netflix and I’ll try to watch it with you. But what I was really thinking was that we have more shows to watch now than we have in a long long time and we barely keep up with our DVR as it is. And then one day he just came home with the first disc—he’d borrowed it from a friend. So I was cornered.

I sat down begrudgingly to watch the first episode. I had to admit by the end, that it was interesting. More so than I had thought possible. The second episode got me a little more, and by the third episode I was hooked. We’ve just watched all 23 epidsodes in a manner of days. And after having to make one night time run over to our friends house to get the next disc like some kind of junkies needing a fix, we had to buy our own copy this weekend. It is freakin’ awesome. We will so be watching it from now on. I can see what all the talk was about, and as much I don’t want to say it, it IS better than Lost! But Lost is still really good. If you aren’t watching either of them, you should be.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks around here. I took on a project to tear down the wallpaper in the kitchen, repair the 3 small holes Bailey chewed the first week we had her and then paint. ( I may post before and after pictures when I finish up the final touches). Then we had family in. Then school started for both of us. And then we took a road trip.

We left on Thursday, bound for the Denver area to visit friends of Patrick’s that I’ve never gotten to meet in all these years. I had a great time meeting them and Brenden loved their 3 little boys (ages 2-5). Brenden did not however like the 12 hour car ride there and back. Especially the ride back as he had come down with a cold that wouldn’t be realized until the next day. (Which I also have and Patrick is trying hard not to give in to.) For a kid that does not like to sit still, even long enough to eat, he did pretty good though.

Friday the family was busy so the 3 of us went to the Children’s Museum and let Brenden play. Then we went downtown and explored. We were pretty tired of walking by the time we got done!

Saturday we drove in the mountains and went up to the top of Mount Evans. It was really beautiful, and really high—14,130 feet high to be exact. It boasts of having the world’s highest paved road. I handled the altitude well at first, but after awhile, I started to feel my asthma. And it was super cold. Then we went back down and drove to Tiny Town, a little town just for kids with lots of mini houses and a little train. Brenden kept going forward to look at something and then going back to the last thing that he saw that he liked.

Sunday we all went swimming at the city’s rec center which was really neat. It had a play room, a rock climbing wall, the pool, workout facility and who knows what else. Patrick and I took turns playing with Brenden in the water and going down the two water slides.

Throughout the visit Brenden practiced going down the stairs until he was a stair master. Their house had multiple levels and he knew how to go up the stairs but not down. The 2 year old showed Brenden how to slide down on his  belly and he slowly  got it and then had to keep practicing. Up. Down. Up. Down.

Great visit. Now we can rest up and try to get over colds until more craziness ensues this weekend.

Here are pics. I may add one of us on the mt. if Patrick has a good one, but so far the ones I’ve seen are not so good.

Brenden practicing his art skills at the Children’s Museum

This was a little pretend vet’s office at the Museum, but all Brenden wanted to explore was the “recptionist’s desk”. I’m sure he was especially happy to see they had a Nortel phone very similar to the one we have at home!

The Museum also had a little grocery store/kitchen area for the kids to play in complete with carts and a register. Brenden loved pushing the cart around and filling it up.

The first stop at Tiny Town was this little Conoco sign that he kept returning to.

Next up was the Tiny Town Tribune.

This is just about as close as I get to the kid actually looking at the camera-which by the way is having technical difficulties.

This little area had a tiny step down from the brick to the astro turf stuff and Brenden took it like he was a mountain climber. Then he crawled up on the bench looking rather proud. This was one of those areas that he kept coming back to again and again.

If anyone in the area wants a cat/knows someone who wants a cat/knows someone who knows someone who wants a cat…you get the idea. I took in a stray about a month ago, we’ve been calling her temporary kitty. I wasn’t able to find her owners and have so far been unsuccessful in trying to find her a home on my own. I really don’t want to take her to a shelter and then not know what happens to her, but we can not keep her. With Brenden, the two dogs and the cats, we just can’t have any more animals. Especially since she hates the dogs and they want to play with her.
She has her claws in, has long hair is litter box trained, and is really sweet. She eats a lot because she was too skinny and underfed when she came to us. So if you can help us find her a good home, that’s be great! Below are some badly taken picts.

My friend Kelli sent me this link to a 80’s lyric quiz. It provides a line from a song and you have to fill in the missing lyric from the line. It was so much fun, I thought I’d share. I did really well on it!

http://yetanotherdot.com/asp/80s.html

Two people have commented that it’s been awhile since I’ve posted. I’ll write more soon and I’m working on a Brenden movie, but for now, what you really want is pictures of Brenden, so here they are!

Before we got our digital camera, Patrick had an elph camera that took special advantage film. We haven’t used the camera in about 5 years. Or so I thought. I realized the other day that the roll of film that was in the camera needed to be developed so I took it in. I had no idea what was on it.We got the pictures the other day and it turns out we’d used the camera in the hospital when Brenden was born because our digital one was getting repaired. I thought it was funny that we got these pictures back the day that two sets of friends told us they were having babies.

Thought it might be fun to share a couple of shots from the hospital and one from Brenden’s first day home. Compare that stranger to Brenden in the pictures in the previous post.

The Stats:
Height-33 1/4 inches 94%
Weight-23.8 lbs 34%
head-19 1/4 inches 90%

Overall the doctor said Brenden looked great. I got a little worried when the doctor listened to his heart because he was checking it from more angles and for a longer time than normal. Turns out he heard a faint heart murmer, but said it sounded innocent. He said that a cardiologist would say that 100% of babies have them at some point and we only need to worry if it sounds different next time, otherwise, no problem.

He suggested having Brenden screened by ECI (early childhood intervention) to see if there is any physical therapy they would recommend to keep him from falling behind on his fine motor skills. He suggested this not because he thought Brenden was already behind, but mearly as a preventative measure because of his hand. He said they may say we don’t need to do anything though. So we will look into that.

Then Brenden got his 3 shots. He’d been happy and playing and laughing the whole time we were there and in one instant his little heart broke.

Here are a few pictures from last week and today.

Showing off that he can climb into the chair now.

Asleep in the car after a long morning or a busy weekend.

This morning in the doctor’s office-his mission was to rearrange all the furniture and he would not let me take his milk cup off the chair.

He likes to pretend this toy is a vacuum cleaner. At least that is what I always think he is doing because he runs it back and forth and right up the furniture like I do the vacuum.

I just got a letter that says I made the Dean’s List for this past Spring Semester. Do you know that I haven’t done that since my Freshman year at ETSU? Go me, I’m slowly bringing my GPA back up to something that actually says something truthful about me and it feels good. I think I may frame my letter.

Patrick and I were anxiously awaiting the final Harry Potter book. We both read and watch movies for the same reason, a great escape, and have found over the years that we can easily get sucked into this fictional world. We had to know how it ended, but we were also afraid of what the end would mean. We joked all through the week that we were going to be so sucked into the reading that we wouldn’t be able to watch Brenden and so I mentioned this joke to my parents just to tell them how excited we were. And my Mom said, “ok, drop him off.” I hadn’t been hinting, but slowly it began to seem like a great idea.

Saturday morning I dropped Brenden off for his first ever night away from home without Mom and Dad. When I got home our 2 copies of the book(neither of us is patient enough to wait for one to read it first) had not arrived yet. We kept ourselves busy until they finally got to our house around 1:30 or 2:00. When we finally dove in, we only came up for meals and bathroom breaks. Patrick had somehow gotten about 15 pages ahead and at one point as many as 20, but then I caught him and remained 3 pages ahead of him until the last chapter. We had thought we might go to a movie while Brenden was gone, but we silently agreed at around 8 to keep reading. We could have gone to bed around 11 both of us about 400 pages in, but at that point I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep without knowing the end and it felt like a mission we had to complete. We hunckered down further and emerged in the wee hours of the morning on the other side of the book.

I think I was near tears and full of anxiety throughout most of the book. I, like a few others, felt that the whole “two major characters will die” thing was extremely misleading. The story got where I knew it had to end up, I just didn’t see how it was going to get there. There were a few things, especially regarding Snape, that I had predicted though. I loved the book. I can’t imagine too many things that I would have changed. Though there were a few bits that just seemed cruelly unnecessary! There are still questions left to answer, but overall, I’m very satisfied. I’m sad to have such a great series end, but I do feel the last line leaves room for the possibility of new adventures…

And Brenden had a great time at his grandparents by the way!

I just wanted to share that I think it is absolutely ridiculous that I take two Zyrtec D a day and I have still had such bad allergy problems that I’ve had a sinus headache for two days. I am blaming it on the Kaboom I used to clean our shower though.

Last night Patrick and I watched Idiocracy (2006) with Luke Wilson and written and directed by Mike Judge (office space). It made us both laugh so hard. The general plot of the movie is that Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph participate in an army experiment that is suppose to freeze them for a year, but they get forgotten and wind up frozen for 500 years. Americans in the future have become complete idiots making Luke and Maya’s characters the smartest people in the country. Ok, it sounds horrible, but it is hilarious. Really.

Ok, in all actuality, there were only two big days, but we packed a lot into those two days. Brenden and I went to Sherman on Wed. to go swimming with my niece and newphews who were staying with my parents for the week. Sherman, like many towns around, has turned their plain jane public pool into a splash park with lots of neat little play areas and slides. Brenden didn’t get much of a nap before going and was very tired once we got out in the heat, but I think he still had some fun. I let him walk around in the super shallow part until the second time he went under water. I had my hands on his back,so he was only under for a second both times, but it was enough to get both of our hearts racing! You’d think I didn’t spend every day of high school and the first year of college in the pool.

This morning, Brenden knocked his head on the coffee table, bruising just underneath his eye. Then, seconds after Patrick went off to shower, he choked. Really choked. Like turning red, couldn’t cough, needs the heimlich choke. I turned him on his stomach and patted. Still choking, and now some awful feeling in his stomach. Panic set in and I ran with him to the bathroom to get Patrick with my arm under his sternum and him and his face towards the ground. I got to Patrick and he looks at me and says, “He’s fine.” Turns out  he’d spit up the food just a second before and I didn’t know it. I was not good in that emergency and am so grateful it turned out ok. Brenden took a little longer to be greatful about it, but eventually did stop crying.

This afternoon we had a picnic for Hands Down at the Scottish Rite Hospital. Due to an illness in the family of the head of the group, I found myself planning activities for the kids. We found out we’d have access to basketballs and courts, bocci ball and frisbee golf so I thought it would be best to plan things for the smaller kids. I got a bubble machine, beach balls, and a set that included ring toss, lawn darts and horseshoes. They all turned out to be hits, especially the bubbles and beach balls. Most of the kids that came weren’t too far out of Brenden’s age range and I was excited at the idea of him getting to play, but for the most part he just wanted to walk around and look at things. He didn’t seem to care too much about the other kids! He was so red and hot and tired afterwards, but we weren’t done with our day yet.

We still had a Build a Bear party for the 5 year old son of some of our friends. It was an awesome party, though poor Brenden just wanted to sleep. Patrick did most of the bear stuff for Brenden and really got into it. He built a lovely little bear named Morrow, as in Brenden Morrow who is attired in a great Stars outfit!

Two of the pictures I’m posting are actually really cute group shots, but I don’t want to post other people’s children without their permission, so I’ve cropped them.

Brenden chasing bubbles at the picnic.

Brenden and Patrick resting at the picnic.

Patrick, Brenden and Morrow.

Brenden has absolutly been cracking me up lately. He has taken it upon himself to yell at the dogs every time they wrestle, which is pretty often with those two crazy pups. He sticks out his little pointer finger and shakes it at them while saying “ah ah ah.” It started off with him yelling at them when they were in trouble anyway, now it seems to have progressed to whenever he feels they need to be yelled at. And a lot of times he is shaking the finger and looking at me when he says it, like he is trying to let me know that I need to yell at them. He is also pointing at everything under the sun and saying “dat?”

He has also started waving goodbye to me and then going to the front door, standing on tip toes and reaching for the knob. If only he could reach that lock, I’m pretty sure he would be out the door and down the street. One day he went for the door so I put his shoes on and we went for a walk. He walked all the way around the block.

Instead of putting his food onto the spoon and then giving him the spoon to use himself, I’ve started just giving him a bowl or plate and a fork or a spoon and letting him do it all by himself. He doesn’t actually get a lot of food on the utensil, but he works so hard and long at it. And then when he gets hungry, digs in with his hands. He thinks that is especially fun with macaroni. He’s doing much better on eating with this set up and is actually finally eating 3 meals a day most days.

He is still obssessed with the phone as you’ll see in the picture below. Everything is a phone. He plays with the real phone, the fax machine phone, his toy phone, the cordless phone and the real phone my parents gave him to play with. Obssessed I say.

He is really into climbing things now. He is working on being able to climb up on the couches, but they are still a bit high so he just hangs there half on half off and grunts until we help him up. But he can get down by himself, and that is the part he loves. He thinks he is so big when he’s up there.

Ok, last funny thing. One day for some reason he became aware of the electric can opener. The next thing I knew he wanted to get up and look at it several times a day. This started when my Mom was watching him every day and I forgot to tell her about it so she’d know what he wanted. Turns out I didn’t need to worry because she figured it out when he stood pointing up at it and growling. And now he does that every time he wants to see it.

Anybody that knows Patrick knows there has been an obsession over the iphone coming out. There has been speculation and following of rumors. There have been MANY reports back to me when new info came out, ’cause you know, I can’t read! And then, as the day crept towards us when Patrick would be put out of his bliss/misery of waiting, there were the all important plans to be made. What store should we go to? One of the Apples stores or one of the AT&T stores? What time should we get there? Would there be a line? Would they run out?

In the end, Patrick went to one of the Apple stores with a friend of his and came out victorious by 7:00. I’m sure he will blog about it so I won’t completely steal his thunder, but below is a picture of the boy and his new toy. It’s like a little Apple ad.

Yesterday morning was Brenden’s first time to see Patrick since he (Patrick) got home from his trip. When Patrick went in and got Brenden out of bed, he said that Brenden looked at him funny for a few minutes and then started clapping and giggling. But sadly, their night visit didn’t go so well.

Brenden didn’t believe me when I told him that I heard the garage door going up and that it was daddy coming home. But after several moments of hesitations and looks back at me, he did go to the door to wait for him. When Patrick came in, Brenden was excited. But Brenden did not want to be held by Patrick and soon turned cranky. Patrick tickled and rough housed with him to try to get him in a better mood and it was starting to work, until the fall. Brenden went to stand up, but fell forward instead, cutting his open mouth on the lip of his toy drum.

And here’s where Patrick and I discover we don’t handle our child bleeding very well. We couldn’t see where exactly the blood was coming from and Brenden wasn’t letting us look at his mouth while he screamed and screamed. And the blood wasn’t stopping. So we decided to take him to the emergency room. While I was gathering a diaper, a bottle and the paper I was working on that was due the next day to prepare for the long emergency room wait, Brenden did finally stop crying and the bleeding slowed down. As we were debating whether or not we should still go to the emergency room he started to twitch, which helped us make up our mind in a hurry.

We ended up going to our urgent care place rather than the emergency room because once we got in the car it seemed like maybe we’d overreacted. But since we couldn’t see the injury and it was in his mouth where food (if he would eat anything besides cheeries and gerber tomato chip thingys) would irritate it.

The doctor, who had no trouble getting inside Brenden’s now wide-open-with-a-smile mouth, said it was a very superficial cut and that he would be fine. So it all ended ok, but it sure had us scared for a bit. And poor Patrick felt like he had broken the baby.

Today my friend Kelli and I took Brenden to the Dallas Arboretum. Kelli is a photographer and wanted to do some practice shots of Brenden in a pretty setting so we went and enjoyed the morning. It was so pretty and peaceful. Brenden had fun walking barefoot in the grass and getting his feet dipped into two different fountains. Here are some of the pictures I took.

After we got home from there, Brenden took a great big nap. When he woke up, I spent about 15 minutes airing up and filling with water a small pool I bought for him several weeks ago and had yet to use. He really wasn’t that impressed, he would have preferred it if I’d let him wander in the grass.

We had a rough afternoon of defiante baby getting into absolutely everything while in demolition man mode and then laughing when I told him no. So we went out for a little ride and both came home in better moods. And Brenden played a little hockey before turning in for an early night of rest.

Brenden has been very entertaining these last few weeks. He just keeps showing more and more personality and learning more and more things. Like how to climb into and onto different things:

He’s still working on how to get down from the table and will scream until someone comes to help him.

He’s also finally caught on to the idea of banging on pots and pans being fun. It used to just make him flinch when I tried to demonstrate. So now he plays while I make dinner:

On Monday he went into his room and got his hockey stick and the little ball that came with it, put the ball down on the ground and hit it with the stick. He’s never connected those two things until that moment. Too bad his Dad didn’t get to see that!
Wednesday while Brenden napped, my Mom and I worked on taking cleaning up the yard so the anal retentive homeowners association would be happy. I was finishing up hand edging our sidewalks (our edger seems to be broken) when Brenden woke up. My Mom brought him outside with a toy broom she had gotten him and he helped clean up. He also liked the super huge rake. He had a lot of fun until he got hot, tired and cranky. I wish I’d gotten a picture of him “helping”.

Last night he worked for half an hour to eat macaroni and cheese with a spoon from a bowl. His mean mother didn’t realize how mean it was to give him a spoon for macoroni until he tried to use it the first time. I then promptly took the spoon away and tried to get him to eat with his fingers but he was having none of that. He wanted to get that stuff on the spoon. He was so determined. He did manage it a few times, but the noodles would just slip off again. Poor guy.

He’s still continuing his love of the phone and even occassionally talking to people on the real phone. Patrick, who is away for work this week, and I have been doing video chats on the computer and Brenden will run to the phone on the fax machine to try to talk to Patrick who he can see on the computer. He’s so confused by that one, but he gets a big smile on his face when he sees his Daddy!

He is really in to taking my sunglasses of my face or the top of my head and putting them on his face. Somehow this has also become a love of taking my headbands off to do the same. When I came home from school one day this week, I found him wearing my Mom’s headband!

And finally, a cute shot my Mom took of Brenden and Shadow:

This weekend was rather busy and we had Brenden all over the place. Here he is catching some quiet time on his new toy (actually, boxes with doors to our bookshelves that we bought on Sunday so Brenden wouldn’t eat any more of our books).

I’ve been reading up on the pools available for us to use in town and today Brenden and I went to test out a small splash park. He wasn’t sure what to think of all the loud crazy bigger kids running around or the big sprays of water, but the nice little one was good.

Brenden has started pointing and mimicing much more. He wants to have words, but just doesn’t know them yet, which is starting to frustrate him.

I started summer school on Monday and it has been hard on Brenden. Summer school is Monday-Thursday, so instead of just leaving the house two days a week, I’m leaving four. He does not care for it. Yesterday my Dad and I both told Brenden not to do something and he took off crying down the hall with hurt little feelings. I feel bad for him, but luckily summer school only lasts a month and then I’m off until the end of Aug.

with the sidewalk. Though to be truthful it was more like a trip, fall, and roll onto the head. As you can see in the pictures, despite a big stawberry on the head, he was fine.