Brenden had a great introduction to Christmas this year. We celebrated with Patrick’s Dad and Stepmom and family on the 23rd. Then on Christmas Eve we were off to Oklahoma and then Sherman to celebrate with Patrick’s best friend Andy and family. And finally, on Christmas day, we hosted my family at our house.  My brother, his wife and kids, my sister, my parents, my aunt and uncle, and three of my cousins filled up the house.  Brenden really  liked the shiny wrapping paper and bows. But I think he enjoyed the boxes most of all! He got a tickle me Elmo from his nanny and Pa Pa (Jim and Mary) and was more interested in the handle on the box! He did tear a little paper here and there though. Here are some cute pictures of from the three days.

At Jim and Mary’s. This is probably the time he was most interested in the gifts. But to be fair, it was also the time he was most awake.

At the Jacob’s house, Brenden studies his new baby genuis dvd.

My niece, Tevis, really enjoyed Brenden.

It is a strong possibility that we could have skipped all the toys and just given him shoes.

Bailey uses Brenden’s new leap frog musical caterpillar as a pillow.

I’m not one of those Mom’s that’s going to take embarrassing naked pictures, but he was enjoying his bath so much, that I snapped a few shots of his happy face.

Brenden enjoys his first bath after getting home from vacation.

And afterwards, gets comfy in his flannel pajamas.

Patrick swears he’s going to blog about our trip, so I leave most of the details for him to write about and just share my favorite pictures. I do want to say that Brenden was so well behaved on the trip that we were able to have a really great time. And yes, we did leave the airport and the hotel, but as Patrick and I don’t appear too photogenic in any of those pictures, I’m not sharing them!

Brenden before our flight to NY took off. He was great on the plan despite many delays both ways.

Brenden as we take off. And I was worried his ears would hurt him….

Brenden has fun on the big comfy bed!

Brenden makes a new best friend—himself! He went to this mirror every chance he got to talk to the baby.

He feel asleep on our way back up to the hotel, so we left him bundled up for his nap.

Fearless World travel waits for Mom and Dad to get ready to go exploring.

Brenden and Dad play on the big piano at FAO Schwarz.

Brenden and Dad are very sleepy waiting for the darn airplane to board.

One more stressful semester down, sadly two more to go! And as of tomorrow morning we are off to NY for a couple of days vacation! I’m suddenly becoming very nervous about travel to NY with a 7 month old at Christmas time. But I’m sure it will be fined as Patrick and I like to say.

I was told earlier that I hadn’t been posting often enough. You just can’t please some people! So I leave you with some pictures of Brenden.

Call him Kyra Sedgwick, but Patrick has become known as the closer in the household. He is almost always able to get Brenden to go to sleep.

Brenden now pulls up to standing every chance he gets. He is convinced he can walk if he just tries hard enough. Monday he got what has turned into his first black eye by banging his eye into the bedframe.

He’s sitting in our big recliner being a silly boy. His favorite past time, being silly that is!

Friday when Brenden woke up from his afternoon nap I heard him cry over the monitor and went in to check on him. Imagine my suprise when I saw this for the first time:

This is a reenactment, but you get the idea. Now he’s pulling up on everything he can and we are regularly greeted with him standing in his crib!

Also, I’ve finally attached the video of him crawling. Go back to my post on crawling to watch it!

Today I read a story about a killer whale at Sea World that took one of his trainers underwater and held him there twice and injuring him. And then I read a story that said that sea lions have been charging and attaching people on California beaches. Perhaps Douglas Adams had it close to right when he wrote in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy that dolphins where the seconds smartest species on the planet. Maybe we just need to expand that to all marine life.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061130/ap_on_re_us/seaworld_whale_attack_9

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061129/ap_on_sc/marauding_sea_lions

Brenden is 7 months old today! And on Tuesday he learned to crawl. Now he is into everything. He was already banging his head on things with all his rolling, but now I’m think maybe he needs a crash helmet. Now he’s moved on to trying to pull up on things to stand up, and he’s doing a pretty good job. I took some video on Tuesday and as soon as I figure out how to get it onto my computer and the here, I’ll post it. For now, I’ll leave you with pictures taken earlier today….

Video is posted now! And I figured it out all by myself! Click on link below pictures.

Brenden Crawls.mov

Patrick and I are both huge readers, so it is important to us that Brenden find a love for books too. And he has….he loves eating them! I can’t read him a bedtime story because he always grabs the book from me and eats it!

My parents grew up in the same town, thier houses within walking distance from one another. These houses were the same ones that provided a backdrop for my visits to Grandma and Grandpa’s. They were places that nothing ever changed and I loved going there. During the 18+ hour trip from Texas to Wisconsin I’d read as many books as I could with my little flashlight. We’d arrive at my Grandma and Grandpa Romanski’s. There would be a wide array of candy and baked goods on the buffet, a vegtable tray and soda in the fridge, ice cream in the freezer. Grandma would offer food the minute we walked in the door. It didn’t matter how many times you said you weren’t hungry, she’d try different things until you caved. In the mornings, waking up in the room above the kitchen, I’d lay and listen to the grownups discussing life. The coversation and the smell of breakfast wafting up through the vent.

There were other rituals too— like the toy closet at the Romanski’s where the kids went to play, my Grandpa Romanski’s (Papa) constant reminder to eat so you didn’t get sick, both grandfathers slipping me $20 and telling me not to tell anyone, looking through my Grandpa Murray’s metal detector finds to pick out whatever rings I wanted (probably where my love of jewelry sprang from) and hanging out in his basement making things out of wood scrapes, playing pool and eating candy.

These traditions began to change the year I graduated high school. That summer, my Grandpa Murray died, followed by my Grandma Murray the next summer almost to the day. Almost three years ago, My Grandma Romanski died after she and Papa moved down to Texas to live with my parents. And finally, today at 7:30 I got the call from my mother that Papa had died. He had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer and brain metts.

I don’t normally share this much about myself or my family, and I hope it won’t make my family too sad to read it, but I needed to write it so I’m taking this space to remember.

Papa loved to entertain with his stories. He loved to impart his wisdom…with such morsals as “look at the family tree of the person you are dating and if you see bad health, run for the hills”. He always called me his little diplomat. He was a character.

We have a homeowners association in our neighborhood, which Patrick and I don’t really care for. They seem to enjoy mailing out notices that are grass is a 1/2 centimeter too long. And then they turn around and raise the price of our homeowners dues because of their postage costs. I just read a story though that makes that seem like no big deal. The link is below.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061127/ap_on_re_us/anti_peace_sign

Today Brenden got up on his hands and knees, which isn’t new, but then he moved forward. He sort of pulled himself with his hands, but it wasn’t an army/belly crawl thing, because he was up on his knees with his tummy off the ground. We are one step closer to danger!

He had a really big weekend last weekend. We went to the Baja Fresh fundraiser for Hands down on Wed and were there for 5 hours. Then on Thursday he and I “volunteered” to help Kelli set up and check people in for her work event. Friday, Saturday and Sunday we seemed to be running despite our best efforts not to.

We went this past weekend (one of the things we ran around doing) to price carseats. Someone had mentioned that we should get a Britax because they last for pretty much the rest of the time he will need one. So we looked, and then we were sold on them, but not on the price. So we found one on ebay for a ton less and it came today! Patrick’s Dad and Stepmom also got us a cute one. Since we have 2 cars, it’s easier to have 2 seats.  It will be sad to see his cute little carrier go, but it will be ok. I think he is getting  uncomfortable in it anyway.

Brenden on the move.

Brenden about to be in big trouble with his Daddy. In case you can’t tell, that’s all the tv setup he’s about to reach for.

He’s getting better and better at sitting up.

Patrick has blogged 9 days in a row now! He is trying to get into a routine of coming home and writing something everyday, even if it is short. If you pay attention to his blog, you know that it is pretty common for him to go a month or two at a time between posts, so this is very impressive. He’s got some cute pictures of Brenden up too! I especially like the one of him in his sweatshirt with his name on it that his great aunt Patty made for him. He looks like he should be on the Mickey Mouse Club.

I just took a quiz to see what borderline personality disorder I have for fun. Guess what it says…I’m obssesive compulsive. Shocking isn’t it. Boy I really wish they’d make those things more accurate!

Brenden has started reaching out for things, like his parents and sitting sort of up on his own. He’s doing the leaning thing, but he can get there on his own! I went to look for the cushy padding to cover up our fireplace hearth this weekend, but couldn’t find it. It looks like I have to get it on line. I just hope he doesn’t figure out crawling before I do that!

Ever since I found out I have diabetes I’ve pretty much stuck to drinking water. Sure, I could have diet soda, but I never developed a taste for it, so I decided not to start. I occassionally have diet lemonade or light cranberry juice, but usually it’s just water. Which apparently is frowned upon by the fast food industry.

Whenever Patrick and I order a fast food combo with water the people always give us a hard time. At best we get bottled water, but I really prefer ice water so that’s not what I’m ordering. Usually they try to talk us into a soda. Is it not ok if some people don’t drink soda? But often what we get is the tiny kids cup full of water. Most recently we ordered two combos with water and got one tiny kids cup. Not even two, just one. Now I understand that it is probably cheaper to just order the individual items in this case rather than the combo, but if we are willing to pay the extra money for the ease of ordering, should we not get the size drink that comes with the combo? It’s water, not gold, why are they rationing it? We aren’t ordering it to be cheap.

Anyway, I’m sure there is a simple solution to the problem, such as don’t eat out, but I find it all rather irritating!

For the longest time I thought nobody was commenting. Then people started telling me there was a problem posting and I thought that the comments were just gone. Patrick finally looked at it this morning and figured out what the problem was and fixed it. And there were all these comments I’ve gotten over the last several months! I was so excited.I feel loved again! So please don’t think I was ignoring any of you, and I appreciate all your comments. And they are fixed now, so feel free to comment away!

I have had a few people tell me they are having problems posting comments. I’m not sure what the problem is, it shows up correctly on my  end, but Patrick is going to look into it for me just as soon as he has time to breathe again. Sorry about that.  You can always send email!

Brenden is 6 months old already! In the last month he’s been to two 1st birthday parties and on a road trip to Austin. Yesterday he went to the doctor for his 6 month checkup where he got his 4 shots and a flu shot! He is now 27 1/2 inches (82%) and 18 lbs 10.8 oz (69%). The doctor called him a big healthy boy!

He is on the verge of crawling, he’s already up on his hands and knees, and sitting up on his own. He is so close to getting it all down that he has become rather obsessed with it and wiggles to get down on the ground every chance  he gets.

Some friends of ours from NJ got married in Austin last weekend, and I might add that it was probably the most perfect wedding I’ve ever been to, so we took a nice car ride there. My Mom had told me early on that changing the water you use to make bottles is not good for the baby’s tummy, so I always carried a bottle of McKinney water to use. I forgot to pack enough for the whole weekend though, and we paid for that the first night of our trip! Brenden woke up screaming every two hours, which he hasn’t done since sometime in his first month. But it all worked out and we had a nice trip despite both Patrick and I being sick. Somehow, Brenden has managed to ward off the cold germs that have been floating around our house for the last two weeks.

We went to a halloween party/meeting for Hands Down (the support group at Scottish Rite) where the kids dressed up (sorry Patrick, I was wrong about that whole, “Adults dress up too” thing, much to both our embarrassment!) so we got Brenden a costume. I should have bought it earlier so that he could be a little monkey like  I wanted him to be, but that costume was sold out so we went with a pumpkin instead. We dressed him up again to answer the door on halloween night too, and he was so cute! (The last pict. is Brenden on the way home from Austin. He was concentrating pretty hard on his toy!)

A year ago around this time (the 17th to be exact) Patrick and I were living in Jersey. I was going to my first sonogram while Patrick was in Dallas starting his first day back at PWC. And I was also trying to work up the nerve to turn in my two weeks notice.

At the end of next month, we’ll have be home for a year. It’s funny how quickly things change and how quickly you become used to them and start to consider them “normal”. I also think it’s funny that I’ve painted most of the rooms in the house in the time we’ve been back but not hung up any of our artwork. It’s all in a stack up against the wall in our library.

Patrick and I were missing NYC this past weekend. On Wed. I was telling my Mom how we had talked about that and then right after she left I came into the office to check my email and saw the yahoo headline about the plane crash. Suddenly I was missing it a little less. I sure would have been worried about Patrick at work in that little bit of time that no one knew what was going on! And I’m even more glad now that I just saw a headline that says 2 ft. of snow fell! I do love snow, but I love fall even more and there should be no snow in fall!

And now, without my agreeing to it, I’m days away from being 30! Ugh. And Brenden will be 6 months old at the end of the month. I’m really not sure when this happened. I still feel like such a kid most of the time. But I do hear that 30 is the new 20, so maybe it will all be fine!

I’m bored with all my music. I’ve worn everything out listening to it over and over. Anybody got any suggestions for something new I might like? I’ve been enjoying Keith Urban songs on the radio, but don’t know which cd to start with so I haven’t bought anything yet. I am excited about the new Sister Hazel one that’s out today, but I know I’ll probably listen to that a bunch when I first get it so I want some backup!