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