Thanksgiving 2011

What a weekend!  Michael snuck in the backdoor Wednesday night during bathtime, and the boys were absolutely elated.  Braddock had been saying all week..."Daddy coming home Wednesday!  Gonna fly to the bed!" (that's their special thing...Michael flies Braddock like an airplane or helicopter and then drops him off in the bed for a tickle/tumble match).

Abram absolutely lit up when he saw Michael.  He had been super fussy from his teeth still trying to come in, and from not being able to nap very well because of the teething, but when Daddy popped through the door his demeanor totally changed and he grinned that Abram grin :)

Being upside down is one of his favorites lately...that and sheets (I was folding sheets that morning and he about literally fell on the floor he was laughing so hard at me shaking the sheet up and down like a parachute).

Braddock was excited to show his Daddy all the bubbles in the tub!

Bedtime stories with the boys.


The next day was Thanksgiving and we were super low key, stayed in our PJs and just enjoyed being together.  Braddock loved watching the parade and searched for "drums and trumpets and geetars and violins" and then Nestle plopped himself over by the TV and watched all the fancy dogs in the dog show...
I wonder if he remembered those days when we worked with Mrs. Jane in confirmation/therapy stuff and was checking out gait and "stand" positions? LOL  I think he was probably more interested in the turkey...

Glutton!

 (He's actually not in time out this time!  LOL...I guess he's been there a lot lately with his habit of trash emptying.  Here he was just playing with Abram in the window)

After naps we loaded up the car and went to pick out a Christmas tree!

Braddock enjoyed pointing to all the trees, until he found the hay....

and then he was totally enthralled!  The man who owned the shop warned us about manure since the tree lot was in a pasture, but at that point he was so happy playing in the hay we figured we'd take our chances and could always just hose his shoes down if we had to.  :)
Michael wore Abram in the Ergo so I could wrangle Braddock and take pictures...

....and I think secretly he wanted more snuggle time (when Abram woke up from naptime throughout the weekend if Braddock was still asleep, he'd strap him into the Ergo to go for a walk :)!
Abram loved looking at all the trees, and would reach out and touch and sniff them (an issue we are dealing with now is trying to keep him from pulling up on the tree and playing peekaboo with the lower branches!).

And nothing beats the smell of the tree stump (Braddock called it the "tree house trunk" and held it all through dinner)

The field where we got the tree...

Braddock was so thrilled that there was a barn!

"loading up"...blowing me kisses :)
We got home that evening and fixed plates for us to all eat dinner together.  Braddock helped sing the blessing...(this was the last picture where Braddock was not in what I will affectionately call "Wild Bill" mode)

Abram ate everything within reach and looked at Braddock as if to say, "Brother!  What's the matter?  This is seriously good stuff!  But if you're not going to eat it, push it my way!!"

...and Braddock...well....let's just say we are thankful for vitamins and milk (he is in a stage now where texture has become a huge factor, and he's not a fan of 'new' foods...I know there will probably come a day where he will totally raid the fridge and pantry and nom everything in sight, but right now it is a little unnerving how much like a bird he can be!).


Friday morning we decided to go and have a picnic at the park and just relax and play together.

Where Braddock goes Abram goes...he is definitely his little shadow these days...and if Abram starts to go where Braddock can't see him he hollers out, "Hey, Abram! Where ya goin!"

Not sure about this sand stuff!

Braddock wanted to build a snowman...unfortunately Mommy is not the best at sand art, but he was excited about it!

Watching Braddock climb up the slide...

Knocking on the "bubble"

One of my favorite things about riding in the car with them...Abram will look over at Braddock and squeak until Braddock turns to look at him, and then they smile and start to laugh at each other.  Sometimes driving down the road out of nowhere they'll both just start laughing and laughing :)






Naptime...Abram was helping tuck Braddock in...

Love.

After a busy day Michael was worn out, too :)

That night we went out on a date night and got some Christmas shopping done!  We were totally the two goons who danced by the fountain and the Christmas tree to the boardwalk music :)  I hope I didn't break too many of Michael's toesies with my two left feet!

The next day was Saturday, and after Braddock and Michael went "mudding" during Abram's morning nap,

(Braddock "drove" while Michael hosed off the residual mud)

we decided to hit up Target with the boys to scout out what they were drawn too...

LOL, no surprise there!  He was drawn at first to the puppy dog guitar, but then once he spied the microphone he became ob.sessed.  There were major major tears when we had to tell it "night night" and put it back in its "resting place" (luckily Santa knows just what to get!)
 Saturday night Michael went to hang out with one of his good friends and I had a girls night with some fabulous ladies.  We had been trying to do a girls night for such a long long time (time has a way of completely slipping away from me!), and I am so so glad we were able to all get together.  We sat around the kitchen table with a jar of nutella and caught up...I seriously laughed so hard my face hurt.


It was a wonderful weekend, and a time to be thankful for all of the many many blessings I so often take forgranted...amazing family, precious friends, and so much more.

Sunday came so so quickly...and so to take our minds off of the changes in our house, we cranked up the Christmas music and had a dance party...well it started as a dance party, and then ended up a piano jam session :)

(Abram was singing)

"Yay!!!!" Big finish!

Even Giraffe got in on the action!

Potty in the Trunk

Last night was a night like any other...until I opened the "pull-up" drawer in the bathroom after baths and discovered that they. were. all. gone.  What?!  How did I let this happen?  And even worse, WHAT was I going to do?  How was I going to get out of the house to buy  more pull ups...withOUT pullups?!  This is a little insight into my absolutely ridiculous stressing about logistics...LOL-please don't judge me ;)...I could get on amazon and change around our shipping dates and have them over-nighted, then do a late night grocery run after Michael got home Wednesday night...I could hunt down a babysitter to sit at the house during naptime while I ran to the store...I could line underwear with obscene amounts of Bounty (after all, it is the "quilted quicker picker upper," surely it could manage to absorb some toddler tinkle) and take my chances...cue the hives and the brown paper sack!  Okay, not really, but I sure was in a self-induced moment of panic there for a bit!  We have been working on potty training now for quite some time, trying every technique and trick known to man,  and although we had moments of great triumph, we also had many more moments of total epic disaster where I was seriously googling "super nanny" to see if we could still sign up for the show.  I had to get a grip!  He wasn't going to go to off to college with a stinky bum!
So, thanks to some brilliant advice (thank goodness for fabulous mommy friends), enter (drum roll please!) "potty in the trunk."  So clever...and so...well, obvious...but I was too spun up in my stress ball to think rationally!

I have to admit, a significant part of my trepidation was public restrooms...not only had I watched one too many episodes of 20/20 where they swab faucets and potty seats (yack) and find mutated strands of heinous nastiness, but I couldn't figure out what I was going to do with Abram while trying to get Braddock in the necessary position for success (again with the logistics!).  But this!  THIS solves those problems...and Braddock seriously thought it was the coolest thing ever.  I was envisioning us racing through the commissary with the intercom sounding above us..."Clean up on aisle 3!....and 4!...and please add 5 and 6!"...as we left a tinkle trail even Hansel and Gretel would've been jealous of, but to my amazement, he stayed dry....and believe me, I was checking the poor little fella every 30 seconds.  After a while I relaxed and almost forgot he was in underwear at all....and we checked out some insanely HUGE sweet potatoes (it's hard to tell from the picture, but that sucker was seriously bigger than my face)!

We even made it to a play gym at Gymboree (complete with Potty in the Trunk! and he did use the potty at Gymbos several times while a sweet friend watched Abram), and through Chic-Fil-A (to celebrate of course ;) for dinner, all with a dry little tooshie.  He was totally ready...I think sadly it was me that was holding him back.  There will be accidents, and we both need to know (and believe) that it's all okay, and it will happen...and as long as we keep trying that's all we can do.  A dear friend of mine shared with me that she and her son started adding potty training topics to their prayers...like asking God to help him learn to control and listen to his body, what a beautiful prayer request (we totally adopted this one, too...Again SO thankful for the fabulous Mommy support system!  I love that we are all on the same team!)!
Anyhow...here we are...I feel like we are on the final frontier of "baby"-dom...big boy bed (check)...underwear (check)...I think this was the little nudge (or kick in the bootie!) that we needed.  He's growing up.....

Almost 11 ...

Abram is just a few days shy of being 11 months old...and this seems like maybe last week?! 

I really have got to pull out the child's baby book and get crackin'!  
Anyhow!  Abram is growing growing growing...he and his brother can share britches (although what is a little long on Abram is a little short on Braddock).  He has sunny, red hair and is developing a very determined personality along with it :) 
He is a social critter, and is in a stage where he is happy, as long as he is right next to someone familiar, especially Braddock. He loves to try to hug on and hold hands with his brother anytime the moment presents itself.  He is also hitting into the beginnings of the separation anxiety stage...anytime I walk out of the room to run grab something, he takes off crawling after me (it's like he woke up one morning with this speed-crawling thing down pat!) and makes this deep "ehhh!" sound of protest (I can almost hear him saying, "hang on a second!  I'm coming, too!").
When he smiles he smiles with his entire being...nose crinkles, eyes squint, cheekbones rise, body bounces, feet swing, arms fly...it is one of the sweetest sights, and it is impossible not to reciprocate. 

He is cruising all over, and when he's not thinking about it, will let go and stand alone for a few seconds.  In fact, he is getting so brave in his adventuring that his forehead resembles and triceratops (three good sized goose eggs across the top of his forehead...one from falling off of his new favorite perch--

one from falling and knocking his head on the side of his bed during "naptime," and the other from losing balance cruising in the bathroom and hitting face first (those tile floors are so mean).  I have buffered a bunch of falls...actually catching him once with my foot from the above perch while I had Braddock in one arm and a carton of eggs in the other...if you know my lack of grace, trust me I was surprised too... but missed some big crashes, too :(

 He loves picking out books, but is too busy most days to read them for very long (he likes to be on the move keeping up with brother).

The next couple that I tried to get of him actually looking through the book were a blur :)

He is absolutely enthralled with opposing concepts like up and down (Braddock and I pick up balls in the tub and roll them down the ramp and say "UP!  and DOWN!" and he laughs and laughs, and then tries to imitate), in and out (he's getting this one down pat and Braddock gets excited that Abram is helping put away...until it's all away, and Abram wants to dump it out and do it all over again :), open and close (this is for sure a big favorite, he'll sit and open and close any door he can find!:

He's playing a good bit with his sounds and pitch these days, and is babbling up a storm.  He'll look at Braddock and try to strike up a conversation... Braddock will look at him and smile and say, "aww, he's talkin' atchya!"  He is also definitely a little songbird--anytime "Rockin' Robin" comes on (or another familiar song) he bounces up and down, shakes his head from side to side, and grins his Abram grin. 

He loves food...not just the taste, but the whole experience of it all.  He for sure eats whatever is in front of him, but also loves to squish it in his hands, sniff it, rub it in his hair...reach his hand down and tease Nestle (Nestle will run over and go to lick him, but Abram will pull his hand back just in time and laugh hysterically.  Eventually Nestle will sneak a lick and that makes Abram smile, too)

He usually wakes up a bit before Braddock and he will snuggle in bed with me and practice "beeping" my nose or blowing raspberries on my cheek.  Maybe I'm crazy, but I am actually dreading the day that he sleeps in...not for the extra rest, but because I know that upon waking he'll decide to go and play instead.  Those days are coming much too quickly...