And He's Off.....

Brodie officially started crawling yesterday...he is still very slow and deliberate and he still will give himself a little push with his foot now and then, but he is crawling and into everything.  He is exploring everything - opening cupboards and drawers - reaching up and pulling things off of tables, etc.  Need to baby proof ASAP!!

 Well - look what I found....

 

 Brodie loves to look outside and of course play with the blinds before I raised them and ruined his fun...

 Oh what fun to empty the books off the shelf....

Best Friends Forever

Little Gym and More...

This morning we had a play group with some of our friends at The Little Gym.  It is a local place that offers gymnastics and other classes for children.  They were offering a special for play groups to come and try the gym out for free.  Alex LOVED it and demonstrated to all that he is ALL BOY.  I think he ran into or knocked over every other child there sometime this morning.  He just went full speed from the minute we entered the room - we definitely need to work on being aware of others in his surroundings!  Brodie hung out in the Bjorn and loved watching all the kids.  They have classes for babies and the instructors did a few things with him, but I pretty much feared for his safety if I put him down on the ground!

Parallel Bars -

 Rings-

Somersaults -

 Circle Time - (jumping, running, clapping, galloping, etc)
 
BUBBLES!

Not sure what these are called :)...
 


Balance Beam...


 Other Random Pics from our life...
And so it begins...Alex and Brodie's new favorite activity - "wrestling".  Alex lays down in front of Brodie and Brodie crawls all over Alex...fun for all and always seconds away from disaster. 

 

Brodie's new favorite outside activity - however, I need a seat belt for this car because he is constantly trying to crawl out of it...

8 Months Old

Brodie is all of a sudden a baby on the move.  Over the weekend he learned how to get from lying down to sitting up by himself.  He loves to practice this move when it is time to go down for a nap :).  He also decided to start pulling himself up to standing on this play table.  Brodie is starting to get across the room doing an inchworm/rolling/army crawling combination move.  He prefers to be standing at is getting antsier a lot quicker when left on the floor to play - he wants to move.

Here I go...gonna try to crawl...






We captured the first time he pulled up - Alex was trying to stop him - like "you can't do that!" :)

 Just decided to snap some shots of this sweetie one afternoon....

 Baby at play.... (spit up as I was taking pics) :)

 Brodie is doing pretty well sleeping - except for trying all of his new tricks at nap time.  It took 30 minutes for him to get down this morning because he kept pulling up on his crib railing, just so proud of himself :).   He eats around 6:30-7:00 and then goes down for the night.  He is up anywhere between 5:30-7:00 in the morning.  He takes two naps and they vary in length from 1-3 hours.  Sometimes he will take his big one - 2-3 hours in the morning - so we never know what the day will bring, but he is a good napper and has been sleeping through the night pretty consistently now.

Brodie loves baby food and gets pretty mad if we wait too long between bites.  I just gave him some pieces of puffs this week and he gummed them like a pro, but wasn't really sure what to think of them.  Will start some more "real food" this month. 

Brodie is very vocal - he is saying "dada", "gaga" and various other sounds.

Being outside is still his favorite place to be.  If he is ever fussy as he is sometimes at night after dinner we just head outside and he is happy as can be. 

Brodie loves swimming in the pool and loves bath time.  He just splashes away.

Brodie is still a very easy going and happy baby.  Some evenings he is a little more demanding and wants to be held and given some attention (just in time for when Daddy comes home!).  Otherwise he just goes with flow and hangs out and is always quick with a smile! 

Melt...Down

Thankfully Alex is not really a crier or the meltdown type...but it was the perfect storm last weekend - he was tired and hungry and "injured".  We had been out running errands and were home late for dinner and despite having a snack, he was starving.  Then he fell down on his way out of the van and his elbow was bleeding.  He would settle down and then look at his elbow and start crying all over again.  We couldn't resist engaging him and taping him for future blackmail ;).  Here is a little snip it - he went on later to say that the only thing that would make him happy would be to go to Target :). 

The Pool

Our pool liner was old and we knew the day was coming when we would have to replace it....well that day came.  While we were in Michigan, on vacation, the pool started loosing water quickly and we realized that we had a pretty big tear/leak somewhere.  

It has been a slow process.  The pool store did a good job with the liner, but they were not in a great hurry to get the job complete.

We let the pool go once we knew we needed a new liner - we had to wait a week for the new liner to come in- so our pool turned into an algae swamp.

They emptied the pool and then ripped out the liner.  They had to treat some algae that grew behind the old liner and secure some seams.





New liner!  Alex loved swimming in the pool while it was filling up because the pool was shallow so he could touch. 

Thankfully with this heat we never had to wait for the water to warm up - it was 84 degrees right away and we could start swimming immediately.

Randomness

 Here are a few things we have been up to the this past week....

Seriously- he looks like a one year old on this thing!  Brodie would put his foot on the pedal and it would go and it would scare him and then he was quite unsure about being on it anymore.  I love the picture where he looks like his is pointing at me...

 















 A little wrestling - Eric was playing with Brodie on the floor and Alex didn't want to miss out on any of the action...

 The other morning Alex wanted Brodie to watch "monkey" with him in the morning.  Sweet boys!  Alex obviously couldn't tear his eyes away from the tv to look at the camera ;). 

 Alex's new favorite thing to play with me is "dinosaurs".  It pretty much goes like this... the dinosaurs are in a cave and Alex and "the boys" (little people) go for a walk in the woods and they see tracks and then they follow the tracks to the cave and use the flashlight to see what is in the cave.  Then he runs and hides in his own cave (blanket) from whatever he discovered.  I usually have to be a boy or a dinosaur or whatever was hiding in the cave- usually a skunk or big dinosaur.  Really it is hours of fun for everyone ;). 

Alex had his 3 year old Well Check today.
     Weight - 33 lbs (50th percentile)
     Height - 39 1/4 inches - (90th percentile)
     Blood Pressure - 103/68

Alex was very shy with the doctor.  Dr. C was asking Alex a lot of questions and here is how it went....
Dr. C - "Alex how old are you?"
Alex - "Three"
Dr. C - "Did you have a birthday cake"
Alex - "Crocodile" - (starting to look down)
Dr. C - "Did you blow out all the candles"
Alex - "yes" - (completely looking away now)
Dr. C - "Do you like to drink milk?"
Alex - "yes" - (barely audible and is off the chair walking toward me)
Dr. C - "Do you like to eat cheese?"
Alex - starts to climb up my body.....

Dr. C continued to ask questions about what he ate, being potty trained, riding bikes, sleeping in a big boy bed, etc.  I had to coax Alex's head out of my shoulder and push him to look at Dr. C and answer and we pretty much got one word answers the whole time.  I have never seen him so shy.  Later when I asked him why he didn't want to talk to the doctor he said he was scared.

Thankfully he is doing great!  He is developing well and a healthy little boy!