23 Months

Getting ready for Halloween means getting ready for my baby boy to turn 2!



This is the B'day shirt I made him.
I'm contemplating having his name monogrammed on it.

I was just talking to friends about his birthday today and saying how I cried last year when everyone was singing "Happy Birthday". All of the memories of Bryant's birth, and after, came flooding back all at once. His first cry, his sweet face and the feeding tube attached to it for days in the NICU, Dixie sniffing him up one side and down the other when we brought him home, the many different noises he made, the spitting up from his horrible acid reflux, his smile, his laugh, sitting up, crawling....everything. It was a very emotional moment. I'm a crier, everyone knows that about me, so I will probably cry again this year...Probably cry because I will think about myself crying last year and then think about all of the things Bryant has accomplished this year. Oh well, at least he is too young to understand why mommy is emotional.

I never really thought about it before, but all the birthday's I've had I never really thought about what my mom was feeling. Here I am at 29 and I feel like I will always view my baby's birthday's as the most special day and make it so for them. Can't wait to celebrate!

This is kind of random, but Bryant's teacher posted this on the class website the other day and I thought I would share it.

Being a Christian is like being a pumpkin. God lifts you up, takes you in, and washes all the dirt off of you. He opens you up, touches you deep inside and scoops out all the yucky stuff-- including the seeds of doubt, hate, greed, etc. Then he carves you a new smiling face and puts His light inside you to shine for all the world to see.

He is doing very well at school. No bad reports, yet. Although, I have a feeling that might be changing very soon...

As Nick would say, we spend the first two years of our babies lives pretty much teaching them they are the center of our universe and the rest of their lives convincing them otherwise. Toddlers are smart. Once their little minds start to pick up on the fact that they can no longer control the situation and there are consequences to their actions you get a little push back.

We will be cranking up the discipline in our home and that worries me because their are so many times when we are out in public...what am I going to do then? For example, (and this is becoming a regular problem) he refused to hold my hand as we were leaving school the other day. Ok, not terrible, a little independence is good, but he is to young to understand streets and cars and if he were to get too far ahead of me and happen to dart off into the street that would be a problem. So, after I yank him up off the ground, that's right...he sits down on the pavement in protest of me trying to hold his hand...I explain he is being disobedient and end up carry him to the car. How do you spank and give a time out in a parking lot? I probably can use the tactic of "wait till we get home" but by that point is he really going to remember what he is in trouble for doing?

Life isn't all that bad. There are things about B that are pleasant, fun and entertaining to watch.

Bryant loves to be pulled in the laundry basket. We keep the basket on the dryer and he knows where it is and will point and ask for it during the day. I cannot play this game with him (thank goodness) so I will tell him that Daddy will have to pull him when he gets home. He remembers...and sure enough when Nick gets home he will pretty much force him to pull him in the basket.



Bryant is obsessed with feeding Dixie her dog food. First, it was a simple obsession with just holding the food in his hands. Now, he has to feed her or his world ends. This is a short video of the process. Nick says Dixie now waits for him to feed her, but I think she is not very excited about the process to the point of scared to even approach her bowl. He freaks if she gets to her bowl and he's not there.



This is just one of those things that I throw my hands up to and go with because Dixie will clean it up.

He has gotten better at dressing. He can put his shoes on, he can put his pants on and kinda pull them up with help. We're still working on learning how to take his shirt off and we are no where close to getting a shirt on. He seems to want to put everything on like pants.

He actually really likes putting his shoes on...so much so that he puts ours on too...



He really enjoys watching videos online.



We show him youtube videos of Elmo, but recently he enjoys the videos his teacher posts on the class website. He is obsessed with two in particular. I'll share them with you...

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCjJyiqpAuU

Butterfly colors
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPAZHVNVJp0

We went to the park yesterday. Nick took him on a bigger slide and he road the dinosaur for a minute...





I don't really know how to post much of an update on Bryant's therapy other than to say that it is going well. He is adjusting to OT just like he did with school. Speech is tough because of the time slot we have, but we make it work. He is getting better with his eating and he is repeating words that he hears. Two new words are ball and star. He has said some other things, but those are the new ones he really knows.