Easter Weekend Part 1

We had suuch a fun Easter this year. We did the normal "Easter things" with Bryson last year, but this year, he was actually able to participate and he had so much fun! I can't wait for the day that he will know and understand the real meaning of Easter. :)

We knew Bryson was going to have a lot of egg hunts this year, so the entire week prior to Easter, we practiced hunting eggs at the house. I put gummie snacks and M&Ms inside the eggs and after a couple of practice rounds, he got the egg hunting down pat!

His first egg hunt was with his school on Thursday and he was a pro already. His teachers said he knew exactly what to do and where to put the eggs. Woohoo! Practicing paid off! haha :)

Egg Hunt #2 was at our church on Saturday. It didn'tstart until 10:10 and we got there a little early, so we had to wait. Bryson didn't like that idea and tried to sneak under the gate a few times. He was ready for those eggs! haha

He was in the "under 2" age group. All the kids were ADORABLE!!!

Bryson knew that there was candy in the eggs so he decided that there was no need for those little round plasic things, he just picked up all the candy and left the egg. HAHA!

 He was SO funny running all over the place. This is mid-sprint for an egg!! It cracks me up!

I love our church. They always go ALL out for any kind of activity. They even had a petting zoo, which was a huuuge hit!

After the egg hunt, we headed down to the Dallas Zoo. They remodeled the zoo a few years ago and it is fantastic!! The weather was great and Bryson really loved seeing all the animals.

We started off in the Children's side at Petting Zoo. It was really fun for him to see all these animals in person. He knows what they look like in books, but to see them in real life is so different.

Then, we went on to the rest of the zoo...

Michael and I had so much fun watching Bryson get so excited about the animals! We can't wait to go back!!

Wordless Wednesday- Ride 'Em Cowboy and Presidential Wave

16 Months!!

My little man is just getting so big! He is more fun than ever right now!

He surprises us with new things that he is doing all the time.

We have dubbed him the copycat master. No matter what we do, he is our little shaddow doing or saying the same thing (some intonation). When I fold laundry, he picks up clothes and "folds" the clothes right next to me. He loves to help clean up toys when we're picking up, but only if I am singing the "clean up" song. If the song isn't being sung, things are not being picked up! He also LOVES when I vaccuum. He squeels and laughs and follows me around the house when I vaccuum. Everytime he sees the vaccuum, he picks up the hose and pretends to vaccuum. It's so adorable!

One of the funniest things is how much he LOVES shoes. The first thing he does in the morning after we change his diaper is run to find his shoes and sit in our lap saying "dis! dis!" while sticking his foot up in the air putting on his shoes by himself.  He also likes to pick his shoes for the day. Michael gets him ready for school in the mornings and if Michael picks shoes B doesn't want to wear, he puts up a big stink a yells "nuh nuh nuh" while he goes to find the ones he does want to wear and then he's perfectly happy and puts on his shoes. It's SO funny! There's also a good chance you would see him running around the house like this:

He has also started standing with his arms crossed (gansta style) because apparently, I stand like that a lot when I'm talking! :)

Half of the time he will NOT sit in a highchair at restaurants. The other half, he is perfectly happy chilling in the chair. So, half the time, he sits next to me or Michael on the bench like a big boy!!

I know I've mentioned that B loves basketball. I don't think I can do his love obsession justice on the blog. He just goes nuts whn he sees a ball or basketball. Going anywhere in pulic during the month of March was a nightmare. There were basketballs and basketball memorabilia ALL over the place in honor of March Maddness. If we didn't stop and pretend to play ball for a bit, lots of screaming and tears would follow. He is definietly a boy after his Daddy's own heart!

He's usually a super easy going kid, but every once in a while, he is VERY stubborn. Don't even think about helping him with the following things; he MUST do them himself:

buckling him in his carseat

buckling him in his high chair

putting on his shoes
eating with a spoon or fork

Some things he's doing now:
~He still doesn't have a gigantic vocabulary yet, but he is starting to say more and more things, so I hope more words are on their way! "caw" is his word of choice now. We drive down the road and he points to all the "caw"s. He also says  "deh ee  isssss" (there it is) when he finds something he's looking for

~He can point to his head, knees, toes, eyes, ears, mouth, nose, belly, belly button, feet, tongue, teeth, hands and fingers

~He LOVES music. If he hears a song on the tv or radio or if we're singing, he stops what he's doing and shakes his groove thang.

~He does most of the motions for:

The Itsy Bitsy Spider

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

The Wheels on the Bus

If You're Happy And You Know It

This Little Light of Mine

Ring around the Rosies- this song goes on forEVER in our house. After we "ahh dow" Bryson pops back up yelling "moe moe moe!" and so we all grab hands and do it again. and again.... it's so fun :)

~ Knows the noises for a car (oom oom) cow, horse, sheep, dog, lion, tiger, bear, duck, owl, bird, snake, seal (i LOVE this one!) pirate, bee, elephant, crocodile (chomps arms) monkey and sometimes donkey :)

~He's "filling in the gaps" in his mouth and only has 2 more teeth to go. He has 14 right now!! BIG boy!

~Loves bath time!!

~ Loves to ride in the car, but absolutely refuses to keep on his shoes. Shoes come off within seconds of being buckled in. He spends the remainder of the car ride putting on and taking off his shoes.

Poor kid has been sick a lot. As soon as he gets better, something else comes along. Two weeks ago it was Strep, in which his fever spiked at 103.5. Scared me like crazy! Then, this week, he woke up with Pink Eye on Sunday morning. I have thought he has allergies for a long time now, but every time he gets sick it could always be explained by something else besides allergies, and since "kid's don't show signs of allergies until 2" it keeps getting dismissed. My dad mentioned that it really sounds like he has allergies, so next time we go to the doctor, I'll be one of "those" moms insisting that they do something or at least start looking into allergies with Bryson. We'll see what happens.

I can't believe my little man is 16 months old already. Time has gone by so fast!

We love you SO much, sweet sweet boy!! 

Nuh Nuh

Growing up, my sisters and I got a lot of bumps and bruises. We weren't exactly the most graceful of kids. Quite frankly, we were clumsy and ran into things or fell down often. My mom was brilliant and created a way to put us in control of the situation by having us tell it "no-no". If we fell off the swing and got hurt, we'd cry, of course, and then say, "no no. don't hurt me, swing." Sounds silly, but it worked well for our family. :)

Michael and I have started it with Bryson in the last few months and it's great!!

I always make sure to help him say "no no (insert item here), don't hurt Bryson" so he knows WHY we're saying it. He knows when to say it and actually never (not yet anyway) says it to Michael or Me, only objects.

A few examples....

He hit his head on his train table pretty hard and after a few seconds of tears, he turned around and said through tears, (while shaking his finger) "nuh nuh. nuh nuh."

He was wildly running though the house a while back and ran smack dab into the door frame. He cried, shook his finger and said "nuh nuh." Later that day he was playing and walked past the same door frame, turned on a dime, remembered what had happened earlier, shook his finger and said, "nuh nuh" and then continued playing :)  

Earlier this week, this no-no thing even saved me from getting bitten. Bryson is not a biter at all, like never, but after he tripped and hit his head on the wall, he was crying really hard and very upset. I was on the floor with my arms wrapped around him and he had his bruised head buried in my shoulder. He lifted his head and looked me in the eye like he wanted to tell me how badly it hurt, but just couldn't get out the words and opened his mouth and was leaning in to bite my shoulder. About 2 inches away from my shoulder, he pulled his head back (completely on his own), turned to the wall and whipped out his pointer finger. With rain drop sized tears streaming down his face and his quivering bottom lip pushed out, he said, "nuh nuh. nuh nuh". Mommy joined in and we both "punished" the wall for hurting Bryson. Mommy also praise the heck out of Bryson for not biting!! :)

Then, today, in the middle of playing hoops with Michael, he started pooping. We always know when he's pooping because his legs wiggle, he hunches over slightly and gets an adoarble "serious look" on his face which usually passes after 10 seconds or so. Well, that look never went away tonight. 5 minutes later, he was getting to the point of making childbirth noises. He was pushing so hard, he even made himself throw up. :( 

I won't go into details about how we relieved this problem but let's just say it wasn't my crowning moment. A mom's gotta do what a mom's got to do, right!? Anyway, after he was poop-free, he was sitting on my lap on the floor and saw his diaper. I told him that was the poopoo and he immediately whipped out his finger and said the magic words. I kid you not, he said, "nuh nuh nuh nuh" about 55 times. Michael and I were sitting on the floor trying so so hard not to laugh because he was so serious and stern, but he was adamant about saying nuh nuh and didn't care that we were giggling at him!! :)

Combining Two Loves

Bryson and I are home today because you know who is sick. again. He has pink eye, poor kid. I swear, Brson finds every germ in a 100 mile radius. BLAHH.

Anyway, he doesn't act like he feels bad, just looks yucky, so we've been playing all day long! We watched a little Micky Mouse Clubhouse, a favorite of Mr. B, and it was all about basketball, another favorite of his!!

I thought he was going to go horse from screaming/squeeling/laughing so much! He was SO happy!! I rewound it and got a bit on camera. I sure wish I got footage of the first time....oh so priceless!!!

(Please excuse the "balls covering the livingroom floor" look. It frequents our home often.)

Bluebonnets

Last Sunday, Michael was out of town, so it was just B and I. We woke up early, so I decided we were going to go take some pictures in a bluebonnet field close to our house before church.

The bluebonnets were beautiful and Bryson was just as handsome as can be. I tried and tried to get cute pictures of him sitting in the flowers, but I couldn't get the kid to sit/stand/stay still for more than 2 seconds to save my life!! No matter how many silly noises I made or how many toys I hid in the flowers for him find, all he cared about was running around like a crazy hyped up toddler. Go figure! I got a couple cute pictures, but decided that modeling is not in Mr. B's future anytime soon. :)

I thought maybe if I had another person to distract B, he would possibly stay in one place long enough for me to snap a smiley picture, so Michael met us over in the field after work. I looove how much he loves his daddy!! :)

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this one!!!

Creativity

Bryson is really getting into "coloring" these days. Watching him discover how to hold a crayon and scribble all over the page is just adoable! I can't wait to see his creativity start developing as he continues to grow. :)

Our fridge was getting pretty crowded with all the pictures he's colored at home and at school. A while back, I saw the cutest little art board at Swoozies (which has the cutest things ever!) however, I didn't want to shell out 60 bucks for the thing! So, I grabbed some supplies from Hob Lob and Office Max (for the clips) and went to work making my own board!

It was super easy! All you need is:

a board (use a 40% coupon that they have regularly, it's only $5.50!)

paint for the background

paint pen for the words (I started with a paintbrushon the octopus and then got smart and got a paintpen from the closet)

clips (I could only find ones that had suction cups attached to the back, so I bought those and then ripped them off)

screws (I had to use the absolute shortest screws we had because the board was so thin)

picture hangers (And I could only hammer the nails half way in the board for the same reason)

To make:

1. Paint

(we have baby bags coming out our ears, so why not use it as a paint plate?? haha)

2. Write

3. Screw in clips

4. Nail in Picture hangers (halfway)

5. Hang artwork and find a nice place for it in your home :)