These boys: 7 months and 26 months

Brady at 7 months-

*Brady has 2 1/2 teeth, and they've all emerged in the month of August.  The bottom two have come in simultaneously, and his top gums are so swollen, too.  I've been able to see one of his top teeth for days now, but I can't quite feel it- and it seems to bother him when I try.  Remember those cute chin "smooches" I love?  Well now they hurt.... I'm planning on nursing for another 5-6 months, so these teeth better not cause too much trouble!

*Brady is really good at sitting up.  The problem is he will still sometimes fling himself back, so I like to still have soft "landing spaces" around him when he's sitting.

*He is always grooving.  If you catch his eye he will (definitely) smile at you and (probably) start bopping up and down.  He's the cutest little boogie-er.

*He naps!  He takes a short morning nap and then a longer (about 2 hour) nap in the afternoon when Anderson does.  Halleluiah!!

*Brady is fully into 12 mos. clothing; some 18 mos. pants already fit him.  Last week I squeezed him into the last 9 month outfits that I think those chunky legs will ever see.

*On that note, Brady loves eating fruit and vegetables!  He's eaten pretty much everything eagerly- we had to sneak in green beans at first, but he seems to have even warmed up to them.  We let him try Puffs last weekend, and he really likes those, too.  His 2-finger grip and hand-eye coordination are still works in progress. :)

Here is a happy-to-be-in-my-highchair-cuz-I'm-ready-to-eat photo:

And one more picture that I love.  He gets his eyes from his daddy, and I love this:

Anderson at 26 months-

Ah, TWO.  Anderson is so fun, but not quite as easy as he has been.  He is still usually happy and usually cooperative, but not always.  He definitely feels more emotions now that he is two- or at least he expresses them more dramatically.  I don't think we've seen a real tantrum yet, but if he's frustrated he will swat (okay, hit) and cry.  This is usually short-lived, but it happens.

But the good SO outweighs the trying.  His vocabulary continues to explode, and talking to him is so fun.  He's starting to remember events and he'll talk about them for a few days.  We still like to ask him about the zoo (we went last weekend.)  Here are a couple of photos:

Anderson liked looking at all of the animals- briefly- and then would say, "anudder animal".  Here are some "mumpeys."

Anderson will tell us he saw giraffes and they were "hungry."

Brady doing his ostrich impression.

Anderson loves

*trains and cars- we accidentally showed him a race on TV a few weeks ago (turns out the SPEED channel is one above the channel that shows all of the Nationals' games), and now his favorite thing to watch is racing- we're talking Formula One, Nascar..... I'm hoping he figures out that it's boring soon!

*books and letters.  Here he is in the tub.  It used to bother him if he couldn't put all of the letters side-by-side, but as you can see, he's starting to think "outside the box"

*Singing!  He sings and suddenly loves for us to sing, again.  He sings the ABC's, complete with "Now my know my ABCs" at the end.  He also sings, "I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas." He does "oat" and "oot" verses on a pretty regular basis, too.  He loves for us to sing "Hush little baby."  Thanks to one morning with Grandpa and Grandma, however, he is no longer satisfied by the traditional version.  As soon as you get to the "Mocking Bird" part, he wants you to sing about "Cat Feet."  Apparently my Dad was coming up with verses MUCH funnier than mine. ;)

*Dessert- we went to a yogurt/ topping bar the other night, and I guess it was the first time I fixed him chocolate ice cream.  He had one taste and lit up, saying, "broum ice cream!"  It was love.

*Computers/ my phone- I like to let him type on the computer (as I mentioned in an earlier blog), but he just wants to do it all the time now.  Luckily his own little laptops tend to satisfy him when we don't want him on one of our computers-

And he loves my phone, and is pretty good at navigating it.  Which means I barely get any front-smiling photos of Anderson because as soon as he sees me pull my phone out to take one, he's reaching for it.  So I have to "sneak" most of my Anderson pictures these days.  Here are two more random pictures, but I like them:

Right before his latest hair cut- think it was time?

This was actually from last month, but I think it's so cute and I hadn't done anything with it yet.  Anderson and I got to harvest some of Grandpa's garden, and we found this "BIG zuteee"  (zucchini).

Little stuff

A little collection of photos and memories from the past few weeks.  Nothing major, but things I don't want to forget. 

Brady posed for a 6-month bathtime photo shoot.  I MAY be biased, but I think he is so stinkin cute!
And look- hair (mini-feaux-hawk in top photo)!

I plopped the boys down on the sofa so I could run and do something-  they sat hand-in-hand just chillin :)  Brady gets so giddy when Anderson is paying him attention.

Brady has loved most of the foods he's tried.  Green beans he did not like very much, but in general he eats a lot.  He has 3 meals a day already because he looks so left out if we're not feeding him at meal times.  He also loves a sippy cup with water.  He likes drinking the water- but at this point he loves anything he can chew on.

Anderson is now in a booster seat at the table.  He's made the transition so easily- he's just messier now without a tray to catch the food.  Also he's messier because he thinks it's fun to throw food on the floor when he's finished and to shake his sippy cups upside down....... Sadie wasn't helping matters, so she's not invited to the table at mealtimes, currently.

Here he is eating a pancake- or "BIG cookie!" if you ask him ;)

Anderson is so funny about letters and numbers- the obsession continues...  Lately his favorite thing to do is get on the computer and type.  He says, "Big A!" or "Chair, pease?" or "Open" as he stands at my bedroom door.  It's great when I have time to sit with him, but it makes me a little nervous when he's under-supervised.  One time I checked on him and completely did not recognize the desktop or any of the icons anymore.  Whoops- luckily, after 5 minutes or so of mini-panic, I managed to reverse the changes. 

He likes to type the alphabet, but it's funny to see a toddler's attention span on paper.  It looks something like:

ABCDEFGHIJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJJ

Haha :)  He usually ends up with about 163 pages, word count: 2.

I may be slightly obsessed with a Buy/ Sell/ Trade Facebook group I've joined.  But I have found a few treasures that I'm excited about!  My favorite is this Jumperoo.  It is in great shape, and Brady loves it as much as I hoped he would.  It plays country music and makes horsey sounds when he jumps.  We keep it inside, but it's a fun way for him to be active when we're outside, too.  I love seeing a little "wild man" personality emerging from Brady.

Here's a video of the boys checking out the new Jumperoo.  :)  This is my first video-blog attempt- fingers crossed.

 Last, a brief list of some things that Anderson is saying these days:

Anytime he falls- also if he sees someone else fall: "Are you otay?"  (followed by "No...")
"Awww tute (cute) baby!"
"I wuv you."
"Momma tiss" (Momma kiss... or Daddy, Brady, etc.)
Also, as of yesterday he'll say "Super Anderson!" and make muscles. Cracks me up. :)

Baby Mine

Anderson is becoming such a parrot these last couple of weeks.  He'll repeat a lot of what we say (he does a pretty good impression of my "Oh, honey!"), but what amazes me are the things he is now saying that we haven't talked about for a long time.  I see this a lot in reading books.  He's chiming in with words from books that we haven't read in weeks.  Tonight at dinner Brady was getting fussy, and from across the table Anderson says in a sing-songy voice, "Baby mine, don't you cry."  It was the sweetest thing ever.  And I sing "Baby Mine" every once in a while, but probably not even once a week.  I looked at my mom, and she said she only occasionally sings it, too.  So funny and so sweet.  I love two-year-old Anderson.

(Here he was at bedtime tonight.)