Brady is Two!

Brady turned two on Sabbath, June 8.  Honestly, I could not love this little boy any more than I do.  Why didn't someone tell me boys were as awesome as girls?!!  Let's just hope TWO boys are as great as two girls.

Since it was Sabbath, it was a normal day with going to church.  We sat with Jennifer, as usual, which brought up the subject of the car cake she was making for him.  He talked quite a bit about that car cake!  In Sabbath School, we all sang happy birthday to him which you can see by clicking here.  I'm happy to say he wasn't shy about sitting in the rocking chair and getting sung to like Aubree has been up until this year.  Just after Sabbath School, I got a text message from Jennifer which said "Is the party tonight???"  Yes, yes it was.  Poor Jennifer.  She thought it was on Sunday and she didn't have any of the cake done so that sent her into a mini panic.  It was an understandable mistake since usually all parties are on Sunday.  I wouldn't normally have a party on Sabbath anyway but this was really more like just supper and a cake.  After the one for the girls, I wasn't about to do decorations, games, etc. again.  Too much work!

Since I wanted to keep it a very low-key event, we just had Ron and Elaine and the Isidros and Bergherms over for make-your-own pizzas, salad (using just lettuce from our garden), and fruit salad.  Allen's parents ending up coming too because Allen and Tangie had planned to go out to see Blue Man Group after the party to celebrate Tangie's birthday which had been on Thursday.  It was a nice time and thankfully we avoided our smoke alarm going off despite all those pizzas baking in the oven. Later in the evening we got around to Brady opening his presents and I wish I had gotten a video of him seeing his present from us...one of those little bikes with no peddles.  His face completely lit up with excitement.  The bike is for age 2 and up but unfortunately because he's so small, his feet don't even touch the ground on the lowest setting.  Duncan just has to push him around.  It's cute though because Brady keeps messing it up and says "The bike is too tiny."  Maybe we can put it on storage and surprise him again with it for Christmas.

The gang with the birthday boy.

One of the gifts from Papa and Gigi.

His new bike.  When he gets excited about something, he sticks out his tongue.

Sporting gifts from Grandma and Grandpa.  Grandma had gotten alarmed when Brady tried on a wedding dress for dress up when she was baby sitting a few days ago.  Hence, boy dress up clothes for his birthday!

The party was definitely over on Sunday morning.  I had gone on Friday to look over the now empty townhouse with our rental agent and assessed the cleaning and such that would have to take place.  Fortunately they had done a pretty good job of cleaning before they left but we still needed to clean the grout on the kitchen floor, all the blind and windowsills, do paint touch-up, and change some light bulbs, etc.  This seemed like the best time to do it and fortunately Ron and Elaine were very kind enough to offer having the kids come to their place while Duncan and I did our thing.  Cleaning blinds is pretty tedious work (hence, why I ever rarely do it!) and I was very thankful we didn't have a bigger place we were renting out.  Some three hours later, we decided things looked pretty good but we determined that we needed to replace the dishwasher and that we needed to paint the upstairs hallway and downstairs bathroom.  Both of those areas are still white and we were very dumb and never found out what shade of white had been used by the builder.  So now if anything happens to the walls, we haven't had any paint to touch it up.  Or, in the case of the tenants, they used a white we had in the garage (that we had used for trim) and used that and now there are two shades of white on the walls.  Not good!  Ahhh, the joys of owning a rental property.  Thank goodness our other tenants have been there for years.

This week is Vacation Bible School (VBS) which we have been counting down for weeks.  Seriously, I don't think I could take one more story by Calleigh about the snacks she got at VBS last year.  Each time she would tell Aubree about it, she would tell it as if it were the first time she had ever shared this information.  I've been excited about the whole thing on their behalf but one thing I wasn't looking forward to was the logistics of it all since it starts at 9:00 and it's a good 30 minute drive away.  Brady doesn't even get up until 8:15 these days so I knew we were going to have to make some schedule adjustments.  Added to that is that we are having Jamie here this week doing some painting.  Anyway, we've made it work pretty well so far.  So Monday morning on the way there, Aubree must have asked six times when we were going to get there.  She was so excited about it! I've been curious how it would work out because Aubree is pretty much the opposite of Calleigh when it comes to being by herself or participating in activities with groups of people, etc.  This would be the first step to see if she was ready to be on her own.  I had requested that Aubree be in a group with Evan and I was hoping that would work out.

Heading in Monday morning.

The theme this year was "Athens" which is the story of Paul.  As usual, the church was all decorated and there was a big crown.  Calleigh is in a group with four other kids, two of which are named Marley (one being Marley Whitaker, her friend).  Her leader was supposed to be a lady named Kristin but for whatever reason, she never came and so a lady named Amy filled in who apparently was nice because today Calleigh informed me that Amy would be with them all week and she was very excited about this news.  Meanwhile, Aubree's leader is named Pearl (sorry, but I can't associate this name with anyone under the age of 70 but what do you know, it's a normal looking thirty-something) and she did end up with Evan and Kaleb both (we had not requested Kaleb because they usually group them by age and Kaleb is five while Evan and Aubree are four).  A double win!  Aubree had gotten to the group first and when she saw Evan you could tell how happy she was and she went and put her arm on his back to lead him the rest of the way to Miss Pearl.  Miss Pearl's daughter, Alaina, is helping her mom with the group.  She's probably around ten or eleven and has taken an apparent liking to Aubree and vice versa because now Aubree is talking about her all the time and this afternoon and evening kept saying she can't wait to go to VBS in the morning to see Alaina.  It's so good to know they are enjoying themselves.

Aubree with Miss Pearl on the left.

Calleigh appears to have missed her cue with the hand motions on the theme song.

It's a happening place.

Meanwhile, Brady and I have been on our own.  It's amazing how much easier it is to go places with one kid instead of three!  And that's what we've been doing...going places.  I haven't wanted to go all the way home so we've been hanging out mostly in Casselberry (not that it's a whole lot closer) doing various things.  Yesterday you could see that he wasn't used to being by himself because he would say "Where'd Aubree go?"  And then five minutes later it would be "Where'd Calleigh go?"  And then it would repeat and repeat.  He didn't say it as many times today though.

Just hanging out with Mommy.

Apparently VBS is very tiring.  Calleigh came downstairs yesterday after quiet time and seriously fell asleep like this.  After about 10 minutes, I moved her and she kept right on sleeping.

Today we had his two year well visit.  Remember how I mentioned that when we were there for the girls' appointment he took off his shoes to step on the scale just like they did, completely unprompted.  Of course, this time, he would have none of that.  Without them there, it was all a dud. He wouldn't step on the scale or stand to get his height checked.  Surprise, surprise said the mother with total sarcasm.  So we had to go back to the baby scale and do the height lying down neither of which are as good.  On the plus side, Brady is now on the growth chart for weight.  Hurray!!  Of course, I think a lot of it could be the fact that he had a bunch of pee in his diaper but nonetheless, he clocked in at the 10th percentile so surely there couldn't have been THAT much pee.  He is still moving along nicely on his own personal curve so that was good to see.  The doctor was very impressed with his talking abilities and commented to me that if you want him to be ahead in something, you would much rather it be on the verbal/intellectual scale than on the growth chart (assuming he's progressing on his own curve, of course).

Here are his stats with the girls as well for comparison:

                                 Brady                                       Aubree                          Calleigh
Weight                    24 lbs, 11 oz (10th)                    26 pounds                       30 pounds
Height                     33 inches (10 - 25th)                  33 inches                        34.5 inches
Clothing Size          18 Months
Shoe Size                5

He's still the smallest but hey, he and Aubree were the same height so that's progress.  I'm only slightly comforted by the fact that Acadia has out-measured Camden at all the milestones as well.  Something about these boys with the Brace genes.  They are both smaller than their sisters.  I'm hoping baby-no-name can break the trend.

As I mentioned, Jamie is here this week painting.  We were holding off on painting the last four rooms because we wanted to do it all at once and we needed to know if the baby room would be painted for a boy or a girl.  Ironically, we are now painting it the neutral colors of tan/brown.  Go figure!  The rooms he's doing are the girls (pale yellow, which, FYI, we've officially determined that yellows require more coats than other colors as we had to do two coats on their room and they got three coats in their bathroom which is a darker shade of yellow.  So beware if you like yellow!), Brady's future room (navy blue with a red stripe), the schoolroom (light blue which historically, I've hated but decided to go with it since most of the walls will be covered up anyway), and the aforementioned baby room.  As Jamie was wrapping up today he mentioned to me that his wife cleans houses and I was like "If only I had known that last week!"  That would have saved me from cleaning the blinds myself.  Oh well.  I will know for next time.  

Girls newly painted room.  Time to start putting stuff on the walls and getting curtains!

The paint job we're doing on Brady's new room.  This is just a sample!

And that's it.  I can barely keep my eyes open because I didn't have a nap tonight.  Have a good rest of the week!