Hello Everybody

Brennan and I have been going to story time at our local library for several months. At the beginning of February, we moved up to the Toddler Twos class! We meet at 10am each Wednesday with about 10 other kids and their mom or dad. Miss Tracy helps us sing a welcome song, reads three stories, we sing and dance, and then even get to do a craft each week. It's really a lot of fun.

When Brennan was in the one year old class, he was very comfortable and danced a lot, but with this Toddler Twos class, he's the youngest one there and has been very shy and just wants to sit in my lap instead of dance. To help him encourage him to get up and move, we've been working on the same songs at home. I feel pretty confident that tomorrow he'll be up and dancing to this one. Check out B dancing to "Hello Everybody".


I have no idea why he has to physically move his head up and down with this hands for "nod your head" or why he feels like he needs to help "blink his eyes" with his fingers. He's pretty silly.

Batter Up!

Check out our future MLB player! I think I need to find a new place to video it though because they were trying to take me out!


Brennan's has had a pretty bad cold, but thankfully today he seems to be on the mend. I guess sleeping 14 hours at night will do that for most people! He was even feeling good enough today to get on his "jump jump". He was watching himself on my iPhone while he was jumping.

B's Birthday Party - The Food Table

I wanted to go into a little more detail about what I did for food for Brennan's 2nd birthday party. Here's another shot of the table.

We went with a construction party theme, so as the party was getting closer, I kept my eyes open for orange, yellow, and black containers I could use for the party. I ended up finding most of them in the $1 spot at Target. I bought four containers there and then found one other at The Dollar Tree.

Since the party was from 4-6pm, I knew we needed to have at least some light dinner options. We baked chicken nuggets for the kiddos. We choose those because most kids like them, it was easy to throw them in the oven, and I had seen some construction party blogs use nuggets and call them boulders in keeping with the theme. We also bought sandwich fixings so people could "build" their own sandwiches. In the above picture, the chicken nuggets are in the yellow basket on the right. The sandwich fixings are on the left. We also had peppers, carrots, veggie dip, Doritos, and pretzels.

For snacks I was trying to stay with a yellow and orange color scheme, so I bought peach rings and put them in a vase and bought Reese's Pieces and put them in my Dollar Tree container. I borrowed my friend Amanda's cake pop maker (AMAZING!) and dipped those in orange candy melts. I knew I wanted the cake pops displayed somehow and decided to wrap a box in yellow wrapping paper, punch some small holes with scissors, and stick in the cake pops. I also made the traffic light pops by covering the front of a graham cracker with chocolate frosting, adding a red and green M&M and a yellow Reese's Pieces, and then using some additional frosting to stick a popsicle stick to the back. I added those to the yellow box too. I loved how it turned out!

I wrapped both kinds of "pops" in small favor bags and tied them up.

And here they are in the freezer before wrapping them up.

The chicken nuggets disappeared at the party, but had a ton of leftovers from the rest of the food. I guess I over-prepared! I ended up making the adults take the "pops" at the end of the party. I don't think anyone wanted to ruin my display, so no one would take one. Over all, I was super happy with how the food table turned out! You can also see the party favors on the table. I'll blog more about those later! 

I Dig Being 2!

Today we had Brennan's 2nd birthday party. It was a lot of fun. We had eight toddlers and four babies here celebrating along with lots of Mommies and Daddies and even an Aunt Kathryn! I wanted to share some pictures from the party. I hope to come back later and give you more details on parts of the party, but you can enjoy these for now!

I just wanted the kids to be able to play, play, play in the basement, so we put a ton of different toys down there. You can also see some of the signs I made trying to keep the construction theme consistent.

Here the kids could have races.

B's train table - this ended up being a favorite activity

We brought B's workbench downstrairs.

I put play-doh on this table, but we didn't play with it. Kids did sit at the table though.

We put the Mega Blocks down there.

Even the little kids were able to enjoy the car ramp.

Kyle put this house together last night from a refrigerator box!

Here's Brennan's "jump jump" that he got for his bday!

The ceiling was lined with tissue paper pom-poms and balloons.

When the kids came in, they each received a hard hat and an apron. 

The overflowing food table! Lots of yummy eats!

Here are some pictures of the kids having fun at the party!

Morgan on the jump jump.

"Organized" chaos!

Erin on the jump jump.

I love this shot of B coming out of his house. He LOVES his new cardboard house!
We had stickers and markers for the kids to decorate the house.

Oh, Parker!

Ethan spent most of the party at the train table!

Sweet Emma!

Baby Camryn!

McKenna had fun playing basketball.

Baby Rowan!

After lots of playing and a little bit of eating dinner (I mean who really wants to stop playing to eat??), we sang "Happy Birthday" to Brennan. He wasn't too excited about it and needed help blowing out his candles, but he LOVED eating his dirt cake!

Then it was time to open presents!

It's always good to have friends who want to help!

B got a super sweet police car from Parker!

Thanks to everyone who came to Brennan's party and helped make it a memorable event!

Birthday Party Preview

I am getting very excited for Brennan's party on Saturday. I've had ideas floating around in my head and pinned on Pinterest for a long time, but this week I actually started working on some things. Here's just a little preview of what you'll be seeing!

Dear Brennan,

Happy Happy 2nd Birthday, my sweet Brennan! It's still just so hard to wrap my head around the fact that you are two years old! Where oh where did the time go? You're a very lucky little guy because your Aunt La-la and Uncle C-Dub are here to celebrate your birthday with you. Next weekend you get to party with your friends! Here's what you've been up to lately.

You are wearing size 5 diapers now. You wear 2T clothes. You don't go for your checkup until the 22nd, so I don't know your official stats yet. Everyday you get faster and faster at walking. You still aren't off and running, but I'm sure it won't be long. You still really struggle with climbing. You usually just refuse to do it and just ask for help. You can't jump yet. You bend your knees and bounce up and down, but don't actually get off the ground. Lala and GaGa bought you a trampoline for your birthday, so I'm thinking that will help you get the hang of jumping.

You continue to say more and more words. I say words, but really you still just say mostly initial sounds. But wow, you understand so so much! You really are such a smart boy. You can get whiny sometimes, but we've been reminding you to use your big boy words and then you usually are able to tell us what you want. Most of the time you want a snack. :) You still love letters, numbers, shapes, and colors. You get so excited to say your ABCs and count to 10. You really are a just a little nerd. I love it!

One of my current favorite things you do is when I ask you, "What kind of choices does Momma want you to make?" your response is always, "Goo". That's because many times a day I ask you to make good choices. Most of the time you are a good listener. We are working on following directions the first time given. If you don't immediately follow a direction, I'll remind you to obey and then you almost always do.

During the past month, you have really started to like matching games. You like to match your Go Fish cards. You like to match skinny and fat markers of the same color. You're also able to match cards that have a certain number of hearts on them with corresponding card that has that number. You also love walking up and down ramps. That's probably your favorite part of going to the mall right now. Going "boom" (wrestling) with Dada is daily occurrence. Some of your other favorite things are choo choos, puzzles, school buses, and talking on any pretend phone (or phone-like object) to Parker.

You have some new television shows you like. You still love "Wiggles". That is really the only show that you sit down and give you undivided attention. You now also like to watch "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" and "Chuggington". When you want to watch tv, you walk up to the television and say "tee".

We talk a lot about going potty, but haven't started potty training yet. Mommy is ready to start, but I don't want to rush you. You do tell me after you go poop now, so you're certainly becoming more aware. However, you still wake up wet every morning and that's without having anything to drink after 5pm.

Brennan, Momma loves you so very much. You are such a sweet, smart, sensitive little man and the past two years have been absolutely amazing! Being your Mommy is the best job I could ever imagine!

Love,
Momma

Brennan back at 23 months

Brennan today at 2 years old!

I'll go ahead and share some other pictures from today. As I mentioned above, Brennan got a trampoline for his birthday. We took pictures of his reaction to it today. He loved it! He did seem a little confused though because his best friend, Parker, has the same "jump jump" and Brennan kept saying "Par" over and over again. I think he thinks we stole it!

Beth and Luke were able to come down from Middletown to celebrate with us tonight. After some yummy pizza, we sang "Happy Birthday" to Brennan and enjoyed some cupcakes. Brennan wasn't too into his, but did try a few bites. The first picture cracks me up; he almost looks afraid to touch the cupcake.

It's been a pretty good day celebrating with our big boy!