Mr. Independent

Mr. calm, cool, collected and easy going Brecken (a.k.a. mini Eric) is turning into an independent little being right before our very eyes (notice I did NOT specify mini April :) ).... He gets more opinionated by the minute and doesn't mind sharing those opinions with anyone who will listen! Don't take this the wrong way at all- He is still a very happy baby, just a very happy baby who knows what he wants at times. For example, when it comes to eating.... He wants to feed himself. Whether it is his puffs, finger foods, or pureed baby food, he wants to grab it himself, put it in his own mouth, and hold his own spoon. When it comes to dressing.... He wants to assist with the socks, the shirts, and the pants. As we try to dress him, his chunky little fingers grab at the fabric as if to say, "I can do it myself!" Really?? I thought that stage came when he was three!

Brecken's new trick is standing... He loves to stand up to things all the time and gets the biggest smile on his face. Incase you're wondering if you missed the blog about crawling, you didn't..... It seems as though Brecken might just skip right over that step... Or perhaps do things in reverse order. All we know, is that his interest in crawling is at a minimum but he LOVES to stand!

Look Mom! I'm standing by myself!

A smile for Daddy from the big boy...

Oooooops! This is what happens when Brecken gets cocky about his standing :)

Sitting for awhile until he regains his pride...

We have been experimenting with several different foods and he loves to try them all! His newest favorite is a finger food by Gerber... It looks like a cheese puff (the orange ones you find the chip aisle) and smells/ tastes like waffles with maple syrup! He could eat those ALL DAY long and gets excited at the sight of the container. Last night for dinner, he ate his regular baby food of oatmeal/ bananas and blueberries/ sweet potato and corn and then decided he wanted some of what Mom and Dad were having. He had several handfuls of rice/ mushroom chicken breast/ bread and even had some ice cream with chocolate syrup for dessert! YUM! It almost made me cry as he was eating "big people" food because each and every day he is turning into a BIG BOY himself! He LOVED the ice cream and kept wanting more and more, but settled for the few small bites we were willing to share :)

We are also experimenting with different formulas currently and trying to figure out if there is any truth to the "milk allergy" that he was diagnosed with several months ago. The doctor gave us permission to go back to a milk based formula and we tried the Similac that he originally started out with but aren't loving it. Brecken and I stopped at Walgreens on our way home from school yesterday to try Good Start Gentle and it seems to be going great! Hopefully this will be a formula that not only sits well in his tummy, but proves that he doesn't have a milk allergy too! Eric and I don't know how to alter our diets to having no cheese/ milk products so we're keeping our fingers crossed that it won't be the case for Brecken!

I have to share this picture from over the weekend of Brecken having his bottle- Look, no hands! What a lazy boy :)

Eric and I have joked before that we pay for daycare only to have someone in the same building as Brecken while he sleeps... He takes the BEST naps for Ms. Lisa on a good day, but yesterday was to the extreme. He fell asleep on our drive there (around 7am) and Lisa finally woke him up AT 12:15!!!!!! Oh goodness! He's no stranger to good sleep, that is for sure! I can already tell he is going to be the opposite of his mother as a teenager. While I would hide flashlights around my room to sneak my R.L. Stine books under the covers and read until the wee hours of the night, Brecken absolutely MUST get his 12+ hours of sleep in each night or he just can't function!!

Check out the new blanket Brecken got from a lady I worked with last year.... How adorable is this! I love the bright colors and Brecken loves the new design to look at while on his tummy. If you're reading the blog Elizabeth.... THANK YOU!

A video of the drunken driver... I am pretty sure he wanted to steer straight towards the camera, but sometimes his brain and his feet are on two different schedules. He seemed to be enjoying it, nonetheless...

Here is a picture of me and my little bug-a-boo.... Check out his cute shirt-- "Mama's Boy!"

Oh, and one more funny story... When I picked Brecken up at daycare this afternoon, Ms. Lisa said that he was playing with a dinosaur today that roared. The dinosaur would walk over to him and roar, and Brecken looked at it and watched for the longest time. One time, after the dinosaur roared at him, Brecken roared back!!!!! How cute! I haven't heard it myself but can only imagine how adorable Brecken's little roar would sound :)