Barrett is One!

Hard to believe that a year has gone by, but sweet Baby B is one! I guess that means I have to stop calling him "Baby B" because he's not really a baby anymore.

We didn't do anything crazy today, but started with a few presents, a walk and then some fun time outside. Here are a few pictures from our day.

Good morning! It's my birthday!

While Harrison was busy scoping out Barrett's presents, Barrett grabbed Harrison's favorite animal...his precious caterpillar.

Afternoon fun. Seeing what bugs are in Harrison's bug box.

Swinging under the deck.

Yay! Daddy's home from work!

Not to be outdone by Barrett's birthday, Harrison layered on his Batman, Superman and Robin costumes.

Thank you for having a birthday Barrett. I love cake!!

Hmm. What's this?

He had just a couple of licks of icing, but wasn't too impressed by the cake.

My sweet little man is one!

Monster Truck

Who says you need to be fifteen to get a learner's permit in Texas?

Here is Harrison cruising through the neighborhood in style last weekend:

Budding Entomologist

Harrison has become quite interested in bugs. We got him a bug box to keep his creatures in. Currently his collection is full of dead bugs. He has literally gathered every dead bug he can find and says this is their "home". Here he is running through the various bus he has currently in his stash:

Harrison Update

Harrison is a great big ball of energy these days. We've had some beautiful days, and he has spent most of them outside...his favorite place to be!




Harrison has enjoyed finding dandelions around the neighborhood.

These past couple of weekends he has been Daddy's little helper. He informed Mark that they needed to go to Home Depot to get a new doorbell (we did need one, so he was right). He was excited to get that and "help" put it in. He was positive that installing a doorbell required a hammer. I looked out on the front porch to see Harrison lugging around a real hammer, positive he was going to get to beat that new doorbell onto the wall. Thankfully he was distracted by a bug and gave up on that endeavor.

Speaking of bugs, he is pretty obsessed with them these days. We got him a small bug box, it's maybe 6" by 3", and it has a handle and a lid. It is currently filled up with every dead bug he could possibly find anywhere around our house. He calls it their "cozy home" and likes to take them out, line them up on the porch, put them in plants, and then put them back in the box. He takes it with us in the stroller when we go for walks, sure that he will see some fabulous bug along the way that needs to come home with us.


Mark picked up some mulch for the yard, and had it in the back of the truck. Harrison woke up from his nap and I told him about the mulch. He was more excited than I would expect a kid to be about this, immediately ran to get his shoes, and told Mark it was time to go outside. Harrison was allowed to ride in the front seat as Mark backed the truck through the gate into our backyard. The look on Harrison's face was priceless! He was so stinking excited to be sitting in the front seat. He got out of the truck, ran down to get his shovel, rake and hoe, and climbed into the bed of the truck and started shoveling mulch out. It was so cute to see him working so hard to do exactly what Mark was doing. He just wanted to help so badly!

He has been having a great time driving his "monster truck" and has gotten quite good at it. He is able to navigate all around the cul-de-sac both in the street and on the sidewalks without hitting anything. He does like to intentionally hop a few curbs every now and then, and cackles about it as he crashes down and just keeps moving forward. He has mastered forward and reverse and can get himself out of a jam if he needs to. These past couple of days I've let him drive around while Barrett and I play in the yard. He is just so happy to drive in circles, stop by to see what we are doing, and then keep going.

Yes, that is my child wearing a camo shirt and driving a power wheels monster truck.

Earlier this week, one afternoon after school. For some reason he's become really attached to this hat and has decided he needs to wear it when driving his truck this week.

For the past month, Harrison has been really getting into the alphabet, letters and letter sounds. He knows the alphabet and knows all of the sounds the letters make. He can recognize all of the uppercase letters and knows that if he sees a letter he doesn't recognize it's a lowercase letter and he asks which one. He is very intrigued by letters that are changed up a bit to be part of a logo (like the slanted E in the Dell logo) and always asks about it anytime he sees anything like that. He reads the letters on anything he sees (boxes of any kind, street signs, store signs, cars, etc.) and gets so excited he can read all of them. One thing he does that cracks me up is that if he thinks he knows what something is, he reads the letters, says the word, and they yells "hooray!". An example: he sees a diaper box of Barrett's. It says HUGGIES, so he says all of the letters, then says "that spells diapers, hooray!" and claps. It's so cute even when he's not quite right, because he's just so proud of himself.

He's been having a good time at school. Every now and then he says he doesn't want to go and would rather stay home, but he always leaves school happy, tired and usually covered in some sort of paint.

Amongst the toys that have been handed down to us from my nephews are some Nascar matchbox cars. Those are a current favorite since they all have numbers on them and he really likes to talk about the numbers. He watched about five minutes of a race on TV a couple of weeks ago and was intrigued, but disappointed that none of the cars he had was on the screen at the time.

And now that the weather has warmed up again, we have a new spring wardrobe in his closet. By new I mean a fabulous lot of hand-me-downs that my sister has once again been kind enough to mail to me. By now, Harrison knows that most of his things have come from his cousins. So now when he puts on a shirt (somehow it seems to only apply to shirts, not shorts, in his mind) he will ask, "Who wear this shirt last time?" and want to know if Charlie and Jeffrey used to wear it. He asks the same thing about Barrett's clothes, and he's starting to realize that everything Barrett wears used to be his and most likely was worn by his cousins before that.

Here are a couple of other pictures from the past few weeks:

Hanging out in the backyard this week

37 months old

Eleven Months Old

Holy cow! Barrett is almost a year old. This past year has really just flown by. It is so hard for me to believe that he's been here almost a year already, but at the same time I can't imagine our life without him.


He is lots of fun and stubborn as can be. Lately he has a few favorite things (aside from pretending that he's not actually a baby but is closer to a four-year-old). He loves to be outside. This has been true for awhile, as he's always loved to go on walks and watch the kids play at the park. But now he loves to be outside, down on the ground, crawling around. He is all boy in that respect. He likes to crawl on the driveway, grass, deck, it doesn't matter. He just wants to be down moving on his own.

He also loves to play with toy cars. We have a ton of matchbox cars: cars from the movie Cars and Cars 2,  Nascars,and assorted Sesame Street character cars and cars from other random things. He has fun with all of them, but definitely has a few "favorites". If you've seen Cars 2, he's in love with Holly Shiftwell. We call her "his girlfriend". He also adores this set of five orange diggers that Harrison's friend Shane got for Harrison for his birthday. Barrett seems to think they belong to him and could spend hours pushing them across the floor.

And lately, he loves to eat. I think that some days he's in his high chair five times a day. He likes a lot of things, but has some interesting dislikes too.  He isn't really fond of cheese. Not a big fan of strawberries either. He doesn't like bananas.  It's interesting though, because he loves freeze dried strawberries and bananas so maybe it's a texture thing...

As you can see, he has four teeth. His bottom two came in a couple of months before his top two did. Those top two teeth were so swollen for months, and finally at about ten-and-a-half months one broke through and then the other one followed. He seems relived to be done with that and we can't see or feel any other teeth poking through at the moment. I am concerned that we might have a biter on our hands, because he seriously will bite anything. He loves to crawl onto Harrison and will try to bite his back, head, basically whatever he can grab onto and get in his mouth. He always tries to bite Mark's nose. And, if he's crawling around under the kitchen table and pulls up on our legs, we know he's going to try to bite those too. Hopefully this will stop as soon as a few more teeth come in because it is not fun to constantly be on alert while playing with him!

He is a very social baby, and loves to wave and say "hi". He gets really excited if people say it back to him, like at the grocery store, Target, Costco...our usual errand spots. He seems to enjoy riding in the cart and waving at people so they wave back. Whenever Mark gets home from work, Barrett always waves and says "hi". And, he's started to say mama mama mama along with his dada dada babbles, although it's not as if he's looking at me calling me "mama" just yet. He does babble quite a bit, and it's seriously like a full sentence, with punctuation, etc. It's very cute to listen to.

He pulls up on anything and everything, and cruises around furniture, but doesn't seem too interested in walking just yet. He's a super-fast crawler, and LOVES to go up the steps. We are working on getting back down the steps safely, and he will try a couple of stairs that way (backing down) but then seems to get impatient, turns around and dives down. So, I always have to be right behind him when we are doing the stairs. Some days it seems like he could play on them for hours. Exhausting!

Just this week he has started sobbing when I leave the room. It's pretty sad, because he will just sit there on the floor and cry. Hard. Big tears roll down his face. Even if I just run from the living room into my room to put something away, he sobs. He used to follow me more, but just this week he's started doing this instead. I guess it's good to be loved, but really, I come right back every time!!

Aside from that he's a pretty happy, albeit stubborn, little guy. Harrison wants to know when Barrett will talk, so I think he's getting more and more excited about having a built-in playmate. All of these photos are from the day he turned 11 months old.


This is his preferred way of sitting. He really dislikes just sitting with his legs out in front of him, but will play like this forever.



He loves to play at the kitchen windowsill.

Happy Boy!

Harrison's Birthday Weekend

Harrison had a fun birthday weekend. For his real birthday on Friday he got BBQ for dinner along with a small personal cake. On Saturday he had a party at home with a few friends, and then on Sunday he played in the sleet!

Both of his grandmothers came to visit, so he had a constant audience.

Getting ready for his party

We had a small party at the house with just a few friends, the same ones who have been to his first two parties.

Hunter and Harrison

Shane and Harrison

Opening a present from Barrett

Ohh! A Butterfly Garden! Thank you Aunt Allison and Uncle Richard!

Shane's Mom is trying to show Harrison how to play the recorder they got him...apparently Harrison thinks it's a flute.

Mmmm...cupcakes!

My Birthday Boy!

Dad and his mini-me

Seems like it is getting harder and harder to get a picture of the four of us with everyone voluntarily looking at the camera

We let Barrett try a bit of cupcake. He sure did like it!

On Sunday it was really cold and sleeted for a bit, which Harrison loved. He has been looking for an excuse to wear his Thomas raincoat, handed down from his cousin Charlie, and loved playing outside in the cold, wet weather.




Ready for action!



Mark braved the sleet with Harrison. I just love this picture of the two of them!

Big Boy Bed

The weekend after he turned three, we set up Harrison's new room. He was looking a little big for his crib, and seemed to be doing just fine without the side on it, so it was time!

We got a bed and nightstand to match the dresser he already has. He kept his bookshelf and rocking chair and we moved the other chair out of his room.

He had fun going with us to IKEA to pick up the furniture. He likes to ride on the flatbed dolly thing that you have to use to pick up all of the boxes. He also had fun going with Mark to pick out his new mattress. It didn't even take too long to assemble the bed and nightstand and remove the crib and chair, but would have taken even less time without his help...he was very excited about the whole process and wanted to be right in the middle of it.

His sheets have bugs all over them and the colors in them match his green walls really well. We got a couple of sets of the wall decals that match the sheets and now one whole wall is covered in bugs. He loves it! He tells us the bugs are "playing tag" or "getting their friends". It is really pretty cute. I am sure once it is warmer and we can order the caterpillars for his butterfly habitat that Aunt Allison and Uncle Richard got him for his birthday, he will insist that they live in his bug room.

We also got a clock that changes color when it's time to get up for the morning or from his nap. It is seriously one of the best inventions EVER! We'll hear him wake up in the morning, and some days as soon as the clock changes to yellow (which means he can get up) we'll hear his feet hit the floor and hear him run out of his room. Other days he just stays in there playing with all of his animals on his bed.

He now loves to play in his room and even told me he wanted to stay in and do that instead of going to school one day last week. So, overall this new room thing has been a big hit! I still need to make curtains that match his new colors and put a few other things on the walls, but he doesn't seem to care that part isn't quite finished. Here are a few pictures:


Chillin on his new bed as soon as everything was set up that afternoon.



Hanging onto his cirb aquarium for dear life. He is probably the only kid who will go off to middle school with a crib aquarium still attached to his bed!!

10 months old

10 months old!

Where has the time gone? How is my little baby now 10 months old? On one hand, it seems like he's been a part of our family forever. On the other hand, it seems like just yesterday we were bringing him home from the hospital. He's doing so many fun things now and even Harrison likes to watch Barrett learn new stuff.


At the beginning of February Barrett decided he could climb the steps. I was helping Harrison with the potty in the hall downstairs and turned around to find Barrett a few steps up and grinning ear-to-ear. Lesson learned. Don't turn your back on that little guy! Now wants to crawl up the steps every chance he gets. If we don't put the gate across he never fails to make a break for the stairs and start his way on up them. He can easily climb the entire way and arches his back and gets mad at you if you stop him and bring him back down.

His top front gums have been really swollen and it's looked like teeth would be coming through any day now for over a month. Finally this week his right one came through, and it looks like his left one should be through this week. Poor guy isn't enjoying the teething thing too much so I hope he gets a break for a bit after these two pop through.

Barrett loves cars, and makes little noises when he zooms them back and forth on the ground or up on the shelves in our living room where he likes to stand and play. Thankfully we seem to have some sort of toy cars in practically every room in this house so he's pretty happy to play with them wherever he finds them.

This is one of Barrett's favorite spots to play.



He loves to stand here and zoom cars back and forth on these shelves.



For about a month now he's been pretty good at signing "all done" when he's finished eating in his high chair. If he starts to fidget or throw his food on the ground we'll ask if he's all done and then he'll sign it. If only he would sign it before he decides to decorate the ground with a smattering of sweet potatoes, corn, peas, toast, etc. And when he's finished with his milk (meaning he's drained the sippy cup, becuase 90% of the time he just chugs it) he doesn't just set it back down on his tray. Noooo, he has to spike it down on the ground as hard as he can. I guess that's his way of signing "more". Gotta work on that one.

He's also started waving, and it's SO cute! I know I'm biased, but it really is. He just started doing that in the last couple of weeks, and also is trying to say "hi" sometimes when he waves. I promise to get a good video of it posted soon!

Barrett is still a really fast crawler, but is spending more time cruising along the furniture standing up. He will also push his highchair or a kitchen chair a few steps in front of him. He's tried pushing the little shopping cart we have upstairs, but it still moves too quickly for him and he ends up falling down when doing that.

I am sure soon enough he'll be walking and I'll wish for my sweet little baby back. But for now, we are just enjoying watching him learn new fun things every day!

Happy Birthday Harrison!

I don't know that I ever thought I'd actually have a three-year old. Time is going by so quickly. He seems to be so much more grown up than he was even a few short months ago!

I'll do an update soon with all of the cool things Harrison can do. I'm just too darn tired to do it tonight. He and Barrett wear me out! 

I did feel compelled to post a few pictures of him on his actual birthday. We made a couple of cakes and some cupcakes today and Harrison had fun "helping". He loves to try the batter!

He loves to get on the counter while I'm baking.

This afternoon we played outside because it was a beautiful day. He sure makes it look fun to be three.

Playing in the front yard today.

Stink Eye to you!

After cake and a long, happy, birthday day.

The Potty

Harrison is officially potty trained!

We did a week-long potty training between Christmas and New Year's. If you want me to be honest, we were dreading it. We've had a little potty, a second little potty, and a potty seat for sometime now. None of them were appealing enough to Harrison to get him excited about using them, so we had kind of let things go hoping he'd show some interest on his own.

However, since that didn't happen and he's supposed to be PT by the time he turns three for school, we decided to go ahead and just get after it.

The first few days were kind of painful, as he was pretty resistant to the idea of the potty. He spent a lot of time in the living room watching a show sitting on his little potty waiting for something to happen. That worked...kind of, but wasn't the happiest about it. But, somewhere along the line things clicked.

We shipped him off to school that next week in underwear and he did great! He's only had a couple of accidents and those were the first couple of weeks.
Now he's an old pro and loves wearing underwear. He reminds me that the stinky diapers belong to Barrett :-)

I am sure that some day he will hate me for this picture but I just couldn't resist!

Christmas 2011

Well, it's been a month since Christmas so I thought it might be a good time to make sure we got the blog updated with all of our Christmas fun.  We had a wonderful December this year leading up to a great Christmas. Seeing all of the excitement through Harrison's eyes really made things so much fun.


Harrison had a great time with his Elf. If you aren't familiar with the Elf on a Shelf, it's a little Elf character that visits children during December and flies back to the North Pole each evening to report back to Santa about whether or not you were a good boy that day. I'll admit I did have to use the "your Elf is watching you!!!" more than once, but hey, you do what you can to get through the day some days, right?


The Elf lands somewhere different each morning when he returns, so much of the fun is looking around to see where your Elf is hiding. He also occasionally brought gifts for Harrison, which really excited him. It was so much fun to watch him wake up each morning and try to find his Elf. At night, he would ask, "Where my Elf be tomorrow?" anticipating the fun of finding him in a new spot. We definitely weren't as creative as some people we read about, but still had a lot of fun coming up with hiding places and a few mischievous things for his Elf to do.


Harrison also had fun helping us decorate the house for Christmas. When we started getting the decorations out he could not contain himself. He wanted to go through every box and touch every ornament, wreath, candle, etc. He had a lot of fun helping to decorate the tree, and for the first week or so could not keep his hands off of it. He wanted to hold all of the ornaments, touch the tree, talk about the lights on it, you name it! And, the first thing we had to do each morning as turn on the lights on the tree...so he could see to find his Elf.


We had a little tree that he put in his room, and he wanted a wreath on his door so we did that too. He was so excited to have those "special decorations" as he called them, and was pretty bummed when it was time to take them down.


I let Harrison help wrap a few things for Dad and Barrett, and he thought that was a lot of fun. In case you are wondering, he's a big fan of tape. Can't get enough of it. Bows too. Each gift should have at least two, preferably many, many more.


However, when it comes to keeping quiet about what's wrapped up, he has some work to do. He got Mark a Chick-Fil-A calendar because they go there on Saturdays sometimes. We wrapped it one afternoon, and that day when Mark came home, he took him over to the tree, pointed at the wrapped package and said in a whisper (of course), "Chick Fil A dad!". Mark had no idea what he was talking about but of course laughed when he opened it on Christmas because he remembered this.


My sister and I got my mom a mini Keurig coffee maker. We knew she wanted some Dunkin Donuts K Cups so one morning I took Harrison and Barrett with me to DD (since that's the only place they sell them) to get K Cups and Harrison got a donut. I explained to him what we were buying and why, then he enjoyed his donut happily and we went on our way. Later that day my mom arrived to celebrate Christmas with us. As Harrison is sitting in his chair enjoying a snack and catching up with her, he leans over and whispers, "coffee maker". I had walked out of the room to do something, and when I came back he was in the midst of this conversation. He looked at me knowingly, leaned over to her, and said it again!! Crazy kid!! What am I supposed to do but look at him like I have no idea what he's talking about and redirect. On Christmas Day when she opened it we learned that he had said, "Coffee maker, under the tree Nonny". Way to go Harrison. Remind me not to tell you any secrets anytime soon!


Christmas morning Harrison was so excited, he didn't know what to do first. There had been presents under the tree all along, but more showed up that morning.. He was thrilled with his new (quite large) "rig" with flatbed trailer and digger that Santa left unwrapped for him in the middle of the room. He had fun helping Barrett unwrap presents, and wanted to play with everything as he opened it. It took awhile for him to get through everything with breaks for snacks and playing, so it was a long, fun day. I am already looking forward to next year because I think the two boys will have just an awesome time.

Here are some pictures from Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

Christmas Eve after church

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

Christmas morning...first present. A favorite character from Dinosaur Train!



Thanks Nonny!

Ohhhh! What is it???

I love my construction costume and tools. Thanks Aunt Susie and Uncle Charles!

Ohhh! Books! Thanks Aunt Julie and Uncle Howard!

More books!

He opened this book from Aunt Amy and Uncle Steve and wanted to read it right away.

James! A favorite train and it even turns on! Thanks Barrett!

Barrett would have been happy just to have wrapping paper, but he sure enjoyed this too.