Life of Bruin

Last week we had some gorgeous days (seems so long ago with the current overcast and drizzly week we’ve been having). Last Monday was so warm that we had our first swimsuit and sprinkler day. Man the kids were soooooo happy–all i did was turn on a hose and you’d think I’d given them the world. It was a truly blissful afternoon. I’ve been smiling so much lately as I aim to soak in every second of this rich rich time with my family. Clay and I have shared countless ‘can you believe how cute these kids of ours are?’ looks over recent months. We are in love. And it feels good.

Concentration.

A better late than never shot of our littles hunting for candy at the community Easter hunt.

Hooray, our blog glitch has been fixed (thanks Tim!) so i can now post some super old pics!!! Here are a couple better-late-than-never pics from Bru’s construction party. It was a very low-key gathering. We only invited a handful of Bru’s closest friends and their families and enjoyed a beautiful day complete with chili, cake, and stomp rockets (thanks Noah and Natalie!) in the back yard!!

Out front.

Party favors: tool belts and tools for the 'workers'.

Quarry.

General Contractor.

Working hard.

Retrieving a stray rocket.

The cake.

I know the cake doesn’t look like a very macho construction-guy kind of a cake. But Bru was adamant that he wanted a strawberry cake so i was hard pressed to make a pink strawberry cake look very tough. So i just added some construction dudes on top and called it a ‘construction cake’. I know that i’m not likely to get any hits on Pinterest for this one!

For whatever reason, i am having difficulty uploading photos to this blogsite . . . . soooo that is why i have been neglecting to blog about all our recent goings-on. But now our baby girl has turned one, and with or without pictures i need to talk about it

Quinn, Quinny, Quinn Rose, Quinny Rose, Q, Quinner, Quinn-a-buggy, Buggy, Q-Bug, Buggy-girl, Love-a-bug, Squishy, Squish. However we may refer to you at any given moment, we are completely and totally in love with you–now a full-flegged participating member of our family.

You are a flirt. When daddy gets home from work you smirk up at him (dimples deepening) and coyly tilt your head down and to the side just waiting for your daddy kisses. And you LOVE kisses. You often lean in for the smooch with all 3 of us (and sometimes other friends and family too). And when you give a kiss you often want to lay them on in rapid fire . . . about 5 kisses or so in a row. And you make the ‘mmmwha! ‘ kissing sound when you do it. Perhaps the most adorable thing (on earth) is when you and Bru smooch each other.

You are getting very skilled with sign language. You now regularly sign ‘eat’, ‘water’, ‘banana’, ‘more’, ‘all done’, ‘please’, ‘more. ‘doggy’, ‘birdy’, ‘outside’, ‘bath’, ‘hello’, ‘bye bye’, and you seem to be able to add new signs with ease. Verbally you seem to be picking up on the melody of speaking but you don’t have too many words just yet. You can say ‘dada’, ‘ma ma’, ‘dog’ (dah), ‘hello’ (hah-ooo), gentle (juh juh), and ‘uh-oh’ (probably your most accurate pronunciation). You clearly understand everything we say to you or ask of you. When given two choices, you’ll point to the thing you want. You are very proud of yourself when you follow directions such as ‘but that toy back in the drawer’. You love for us to clap for you or slap high fives with you.

You have settled into a pretty nice sleeping routine. You typically nap around 1ish(when i put Bru down for his nap) until 3:30 or so. You sleep through the night or at least until 5 or so most nights.

You are not the most adventurous eater at this point. You love all fruit, cheeses, pasta, peas, and rice. Other than these we are continuously introducing you to new things, and feeding you new things (whether you like them or not) and hoping you’ll open your mind and your mouth to new flavors! You are still nursing about 3 times per day (first thing in the morning; before nap; and before going to sleep for the night). And now that you are a big 1 year old we have been introducing you to cow’s milk–you’re not super impressed so far but you will drink small amounts. It seems you are most interested in drinking milk when you are sneaking it from your brother’s cup (this is also the case with every toy, food item, shovel, rock, stick etc . . . . if he has it, it must be better than what you have (and vice versa!)).

You finally got your first tooth!!! About a week after you turned one, your very first pearly white cracked through your gums on the left of center on the bottom. I guess we won’t need baby dentures after all (something we’ve jokingly discussed over the last few months). You’re an adorable drooly little mess most of the time and you have definitely had your share of cold bugs this winter. It has been nothing like the severity of the bugs we dealt with during Bru’s first winter–just lots of minor viruses causing a near constant drip out of your eyes, nose, and mouth. Looking forward to summer!

You are a man’s man, through and through. You love doing guy stuff; talking about trucks; scooping dirt; doing projects with daddy; etc. It is only appropriate that we celebrated your 3 years by hosting a “Construction Party” for you and a few of your closest friends. Caution tape was everywhere; we had tubs of rocks for scooping and dumping with your miscellaneous construction vehicles; an old plank of wood with several nails sticking out for hammering; and of course tool belts for you and your friends. So fun.

It doesn’t surprise anyone that you are an absolute daddy’s boy. You look up to him with your entire being and it brings me such deep joy to feel assured that your daddy is worthy of your adoration. He will set a good example for you. He will show you and is showing you what it means to be a good man. And you are watching.

You are brave. We decided several months back that when you turned 3 you would be all done with your pacies (pacifiers). You have been anticipating this event for quite awhile and i know you were quite nervous to give up something that had become such a comfort to you. A few months back you announced that when you were done with your pacies that you wanted to give them to a baby–specifically ‘Baby Harper’ (a friend’s little girl who is the same age as Quinny) and you wanted to send them to her in the mail. You haven’t deviated from this plan and when it came time you packaged your pacies up like the big boy and clung tightly to them as we drove to the post office. You were clearly nervous and sad to see them go but you didn’t once try to recant your decision to send them to Harper. You would not let me touch the package–it took my very best negotiating skills to convince you that i needed to write Harper’s address on it–you held tightly the edges of the package while i wrote her name and address. But then you walked tall and confident up to the big blue mail box, pulled back the handle (with a boost from mommy), and dropped them in. Not once did you hesitate. This may seem a little ridiculous to you if you read this some day as a teenager or an adult, but it’s not. You were displaying your character of strength and bravery. This was a right of passage for you. It made me cry a little (not in front of you of course . . . ).  We celebrated with lunch and gelato (or ‘enchilato’ as you called it).

You are funny and smart. You use these qualities to get out of following directions and/or out of discipline :). When we need to get you dressed; ready for dinner; in the car; to a time-out; anything at all you will delay following instruction by doing something goofy and asking “is this funny??”. And usually, it’s totally hilarious . . . but somehow we have to try and pull it together and act serious so that we’ll have any shot at getting you to follow directions. This is one of your most annoying yet totally charming qualities.

You are a protector. When we named you Bruin, which means ‘brown bear’, it had nothing to do with a sports team of any sort if you’re wondering. We named you Bruin because we hoped for you to be a courageous protector. Your experience as a big brother has proved you to be true to your namesake. A week or two ago i was scrambling to get the 3 of us (you, Quinn, and myself) out of the house and into the car. This is almost always a challenge for us all to be ready at the same time! You were ready and i ran back to Quinny’s room to grab an extra diaper. When i got back to the garage door entrance i discover that you had gone out to get in the car and had left the door wide open. Quinny was teetering in the doorway with a two step concrete drop in front of her. I manage to catch her just in time and i look up to see you screaming and crying in the car. I open the door and ask (admittedly with a little irritation in my voice) what all your fuss was about. Through your all-out bawling you manage to choke out that you were so scared that Quinny was going to fall down the stairs and bonk her head. You were stuck in the car panicking–thinking you were going to have to watch her fall without being able to rescue her. This is just one example among many that you have shown yourself to be a truly loving and protective big brother. I cannot tell you how proud i am to see you growing in strength and gentleness. I have no doubt that you will be the same strong example for your own son as your daddy is for you.

I’ll end with your most recent bedtime prayer: “Dear Jesus, please protect me dear Jesus. Please protect me from the big sharks that might try to eat me and send angels to protect me. And please help my cough go away so that i can have deep deep deep sleep tonight. Thank you Jesus. Amen.”

What a crazy couple of months we’ve had! As stated previously, our computer was out of commission for a period so this is the first Quinny update since 9 months.

First of all, we made it through the baby casting experience. After about 2.5 weeks, Q’s cast was utterly nasty with permanent avacado stains between her thumb and forefinger. Similarly to our experience with getting the cast, Q was calm and happy when she had the cast removed too. The cast saw didn’t freak her out one bit, in fact she seemed to think it tickled a little–how can we not just LOVE this girl?!

Even with the cast, Quinn was walking short distances, maxing out around five steps or so. But within days of removing her cast, Quinny regained her previous sense of risk and adventure and really took off. Here are a couple videos of her walking during those first few days when she really ‘got it’. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2NlbfaqEiw & http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFBQUCKsea0 

Now, walking is Quinny’s primary method of transportation. Here is a video we shot last night of her walking in ‘circles’ with Bruin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dEBrs3PO2A .  I’m sure you’ll notice that she doesn’t have any pants on . . . . well the poor girl has been sick with a fever for about 4 days and letting her have some nudy time was about the only way we could cheer this poor girl up!

In addition to her new physical skills she is also catching on to sign language quite well. She now can sign for: ‘more’, ‘all-done’, ‘eat’, ‘doggy’, ‘hello’, ‘bye bye’, and sometimes ‘water’. Her favorite games are ’uh-oh’ (which means she drops food/toys/books on the ground and says ‘uh-ohhhhhh’) and ‘peek-a-boo’.

She seems to be a little pickier of an eater than Bru but still generally a good eater. This girl would live off of grapes and goat cheese if we would let her!!! We are still waiting for her to finally get some teeth though! Who would have thought you’d be an 11 month old walker with a completely toothless smile?!

She still loves ‘cracking jokes’ and hanging with her best friend, Bruin. She is totally attached and in love with her night time lovie, “Moomer’. And she has just about the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen.

Love you more evey day baby girl! XXXXOOO

It has been awhile since mthe last post. Several weeks back, Bruin knocked our laptop down off the couch rendering it completely useless. Turns out that we had a broken harddrive. Thanks to Uncle Tim, we have a fully functioning computer again–hurray! I’ll try to get back to semi regular posting. . .

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Today at Costco (after being a super good listener) Bru was rewarded with a slice of super greasy pepperoni pizza. After finding a vacant table, Bru settled in and started scanning nearby tables for other kids and/or other people to visit with. There was a girl at a nearby table, probably 4 or so. He looked at me and said, “I’m going to go tell that girl ‘my name’s Bruin.’” With permission granted he heads over.

“Hi little girl. My name’s Bruin. What’s your name?”

The little girl bashfully turns her head away and whispers something to her mom. Her mom tries to encourage the girl to say hello, say what her name is, etc. She stays quiet and shy.

Bruin decides to add, “But i’m a really good guy.”

Nearby pizza and hotdog eaters snicker at his really great ‘one-liner’ and his lady interest playing hard-to-get. It was pretty sweet. His ‘one-liner’ was really just an honest attempt at breaking the ice with a peer. Bru is very interested in bad guys vs. good guys and he wanted to be sure she didn’t have him in the wrong category :). He was completely undeterred by the girl’s apparent shyness and went about his business (eating pizza) as happy as can be.

Bru has a quality that i hope he never loses: the ability to be completely confident and completely kind. He assumes that other people will like him and he doesn’t let a little rejection get in his way. What a great quality to carry into adulthood. Praying that it does

Last night as we were playing with the kids in the living room we were talking about someday when Bruin grows up . . . .

Totally unprompted, Bru says: “I’m gonna be a good man when i grow up. . . . . . . . . . . . I’m gonna be like you daddy. . (**pause**) . . . Can we do some jumps??”

And the night played on and Clay and I buried that sweet treasure deep in our hearts.

Yes you will sweet boy, yes you will!

Last Saturday we were over at our neighbor’s house enjoying a little social gathering when Quinn took a pretty good fall. She was cruising around the base of a bar stool and i’m not sure if she slipped or what but she fell down taking the stool with her. One of the folks at the gathering snagged the stool as it fell so fortunately she didn’t get a double whammy–smacked by floor and then by stool. But she hit the floor pretty hard. She did one of those silent cries, followed by a wail (the pain cry that most of us with kiddos recognize). This is not that unusual for our adventurous girl who is anxiously trying to learn to walk (and climb!) to have a spill, some tears, a bruise, and some snuggles. But she just didn’t stop crying.

After taking her back home we got her calmed down and she ended up falling asleep in Clay’s arms. Later, after she woke up, we found a pretty good sized bruise along her jawline so we figured that she’d cracked her jaw pretty hard and that was responsible for her pain. We gave her tylenol and she was pretty much herself by the next morning. But she wouldn’t crawl . . . .

Monday was the same thing: a generally happy baby, but no crawling. Sometimes she would lean forward to start crawling and then lean back and whimper after placing weight on her left side. So Clay set up an appointment for Quinn to go in to the Orthopedic and Fracture Specialists (where he works) and have an x-ray taken. When Quinn had her x-ray Clay held her and Bru and I went to stand behind the leaded glass. The x-ray tech said something like, “ahhh, it’s her wrist. see the little buckle fracture right there?” and I said something like, “poor Quinny . . . ” and Bruin fell appart crying. Such a sweet, tender brother. He was worried about his ‘buggy sister’ as we like to call her. We reassured him and pointed out the fact that Quinn was completely fine and not even crying so he got over it.

A quick visit with Dr. Davitt, and then off to the casting room we went. There was a bit of a gathering to watch sweet little Q get her teeny tiny little hot pink cast (cutest thing you’ve ever seen!) as most all of the staff knows her and us. Quinn loved all the attention and was so still and content smiling at everyone while her arm was casted. Recovered from his earlier emotions, Bru went to check out the fish tank with Nicole.

In the car on the way home Bru said, “someday when i get an ouchie, maybe i will get a cast because that looks like fun. . . . . I like your cast Quinny.”

With her prize (chosen by Bru).

**So much thanks Nicole for loaning us your iphone so that we can have appropriate photo documentation!!!!

Lately i am reminded what a period of richness and blessing our small family is living in. It will likely (most certainly) not always be this way and for now i aim to cherish it. Each day comes with its own challenges and our family and our lives are certainly not perfect, but the overall picture is one of profound love. Here are some pics of our family goofing off down in Bandon the weekend before Christmas. Grampy Scott was nice enough to take several beautiful family photos for us, some of which ended up in our Christmas card this year (if you didn’t get one, sorry!!! . . . please send me your address and i’ll try not to neglect you next year!).

THANK YOU Grampy Scott!!!!