The Brown Brick Road

Friday Favorite

January 25, 2013

Hi lovely readers! It’s FRIDAY! woohoo! We’ve had an adventure of a week around here. I’ve been potty training Maxwell. I’ll spare the details but we’ve had ups, downs and lots of Teddy Grahams! 🙂 He’s doing great. Let’s hope he does great at school next week too!

We’ve obviously been homebound this week so have been enjoying some fun toys – particularly these Bristle Blocks that the boys got for Christmas from Jenny, Ronnie, Katie and Anna.

They’re a blast from the past for me and Maxwell loves them. We’ve built a train, several airplanes and even a swimming pool – at least that’s what Maxwell thought it looked like!

I love that they come in a big bucket for easy clean up and storage! 🙂

Thanks for the fun gift Jenny, Ronnie, Katie and Anna! It’s a winner!

Hope you all have a great weekend. We have fun little reward for our potty user – the circus!! See you all Monday!

Anniversary celebration

January 24, 2013

Last weekend, Robert and I decided to actually go out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary. But, we had no sitter so we just took the kids. What does that mean? It means going to dinner at 5:45! 🙂 Fine with me! Both kids were (fairly) well behaved and we had a great dinner at The Club…a little fancier than our usual Mexican but it was a special occasion!

I put this picture on Instagram (sjpbrown) because it makes me laugh…wine, beer and a kiddy cup!

Life’s a little different these days! but it sure is fun! 🙂

Snow 2!

January 23, 2013

As I said yesterday, we had snow here on Thursday of last week. By around 2:00 in the afternoon, the snow was coming down sideways and actually sticking to the grass. Maxwell and I bundled up one more time and went out to play in the winter wonderland!

Maxwell wanted to take his mittens off so he could touch the snow. He did and he decided it was cold!

He then really wanted to build a “Frosty” so that’s what we did! We built a very little Frosty!

Maxwell was pleased but told me he needed an orange nose! ha!

He sure had fun in the “shown!”

I had fun too but, I can tell you that after living in New York for 5 years, I’m glad I live in a city where snow is a 1 day event every 3 years! 🙂

I will say, I think these are some of my favorite pictures I’ve taken of Maxwell yet!

Here’s to just a little bit of snow!

Snow!

January 22, 2013

As I mentioned last week, it snowed here on Thursday. We only got about an inch or two but it was enough for Maxwell to have fun with! Not surprisingly, I took a TON of pictures. We actually went out into the “shown” (as Maxwell kept calling it) 3 different times. Maxwell only lasted about 5 minutes each time because it was pretty cold and he really didn’t like getting wet. But, he sure did have fun saying “it’s shownin’!”

First time outside when it had just started snowing…

It wasn’t snowing hard at this point at all. In fact, I sent a picture of Maxwell to my mom and said “snow!” and she wrote back, “where?” ha!

Maxwell thought it was pretty neat but didn’t like it when his face or gloves got wet and it really was more like rain at this point…

Needless to say, we didn’t last long outside!

It kept coming down though and getting heavier and Maxwell wanted to go outside again so we bundled back up and out we went.

About an hour later it was really coming down and our yard was becoming a white wonderland…so out we went one more time! pictures tomorrow! 🙂

3 months old!

January 21, 2013

Guess who is 3 months old?! My sweetest, happiest, most awesome baby boy, Spencer!

This little guy is such a lovable, squeezable little baby and I could just eat him and his sweet disposition up!

He’s starting to come into his own and look less like a newborn alien and more like a cute baby. His eyes are still blue but sometimes almost look grey. Jury is still out on his hair. It definitely looks like it has shades of red in some light. I might get me a ginger baby! 🙂

For comparison, here’s Maxwell at 3 months…

and Spencer at 3 months…

Both precious but look nothing alike, in my opinion.

Spencer is just a happy baby. He really only cries when he’s hungry and it’s easy to make him smile and even laugh!

He’s CLEARLY a good eater! He’s eating about every 4 hours still but going some longer stretches at night – up to 7 hours. I mean, check out this belly…

Love that belly, love him. According to our scale at home, he’s 14.6 lbs.

I’m trying to follow the same sleep principles from Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child that I did with Maxwell and that means really keeping him awake no longer than 2 hours during the day. It seems to be working great. The big difference between Spencer and Maxwell is that, with Spencer, I can put him into the swing awake and, more often than not, he’ll go to sleep on his own. Maxwell had to be held and rocked to sleep. Spencer really loves the swing and will take fantastic naps in it. At night, he usually eats around 8:30ish and then I get him to sleep and in bed (which is still the Rock N Play Sleeper for now!) and he’ll wake up once in the night – sometime between 3 and 5:00 – and then go right back to sleep until around 8:00. Pretty awesome! He’s so easy to get back to sleep and there’s never any crying. Yahoo! I’m still swaddling him every night and he seems to like that.

While a very happy baby, he can get a little crabby when Momma won’t put the camera down! 🙂

He’s starting to interact with toys and loves to bat at the toys on his bouncy seat, watch his mobile or the birds on the swing, and bat at the toys on the play pad. We try to do tummy time and he tolerates it. His head control is getting to be very good. I might need to try the Bumbo soon!

Posing with Bear Bryant…