The Brown Brick Road

Capturing our adventures one photo at a time...

Scenes from the weekend

Happy Monday everyone!  Well, the rain came on Saturday and washed fall right in!  The temps on Sunday were fantastic and it’s supposed to stay this way all week.  Hooray!!  We took full advantage of the weekend…

Friday my cool dude and I headed out for an adventure…

and ended up at the park – check out his new kicks!

Maxwell showed me his expert way of getting down the slide – still not quite ready to go down on his bottom!

Later that day I learned that Maxwell only likes the middle out of the chocolate Oreos.  Smart boy!

On Saturday we loaded up and took a trip to the massive Bye Bye Baby to stock up on stuff for BBB2.  I didn’t think we needed that much but we still managed to spend WAY too much money.  Babies are expensive!

Maxwell definitely had fun checking everything out…

and we found BBB2’s first car…

Ha!  No, we didn’t get it…but I was tempted for a second!  🙂

We also checked out the double strollers.  As I’ve said before, we love our single City Mini by Baby Jogger.  In the picture below, Maxwell is sitting in the 2012 version of the City Mini Double called the G2.  It’s a little bigger than the non-GT 2011 version and, honestly, just a bit too big for what we need.  So, we decided to go with the 2011 City Mini Double and were able to find it on sale on Amazon in the color we wanted (green) with free Prime shipping!  woohoo!

That afternoon, Maxwell watched football while Robert played fireman :)…

Roll Tide!  and what happened Arkansas??

Sunday was a GORGEOUS day!  Made me so happy!  We spent lots of time at the park where Maxwell finally decided to go down the slide the right way…kinda!  He started out facing front but managed to flip around before he got the bottom.  He’s clever like that!

Maxwell then helped Robert put up a baby gate…I don’t think he realized it was going to keep him out of the upstairs though!  Safety first!

That afternoon we wound the weekend down with a little bouncing outside….

and some grilling!

Couldn’t beat the temps and the perfect weather!  A fantastic weekend!  Here’s to a great week ahead!

A Year in Pictures

Happy Friday!  To round out the birthday posts (yes, I know his birthday was a week ago!), I wanted to put together a little (err…big) collage of my favorite photos from the past year.  Just a little photo walk down memory lane of the past year with Maxwell…

Clearly I have no ability to narrow things down!  I can’t help it – I just love to see how much he’s grown!  Which one is your favorite?

Have a great weekend!

 

Doctor update

Maxwell went for his 2 year check-up on Friday of last week and everything looks great!  He’s 26.4 lbs which is only the 25th-50th% but he’s 34 and 1/4 inches which is the 75th-95th%.  Dr. Walley said it’s not unusual for kids, especially boys, to have a height growth spurt in the summer months followed by a weight growth spurt in the winter months.  Guess Maxwell is just waiting to store up his fat for the winter!!  🙂

Maxwell was NOT a happy camper when we got to the room and had to take his clothes off to weigh him and measure his height.  I haven’t heard him scream like that in a long time!!  He finally calmed down and I got the ipad out to entertain him.  Can’t you tell how happy he is to be there!

He eventually warmed up to Dr. Walley.  Dr. Walley’s pretty good at entertaining him with that stethoscope!

Luckily he didn’t have to get any shots but we did get him the flu mist to try and keep that flu away from him and BBB#2.  Waiting for the nurse…

Dr. Walley did say that he has absolutely no concerns about Maxwell not wanting to drink milk.  He said he’s still getting plenty of calcium and that it’s great that he loves yogurt.  He said it’s honestly not as bad of a problem as those kids that drink a ton of milk and never eat because of that.  He did suggest going on and switching the skim milk as well.  I’m glad to not have to buy 2 varieties of milk anymore!

He gave me some good tips on food in general – basically just continuing to try new things and knowing that Maxwell won’t starve himself.  If he doesn’t want to eat what I make him, fine.  Just don’t get stuck in a rut of only giving him the same things over and over and over.  He needs variety and exposure to new foods.  We’re going to try to switch our schedule around a little bit and actually have a family dinner each night.  Up until now, I’ve been feeding Maxwell between 5:30 and 6:00 and then Robert and I would eat dinner after Maxwell went to bed between 7:30 and 8:00.  I’m going to see if we can all eat together around 6:30 and then do bedtime routine after that.  That means I gotta get myself into gear making dinner earlier – wish me luck!

While Maxwell felt like this about the doctor visit overall…

I’m very thankful for the good report!

School birthday!

To celebrate Maxwell’s birthday last week, I sent cookies up for his class to enjoy at lunch.  I just made sugar cookies (this recipe – the best ever) with yellow icing of course.  All morning, Maxwell was so excited about his “lallow ccckkkkies” and I kept having to explain to him that they were for school and not for breakfast.  Well, needless to say, he couldn’t wait to get to school!

As soon as he got to his classroom, he walked in and immediately sat down at the table ready for his cookie!

ha!  It was precious.  Beyond precious.  I had to break his little heart and tell him that cookies didn’t come until after lunch!  He was fine though and immediately started playing with some trains and said “Bye Bye Mama!”

His teacher then sent me some pictures that afternoon of the day…

It looks like he had a GREAT day and everyone enjoyed their “lallow cccckkkkies!”  He was very proud of his birthday crown when I picked him up!

Thank you Ms. Juli!  She also sent this AWESOME video of everyone singing Happy Birthday to Maxwell.  Wait until you see what he does at the end!  TWO!

Happy Birthday Maxwell

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

Maxwell is obsessed with this video and he’s probably watched it 75 times over the past few days!  I don’t mind, I can’t get enough of that cute little TWO at the end!

Happy Birthday buddy!  Here’s to many more fun school birthdays!

Roll Tide in the Big D!

What a FUN long weekend we had!  Robert and I took one last pre-baby adventure and hopped on a plane to spend about 12 hours in Dallas and see the Tide roll all over Michigan!  A BIG, HUGE thanks to GJ and Daddo for not only giving us the trip and tickets for our birthdays, but for also coming and watching Maxwell while we were gone.  We really, really appreciate it and had the BEST time!

Game day and we were all ready, including Maxwell!

Robert and I ended up taking a charter flight to Dallas.  It was great because we got off the plane in Dallas and immediately got onto buses right on the tarmac that took us to Cowboy Stadium.  After the game, we all made our way back to the buses and hopped on the plane to come home.  Granted, we didn’t get back home until 3:30 am and were exhausted but it was worth it!  Our plane left from Birmingham at 2:00 in the afternoon and, luckily we got to the airport with plenty of time to spare because I went to check-in only to learn that my driver’s license had expired 2 days before on August 29th!!!  What?!  I had NO idea that it was expired.  Luckily (very luckily) we live close to the airport and my  mom was able to get my passport up to me within 15 minutes.  Phew!  Poor Maxwell though, it was his nap time and by the time she got to the airport he was doing this in the backseat…

Robert was about to kill me during the process but, we made it to the gate with plenty of time to spare and I WILL be heading to the DMV this week!  🙂

I took a little series of self-portraits with my iphone throughout the day.  Much easier than asking someone else to take your picture!

At the airport (passport in hand!) and ready to go!

On the buses headed to Cowboy Stadium…

Outside of Jerry World!

In our great seats before kick-off…

During the game…

After the game, tired but happy, back on the buses…

On the plane at about 2am really ready to be home!

I also took lots of pictures with my big camera.  If you’re every going to Cowboy Stadium, note that you can’t take in a lens longer than 3 inches.  I didn’t think they would really enforce that, but I took a smaller lens just in case and I’m so glad I did!  The security guy definitely measured it and I’m so glad I had my cheapy, shorter lens instead of my good long one!  That thing would have been left in Dallas!

A little shot of BBB#2 at his first AL game!

Please note my OFF bug spray fan clipped onto my bag.  I wasn’t going to get West Nile!  I have to say, being so pregnant, I was kind of the novelty of our flight.  Everyone kept asking when I was due, how much longer I had, how they couldn’t believe I came on the trip, how I was such a trooper, etc.  I knew I’d be fine though and I was.  No problems at all – despite the 90+ degree heat and VERY bad air conditioning on the plane and bus!

Our seats really were good and right in the middle of all AL fans.  We bought them off of stubhub and didn’t know which side most AL fans would be sitting on.  We almost bought seats on the other side of the stadium and I’m so glad we didn’t because we would have been smack dab in the middle of a bunch of Michigan fans!  This was our view from our seats…

Not bad at all!  We were on the end of the row which was nice.  Right on the other side of that railing was the club level.  Those people paid a lot more for their seats and, other than having more padding on their chair, I don’t think they got much more than we did!

The jumbo-tron was awesome and jumbo. It was hard not to just watch the game up there the whole time!  They were doing crowd shots throughout the game which were pretty funny a lot of the time.

A game shot for Robert…

Maxwell will be glad to know that Big Al was there!

I didn’t worry once about Maxwell the entire game because I knew he was having a ball at home with GJ and Daddo.  My mom sent me this picture as proof!

Two peas in a pod!

While not a close game (Go Bama!) it was a fun game to watch and we got to see this up on the screen a lot!

Touchdown AL!  This was also an interesting fact of the night…

Let me tell ya, there were a LOT of people there!

And, of course, we were VERY pleased with the final score!!

After the game, we made our way back to the buses and, after a slight delay waiting for Ricky Phillips to show up (the only person out of 100 that couldn’t get back to the buses in time!) we headed back to DFW and flew back into Birmingham.  A quick trip but worth every second!  Again, thank you to GJ and Daddo for the flight, the tickets and the babysitting.  It was definitely a birthday trip to remember!

Roll Tide!