6 Months Old and Wiser Too!

It's official, Brycen has lived for half a year now and has had more adventures in those 6 months then some people have in their entire lifetime. Brycen went on his first airplane ride when he was 5 weeks old and has been on 4 more plane rides since then and will be on 5 more in the next two months. He has also traveled across the United States (by car) several times, amounting to roughly 150 hours in his car seat (which is why he hates car rides!), and visiting 20 of the 50 States!

At Niagara Falls..

In the Sacred Grove, Palmyra, NY

Hershey Park, PA

D.C.

Where they make all the money.."How tall are you in money?" Brycen is worth $2 million!

Williamsburg, VA

Soo much time in the car! Brycen is contemplating what to do. He did amazing in the car from New York to Massachusetts, from MA to Virginia, from VA to Utah, from UT to Arizona--what a trooper! And then...he decided enough was enough and has hated any car rides since!

Omaha, Nebraska Zoo

Other than all his travels..he has visited the ER twice already, once for a CT scan because he was in his first car accident when he was 6 weeks old and another for a second degree burn.

Here's are a few more updates about the little man behind the big grin:

He is officially 29.5 inches tall, weighs 22 pounds, his head is 47.5 cm big (all in the 97%--he's slowing down! No longer in the 100%) and has grown out of his infant car seat and is now sitting in a big boy chair that makes riding in the car with him a bit more bearable. He enjoys the new seat because he is able to sit up and look out the window.

He has his first four teeth with two more on the way that will probably make their appearance in the next week or so.

Three of them can be seen here...

As a result, he has become our little shark and likes to not only stick everything in his mouth but likes to bite on everything in the process. He has discovered the hard way, that biting his pink piggies (his toes) is not nearly as fun as biting blankets, pieces of clothing, mom and dad...

We have also started to brush Brycen's teeth and boy, does he enjoy it! We hope that continues...for forever. The downside--his brush is on a rubber finger that fits the adult finger and makes brushing Brycen's teeth very easy but the rubber has proven to not provide much protection from those lovely pearly whites and can really be finger suicide if the brusher is not careful.

Brycen has also successfully used his teeth to eat his first cheerio and loves to actually use the chewing motion that he has watched and mimicked the parentals doing for the last few months.

Brycen has proven to have amazing hand/eye coordination and loves to "clear" off the counter when Mommy puts him in his Bumbo while she does the dishes. His favorite game is to repeatedly drop all his toys off the counter and watch Mommy pick them up for him. His hand/eye coordination has also resulted in the cat missing a chunk of her hair. haha.

This is his mischievous face...caught attempting to "clear" off his night stand which entails knocking the alarm clock off for the fiftieth time!

Like before, Brycen wants to hold everything Mommy is holding but he has learned that Mommy has long arms and can hold the things away out of his reach; so what does he do? He gave up on trying to reach the thing Mommy is holding..he instead, pulls on Mommy's arms and tries to "assist" in every way possible..making it near impossible to... read a recipe...accurately pour a liquid...attempt to drink something..etc. Brycen is so good at what he does, he now successfully shares a sip of Mommy's drink EVERY time she picks up her glass.

Brycen has also started to repeat sounds back to us; Bryce was singing a song the other day and Brycen repeated the tune back to him using his own language...which we must say, he has become quite fluent in lately and will gladly talk your ear off night or day.

This is what Mommy wakes up to the in the morning (complete with the grunting noises and all :)..

He was supposed to be going down for a nap but tried to convince me that it wasn't a good idea..

Despite everything, Brycen is always a joy and we absolutely love watching him grow and learn

Proudly sitting on Dad's bike..

Gotta love that smile..

and even though he almost the size of a two year old...he will always be our baby.

Live. Laugh. Love.

Brycen is full of life and loves to laugh. He is so incredibly happy and laughs all day. It doesn't matter, if Daddy is sharing a funny story about his day with Mommy, as soon as Mommy laughs-Brycen doesn't want to feel left out so he laughs too! Brycen loves all facial expressions, all games, and will seriously, laugh at just about everything. He especially loves watching either Mommy or Daddy talk on the phone. We are not sure exactly what it is that he finds so funny about it, but sure enough, every time Daddy calls Mommy to say that he is headed home, Brycen can be heard laughing in the background. Yesterday, Mommy was on the phone talking to a nurse after Brycen had an unfortunate encounter with gravity and fell off the bed and the nurse said that she knew he was okay because he was laughing in the background. Haha. He is a trooper! And...that will never happen again...Mommy feels horrible. The nurse reassured Mommy that every baby falls off the bed at least once and that babies are built to withstand the bumps and bruises. Mommy also called the pediatrician just to make sure and the doctor replied, "Welcome to parenthood". For Brycen's and Mommy's health sake though, Brycen will not be falling off again! That was too scary...Brycen did cry for about 10 minutes but then he smiled and moved on. Mommy and Daddy are SO glad that he is okay!

Brycen laughing with Daddy. So much for Mommy being able to listen to the evening news on T.V. :)

Usually while Brycen is sleeping, Mommy tries to get her workout done. She works out with one of those dancing videos and has fun. However, Brycen woke up from his nap early yesterday and Mommy was only half way done with the workout so she put Brycen in his bouncer toy to see how he would do while she finished doing the workout. Forget playing with the toys! Brycen found watching Mommy dancing around, pretty humorous and couldn't stop laughing. So, maybe working out is possible while the baby is awake...but Mommy's not sure if the laughing is very encouraging for her self esteem...haha.

Brycen is playing with Daddy in this video; doesn't he just have the cutest little laugh?

Brycen successfully knows where all the mirrors are in the house and if the person that is holding him is about to pass one, he gets so excited. Yesterday, Mommy put Brycen in front of the mirror so that he would be entertained while she made the bed. However, as she was making the bed, something got in her eye that forced her to walk over to the mirror and stand really close to try to see what it was/get it out. Just then, Brycen about had a cow so Mommy rushed to his side to see what was the matter, it all soon became apparent as Brycen became immediately happy again as soon as he was able to relocate his friend in the mirror.

The following video is a sad attempt to catch Brycen's reaction when he locates himself in the mirror. The rocking chair he is sitting in sits directly across a mirror. Funny story: So, Brycen loves to sit in the rocking chair and rock himself, so one evening, Mommy was multi-tasking and was watching Brycen as he rocked himself on the chair while she was folding laundry on the floor in front of him (blocking the mirror-this was the first day the mirror was put there). Well, Brycen seemed pretty content and Mommy didn't want to spoil the fun by picking him up so she quickly picked up the piles of folded laundry to carry into the next room. While she was gone, she suddenly heard Brycen get really excited, stop, get really excited, laugh, stop, etc. So, she peeked in (she didn't want to ruin his fun by distracting him) and discovered Brycen locating himself in the mirror (the sudden excitement, laughing) then looking away, then locating himself in the mirror again, etc. In the following video, he first looks at the camera, then looks down, then finds himself in the mirror (laughs, gets excited, etc.) and then does it again. His reaction is not as big as usual (but that's what happens when Mommy pulls out the camera) but hopefully this gives everyone an idea.

As social as Brycen is and since he loves his friend in the mirror and loves almost any person that will smile at him; you would never guess, but Brycen is terrified of other kids. He can handle 50 adults but not one child. Brycen enjoys watching the other kids play but as soon as they invade his bubble, or try to touch him, or try to communicate with him; he has a break down. Last night, we were at our weekly neighborhood dinner and there are quite a few little girls that love to scream and run around. Well since it has been colder these days and getting dark so early, we moved the usual outdoor dinner into someone's very, very small apartment. The girls were playing with one of the other dads that happened to be right by us and were screaming in excitement and Brycen couldn't take it and cried. After Mommy explained to all that Brycen is terrified of kids, all the adults laughed and one of the other mothers said (impersonating Brycen), "Mommy, they're screaming at me!" Later that night, Bryce also commented, "I don't blame you Brycen,I would be scared of those kids too!" haha. As Brycen becomes more mobile and can play a little better, hopefully, we will be able to start attending a playgroup so that Brycen will no longer be scared of his own kind. :)

We make some pretty good Walk-ers!

For the past two weekends, Bryce and I have rented a redbox Saturday night and thus, it needed to be returned on Sunday. When we lived in Provo, we would often walk to the local Smith's store since it was only 5-8 blocks away (depended on which location we lived at) and would do our light grocery shopping and/or return the redbox; depending on the day of the week, of course! No grocery shopping on Sunday. Well, when Bryce reminded me that we needed to return the redbox 2 weeks ago and then asked if I wanted to return it or if I wanted him to return it, I remembered how much I enjoyed living so close to a redbox in Provo and how that would be our family walk and how I wished we could do that here. Well, even though the closest redbox is about 1.5 miles away, each way, we gave it a shot! We really enjoyed walking on the campus, the first time Bryce has done it on a non-school day, Brycen absolutely loved it-fell asleep 10 minutes into the walk and slept the rest of the way, and we enjoyed it so much as a family that we did it again the next week.

Getting ready to go!

"Pictures? I'm bored..let's go already!"

The campus bell tower, look at the beautiful sky!

Gotta love the Fall leaves!

Bryce's home away from home-the Chemical Engineering building

Brycen and I also got to see Bryce play in a soccer game with his fellow colleagues as they played the faculty. The students won (Bryce scored the winning goal!)-it was a fun and pretty amusing game. Most of the faculty lasted 3 minutes before requesting a sub. haha. And Bryce said that it was even more amusing to see his teachers walk (or should we say limp) into class the Monday after. Brycen was fascinated by the continuous moving soccer ball and tried his hardest to follow it with his eyes. He also did a fair amount of cheer leading and provided much entertainment to all, as he performed one, continuous monologue at the top of his lungs before conking out cold on my shoulder for the last 15 minutes of the game. If anyone turned his way, he would give them the biggest grin (showing off his very own 4 pearly whites) and like many times before, they all commented on how happy of a baby he was. We are so blessed!

Getting ready to play!

"Where's Daddy going?"

We also got to attend the temple recently and enjoy the beautiful Fall trees!

Chicago, IL Temple

Haalloooweeennn!

Well, I'm usually not a huge fan of Halloween but I absolutely loved it this year! Brycen and I started out the weekend by making a trip to campus on Friday to see Daddy. Bryce's school building is a little over a mile from our apartment and since there isn't really any close parking and the bus ride takes as long as it does to walk (and they look at us like we are aliens; a baby is a RARE sight on campus/ let alone on the bus, so they LITERALLY stare at us the entire ride-the longest 17 minute ride of my life); so we decided to walk. On the way there, it started to sprinkle but wasn't bad at all; definitely worth it over the very awkward bus ride.

Brycen was a pumpkin and LOVED seeing Daddy!

"Hey, look! What's that?" Brycen is sooo good at looking away from the camera (sound familiar Uncle Mike, this picture is for you!)

Super pumpkin!

Sitting on Daddy's lunch bag.

We weren't as lucky on the walk home. It POURED 30 seconds after we left Bryce's building and ended 30 seconds after we arrived home (go figure). It was so bad with crazy wind, that I attempted to stop and wait out the rain at different campus buildings along the way. As soon as I stopped, it would start to just sprinkle so I would think, "let's make a break for it, since rain was expected all day; I can handle sprinkling". As soon as we started again, it would POUR, the wind would start up again; making everyone that even attempted to use an umbrella look like a fool so I layered up Brycen's legs (the only part of the stroller not covered) and decided to stick it out and go straight home. Make-up ran into my eyes making it almost impossible to see, my shoes were not even a tad-bit waterproof causing puddles to form within my shoes adding to quite the overall wet experience; somehow though, we did make it home. It will make a fun memory.

Brycen must've found the rain pretty soothing!

After Brycen went to bed that night, Bryce and Christi carved a pumpkin (Christi's first!) and then roasted the seeds--soo yummy! while watching a movie.

On Halloween, we all dressed up to go to a Halloween Party hosted by the community we live in. We were one of the VERY few entire families that dressed up; typically only the kids were dressed up. Lots of the international people took pictures of us and asked to take pictures with us...it was kinda weird.

I love this picture. "Daddy, you look silly!" Bryce was a clown.

I was the farmer that grew this pumpkin :)

Wearing Daddy's hat.

Our three pumpkins.

Brycen couldn't help it...too irresistible.

Glowing!

That night, Christi and Bryce finished the Halloween festivities dipping apples into homemade caramel.