I have a lot of catching up to do but I am choosing to go read a book instead. Here are some pics from our morning and a quick update on Brigham's tooth count for posterity :)

Between December 12th and 13th he had 3 teeth break through his gums bringing the tooth count to 8. This past Saturday I noticed the corner of a molar poking through so hopefully more will follow soon so that eating gets easier for him!

Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night!

Christmas week was a little hectic for me. I procrastinated in making the gifts for my family and on top of that I had to work all week. Each night after Brigham went to bed I would make a gift before going to bed. Krystin got an apron made from pillowcases. I wanted to keep this one for myself. Derek and my dad got t-shirts I made using my Silhouette SD. Arden got a doll and sock dog, and for my mom I got 4 mismatched picture frames and painted them white. Then each frame has a letter cutout with pictures behind it. The frames spell MIMI. I hope everyone loves their gifts as much as I enjoyed being able to make them. I hope I am able to think of new ideas for everyone each year so that I can make my family's gifts every year. Anyways, I never got to bed before 1am this past week and last night I was up until 4am. I had to finish my mom and dad's gifts and then wrap Brigham's gifts and assemble his Cozy Coupe. I couldn't work on the gifts during the day because we spent the day baking treats for our families with Daniel and Katelyn and then we had Christmas dinner with all of Mark's family at his mom's house. It was a nice day and I loved having people cook with me. It was so much faster! We got home from dinner at about 10:45 and I immediately got started on the gifts for my mom and dad. I never even took off my coat and boots until much later in the night. I finished the gift making at about 1am. I then cleaned our kitchen, living room, and dining room and poured out the contents of the Cozy Coupe box so I could get to work on snapping the plastic car together. I was a little bummed that Mark didn't put the car together before he went to bed at midnight but I figured it was something that wasn't important to him or he was just hoping I would do it so he wouldn't have to. This morning he said it was because he thought we would just put it together later Christmas morning. Anyways the car took nearly 2 hours to assemble and it was a major pain. I am super grateful for the video instructions that are provided on the Little Tikes website because the instructions that came with the car was just 30 something pictures that weren't always the easiest to understand. I finally got the thing together only to realize that one of the pieces partially popped out of place and could only be fixed by removing the roof and screws. I left that for Mark to complete today. I wrapped Brigham's other 2 gifts and Mark's gifts and finally went to bed at 4am. I was pooped. I was up at 7:25am waiting for my boys to get up so they could see their presents! Brigham woke up at close to 8 and we played on the bed with Mark for about 30 minutes. He finally woke up enough to get my gifts together and we all headed to the living room. Brigham loved his toys and Mark was happy with his Ipod touch, dark chocolate truffles, and new coat. When it was my turn to open gifts I had to play Let's Make a Deal. From the beginning my plan was to always trade until I got to the last gift. The first gift I gave up was a new pair of Rainbows. The second was some used lotion from our bathroom. The third (which I went back and forth about) was a Nook color. Finally the time had come for me to see what I blindly traded these gifts for. A Kindle! It was hard to not be a little disappointed (especially after I looked at the info sheet on the Nook compared to the Kindle) but it is still a fun gift. Mark didn't buy and of the gifts yet. He is hoping to find my gift on Craigslist for a good deal.

We had breakfast with Melanie's family, Daniel, and Katelyn and then headed to my dad's for the afternoon. We are home now and waiting for the snow that is supposedly headed our way. I hope it comes. It will be the first white Christmas in Charlotte since 1947!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

I can't believe it has been over a month since I have posted. I have been working a lot. I'm not sure if that is a reasonable excuse or not. There hasn't really been much going on around here. We decorated for Christmas the Saturday after Thanksgiving. This year Mark was excited about decorating for the first time. He even hung lights along the roof. They are the old fashioned big bulbs and I just love it. I thought the Christmas tree was going to be a major headache with Brigham but he actually doesn't really care much about it at all. On a side note, each year we just take the ornaments off the tree and leave the lights and ribbon on it and just set it in the attic portion of the shed. Well this year when I went to take it out, there was a huge spider/cob web all over the top half of the tree. Mark pulled the tree down and cleaned the web off. He assured me that no spiders were in the tree because it had been too cold and spiders either die or go live in people's houses for the colder months. Well this morning as I was fixing our tree skirt (which is actually just 2 white bed sheets wrapped to disguise the box our tree sits on to make it taller) I see a couple spiders. I call Mark in to save me from these ferocious beasts and he finds several more spiders. Apparently they have been living in the tree all along. How gross and scary (I hate spiders and most any kind of bug). I just want to throw this tree away and start new next year with a pre-lit tree that comes with an airtight box for storing. Instead I will definitely be buying a tree bag. I think they make these and I surely hope they do. I want a bug free tree next year.

Anyways, Brigham is finally saying a word. His word of choice is AMEN. I love it. He says it at the end of every prayer and it is just too cute. He started saying this on either Wednesday or Thursday of this last week. He has also started running and he has started playing peek a boo again but instead of hiding behind a blanket, he hides behind furniture.

Our Tree

I just planted our first tree. We have wanted a tree or two for a couple years and we finally followed through a couple weeks ago. Today I actually got around to planting it.

If you look in the center of the scattered red dirt, you may be able to see a stick. That stick is our tree. The one leaf that it had left fell off while I was trying to get the tree out of its plastic container.

Here is a close up. To the left you can see the one leaf it had.

I guess I won't know until next summer if it is just a stick or an actual tree.

Happy Halloween!

We celebrated Halloween on Saturday rather than Sunday. The day started with me waking up in Davidson at the Ada Jenkins Center where I spent the night with the youth that were participating in an overnight service project at the center. This was the first night that I spent away from Brigham in his 13 months here on Earth. It was a great experience working with the youth in moving the food pantry, painting the rooms and halls at the center, restocking the new pantry, and also assembling a new walk-in cooler and freezer for the center. Everyone worked so hard on Friday that most of the work was completed by Friday night so most people came home on Saturday morning. I returned home just in time to see Brigham before he laid down for his nap. Once he got up we headed to Carowinds for the last time this year. We met up with Shannon, Justin, and Briggs' bff Kaitlyn. We spent the afternoon in the kiddie park riding anything we could with them. Then we went to the trick-or-treating that Carowinds was hosting that turned out to be pretty lame. It was crowded and there were only 4 candy stops (and they were only handing out dum dums and jolly ranchers).

This is one from the carousel. I thought Briggs was so adorable on this ride because he was actually holding onto the pole with both hands once the ride started.
This ride was pretty cute. There were these cars that rode around a track and played music from the 50's. It sounds lame but I just thought it was so cute.

We all came home and took naps and then I finished making Brigham's costume for the ward trunk-or-treat. He was Luke Skywalker and Mark was Darth Vader. Briggs' costume didn't turn out exactly how I envisioned but it worked. Since it was so cold out, we had to layer him in some long sleeve shirts under his costume so that made his "robe" not fit as well and also threw off the look a little. I couldn't find a pattern for this costume so I just used one of his shirts as a guide for how big to make the robe. For the pants I just made some baby legs and then I chut some brown jersey knit fabric into strips and wrapped it around his shoes and half way up his calf so that it looked like he was wearing boots (or whatever you call the weird Star Wars shoes that Luke wears). It was pretty cute seeing Mark hold Brigham with both of them in their costumes. Surprisingly, some people had no idea what they were. I wish I would have gotten a picture at the beginning of the night instead of the end when Brigham's costume is coming off his shoulders and is barely wrapped around him and I also wish I would have gotten Brigham's whole costume in the picture.

What Have We Been Doing?

Hanging out in our pj's all day? Not quite. Nothing too exciting really. We had pictures done on October 4th and it was so hard to pick the ones we wanted because we wanted every single one! We finally narrowed our list down and we will be getting our disc of pictures next week. I can't wait to get them so we can get pictures printed and up on our walls.

On October 5th Briggs had his 1 year check-up. He also had to get shots. He was so happy until that point. I hate shot days. It is just so pitiful. Luckily he only cried for maybe a minute then all was well with the world. We opted out of the MMR but he did get 3 other shots. We will get the MMR eventually but we wanted to limit how many vaccines he got at once.

Here are his measurements:

Height: 31 inches (90th percentile)

Weight: 21lbs 12oz (25th-50th Percentile)**compared to his height his weight is in the 8th percentile ****obviously our scale is off because in a previous post he weighed 24lbs when we weighed him at home.

Head Circumference: 47 cm (75th percentile)

He is a very happy, easy going boy. He still gets a bottle at bed time since we have the formula left. Once it is gone we may do some warm milk in his sippy cup at bed time. He loves cheese and protein shakes more than life its self it seems. He is on hiatus from eating vegetables at the moment but I hope he ends his hiatus soon mostly so that diaper changes are a little less messy. Brigham loves milk and water. He drinks so much from his sippy each day. Sometimes it is surprising at how fast he will empty his cup and be ready for a refill. He has become more cuddly which is sweet and Mark and I love to cuddle with him. His favorite toys are balls and a wooden sword that was Mark's when he was a kid. It's a fairly big sword but Briggs loves just carrying it around with him. It is rather cute. We still don't count any of his "words" as his first words because there isn't anything he says at anything specific. He has become quite the chatter box though and we love having conversations with him.

This was from the last Sunday in September before church. I just love this picture. I laughed for a few minutes because they have the same eyes.

Here is a real picture. Mark and Briggs just looked so cute with their white shirt and ties on. This picture doesn't do the moment justice but in all the other pictures one of them had crazy eyes.

Time Flies

A year ago today I was sitting in a hospital bed holding our new baby boy. When I think back over the past year, so much has happened that it seems like it was ages ago but then it also seems like there is no way that it has already been a whole year! Mark has gone back to school, I completed student teaching and received my degree and NC teaching license (which may never be used), Mark was accepted to graduate school and is taking a mixture of grad and undergrad classes, we sold the Tundra, paid off my student loans, and lots of other little things.

Briggs has grown so much. He looks so different from when he was born but you can still see him in his newborn pictures. It is so interesting. After 12 months of life here on Earth he has turned into a walking, babbling, food loving, independently playing, cuddly boy. We love him so much and are so grateful that our lives have been blessed with him.

We celebrated his birthday with family members on Sunday, September 19th. Brigham loved his birthday cake and we had to take it away after he ate half of it so that he didn't make himself sick. He also loved the toys that he received from our sweet family. Those in attendance: Grandmother, Pappy/Boppy, Auntie Becky, Uncle Paul, Mimi, Clarisa, Grandma Mooney, Melanie, Brandon, Madison, Landon, Alison, Cameron, Daniel, Katelyn, Scarlett, Nate, and Carolina.

Birthday party #2 was on Monday September 20th. It was a combined party with Kaitlyn that we had with our friends. Brigham wasn't all about this cake like he was with the one on Sunday. I just used whipped cream on the 2nd cake since it had less sugar and I'm not sure if that is why he didn't love the cake as much. It was a fun night and we were so happy to have all our friends over to celebrate Kaitlyn and Brigham's birthday.

Brigham is about 31" long and 23 pounds. He loves water, protein shakes, cheese, anything we are eating, and his fruits and veggies. We are down to one bottle a day (the nighttime one). The only reason we haven't dropped this one is because we have 2 cans of unopened formula left and 3 boxes of baby cereal that we put in the formula to thicken it.

More birthday pics: