My Techie Baby

Remember how I said Brett loved my phone and remotes more than just about anything? He "carries" them with him wherever he goes!

Such a Big Boy!

Yesterday was just flat out busy. In addition to having the realtor come to put the house on the market, Brett had his 1 year doctor appointment! (Plus, I got sick, but that's another story...).

Here are his stats...

Weight: VERY SKINNY - 19.4 lbs (only the 5th percentile)

Height: Still tall - 31 inches (81st percentile)

And his head is still small - (20th percentile)

Picture by the bear for posterity (you know the drill by now!). He actually finally used it as a chair today.


Looking back all of those months ago... 1 week old.

Buy My House!

So, the realtor came over this morning and put a purdy sign in our front yard... yep the house is for sale! I never thought we'd finally get here, but we have. Anyway, with the housing market being in a slump, I thought I'd shamelessly promote myself and create an ad to buy my house.

It's a cute 2 bed/loft, 2.5 bath in Fishers. We've loved it for some time now, but have outgrown it. So, if anyone knows ANYBODY who might be interested, please direct them to me... I'd be HAPPY to get them more info..

Birthdays are so nice, Brett decided to do it TWICE

Okay, so I decided to do a joint post for Brett's two birthday celebrations. Last weekend, while we were in Chicago for Easter, we had a birthday celebration for Brett that included Steve's side of the family. Brett had a wonderful time and got to see a lot of relatives that he doesn't get together with often. He got lots of books to add to his library...


But the best part was letting Brett eat his cake.. the blue frosting was awesome...

Kinda digging this frosting here...

I'm loving this! Let's do it every day!

Then, today, Brett had his Indy birthday at my parent's house. He got this cool Thomas the Train toy..

And, the cake... I didn't think it could get better than the previous week... but you've got to check out the pics. No we didn't place icing on his face... this is completely organic..

Okay, we're blowing out the candles again... I remember what this is about...

Hey, dad, come here... I want smear icing on you...

What are all of you looking and laughing at? I've just been stuffing my face. You say I look like "Colonel Sanders?"

I can't believe the way the frosting stuck to his face... I'll have to pull out these pictures years later to show him! Overall, 2 very good first birthdays. We are def. only doing 1 next year though... otherwise he'll get used to it, and expect it!

Fun at The Zoo!

If you follow my Facebook updates, you may have seen that Steve and I had been planning on taking Brett to the zoo, but were bummed that the weather wasn't going to be good on his birthday. Well, we'd both taken the day off so we decided to brave it anyway... the only other place we had "thought" to check out was the Children's Museum, but since he's not quite walking yet, I thought he'd be a little young to really experience it right now (but hopefully this summer!).

Even though we had to bundle up to see everything, it didn't rain all day and NO ONE was there so we had the whole zoo to ourselves. Plus, since it was a little chillier, the animals were really active and we got to see almost all of them!


(Ugh, I forgot how blogger posts pics opposite of how you upload them, so a lot of these are our day "in reverse")...

The very best animal we saw all day came at the very end. We happened upon the walrus, and no one was playing with him, so he was looking for a friend. We got him all to ourselves. Brett thought this was waaayyy cool...

Checking out the sea lions with daddy...

Still with daddy, checking out the roosters...

Some sort of buffalo at the petting zoo area..

The rhinos. Namely their butts. It's funny how many animal behinds we got in our pictures.

This is about the closest I've ever been to the lions. Yes, I was a bit reluctant holding my innocent offspring this close to a deadly predator...

The giraffes were way cool. We got to see them up close.... couldn't get a great shot of Brett, so...

....this pic is Steve taking it from another angle, still looking at the giraffes (notice the lone giraffe butt in the background!)

Dolphins! Suellen had a cute pic of Parker and Alicia looking at the dolphins when they went to the zoo last week. I tried, but couldn't quite capture it.

We have tons more, but I'll just post these for now. Oh, and we caught some "Wild America" pics.... still debating on whether to post them or not. Let's just say we caught some tortises being "bad" in the desert exhibit... we should tell the zookeeper that they need to be aware that baby tortises may be on the way....

"Oh, Sing Us A Song"...

Yesterday morning after he got up, Brett got to check out his big birthday present from mommy and daddy...

He loved it!

Any requests?

Thank you, thank you..... There will be another show tomorrow!

Happy Birthday Baby

Happy 1st Birthday sweet baby boy. Your mommy loves you sooo much, and is amazed at how much you have grown and changed.

Where did the year go?

Hoppy Easter!

Brett got to visit a very "Woodland Critter Christmas"ey Easter Bunny yesterday at brunch...

Hey mom, how's it going?... I know you just plopped me on a lap like you do sometimes... but there 's something different about this one...

Hey, WOW! Who are you??? I've seen pictures of people like you in my books but never in real life!

This guy is pretty cool!

Hope that makes up for the fact that we didn't take him to see Santa this year.

Best Buds

Brett and Sasha were goofin' by the window today....

What a beautiful day in the neighborhood!

Hmmm...I think I hear someone behind me...

And then WHAT, Sasha? Are you serious? And it happened right outside of THIS window in the neighbors' backyard? HOW did I miss that?

Okay, I'm on the lookout... keep your eyes peeled and let me know if you see anything...

Flat. Out. Exhausted.

Let me start by saying I feel as though I need to write a blog about life and what's been going on and yada, yada. But I am so tired that I might fall asleep at the keyboard!

Life has been crazy lately. As I posted last month, Steve and I are going through the arduous task of putting our house on the market. This has lead to very long and busy weekends. In fact, Steve has pretty much missed the entire NCAA tourney. We've used every spare minute of our time at home together to be productive. So, we've really not had any relaxation time for awhile. But, we've made soo much progress. We've repainted our entire bedroom, touched up all of the doors and walls in the house, replaced a sink (thanks dad!), fixed a ceiling fan (again, thanks dad!), revinyled 2 bathrooms (oh yes, I DID THIS BY MYSELF!) and replaced our downstairs carpet. We've also been cleaning and re-organizing closets, storing clutter at my parents (thanks mom & dad!), and working on "staging" our house. In my former life, I was in the apartment industry so I am trying to make our house look like a model. Not an easy task! We can see the finish line, though, which helps. We need to deep clean, landscape and get our carpets steam cleaned, but then it's going up baby!

Well, not only are we devoting all of our time to that... I thought that I'd try to re-gain my figure by training for the mini marathon, so we signed up last fall. This will be my 6th or 7th mini, so I'm not new to the training regime, and I know that around this time every year it gets ridiculously time consuming. This weekend was our 7 mile Saturday, which ate up over an hour and a half of the day and a lot of my energy. (BTW- my figure hasn't changed much... all of the stress has caused horrendous eating patterns and the 1,000 calories I burn from those long training spurts are promptly put back on. I need to get serious about these last 20 pounds and I just can't seem to do it.).

Plus, I am nearing the end of some serious drug withdrawl. PRESCRIBED drugs... don't get any ideas! Shortly after Brett was born I went on 20 mg of Paxil and have been on it for almost a year... after my anxiety was calmed I stayed on it through the winter because of my seasonal affective disorder. Previously, I had taken Lexapro, which wasn't too hard to ween off of, but Paxil is a whole other story (the lactation consultants would't put me on Lexapro because of issues with it affecting breastmilk). I will NEVER take Paxil again. I took the whole month of March to gradually cut back my dosage, and each time I did I experienced serious vertigo. The room would spin and I'd almost lose my balance. NOT recommened if you have a small child to carry around. I took my last dose on Saturday the 28th and the following Monday I was in pretty bad shape. Last week I spent a lot of time sitting down because if I moved too quickly in any direction I would get so dizzy I would almost lose my balance. Finally on Thursday I started to feel a little better and now I am not too spinny unless I am really stressing. (On a side note, this has also put a major damper on mini training, and I'm hoping our pace won't be as embarrassing as I am pretty sure it will be).

And, then, add in an exhuberant, energetic, almost 1 year old. Add this child to a house full of clutter and interior design projects and mix. NOT a good idea. Poor baby is in a minefield right now. We don't have a lot of space for him to roam and all of the babyproofed areas are currently NOT babyproofed, which makes it even more challenging. Plus, since we can't leave him alone, we have to take turns watching him while the other one works in the house. I tell you, over the past month, we've timed so many things to co-incide with his Saturday and Sunday naps!

Oh, and the fact that he is almost 1 brings with it another whole set of projects. He's having 2 birthday parties. One in Chicago and one in Indy, so Steve and I have two parties to plan. Luckily, neither one is at our house, or you'd have to commit me to the looney bin right now!

But there is one thing that I am pretty stoked about... I've been saving $$ in my paypal accout for awhile, and I was finally able to purchase Brett's birthday present. It came in this past week and I can't wait to put it together and have him play it...


Yes, it's a "baby" grand piano. Just like Shroeder. I want all of our kids to be exposed to music early in life, since it was such a huge part of Steve's and my life growing up. And, I'd really like them to learn piano first, since it's such a good base for everything else. We'll see if he likes it... I'm crossing my fingers!

Now, if only ordering this thing were easy... it was a horrendous story and one that could take another blog to tell. But it's here, which is important, and I am, instead, going to use my last ounce of evergy to....

finish.... this.... sentance..... ZZZZZZZZ.

Evan's Response

If you are keeping up with my blog... here is Evan's response to Brett's video the other day.

Evan checks out Brett's video

Adorable! I love how he gives the thumbs up!

My Favorite Toys

What are Brett 's two favorite toys on the whole planet?

If you guessed they were not actual baby toys, "ding, ding, ding" you won the prize!

Like seemingly all babies, Brett loves our tivo remote (and don't try to fool him with his Elmo remote, because at 11 1/2 months old, he already knows it is "fake"), and he could spend all day playing with my cell phone.

I didn't mind him playing with the phone as much at first, until he dropped it into the dog's water bowl and almost fried it. Now I try to keep it out of his hands, but that doesn't always work so well. For example, in the photos below, he had gotten into my purse and found it. Smart little guy!

Okay, I've already changed the channel away from the classical music that mom wanted me to listen to, now let's screw up her phone...

Hmmm... I'll add vibrate along with the ring so I can make it as annoying as possible...

Looks like it worked... hey mom, it's for you... by the sound of the ringtone I think it's dad. Can you please put him on speaker so I can try to grab the phone out of your hand the whole time you are talking to him?

Hi Evan

Evan, this video is just for you!



(a side note for readers who are not "Evan"... Evan is Rick and Tina's little boy, and from what I've heard he likes watching videos of Brett on my blog. Brett wanted to give a "shout out" to his good buddy!)