More Birthday

Here are a few more birthday pictures.

Brendan enjoying his smash cake

Brendan is a lot more interested in eating his cake than he is in taking a picture!

Nanny and Papa with Brendan. Papa is more worried about watching Brendan eat than take a picture ;)

CiCi and Peepaw with Brendan. You can tell this is further in to the cake eating. Brendan looks like he's wondering what's going on.

And last, but most definitely not least, Brendan's sweet friend Caroline sent him this picture using her Mommy's phone on his birthday:

Isn't she too cute?!

I still need to get some more pictures from the birthday party from other people, but I thought you might like to see the few more I got. There is another new post below this one, so be sure to check it out, too!

Randoms & Little Gym

We haven't had much going on the past week because I was sick with a terrible cold and then Brendan got it :( Luckily, I got better pretty quickly because my amazing husband came home from work at lunch the second (and worst) day of the cold and watched Brendan so I could nap for FOUR hours. I felt much better after that. Brendan is pretty much better now but he has a cough from all the congestion breaking up. Poor guy.

So here are just some some random pictures and some pictures from our last class of the semester at Little Gym. I'll post a few cute birthday ones in a separate post.

Eating some puffs and playing in mommy and daddy's room. I'm not sure why he looks so concerened! (Shiner is the blur on the left side of the picture)

Trying to get Shiner under the bed. We do have sheets on our bed, by the way, but I was washing them at the time.

I realized I haven't posted a new picture of Shiner in a LONG time. He got his first haircut the other day and we did a Schnauzer cut around his face because I'm not a big fan of the Wheaten cut on the face because it covers their eyes. We were totally shocked by how different he looked with that cut AND with some of his hair cut off it cut most of the dark that was left off and he is much lighter now!

Playing with his Christmas gift from Santa. He loves this thing and knows how to put the shapes back where they go.

Happy boy!

Today at Little Gym...working on moving over things.

Practicing some walking. His shirt says "Mom's Little Man of the House." It was from Lolli and Pops for Christmas :)

This is what he does when he wants to throw the ball. He lifts it up to his face, opens his mouth like he's going to bite it and then lets go. haha

They had a cute little medal ceremony at the end where they all got medals for finishing the class. Here is Miss Natalie giving him he medal.

"Oh I love this medal. I think I will kiss it and eat it!"

We are going to do Little Gym again and it restarts next week so he won't know the difference except we'll be going on a different day and time and he'll be in the older class.

Everything else is pretty much the same, not a whole lot going on around here. One BIG thing I forgot to mention before because I was waiting on Tim to tell our families and then forgot I hadn't posted it, Tim was offered a Junior Partnership in his law firm! So, he is now a Partner of a law firm at the ripe old age of 28 :) We were SO excited about this opportunity and promotion because it was not expected for at least another year or two. Yay, Tim!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Post TONIGHT (Update!)

**I DID do a post, but since I started it before I posted this, it is on the page BELOW this post. So, scroll down for the new post!**

I will do a post tonight detailing Brendan's fabulous 1st birthday :)

I actually have all the pictures uploaded but he just woke up from a nap screaming so I can't add any details to them right now. Check back late tonight or tomorrow!

Happy Birthday, Brendan!

January 6th was Brendan's FIRST birthday! I can't believe it's been a year. Funny story, the night before his birthday, Tim and I were going to bed and I said, jokingly, "I wonder if Brendan will wake up at 4:00 AM since that's what time I went into labor last year?" I woke up in the night to him crying and looked at the clock...guess what time it was? Yep, 4:00 AM! Can you believe it? When he does wake up in the night, it is never at 4:00 AM. I thought that was too crazy.

Tim stayed home from work on Brendan's birthday to spend the day with us. When everyone woke up, I went and got donuts and Brendan had some donut holes for breakfast. We all took a nap about 11:00 and, when we woke up, we went to Chick-Fil-A for lunch.


Brendan enjoying his lemonade at Chick-Fil-A. He is seriously addicted to this stuff. I made the mistake of giving it to him before he ate any of his food and he would NOT put it down. We had to force it out of his hands to get him to eat any lunch.

After lunch and some applesauce, doing a little munching on his spoon.

After lunch, we went to Southlake to Pigtails and Crewcuts for Brendan to get his very first professional haircut. Pigtails and Crewcuts was the cutest place and they did a great job. They had a "first haircut" package where they would take some pictures of him getting his hair cut and give you a little bag with some clippings of his hair in it.

Brendan wondering what the heck was going on....He kept turning when she would try to cut around his ears but he did a good job overall.

He was obsessed with the comb and started bawling when we had to give it back to the lady. Luckily, they had a treasure chest of toys for the kids to pick from and it had a comb in it. Whew!

Family picture :)

Brendan in his getup for the day. He had some super cute boots but I bought them too big accidentally and they wouldn't stay on. His shirt was a present from my cousin, Jackie, for his birthday. It has a little baby in a diaper and an A&M helmet and it says "Put me in Coach! Future 12th Man." Isn't that adorable?

On of his gifts from me and Tim. We took him on a walk in it after we got back from the haircut place.

At dinner. I know this picture is kind of blurry but it was too funny not to post. We went and ate at Pasados (sp probably) and Brendan had some cheese quesadilla, beans, rice, and guacamole.

After dinner, we ran by Kroger for me to pick him up a cupcake to have a little cake with us on his birthday. Their cupcakes were HUGE and this little cake was the same size and even cuter, so I got it instead. Here is the picture right when we set it down in front of him.

Then, he dove in...

And this is what it looked like afterwards....Needless to say, he enjoyed it.

He would NOT cooperate for his 12 month picture and this was the result:

Friday night, Tim and I went to watch the Aggies play LSU in the Cotton Bowl. Pretty much a depressing game, but Tim got some awesome pictures of Cowboys stadium as we were walking up

The stadium was really cool and it was worth all the money we paid for the tickets just to see it in person.

Saturday was Brendan's birthday party. Many of our family members and some of our friends came to the house Saturday afternoon for it. I forgot to include a picture of his invitation. I will try to do that next time. It was a farm-themed party.

Here is his cake. It turned out SO cute! We just got it from Albertson's and they did an amazing job and it tasted great. I would totally recommend them if you need a cake for anything. We also got a FREE smash cake for Brendan. He did just as well devouring that cake as he did the one on his birthday but I don't have any pictures of that. I will get some from other people and post them next time.

Here was the dining room decorated

Sign for the front door. I this and a Happy Birthday sign and some cupcake toppers from 62 Cards on Etsy. I would highly, highly recommend using them. She has some adorable stuff on her Etsy page but she also takes custom orders. She was extremely nice and did a wonderful job.
Party favors. I also got the little animals attached to the party favors from 62 Cards. The favors were Old McDonald Had a Farm Golden Book on bottom and in the bandana was a crayon (some were shaped like a tractor and then the older girls got a cool Crayola crayon instead), a little stuffed farm animal and a little tract or combine. I was really happy with how they turned out.

I made a banner of pictures of Brendan for each month of his first year to hang on the fireplace.

My pictures of the Happy Birthday sign from 62 Cards didn't turn out that great, but it was reallllllly cute. Each individual letter on a piece of paper, tied together with all different kinds of ribbon and little farm animals on each end and in the middle.

Brendan got LOTS of super awesome gifts for his birthday that he loves. We pretty much have all new toys for him now between this and Christmas. One of his gifts was a tunnel from his friend, Conner, and Conner's parents. He loves for us to be at one end and him crawl to us. I couldn't get any really clear pictures, but here is one of him coming toward me.

He's still slowly starting to walk. Some days he loves to try to take lots of steps and some days he only wants to crawl. But, he can pretty much stand on his own for as long as he wants and do mostly anything while standing on his own. He started saying "bye" sometimes and FINALLY started saying "Mama" sometimes, but not anytime you ask him. He says a lot of things that sound like real words/phrases but, of course, we aren't sure if we are just hearing things or he is actually saying them. We transitioned him to whole milk and he did great and drinks only milk (no formula) easily now. We are still working on weaning from the bottle and trying to come up with a game plan for that. Unforunately, he doesn't have his one year appointment until January 26th because when I called (over a month ago!) the doctor was booked until the 26th :( But, I'll update all his stats and all that whenever we go.

I think that's about it! Hope everyone is having a great New Year so far!