Brenden will be 11 months tomorrow! He is working on lots of little words, though he only says them when he feels like it, not when prompted. He can say, kitty, doggy, ish (for fish) and mamma and dadda. This week he learned two new ones. I yelled “no” at Bailey pretty loudly because she was being a pain and Brenden very distincly followed me up with his own loud “no”. The next day he was sitting looking out the back door and I was sitting beside him and he turned and looked at me and said, “Hi”.  He is getting at least two more teeth, which will bring him up to 6. He can now make a crunching noise when he chews and it very happy about that. He’s getting so much better at walking; he can make it across our living room now. Not that I have that recorded yet! Soon. I promise.

He loves to dump all his toys out of their little container, especially these legos, and then just sit in a big toy pile. Tuesday he had a lot of fun opening his dresser drawers and taking all of his clothes out. He then sat in the pile and just picked them up and dropped them one by one. Fun for neat freak mommy, let me tell you! But he loved it.

Brenden is having the craziest couple of weeks. He is all off his schedule because I was on spring break last week. He got used to me being home and his sleep schedule got messed up a little bit because we got out of our routine.
This morning he woke up at 4:00 and wouldn’t stop crying. Once I realized he wasn’t going to cry himself to sleep I got up and changed his super wet diaper and took him into the dark living room and gave him a bottle.  He seemed like he was going to go right back to sleep so I put him back in bed, where he promptly started to cry. I thought he’d cry it out, so I went back to bed. But he didn’t stop crying, so Patrick took his turn. Brenden kept almost falling asleep on Patrick’s shoulder and then jerking himself awake. Patrick thought he would go to sleep if he put him down, but he was wrong. So up I went again.

By this time it was 5:00 a.m. I sat with Brenden for an hour rocking and shushing and letting him use his bottle as a lovey. Finally  he went limp with sleep and I was able to put him down and go back to sleep. I should mention that I had stayed up late studying for a Spanish midterm that I had today!

Patrick had jury duty, and by the time he got out, it was too late go downtown to work, so he came home. That really threw Brenden off! He only had one nap today and was a bit tired and cranky, so we tried to put him down for a late second nap. He slept for a little bit but then woke up screaming with tummy trouble.

And this weekend will throw him off even more. Patrick and I are going to have our first overnight away from him. We are headed to NYC for basically 24 hours to go to a wedding reception for a friend of ours. Brenden will probably be fine with it after an initial upset. He’ll be here at home with my parents, or at least my Mom, who will watch him and the dogs for us. I however might be a different story! We’ll see. But I’m looking forward to seeing NYC again, plus, I get to wear a pretty new dress!  And when we return home, somehow we’ll get back into a routine…at least until this semester ends in May.

It is official! I’ve turned in and signed my degree plan and it is making the rounds to all the important people that will say I can graduate! I have 2 classes to take in summer I and 4 in the Fall. And then I am done!

I’m a little nervous about two things. 1) I have to take speech.  2) I have to take an independent study class where I sit in on a grad level  English class because the class I really need is not being offered.  There is still a chance they might decide to offer the one I need though, so it might be ok!

My hair and I have had a life long love/hate relationship. I love that is soft and silky, and that is about it. Sometimes I think it is a wonder I have any hair left on my head after all the changes it’s been through. It’s been long, short, permed, home permed, cut at home, cut by me, cut by someone who did not speak english, red, blonde, with bangs, without bangs and around again and again. I was just looking back through all my photo albums and it is funny how much it changes only to come back to the same thing. It is also funny how there are very few pictures where I actually like the way it looks.

I’ve learned over the years that there are a few things that just do not look good on me. Super short with layers is not a good look for me for instance. Neither are perms—as several old photos will attest to. But the one thing I can’t seem to accept not looking good on me—bangs. They look so good on other people. When a new style comes out, I somehow convince myself that this will by the style that looks good on me. But alas, it is never true. I’m not bang people despite hoping against hope. They always do some wierd curly cue thing even though my hair is stick straight everwhere else. I have actually told Patrick that if I ever tell him I want bangs, he has to remind me of my Jersey Mall hair trama. (see earlier post)

Patrick is always laughing at me when it comes to my hair. Every time it is time for me to get it cut it becomes this life or death question as to whether I should cut it off or keep growing it. I ask, even though I know his answer. He likes it short and blonde. And I ask, even though I know I’m not going to listen to what he says unless it is actually what I really want to do. So now, he just laughs and shakes his head.

But it is thanks to Patrick that I actually have a stylist I like. She’s more than I’d like to spend on a haircut, but worth every penny. I grew up getting haircuts at home and then moving up to cheap haircuts. When I was 18 I colored my hair for the first time by myself and an addiction was born. ( Yes Jeff, if you still read this, this is where you insert globhead comments about my glintz days.) Sometime after Patrick and I got engaged, fairly close to our wedding I think, I had a very lovely dark auburn color on my hair, but for some reason felt the need to change it. Now my hair takes most color as red, so it could be blonde, but if it isn’t the right blonde, it will come out red. That has been another thing I’ve had to learn. Well, I’m not really sure what happened, but it came out orange. I blame it on the dye, ferria is no good for me! Patrick had been trying to get me to go see his regular stylist forever and after the orange fiasco, I had to admit, maybe it was time to splurge on my hair. She fixed it and it was great. So I’ve been going to her ever since (with the exception of the Jersey days when I was seriously considering how to afford flying home every 6 weeks.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been trying to decide that very question lately. I have a haircut appointment tomorrow and I still don’t know what I’m going to ask her to do. Maybe it’s a me thing, maybe it’s an all girl thing (even though I like to think I’m not a girly girl) but if I don’t like the way my hair looks, I don’t like the way I look.

For now, I think I will just get an inch off even though I’m really wanting to cut it to my chin. I’ve worked so hard over the past two years to get it this long, that I don’t want to go chopping it off and then regret it. So there, that is my decision. That is unless of course I come home with it short!

So that is a lot to write about my looks for someone who generally gets ready in about 5 minutes, but hopefully it was entertaining!

We took Brenden to get his first pair of shoes yesterday. He wore them when we went out to run errands today and he thinks they are really funny. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned before that he loves to play with shoes. He unties people’s shoelaces when they are over and once they take their shoes off, he wraps the strings around his little hand and has a ball with the whole shoe. His have velcro instead of laces, but he has already discovered that velcro makes a pretty neat sound.

I’m on my spring break this week, so maybe I can get a new video made and posted like I made mention of previously. In the meantime, here is one happy shoe guy!

So sometime at the end of last year Patrick bought a laptop from one of his friends. He hemmed and hawed over it and had a great debate as to whether that was what he wanted or did he want an apple laptop. He finally decided he wanted his friends laptop and so he bought it.

It couldn’t have been more than two months later that he decided he hadn’t made the right choice for him and that he really needed a mac. I was a little perturbed needless to say. I told him this was a good lesson in thinking about the consequences of his actions!

Turns out he won the persistence match and I gave in and let him sell his laptop to get the money for the mac. He listed it on ebay and the auction ended Saturday. Patrick was crushed to find out that the auction had just barely met the reserve, but sadly the guy was a scammer. Ebay was on top of things though and got him his auction fees refunded. After a consultation with my ebay expert parents, Patrick decided to offer the next highest bidder a second chance at the computer even though his high bid was slightly under the reserve. The guy agreed and paid for it within a half an hour of the offer on Sunday.

We have a ton of random electronic stuff laying around that I’ve been asking Patrick to put on ebay or craigslist ever since we got home. You know, stuff that has been replaced with better stuff. And it has remained on his to do list ever since. I told him when he got that stuff listed he could go to the Apple store and buy his computer. So he had plans to go buy it tomorrow at lunch after completing his task tonight.

And we are finally getting to the quote. We were talking just now about our money situation and I suggested maybe it would be best to wait one more day until after payday. You would have thought the world had ended as Patrick put on his best pout. Frustrated with him I asked him how many babies I had to take care of. A little mean, I know, but you didn’t see him. His response: “Just me.” I said, then who is going to take care of Brenden? Patrick-“He’s not a baby. He’s an infant.” Maybe it was the tone of his voice, or maybe it was just the rest of my day adding up, but that cracked me up.

By the way, I asked Patrick how to spell perterbed and persistence and he said, ” Are you writing about me?” I think someone has a guilty conscience.

What was the rest of my day you ask? The day started off nicely enough. I was procrastinating on a writing project and my biggest topic on my mind was should I keep growing my hair long or cut it. Still haven’t come to any conclusions about that by the way.

Anway, Brenden woke up from his nap. I was moving my studying around him as he moved around the house. I ended up sitting at the dining room table. Brenden came to play at my feet. He fell forward into the chair and hit his head. There was silence building toward that awful scream I knew was coming, and then it came. He was bleeding. I called Patrick who laughed at me for wondering, “how do you know if a baby has a concussion?”

After Brenden was calmed down, I gave him a bottle and realized it was time for his second nap of the day. I put him in his crib, but not 5 minutes later I heard the dreaded scream that has come to signify that his leg is stuck in that darn crib yet again. (I’m working on writing the company about that.) So I went in to free him and as usual the longer it took, the louder he screamed, the more panicy I became. You’d think I’d be used to it because it keeps happening, but no. I finally got him out, and started to calm him down.

I decided the best thing to do would be to put him down for his nap in his play yard in our room. It wasn’t set up and our room is a mess because we are in the process of moving some things around. I’m trying to set it up and manuver around all these things all with one hand as I hold Brenden who does not want to let me go with my other hand. I then stepped on a plug to a tivo unit that is on our floor and fell down and backwards into Sam’s crate door which stabbed me in the back. And at that moment it started to storm. Literally. Which of course freaked out the dogs and kept the baby from sleeping. It turned out to be a day, but I got chick-fil-a out of it!

As of Monday, Brenden is walking! Ok, it is really only a few steps at a time, but it counts! He takes a couple of steps and then sits down. Or the dogs trip him. But he is getting better. I’ll try to get some video soon, but when I tried on Monday he kept trying to take the camera away from me.

That’s right, it is time for your monthly Brenden update! I’ve come to the conclusion that since Brenden was born on the 30th of the month then all months should have 30 days. It would just be a lot easier for me!

He loves to look out the windows, pull all of his toys one by one out of the box, use his computer keyboard, go into any room you open the door to, play with the phone cord and bang the metal dog bowls on the tile floor in the kitchen. He is also enjoying his little walking toy and pushes that until he gets stuck. And he loves to rough house as my Mom puts it (being tickled, turned upside down, trying to go headfirst off the couc, etc.).
He is able to take a step at a time and then sit down, I keep thinking it isn’t long until he will put a few together, he seems so close. He’s a bit of a stinker about eating, he seems to only want to eat what he can feed himself and he refuses to use the lid to sippy cups, he just wants a plain cup. He has four teeth, but I think more are very soon to follow. He  has gotten tall enough to reach things off the kitchen table and the tv stand, so we are running out of safe places to put things!

I just got back from getting a massage with the gift certificate Patrick got me for Valentine’s Day. It was heaven! I haven’t had a massage since the one I had while I was pregnant last year in February when Patrick got me a gift certificate. I went in thinking I knew exactly where I hurt, my lower back has been hurting for a month and my carpal tunnel has been hurting my arms since December. It wasn’t until the masseuse started that I realized I actually hurt everywhere! He was using really deep pressure and still couldn’t get the knots out of my shoulders and neck. I was surprised when he asked me if I get a lot of headaches while he was rubbing the huge boulder on my neck. Because I do. And he could also tell without me saying anything that my back has hurt for some time.

The place I went to has membership where you can pay $49 a month and get one massage a month and then if you want another one in that month you only pay $39 for it. If you don’t sign up for the membership then you pay a slightly higher fee, but it is still a really good deal for a one-hour massage. I would love to join, but don’t want to add another bill to our budget. I have however told Patrick that if we ever win the lottory, I’m going to have a my own personal masseuse on hand to give daily massages. Because apparently I need them!