Brendan is ONE year old today!

Brendan turns one today. Its amazing how much he has changed in the past 12 months.

If you want to send him birthday wishes, you can email him at brendannbrown@yahoo.com and we'll put the emails in his scrapbook.

What he's up to these days:

• Walking and running all over the place. He has now learned how to stand up without pulling up on something.
• Babbling a lot and using a few words - mama, dada, night-night, dat (cat), no
• Lots of hand motions - waves for hi, bye, and night-night, raises his arms for touch down and loves to clap.
• Rocking and bopping to music - he loves to play with his musical toys, drum, maracas, piano, and when he hears music he starts bopping to the beat.
• If he doesn't grow up to be a muscian, he's going to be a soccer player - he loves to kick around his soccer ball and does pretty well for a kid who has just been learning how to walk.
• He points at everything and especially loves to point at balloons and airplanes.
• He loves to watch the school bus and trash truck. If he's inside when he hears the bus approaching (the bus stop is right next door to our house), he runs to the window with his arms up so that you will lift him to watch.
• Still growing. He weighs about 25 pounds (tripling his birth weight) and wears size 24 month clothing.
• Slowly expanding his diet - besides his favorite formula he likes to eat yogurt, cheerios, Gerber fruit puffs, and crackers.

Unfortunately Brendan is sick for his birthday. We're having a small celebration this weekend for him so he can celebrate with Grandma Leslie and Nicole and we've moved his party to next weekend.

Brendan's first Christmas

We were very excited to celebrate Brendan's first Christmas this year. He loved playing with the bows and didn't understand that there were toys in the packages. Though once everything was unwrapped, he's had fun trying out all of his new toys. Brendan got spoiled by Santa, grandparents and aunts - toys, books, bath toys and clothes!

Reading the Night Before Christmas on Christmas Eve

Brendan playing with bows

Playing with his new soccer ball at the park

Going down the slide at the park

Trying out his new trike

Merry Christmas

Audra's wedding

This past Saturday, Rob's cousin, Audra got married. This was Brendan's first wedding and he behaved wonderfully even though it went past his bedtime. He loved bopping to the live music and running around with his cousins. Audra married Troy and he brings Sydnie and Brendan to the family so now we have 2 Brendans.

chilly weather

Its been chilly here this week but Brendan still likes to go play at the park so we've been dressing him warm - isn't his hat ADORABLE??

photos

Here's some new photos of our little boy

wearing his santa hat

sitting in his new chair

being a crazy baby

more crazy baby

its beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We're excited for Brendan's first Christmas and our first Christmas in our new home. We're almost done decorating.

Our house at night

Department 56 Snow Village

our Christmas tree

balloons

Hot air balloons take off in this area every morning and evening. This past Sunday morning they took off really close to our house and we got a great view of them as they were going up - Brendan was excited and pointing at them as they went up

I won

I entered one of my digital scrapbook layouts in a contest and I won! (well there weren't very many entries but that doesn't matter - I still win a free digital kit)

http://sweetshoppedesigns.com/blog/?p=70

Brendan meets more grandparents

This past weekend Brendan got to meet Grandma and Grandpa Vollmer and Aunt Allison for the first time. They flew out from Florida for the weekend - Aunt Jessica couldn't make it because she has classes at Tulane. Christmas came early as he got lots of spoiling - his favorite toy is the Megablocks fire engine and he has lots of fun taking all the Legos out of the container so that he can play with the tub.

Tempe Art Festival