Brody - 11 Months

Brody will be ONE in two short weeks. I guess I better post about him being 11 months before it is too late. :)

-Brody can say "UH" for up and "UH" for uh-oh
-Brody can sign more, eat, milk, all done, car, cat, dog, bye-bye, night-night (which to him is waving bye-bye), shoe, and ball.
-Brody can dance, clap, blow kisses, give real kisses, and smack his lips while hitting his head thanks to Lyndsay, Jenna, and Laurel. I'll have to video them doing it and Brody doing his rendition. :) Anytime he sees them that is what he does now.
-Brody is still in size 3 diapers and wears some 9 month clothes and some 12 month clothes.
-We are working on switching him to whole milk. We started mixing my milk with whole milk for a week or so and last night Brody woke at 3 am (not like him) and would not go back to sleep so I gave him 3 oz of whole milk and he drank it all no problem.
-Brody can now walk about 8 feet without falling. He still walks like Frankenstein and needs to hold on to something to stand up before walking.
-He loves his push walker, his Mater riding truck, and his zebra bouncer that he can get on and off of all by himself.
-Brody now only eats solid food. No more baby food! He loves macaroni and cheese, spaghetti, grapes, and cheese.
-Brody likes to "call" the kitty by making a kissy sound with his mouth and rubbing his fingers together. It's super cute!
-Brody loves to push any button he can get a hold of. He loves to turn the TV on and off and also the light switches (which comes in handy when my hands are full!)

He's getting so big. I got an email the other day telling me that Brody was 50 weeks old. I didn't believe it at first thinking it couldn't be true because at 52 weeks he'd be one and that was still a while.... then I realized Brody WILL be one in 2 short weeks. AHH! Better get on that party planning!

 Watching football with his Daddy

Eating with the "big kids"

Polishing the Pulpit

This year was Brody's first Polishing the Pulpit. I was very much pregnant with him last year while we were there. PTP is held at the Wilderness Conference Center. We stayed at the Wilderness Hotel that was right next to the conference center. PTP is a week long event where people can come to hear many speakers talk on various topics related to the church. They split them up into tracks and there are tracks for women, men, preachers, elders, deacons, youth workers, families, teens, etc.

We were worried about how a week long of lectures would fit into Brody's schedule. We decided we would have a relaxed schedule this year and just see how our week went with Brody with us. I was helping Jeanny with her chalking sessions at different times that week, so while I went there Kyle would watch Brody. And other than 3 other times when I wanted to hear April and Teah talk about their visuals, I watched Brody so Kyle could go to the sessions he wanted to hear. I think it went pretty well. I took Brody with me to some of the sessions and I only had to take him out of a few. If you had to take your child out because he/she was crying you got to get a free CD of that session. This was a way of encouraging the mothers to take their children out so they wouldn't be a distraction on the recorded CDs of those sessions.

We also love going because we get to see many friends that we don't get to see throughout the year. Brody even had some friends he couldn't wait to see this year! Some of our friends have babies that are around Brody's age so that will be fun every year to get together and let them play. Brody's schedule was a little messed up while we were there, but I think he did a great job and still was the happy and sweet boy we love to be around. He started waking up some during the night, but we knew it was because he wasn't drinking as much milk during the day as he usually was and he also wasn't in his room in his own crib. I did miss a lot of sessions during the afternoon so that Brody could get a good nap in.

Brody met a lot of preachers while we were there and Kyle took his picture with them and put them on his facebook page in the album with his other preacher friends. We enjoyed being up there and I'm sure Brody's grandparents, Jema and Pop, were even more excited that they got to spend an entire week with their grandson!

Here are some pictures of Brody at his first PTP:

10 Months

What was Brody doing at 10 months old?

-Brody's first word is "up" - I'm making it official! He can say mama and dada and other things, but not like he uses "up."

-He is done with baby food! He refuses to eat it now which makes it a little harder for me to think of what to feed him during the day!

-He has 6 teeth

-He's wearing 6-9 and 9 month clothing

-He's in a size 3 diaper

-He can now crawl up AND down the stairs all by himself.

-He loves using his walker to walk around the house, but still isn't walking by himself

-He's drinking more from his sippy cup

-He is still attached to his blanket

Here are some of his 10 month pictures.

Here are some more pictures of Brody from August:

Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday in Pittsburgh

Sunday was a family day in Pittsburgh. My family got up early and went to their church at 8am. We had a little bit more time to get ready to go to our church at 9am! We had the opportunity to visit with the members at the Whitehall Church of Christ. After worship we went home and ordered pizza from Ephesus. We got hot chicken pizza (which was buffalo chicken with tomatoes, lettuce, and purple onion) and we got seafood alfredo pizza (which was shrimp and imitation crab meat with alfredo sauce). They were delicious! Then my aunts, uncles, and cousins all came over and we all hung out. I love my big family!

Here is a picture of my family eating breakfast on Sunday morning. My grandmother's house is not usually this messy. This is all thanks to Brody and Haley!! We filled that house with all of our junk!

Here is one of the last pieces from the seafood alfredo pizza. The hot chicken pizza was gone before we could get a picture. Ephesus has some good pizza!

On Monday, we decided to have a relaxing day before we left on Tuesday. We ate lunch at a place that had really good gyros and then shopped at Definitely You which is a place that has a ton of Pittsburgh souvenirs. My aunt bought Brody some hockey sticks, Kyle got a Polamalu jersey and bought Brody a Roethlisberger jersey so they can match on gamedays. We also got some Pittsburgh stickers to put on the back of our van.

There were some left over stickers for the "family" to put on our window so Kyle said we'll just have to have more kids so we can put them all on there. I counted and told Kyle that there were 9 more kids left and another dog and cat. I think we're going to have a few extra that we don't use, haha!

On Tuesday, we got up early, packed the van, and said goodbye. :( We started our long drive home, this time with my Mom in the front seat so she wouldn't get carsick. We had to stop a few times, but I don't think it was that bad. I did feel bad for my Mom and Haley though because once we got to our house in TN and unloaded everything they still had a 3 1/2 hour drive back home to AL. We had a great time (other than my Mom getting food poisoning) and can't wait until we get to take another trip and visit again.

Saturday in Pittsburgh

I need to finish these Pittsburgh posts because I have more I need to post about!

On Saturday, we decided we would go out to eat for lunch and then head to the science center. My poor Mom was still battling with her food poisoning and stayed home to recover. Next on the list of places where Kyle wanted to go while in Pittsburgh was Primanti Brothers. They make really good sandwiches where they add cole slaw, tomatoes, and french fries to your sandwich! Yummy!! Kyle and I both ordered the Pastrami because we wanted to get a classic Primanti sandwich. Next time we might venture out and order something different. It was very good! I can't believe I had lived there for 13 years and had never eaten there!

After we ate at Primanti Brothers we went back to my Grandmother's house to pick up Haley and head to the Carnegie Science Center. We had left Haley and Brody with my Grandmother and Mom because Haley decided she didn't want a Primanti sandwich, which was a good decision because I don't think she would have enjoyed it. My Mom and Grandma offered to watch Brody while we headed to the Science Center. There isn't much for babies to do there so we took them up on their offer. It was good to be out without him for a little while, but we were both ready to go back and see him after we left.

My family has season passes to the Science Center so they take trips there often. I used to go there for class field trips when I lived there. It is a really fun place! You could spend hours there, but with Haley's attention span we didn't stay very long. :) My favorite things when I was a kid were the earthquake simulator, the freeze dried food in the gift shop, and the IMAX theater. We didn't go see an IMAX movie, but we did make sure to ride the earthquake simulator and buy some freeze dried ice cream! I ended up giving mine to my cousins because it wasn't as good as I remembered as a kid! Haha.

They had a neat shadow making center. You stood in front of these white boards and a light would flash like it took your picture. When you step away from the wall your shadow remains for a few seconds. It was pretty neat. We did this a few times!

They still had the station where you could pretend to be on the news. They had a blue screen with a tv that would scroll and tell you what to say. They had monitors all around so that you could see yourself in front of the screen so you would know if you were pointing in the right spot if you were telling the weather. Haley liked this a lot, but she wasn't tall enough for the cameras so (you can't see me), but I was kneeling with one knee up and Haley was standing on my knees to get onto the camera!

Like I have said, I have been to the Carnegie Science Center many times, but I had never had the opportunity to go into the submarine that was docked outside on the river. I finally was able to go on it this time. It was pretty neat! It would have been even cooler if we were able to go down into the water! We didn't, but it was still cool.

Before we left, we had some fun trying to catch rockets. There were ramps going up to each of the levels and in the middle of the ramps were really cool stations dealing with air and other things. There was one station where you placed a foam rocket on a stand and pushed down on a button that would propel it by air up into the air. It would occasionally come close enough to catch if you were standing by the railings of the ramps. That's us standing on the ramps ready to catch the rockets! I think we all had a chance to catch one and throw it back before we left. I think it's pretty funny that of all the things the Science Center had to offer, we spent most of our time doing this! Haha.