Celebrating 11 months

Yep, I have an 11 month old baby. That is crazy. He often seems more like a little boy to me than a little baby. And that is even stranger.

Isaac decided to celebrate 11 months of life by not napping. He refused his afternoon nap two days in a row. So now I'm contemplating one nap again. Though I know he is teething so I think I need to wait this napping business out a little more. We'll see. He's currently crying in his crib as I type. Though I think I'm going to have to go rescue him shortly. Type faster!

He is still taking steps when coerced but has yet to really get moving on his own. He is totally capable, but I think he just prefers the well known crawling over the little unsteady walking. He will walk if I stand him up in the middle of the room and he wants to get to a wall or a toy, most of the time. Sometimes he still carefully lowers himself and then crawls where he wants to go. He does think it's great fun to walk between Jacob and I, usually.

He continues to sleep through the night. At least most of the time. We have had some rough nights lately with the teething and the weaning, but overall he is sleeping 11 or so hours each night.

He also continues to be the most social and happy baby I've ever encountered. He loves other kids! People still stop me and say how happy a kid he is. And this is one of the things I love most about Isaac. Even on less sleep than normal he is pretty happy and smiley.

Isaac is learning more each day. It's amazing how quickly he picks up new games to play with me or new signs for things. It's also fun to see him mimic talking as he tries to make all the sounds right. Sometimes he is successful, others, not so much. One of my favorite things is when he tries to copy the sound of Jacob or I burping. Let's just say we love it so much that things have gotten way less polite around this house. And they weren't all that polite to begin with!

The other thing I love is his sign for more. He claps quickly twice. But it has now evolved to mean "I want" rather than more. So he will clap twice and then point at whatever he wants. Like he is calling us to do his bidding. It's pretty funny.

I just can't believe my little baby has gone from this:

to this:

So quickly!!

But you better believe I am already preparing and planning for his big 1 year birthday celebration. And I know it's ridiculous because he won't even know the difference. But I do! It's more for me than for him. :)

Surprise!

Warning: This is going to be a long post related to parenting and breastfeeding. If you don't care about these topics, feel free to just peruse the photos interjected here and there just to mix it up.

Jacob went camping this weekend with the 12 year old scouts in our ward. He was in charge of making dinner for the leaders Friday night and decided to make a stir fry. While we were buying stuff for it I told him he should grab a box of fortune cookies just for fun. So he did. And then he gave me a cookie before he left and this was my fortune. It could not have been more true!

Jacob was gone Friday night and wasn't scheduled to get home until late Saturday night, missing Issac's bedtime twice. Now, some of you may think it's silly but Jacob and I are both involved in Isaac's bedtime routine. But I didn't really think it would impact Isaac too much to have his daddy gone two nights in a row. And maybe it wasn't because Jacob was gone but Isaac certainly was behaving differently. Friday night he refused to nurse. I had been working on weaning Isaac and was down to just his bedtime feeding remaining. I was planning on cutting it out sometime this coming week. But surprise! Isaac decided to totally wean himself. He was mostly fine Friday night and drank some formula from his sippy cup after I gave up trying to breastfeed. And then he proceeded to cry himself to sleep. He has been going to sleep pretty calmly lately so this was abnormal. And I didn't love it.

Saturday night was the same, drank his formula and then went to bed crying. So I was figuring we'd have a few rough nights of crying and then he'd get back to his normal falling asleep with limited issues. After tonight I'm not so certain.

With his daddy back in the picture we proceeded to do our normal routine. When it came time to eat Isaac drank a few ounces of formula from his cup and then started screaming. I gave him to Jacob to see if that would help him drink it, but no. It was awful. So I tried just putting him in his crib and he screamed even worse. And of course, he learned the sign for milk in association with nursing just before I decided to start weaning. So all the while he is throwing his fit he is indicating he wants to nurse. Sad. :(

I was at a loss. Jacob tried switching the formula to the bottle instead of the sippy cup but that didn't do too much. So I took Isaac again and sat down in the "media room" with him. He stopped screaming and played around with the bottle a bit. Then Jacob brought in a little more formula in Isaac's sippy cup since he was just playing with the bottle. He started crying again when he saw the cup. Again, I was at a loss. So we said a quick prayer that Isaac would drink his cup and go to bed. He then drank the formula and went to bed. It was a small miracle for us. But now I am concerned. His reaction to weaning now that is dad is back is not good. Any advice would be awesome!

Because seeing this cute little face totally distressed breaks my heart.

Mt. Rushmore Part 2

So...at Mount Rushmore they have the little flag display area where they have all the flags from the United States. We all got pictures with the state we are from. We're cool like that.

I'm not sure why, but Jacob didn't want to ask someone to take our picture so we have a self family portrait. It turned out pretty good though.

We went back that night for the lighting ceremony and it was rainy and cold. Isaac and I spent much of our time in the visitors center area walking around the displays and trying to stay a little warm. It was also past Isaac's bed time so he was less excited about being there. But, the faces do look pretty cool all lit up.

The next day we drove home. We stopped in Wyoming at a rest stop for lunch and that is the only stop we really made. Isaac was super tired from not sleeping well the night before so he slept most of the morning and then refused an afternoon nap so was pretty cranky when we got home.

It was a good trip and I think we will do it again at some point. We had fun.

We Interrupt Your Regularly Scheduled Programming...

A quick pause in the Mt. Rushmore report to inform you all that Isaac has officially taken his first steps.

He had been toying around with the idea for awhile now and has mastered cruising along the furniture and walls. He would even take a few steps here or there if he was tricked into it.

But today, while his 18 month old cousin was over, he decided he had the balance and skill necessary to walk from my arms to his cousin or the wall. And he did it repeatedly. And he was pretty pleased with himself. He has continued taking a few steps from me to Jacob or vice versa but has yet to let go of the wall or furniture and just take off on his own. And that's okay with me. I'm good with him taking all the time he wants to become fully mobile. I can barely keep up with him as it is!

I think Jacob was going to post a video on the family blog. So go check it out!

Mount Rushmore

This little Brunson family took a quick weekend trip to Mount Rushmore recently. There was much to love about the trip and a few things that were less loved. Overall we are really glad we went. This was our first family vacation that didn't involve going somewhere to visit extended family. And hopefully this is something to be repeated again. Not that we don't love visiting our families, it was just sort of fun being just the three of us.

We stopped on the drive there to see some sites of the Oregon Trail. This is at signature rock. It was pretty cool. Jacob especially liked it having grown up in Oregon and learning A LOT about the Oregon Trail. This rock had loads of signatures of those that traveled this road many years ago. It also had loads of less historic markings as well.

We also stopped to see some of the Oregon Trail ruts worn into the rock. I liked this even more than the signature rock.

When we arrived at our hotel we took advantage of the empty pool and went swimming. Isaac loves it! He could stay in the water all day if his parents would let him. But we don't.

We then headed to dinner at a local diner. This time of year is the "off season" for most shops and towns around Rushmore so we were one of the three customers there. It was kind of fun being in this little old timey diner without much company. The food was only okay though. Good shakes and fries, less good sandwich and burger.

Entertaining an almost 11 month old in a hotel room is not one of the things I loved about this trip. Also, trying to get him to eat was not something I loved. He was too interested in all the new surroundings to really eat. And he wanted to get into everything he shouldn't in the room. And he is teething (I noticed number 5 tooth as we were driving to South Dakota) so sleeping in the hotel was also not awesome. As in, there wasn't really good sleeping happening. But we survived. And those are all the complaints I have. Everything else was good. Even driving. He traveled really well actually.

The next day we took a drive on one of the scenic highways near Mt. Rushmore. It was really fun. About the only thing I remember from our family reunion to Rushmore when I was a kid was seeing the faces framed in the tunnels on the drive there. This was not one of those "framing" tunnels but was on the other side of that scenic loop near needle rock. This tunnel was crazy. I'm not sure how some of the cars fit through this sliver in the rocks. But, we managed.

And then we let Isaac out to stretch his legs at needle rock.

He experienced his first time hiking.

We also saw a big buffalo while driving and had to get out for some pictures.

And then we came to Mount Rushmore. We pulled over at one of the lookout spots for a great view.

This was in the parking lot of the Subway we stopped at for lunch before actually heading to the Mount Rushmore Monument. Of course I had to have some cheesy photos.

Look for part two of our adventure a little later. I know you are excited!

Helper

Isaac loves to help with the laundry. He loves loading the washer and moving the clothes to the dryer. And by helping I mean he likes to pull the clothes out and chew on them. But his all time favorite part of doing the laundry is helping to fold the clean clothes. And by help I mean chew on the clean clothes. Especially the stack of already folded clothes. Mostly I just think it's pretty cute. Even if I do have to fold the same clothes five times.

And I absolutely love this picture. I can't get enough of his amazing eyes.

A Wicked Long Update

This is mostly a post of random pictures. Random cuteness of Isaac primarily.

These are Isaac's new PJ's (size 18 month if you can believe!) that I think are just too cute. I don't know why but I love a baby in pajamas. Also, he is wearing socks because it is chilly here. (YES!) Bring on the fall and all the goodness that comes with it. LOVE IT!

We had company for Labor Day and I actually remembered to take pictures, mostly. We were pleased to have Diana and Sam, and Scott, Mary Ann and Hannah for the weekend. Sam helped Jacob build the beginning of our new porch out back and it is awesome! Thanks again for the help. We also spent a lot of time watching the cute babies together.

Lovin' Mary Ann in the background of cute Hannah! She is such a pleasant, easy going baby. Fun!

Isaac loved extra attention from Aunts and Uncles.

But mostly he LOVED Hannah. And by loved I might mean mauled her. She did hold her own when it came to Isaac trying to take toys from her. She's got a pretty solid grip. Love the sass Hannah!

Check out Scott in the background of this one. Awesome!

We took a little walk, just around the corner :), to the park by the elementary school. We decided to try Hannah and Isaac in the wagon. Hannah was chill about it and seemed to really like it. Isaac loves the wagon because it provides way more freedom.

Maybe too much freedom.

I love the picture of Hannah laid back and chillin'.

We totally bleed blue at our house. Too bad we don't have cable and can't watch the games live but we did enjoy it later that night. Go Cougars!

I made some mint chocolate chip cupcakes that I thought were pretty delicious. This is kind of a washed out, weird picture of them. They tasted way better than this picture lets on.

I babysat our nephew (Jacob's sister's son) last week while Sarah got a hair cut. He sure is a cutie. Isaac loves his cousin. He loves all kids, but he really likes Maxwell. I'm not sure Maxwell shares the affection though.

I tried to get a few pictures of the two of them together. You will see what happens when Isaac is around other kids.

He just gets so excited. I love it!