A Favorite For Sure

So the 4th of July is one of my all time favorite holidays. I think I only like Christmas more because it seems wrong not to. However, I'm still trying to figure out how to do the holiday right in a place other than Provo. I think this year was a pretty close to perfect.

We started the day with a parade. Well, half a parade. As you can see we had two little boys on the not so shady side of the street. That made for some very red faces and adults constantly asking boys to drink some water. My son was happy to oblige but Maxwell is less a fan of the sippy cup. So, as the parade went on and nap time approached we thought it best to make our way back home. For some sleep and some swimming.

Some thought on this parade: It wasn't great. The marching bands were good. There were a lot of horses (the parade is actually in conjunction with a big rodeo). But I didn't see one float. What is a parade without floats? And in the absence of floats a parade aught to have candy. This one didn't. I'm not sure if I'll go back again or not.

Isaac was decked out in his patriotic attire (thanks again to Megan and John for the adorable onesie). And he had enough sunscreen slathered in his hair from swimming after the parade that I was able to give this cute kid a mohawk. I think he rocks it. I might just do it again. Minus the sunscreen.

I am a little sad I don't have photos of swimming in our little wading pool we bought. It's a pretty good sized pool. Jacob, Isaac, Maxwell and I were all able to sit in it comfortably. Well, Isaac probably would have drowned if he tried to sit in it. But he was happy to stand and splash. It was really funny to see Maxwell's reaction to the somewhat chilly water. It was a mixture between a cry and a laugh. Pretty cute. Isaac had no problems with the temperature of the water and just began splashing away. Also pretty cute.

We were pleased to have Sarah, Kevin and Maxwell join us for dinner and dough boy making. I had never had the famous Brunson dough boys so it was a real treat. For those interested, dough boys are biscuits roasted over flame (or charcoals in our case) and filled with pie filling or pudding or whatever else you fancy. They were pretty delicious.

I suppose my one regret (if I were to have any) is passing on the local firework display to allow our baby a decent bedtime. Our plan was to light off our own fireworks but it turns out our city had outlawed anything more than poppers. So it was definitely a first for me. A 4th with no fireworks.

But I did enjoy the sleep instead.

8 Months Grown

This Brunson family recently returned from a trip to Oregon (more on that later, I hope) with a brand new 8 month old! My how he has grown. We took the opportunity while there to have Jacob's mom use her nice camera to take some photos of our little family (more photos later, maybe). Here are some winners of Isaac that are maybe mostly taken by Jacob.

At 8 months old Isaac is a crawling machine and also loves to eat. He mostly loves his finger foods, drinking from a real glass with a little help from his mom, and of course eating things he shouldn't (dirt, paper, leaves, grass, and numerous other hazards we've had to fish out of his little mouth). He is less good at sleeping, still.

We think he's pretty great and obviously adorable...

And More Trouble

Also, I just noticed that Isaac must be standing in his crib a lot more often than I originally thought because there are bite marks and teeth scratches ALL OVER one side of my nice wood crib.

Any suggestions for that? I'd love to have a crib in good shape for future use...

Strong. But Not Strong Enough

What do you do when your baby is strong enough to pull up on things but not strong enough to maintain balance when letting go? And really not smart enough to know he can't let go without falling? This is especially becoming a problem when I put Isaac down for naps. He pulls up on the crib and this afternoon I heard a thump...falling into the side of the crib I'm sure. Of course I didn't see it because I was in another room listening for him to stop crying and fall asleep.

So, how do I do naps without causing lots of bumps and bruises on my poor babies head?

Crawling Perfected

Isaac has abandoned the army crawl/scoot he was doing for the more technically perfect form. And he became super speedy at it when I was vacuuming. He LOVES the vacuum and followed me as quickly as he could.

So Jacob brought the vacuum out to motivate Isaac to crawl so he could get it on video. I'm not sure why it copied so huge on my blog though...

Sleeping and Crawling

Yesterday Isaac started crawling. He hasn't really perfected it yet but there was definite forward progress on his hands and knees. He still mostly struggles with it and ends up rolling and scooting in other ways but I'm counting it as crawling. And it's exciting and scary all at the same time. I have certainly got some baby proofing to do!

In other good news, the past two nights Isaac has slept for an 8 hour chunk of time. And yesterday was especially good because he only woke up once to eat at 4 am after being in bed at 8 pm. Lately he has been waking up a couple hours after going to sleep and crying for awhile until I feed him again or he falls asleep. So yesterday was brilliant! I could certainly get used to it. Though I must admit I woke at about 3:30 and had to check on him to make sure he was okay since I am so used to crying at some point in the night...

No Socks For You!

I've given up putting socks on Isaac. And here is why:

They ALWAYS end up ripped off his feet and usually find their way into his mouth.

But it's sure a cute mouth at that. Look at those adorable teeth!

(He has four now, by the way.)

And that smile is too much adorableness. Seriously...could he be any more adorable. Me thinks not.

Further evidence of adorableness: