I've got to get my animals lined up just perfectly.  Let's see.  The horse goes here, and then I move this other one . . .

 I think this looks right.

 Yep, now it's perfect.  The herd all situated next to my cars.

5 months old

Brenna turned 5 months old on Saturday.  5 months.  Already?  Where did time go?  You know you've officially become an adult when you start talking about how fast time moves.  So, I guess I'm an officially an adult.  Ugh.

Back to the celebration at hand.  Brenna is 5 months old!  She's quite the mover, so it's getting more difficult to take her picture with Pooh. 

 "Talking" to her brother, who insisted on sitting next to her on the couch.

 And here's our little Wildcats smiling for the camera.  Aren't they adorable?

At 5 months old Brenna weighs in at about 13 pounds.  I have no idea what her height is.  She's barely fitting into her 3-6 month clothes, so it appears we'll be digging out the 6-9 clothes this week.  She can roll over from her back to her tummy in both directions but hasn't quite figured out how to roll from her tummy to her back.  She loves to squawk and make noise and is very active on the floor.  She's mastered the ability to lay on her back and push her feet against the floor to move herself around.  

She eats about every 3-4 hours and is eating rice cereal twice a day.  She's great about opening her mouth for the cereal, but not so great on swallowing all of it! 

She's not a consistent napper.  Some days she'll take a good nap, but other days she just catnaps.  Most of the time we can get her to take a 2-hour nap during the middle of the day and then a 30-minute catnap about 5:30-6:00.  She goes down for the night about 8:00 - 8:30 and usually just wakes up once during the night.  We get her up about 7:00 in the morning.

She loves her brother and her favorite thing to do is just sit on our lap and watch him.  She laughs at him and studies all of his actions very intently.  

Splash Park

Before summer ends and fall officially starts I better put up the remainder of our summer photos! 

These pictures are from a play date we had at the splash park in Manhattan.  Brady and his buddy Braxton got together and played in the water while us parents watched/talked/avoided the water guns from other children.  The boys clearly had a very fun time.

2x the bath fun

Brady and Brenna took a bath together on 9-18 for the first time.  As Brenna learns how to sit on her own I imagine they'll be taking many more baths together (much to their personal mortification in a few years when they view their bath-time pictures).

 Brenna is quite fascinated/mesmerized/entertained by Brady lately.  She loves to just look at him.  Wish we know what was going through that little mind of hers.

The next Jeff Gordon

It appears the next generation's version of Jeff Gordon may already be alive and living in our house.  Brady LOVES his truck and seems to be quite content just driving it in circles.  Being the wise parents we are, we make sure that he's driving in a counter-clockwise circle so he's ready to make all those left-hand turns for the Sprint Cup Series.

I think Disney Pixar would be a great sponsor for him.  He can drive the next Lightning McQueen/Toy Story Chevy car.

So we have begun the process of teaching Little Miss how to eat real food.  But really, how can you refer to rice cereal as real food?  Have you seen that stuff?  There is no way that counts as real food in my dictionary.  Alas, I digress.

On August 30, 2011, Brenna got her first taste of rice cereal.  Not a big fan as I was only able to shove about 4 bites into her mouth and I think she just pushed all of it back out with her tongue.

Try No. 2 was last Sept. 13, 2011.  A little more success.  She ate several tablespoons of food and kept most of it down.  Progress!

And I said most, but not all!  Here's that "are you an alien?" look that she strikes just for the camera. 

And please be sure to notice the massive improvement in her hair between picture #1 and the latter 2.  She got a mom-mandated haircut in between and looks immensely better.

And just in case you're wondering why I put such long dates on events, well, that is required so this mom can actually make a scrapbook for her children.  Some day.  What was going to be a big, homemade undertaking is turning into a digital adventure.  But it will be done nonetheless.  And without this blog I don't remember all these dates in the kiddos' lives.  So, there you go.  Just more information you were dying to know!

Aaaaaww, she's so cute when she sleeps. 

Now if she could just sleep more, we'd be all set.  Sometimes she sleeps through the night; sometimes she doesn't.  I'm looking forward to a routine of all-night slumber.  Some day.

Driving pics

He drives already?

We now have another driver in the household.  Okay, the term "driver" might be an exaggeration, but nonetheless Brady has a motorized vehicle now.  Courtesy of Nana he is now learning the concepts of steering (we're still working on that idea) and braking. He loves his truck and it's now his favorite item in the garage.  More pictures to come.

Brenna gets a haircut

Our little baby girl got her first haircut last night.  Nothing fancy from Miss Judy yet, but she had some really, really long hair in the front and was rocking some Farrah Fawcett wings on the side.  I broke out the scissors and we did a little trim while the bald spot in the back o' the head grows in and catches up to the rest of her hair.

 Isn't she adorable?

 We get this look quite a bit when taking pictures.  Brady loves to "cheese" it up for the camera while Brenna just stares at us like we're aliens. 

Brady "plays" with his sister quite a bit.  Unfortunately, we don't know what exactly he's playing.

That's How We Roll - Brenna style

I did mange to get a video of the little girl rolling over.