Good People Day 2009

I was gonna post this on my Xanga blog but I think more people read this one, so it's more appropriate here. If you've never heard of Gary Vaynerchuk, I'd be surprised. He is an amazing guy who is passionate about life. Most people know him because of Wine Library TV. Wine Library is his wine store in New Jersey. But like I said, he is passionate about so many other things than just wine. Last year he started this thing called Good People Day. You are supposed to honor someone in a blog post. Not a tweet, not a Facebook note, but a real blog post. He honored his sister this year.

My Good Person for 2009 has got to be someone I've known for a very long time. And that is Janie Henry. Most who read this might not know her but she is amazing. I first worked VBS (Vacation Bible School) with her in the 4 year old class in the summer of 1996 (I have worked with her for a total of 10 VBS's now). Her passion for children is contagious. You can't help but love every single one of those screaming kids when you're around her. Not only that but she makes you feel like a kid again. Every day during VBS she would read the Bible story and there I'd be sitting "indian-style" on the floor with the kids with the same look in my eyes as the kids. That look that shows you know they're paying attention and hanging on every single word. And at the end of the Bible story she would always pray the sweetest, simplest prayers that everyone understood. And when she was done she would say "And the children said..." and the kids would yell AMEN! And she'd tell them "I don't think they heard you down the hall" and the kids would scream as loud as they could AMEN!!!! Janie puts her heart and soul in teaching 4 year olds. She used to tell me that VBS was her Christmas. She saved up money every year to put towards crafts and surprises for the kids. She made VBS so amazing for not just the kids, but the teachers and youth who helped out as well. I help her out every summer that I can. Her joy for Christ is contagious and it really "recharges my battery" when I get to be near her. I don't know if she'll get a chance to see this but if she does I hope she knows that I love her and that I can never thank her enough for all she's done for the kids of our church and for me and my family.

Ugh! Tax Season!

So I know that I am waaaaaaaaaaay behind in blogging. It's tax season... nuff said!

Just some quick thoughts.

Brendan is so big! I finally got to go to an appointment again for his 9 month checkup. He is 27 inches long, 19.4 pounds, and his head size jumped from the 72nd percentile to the 95th! His pediatrician asked us... do you have big heads? Brent apparently does (after a quick measuring comparison between the doc's head and his) and my mom says big heads run on our side as well. Who knew?

We are chasing Brendan all over the place now. He crawls VERY fast! Especially when he's going after the kitty or a favorite toy. He's babbling all the time now too. We had quite a conversation this morning in fact. Hehe. I can't wait for the first time he calls one of us mommy or daddy. One of Brendan's favorite activities right now is standing next to our ottoman and banging on it like a drum. And when we drum back... he laughs so hard.

So after a month or so with just 2 teeth, Brendan is now working on tooth number 5. He's eating really well and we're gonna start making a push towards "table" food (aka, not the mushy stuff in jars that he's eating currently). His favorite food right is sweet potatoes and anything with fruit. He'll eat meats but he likes them best with sweet potatoes, lol. He also loves the Gerber Graduate puffs (sweet potato, of course, and apple cinnamon). You have to be careful about how many you put on his tray though. If you put 10 down, he'll try to pick up all 10 and shove them all in his mouth at once!

Since he's "talking" to me now... he said he's excited about meeting his 2nd (? I can never remember... time to go look it up on the family tree website again) cousins from Israel. I can't wait either!

Pics, videos, and ramblings

Enjoy these adorable pictures and the videos. The videos are taking forever to load!!! But I'll post some more when I get a chance. It's tax season now so posting will get even more sporadic I'm afraid. Oh, and yes... in one of the pics above, you'll notice a little bit of me on the side. They had me sit there in case Brendan fell over, lol.

The first video is just us hanging out and playing with Grandma. The second is Brendan opening up his Christmas pajamas from Aunt Shannon with my help. The third is opening Christmas Eve presents at Grandma and Grandpa's house. Grandma wrapped his presents in blankets so he wouldn't eat the paper... it didn't stop him from grabbing our paper, tissue, ribbon, etc. and playing with it!

Brendan is growing so much. I can't believe how big he is. He's eating so much food now and we had to start supplementing with formula cause I just wasn't giving him enough. But it's okay cause he doesn't seem to have even noticed. We've even switched to Parent's Choice formula from Similac Advanced and he didn't notice. One of our friends told us (after she did a ton of research) that it's the exact same stuff and it's soooooooooooo much cheaper. Gotta love Walmart brands!

Brendan is crawling but he prefers to pull up to standing or sit and play in his playpen. That is until the kitty comes walking by... then he zooms after her. He loves playing with Jordan! Though the other day I had to take him away from her cause he was getting a little too rough and she started nipping at him. We still just have the two bottom teeth. It seems like more are gonna come in any day now but who knows? Brendan will be 8 months old tomorrow!

Registration for Children's Day Out (Miriam: kinda like SRoch's gan I'm guessing?) started this week. We're debating if we're gonna enroll Brendan. It meets one or two days a week, you get to choose how many days. It starts in August. I hate that I have to make this decision now since who knows what life is gonna be like then but I really like the idea of him getting some social interaction with other kids. His life up till now has revolved around adults, poor baby. Our Sunday School class has started doing play dates but I can't convince Brent that it's okay for Dads to go to play dates, lol. Maybe they'll do a Saturday one this summer and I'll go. Ahh... the joys of being a working Mom! That's all for now, I think!

7 Months

The lighting is so awesome in our living room at this time of day.... just don't ask me what time it was, can't remember!



Cute look.





Brent and I dressed up for my office Christmas party.

Brendan and Grandma

"I got your beard Grandpa!"

2 teeth! And that's still all we have for now.

Brendan really liked the pajamas that Aunt Shannon gave him!

Brendan in the adorable hat that Grandma gave him. It has a matching jacket. Grandpa gave him that tissue paper to play with and there is a video of him playing with it.

The stockings were hung by the chimney with care...

Notice our Santa plate and mug. Santa gets fudge and hot chocolate at our house.

Brendan's walker/jumper car! He loves it.

Grinning behind the wheel of his new ride.

Max enjoying his Christmas presents.

Nana and Brendan

Aunt Krystal and Brendan

I liked this... "Daddy, what is this?"

Brent's Mom found this shirt at a garage sale and couldn't resist buying it.

Brendan playing with ribbon from one the packages.

Enjoying his new swing at Grandma and Grandpa's house. They're the only ones who have trees low enough to hang one from.

Family pic of the Beans. Top row L to R is Great Uncle Ronnie, Cousin Brian, Cousin Chris, Brent, Brandon (Aunt Krystal's boyfriend), Papaw, and Angel (Nana and Papaw's dog). 2nd row L to R is Brenda (Ronnie's wife), Victoria (Brian's fiancee), Shannon (Chris's wife), Aunt Krystal, Bosco (Aunt Krystal's dog), and Nana. And the 3rd row is Great Mamaw, Brendan, and me. I had to run in to the picture cause I was in charge of setting up the camera. Not bad, huh?

So, these clothes are a little on the big side but it was cold outside and this was really warm.

My cousin Micah gave Brendan this t-shirt. Everyone loves it! If you can't see it, it says "That's how I roll" with a picture of a stroller.

Brendan kept playing with the remote so Brent gave it to him and I caught him at the perfect moment. Looks like he's about to change it to Mickey Mouse Clubhouse... his favorite cartoon.

7 months is an incredible age. I'll probably find myself saying this again, but this is my favorite age so far. Brendan is crawling, sitting up on his own, and giggling. Our kitty was found by Pearland Animal Control after 2 months of being gone! And Brendan loves her! Of course his affection is grabbing big chunks of her fur and skin and laughing. She doesn't like it but she keeps coming back for more. She even rubbed up against his feet tonight when I had him sitting in my lap on the floor. We'll work on learning to pet the kitty instead of grabbing her or hitting her. Brendan has also learned to pull himself up to standing. He greets us in the morning either on his knees or standing in his crib and grinning mid-cry, lol. Thanks to the recommendation of my wonderful cousin Miriam... we bought the book Goodnight, Sleep Tight. Brendan is doing much better with sleeping and I haven't even used the sleep lady shuffle yet. I've just used some basic sleep tips she gives in the first few chapters. I have it on standby just in case I need the sleep lady method later. Brendan is eating like a champ. We have quite a repertoire of food now and soon we'll be starting him on Gerber 2nd foods which include meats. I was kinda shocked to learn these include such things as veal and lamb.

Tomorrow if I get a chance, I'll post some videos and Brendan's 7 month pics. (We finally went some place where we got the CD again.) Brendan "heard" me typing about his sleeping well... he's fussing so I better go. Enjoy all the new pictures!

Picture Tag

I was tagged in the picture game. The object of the picture tag is to:

1) Choose the 4th folder where you store your pictures on your computer.

2) Select the 4th picture in the folder.

3) Explain the picture.

4) Tag 4 people to do the same.

No cheating (cropping, editing, etc.) Have fun!!!

So this is our 4th picture in our 4th folder. This is a pic from an Astros game we went to in April of 2008. I had given Brent some tickets for his birthday. So this was Brendan's "first" game, lol. I was still pregnant with him at the time. This is a picture of Taveras (of the Rockies) and Matsui talking before the game. Taveras used to play for us and wore number 3 and now Matsui wears that number. We thought it was funny to see them talking to each other.

Don't worry, there will be a new post sometime this week. Gotta sort through all of the Christmas photos and videos.

I'm tagging the Vandervorts, the Druyans, and the Griffins.

I have been corrected... Taveras wore number 1 for the Astros. Oops.

Snow, Santa, and 6th month stats!

Brendan crawled backwards under his playpen!


Another shot of the backwards wonder.

A cute smile.

Touching his toes. The onesie says "Just hand me the cookies and no one gets hurt"

I love this picture! He was watching Windows Media Player while listening to a Baby Einstein CD and actually ended up falling asleep like this.

After a bath wrapped up in his Texas Tech towel.

Cartoons one Saturday morning. He loves Mickey Mouse!

Watching something on Papaw's iPhone.

Playing with the new baby gates Mommy bought. Don't worry, I was right there to catch him when he fell shortly thereafter (and before he bonked his head).

Dressed up for the 5 month pictures. (More like 5.5 month but whatever.)

Peeking at Brendan.

Yum rice cereal!

Fell asleep while watching Daddy play video games.

Sitting in the Bumbo seat.

I finally caught him on all fours for a picture. I'm shocked he hasn't crawled yet.

Snow! In Pearland, TX! I'm glad we saw it this time. In 2004 it snowed and we were on our honeymoon and missed all of it!

Mommy and Brendan in front of our house.

Daddy and Brendan with the Christmas decorations.

Brendan likes our snowman.

These next few I took in the first hour of snow.

Our street.

Neighbor's house across the street... this was for a roof shot... sorry it's so dark.

Brent was at the mall when it all started and picked up a mini-cookie cake from Great American Cookie Company to celebrate. It was very good!

This is the second hour. Our little Texas Tech gnome was covered!

Compare our cars to the previous shot to see how much snow we got!

Our front yard

Trying to get a shot of our Christmas tree inside the house.

Our snowman covered with actual snow!

This had to be taken... a palm tree covered in snow!

Our backyard. Those are our grape vines we've been growing since Spring 2007. This may have killed them... we'll see.

A fire in our fireplace. The stockings, in order from left to right, are Brent's, mine, a Texas Tech one, Brendan's, and our dog Max's. We were sad to not hang one for our kitty Jordan. I hope some family is taking good care of her.

Santa! Brendan was probably one of the happiest babies we saw there. The photographers (and Santa I'm sure) were glad to see a happy baby.

Video 1 is eating carrots, video 2 is showing how far he crawled backwards, and video 3 is enjoying his Baby Einstein CD.

Brendan went for his 6th month shots on the 19th. He is now 14 lbs, 4 oz and 25.5 inches. 10th and 20th percentile. So tall and skinny like his Daddy! On the 18th I noticed Brendan's 2nd tooth has broken through. Now he has two teeth on the bottom. We have tried carrots, green beans, sweet potatoes, white grape juice, and apple rice cereal. So far he only like carrots and sweet potatoes. Apparently he only like orange foods, hehe. I was shocked he didn't like the juice or apple rice cereal. I dunno if the fruit is just too tart for him or what.

The 19th was a busy day. We took Brendan for our family Christmas photos at Sears (by the way they charge waaaaaaaaaay too much) and then waited for 2 hours for a photo with Santa. He did really great for both. We constantly get to hear what a good baby he is for pictures. Photographers love him! He's gotten to the point when he hears our camera turn on he starts smiling. Think we've taken too many photos?!

Speaking of photos... I'm sure you have noticed the lack of professional photos. Due to technical difficulties our printer has not been hooked up for a while. When this gets fixed I can scan the ones we haven't been getting on CD so we can catch you all up on the chronicling of his adorableness!