School worksheet

Hagen wrote and drew this story yesterday at school. It was about us going to his friend Sam's house. That's Shawn on the left, holding Brodie upside-down playing airplane with him (notice Brodie is smiling), and that's Sam's dog, Cleo, at Shawn's feet. To me the dog looks like either Brian from Family Guy or a Sandra Boynton dog. LOVE THIS!!!!

That's entertainment!

Hagen is the best entertainment for Brodie. I told him once we don't need all these baby toys; as long as Hagen is around, Brodie is happy and engaged. I took a video just a couple of days ago of Hagen making his little brother laugh (well, crack up). This is just too cute; I love that Brodie is so VERY easily amused by Hagen.

Kindergarten projects

Hagen has already had a couple of projects since starting Kindergarten. The first was over the Labor Day holiday; they were talking about families in school and they had a homework project to do a family tree. Now, when I first head of said project, part of me panicked. I was thinking, how big is this project?? Do we need a bunch of pictures?? How far back will this go?? Can we get this done in the time frame we have?? Turns out it was a drawing of a big tree with spots for the child's name, sibling(s), and parents...I was WAY overthinking it. Hagen finished it at Mom and Dad's house in about 15 minutes over Labor Day in Glen Rose.

See? Mommy WAY overreacted.

On Friday, Hagen brought home a piece of paper that said he would be his class' MVP next week. That means the child has to put together information about him/herself on posterboard and present it to his/her class. The poster gets displayed on the Kindergarten hall the rest of the week, I believe. That night Hagen and I went over some of the suggestions from his teacher of what to put on his poster and we wrote down some ideas. Over the weekend we printed out pictures, photos, and Hagen did the writing - and VOILA! He was very proud of his poster and even a little nervous about having to present it to his class, so we rehearsed it. How freaking cute is that???

Around the house

Here are some really random pictures from August. I try to take a lot of photos of Brodie as I think back to how often I was runnning for the camera when Hagen was little...I don't want Brodie to be asking me someday, "Hey, Mom, how come there aren't very many pictures of me when I was a baby??". I'm trying.

One day when Brodie was in the Intellitainer, Hagen started dancing to the music and being goofy. As always, Brodie was completly fascinated by his brother's antics and I loved how he was leaning back just staring at him. And of course Hagen was eating it up.

These pictures remind me a LOT of Hagen when he was this age...probably because Brodie is wearing one of Hagen's old onesies...and he's on the same blanket that Hagen would play on...and Mocha is there, juuuuust out of reach.

Last month there was a reunion at Medical Center of McKinney for babies in the Special Care Nursery. Apparently this is something they put on every year and it just so happens that this year it was about 4 months after Brodie was born.

This is Miss Deborah, one of the nurses who first took care of Brodie. She is the one who made the creative nametags for the babies that hung over their cribs. At the reunion she was painting faces for the kids. She put a little black nose and whiskers on Brodie; she said it was the first baby she ever painted. He looked pretty darn cute.

Hagen chose a bull and here she is in the process of painting him...

...and the final result. He also got to pick a tail to go with his face.

Brodie + solid food = messy boy

We started Brodie on rice cereal recently. The first go-round wasn't so great because he was too hungry to start something new, so we tried again after he had a bottle. Much better results.

This past weekend we tried peas and he had a few good spoonfuls. He put his fist in his mouth while eating, hence the peas all over the face. He never spit them out and didn't make any yucky faces, so it was a hit, I guess. I asked Hagen to choose either peas or green beans for him, and he chose peas. He told me after Brodie ate that he made the right choice. :-)

Brodie's room

Poor Brodie...his room is not entirely "his" - there are still two big bookcases that we just don't have anywhere else to put them, plus some other...stuff...that just needs another home. He has his crib on the main back wall where the guest bed was, and his changing table is on the wall next to that. So he kind of has a corner. It works, but we didn't go to the lengths to make his room so perfect like we did with Hagen because it wasn't going to be entirely his room. Plus I didn't want baby stuff painted on the wall because eventually we might get that room back as the guest room.

Anyway, I was trying to think of ways to decorate his wall so he didn't completely get the shaft in the room-decorating department. Awhile back I thought it might look cool to hang wooden letters spelling out his name over his crib. At first I thought of using ribbon to match the bedset but then thought ribbon would look too girly and/or babyish, even if it was "manly" colors. So I got some wooden letters and picked out paint colors that match his bedding, and over the course of a couple of weeks, Hagen helped me paint the letters, and we hung them today. Voila!

Hagen painting the "B". This was taken with my phone so the picture quality is not great, but I wanted to get a quick picture of Hagen helping.

Kindergarten!!

I know it sounds cliche, but I can't believe Hagen is old enough to be in KINDERGARTEN. The big leagues. He has made the transition well and seems to love it; it's difficult getting specific information from him when we ask about his day, but he has consistently said "computers" when we ask what his favorite thing is. He has made a few friends (one he saw down the street recently so we went over and played for awhile; the little boy is in first grade and knows Hagen from the aftercare program) and has really adjusted quite well to this new adventure in his life. Plus he looks so freakin cute with a backpack on.