The Simple Joys

This is a video I took of Hagen making Brodie laugh the other morning while Brodie was eating his breakfast.  Notice the cut-up strawberries; he is addicted to them.  He calls them "ba-boo".  Anyway, it is so refreshing to me to see how the TINIEST of things are SO entertaining to Brodie, especially when his big brother is behind it!

A Tale of Two Haircuts

We took Brodie to get his first haircut over the weekend - a tradition we did with Hagen and figured we'd carry on to Brodie. We were very curious to see how he would react considering Hagen didn't take too well to his first when he turned one...

...but we didn't need to worry.

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.