What is Brandon up to now?

Whoa - time for an update on Brandon.

Back in the beginning of October Brandon and I went to play at Christian's house. It was a good time. Christian has this bounce and spin Zebra Playskool toy that Branon delighted straddling and bouncing on. Then he and his buddy played with some Thomas Train toys and other things. After a while I hear Christian's Mommy, Yanin, say "What's that?" And I follow the sound of her voice and see her bending over looking at something on her carpet. Then she asked "Is that a grape?" This is about the time my stomach dropped. You see - Brandon ate raisins for dinner the night before. And if any of you don't know this... undigested raisins become grapes through re-hydration in the tummy. And eventually get pooped out again. You'd only know this if your toddler has ever not fully digested raisins before, of course. Well I knew this. As it turns out, all that bouncing and spinning on the Zebra caused Brandon to have a diaper blow out at his friends house. Something I didn't notice because he was wearing pants. Pants that hid the grape's trail down his leg and on to my friend's carpeted floor. Needless to say I was mortified. Laughingly mortified, but still mortified. Luckily we've still have play dates with Yanin and Christian since so all was not lost on the grape.

Brandon is truly Joby's and my child. He is not a morning, get up and out of bed quickly little boy. In fact, many mornings I will hear him and go in to get him, only to have him wallow around the crib basically telling me to get lost. I'll ask him if he wants to get up and he will cry "Mo Mommy!" Sometimes it takes 15-20 minutes to get him to a place where I can grab him. If we're not in a rush, it doesn't matter to me, but some mornings we have to get going for work!

As mentioned before in a previous post Brandon is crazy about elevators (loo loo loos). He loves them. Well recently he started saying "Here ee are!" whenever we arrive at the destined floor. The bell will ding, the doors will open and voila! "Here ee are!" with hand clapping and hammy smiles. Very amusing. Now the expression is for everywhere we go. The store (yesterday it was Bome Bepot (Home Depot)), our house, my parents house, whatever. If we're going someplace - he announces when we arrive. Oh, on a different note - Brandon is also crazy about Best Buy. Why? I have NO idea. We can't even drive past the store now without him crying to go to "Buy!" It's kind of ridiculous, especially because our Best Buy is right next to the mall, across the street from Target, Home Depot, Bed Bath and Beyond, Michaels and other great stores. So we drive by it all the time. I think Daddy might have had a hand in making this one of Brandon's favorite places to go and run around.

Brandon has discovered the fun of forts. We had made them in the past with blankets over at able but he never really got in to it. Well one rainy morning my mother made him a fort at her house with her kitchen table and a blanket. That was it. The next day we went back and Brandon left the kitchen, went back to her bedroom and dragged the blanket out to the kitchen asking for a "cort." That night I made one at home and now it's a weekly occurrence. Rumor has it Santa is bringing him a pop-up Thomas the Train fort to play in.

We have finally had our first really bad skinned knee. I'm not sure who felt worse when it happened. Brandon, me or my mom. Needless to say it was bad and scabbed over pretty bad. The day it happened Brandon would look over at me every 15-20 minutes and start crying/whining, saying "Owie!" and pointing to his knee. Obviously it really hurt him. The cute thing though is that we used that week as an opportunity to teach him the difference between "Owie," something actually still hurting, and "boo boo," something that has stopped hurting but still visible, like the scab. And we also taught him to say "all better!" when we'd blow on the "Owie." Very cute. To piggy back on this train of thought - last week Brandon skinned his elbow. Not bad, just a slight abrasion. And to distract him from crying I said "here's a drink! A drink will make it better." I handed it to him (Daddy was holding him at the time) and he proceeded to take his sippy cup and dab it on his "owie." I guess water has magical healing properties. We both laughed to see him trying to dab out the cold water on his elbow.

"Oh Mo Mo!" is one of Brandon's favorite expressions right now. Basically is means "Oh no!" Sometime he says it because he's knocked over blocks or Thomas and those Troublesome Trucks. In those cases he will say "Oh Mo Mo! Cash!" (Crash). Other times he will say it when he can't find a toy he is looking for. And sometimes he just says it because he knows one of us will come looking to see what's the matter and he just wants us to play with him.

Brandon now says "Okay" and "yes" but they come out "ah-kay" and "hes." When you ask him if he wants to do something that you know, of course, he'll want to do, then you usually get a string of "ah-kay" and "hes" put together in some order complete with hammy grins and hand clapping.

"Froop!" is Brandon's word for fruit.

And lastly - Brandon has discovered the power of dragging his parents around the house by the pant leg to whatever toy he wants to play with or room he wants to go in. He has decided he likes us with him and knows he can drag us there. Well we got a little tired, or should I say sore, from him grabbing our pants or shirts and including a fist full of skin in the process. So Joby taught him to take our hand instead and Brandon knows we won't follow unless he takes our hand. So that has developed in to this cute game of where on earth is your hand. If we are sitting at the table eating, he reaches over everything to get our hands. If we are on the computer he tugs our arms away from the keyboard to take our hand. And if he can't reach then he'll stand there saying "Hand? Hand" Hand?" until we comply with his request and get dragged off to play with something that we probably had just abandoned minutes ago. At our house the favorite place to go is in to the front living room because all the baby gear (swing, exersaucer, etc) is in there and he likes to examen them, push the swing and generally get excited that there are "gunkies!" (monkeys) on the side of the bouncer.