Haircut = Happy Daddy

We have a classic dilemma in our house. Drew likes Bray's hair short and I like it a little longer. I have had my way for several months now and thought it was Daddy's turn....Really, I just decided that with Bray not being able to get water in his ears because of the tubes, short hair would be better. And it does make hair washing so much easier....makes me feel bad for the mom's of girls with tubes in their ears who do not really have this option. He does look so handsome though...but so grown up :(

Attempted Murder

Well, there was an attempted murder in our basement on Sunday. Braylon had been playing with his stuffed animals downstairs and I reminded him repeatedly to make sure he took them up stairs when he was finished playing with them. He insisted that they were tired and needed to stay in the cave he had made for them. Eventually, I went up stairs to start dinner and Bray followed shortly behind me, forgetting the stuffed animals. A little while later I went down to check on Lando, who was laying quietly on the chair, and found Leopard with his face ripped open and stuffing everywhere. There were no eyewitnesses, but we do have the prime suspect behind bars.

I performed emergency facial reconstructive surgery, unfortunately one eye was not recovered and the other eye and the nose were too mangled to stitch back on. Braylon watched hopefully throughout the over 30 minute surgery then inspected the final results, asked where Leopard's nose and eyes were, and then declared that if he didn't have eyes and a nose "we had better just throw him in the trash". Check out the "My Little Patient" post for Leopard's Before picture. I don't think the After is too bad...considering. Braylon is currently trying to learn to look beyond the deformities and learn to love again. Although, he looked at me like I was a moron when I suggested on Monday morning that he take Leopard to school with him for nap time.

Isn't it Grand

In my Dad's family my brother and I were the only grandkids for quite a few years. Now MaMaw and PaPaw have great-grandkids (Bray and D.J.'s crew) who are right around the same age as the "second round of grandkids". Sabrina is the oldest of the younger group and here she is with three other grandkids and Bray, the great-grandchild, all piled on her.

Braylon, right in his element, checking out coon hunting magazines with the other coon hunters.

Braylon writing his name for MaMaw Edith. (I still need to get a picture of his "signature" to put on here).

Braylon and PaPaw Otto. Two comments: PaPaw has not been feeling well at all since right before Christmas and this was the first time in my life that I have ever seen him with any facial hair, even if it was just stubble. Second, Am I really so obsessive about little things that I would make sure that Bray wore his raccoon shirt on the day he would see his coon-hunting buddies? -Yes, yes I am...its so sad.

Let it snow! (2 weekends ago)

My Little Patient

This is what you get when you have to wake your three year old up and be at the hospital by 6:00 AM. Yawns and bags under his eyes. Braylon had tubes put in his ears last Monday. He didn't seem too worried about anything until he found out he was going to have to lie in the hospital bed. I think it is related to seeing me in the hospital when we lost Donovan, but whatever the reason, Braylon is afraid of hospital beds.

He was also not a fan of the blood pressure cuff. I was afraid I would freak out when they took him away for the procedure, but I did OK. Luckily, the surgery took less than 15 minutes and then we were allowed to go back with him.

Poor little guy. You can see how out of it he was when he came out of the anesthesia. The nurse said if he would sleep for about 30 minutes he would be fine but of course my Bray would not. He started getting restless and was "drunk" so I picked him up to hold him, thinking maybe that would calm him and he could sleep. He was seeing and reaching for things that were not there. And his eyes would not focus. But he refused to sleep. So they went ahead and sent us home. On the way home Braylon became upset because his "Daddy has two ears...on the same side of his head." When we got home he was very irritable and it took me nearly two hours before I finally got him to sleep, but when he woke up he was back to our same ol' Bray and he has not mentioned his ears since.

For a reward for being so strong and brave Braylon requested to go to WalMart to buy "cool Star Wars" and to go eat at "Cracker Barrels". Here is PaPaw at Cracker Barrel cheering up the patient.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

The good news: Braylon's appetite seems to have improved recently (not that it was ever horrible, but he has been cleaning his plate at most meals for the last couple of weeks) and he is growing like crazy!
The bad news: Braylon is outgrowing all of his size 3T clothes...his pants and the arms of his shirts are too short. I have been searching the stores for the hard to find size 4 slim as all of Bray's growth has occurred up and down and not around his skinny little waist. And he has outgrown his shoes. We just had to buy him some new size 10 shoes. It is hard to believe that he was wearing a size 4 shoe when he turned two. In that summer he jumped from a 4 to an 8 and he has been in an 8-9 since. His feet are crazy. They stay the same forever, then grow like wild.
The Ugly: The above shoes which Braylon HAD to have. I have just never been a big fan of character shoes-too bulky and busy. Up until age 3.5 and size 10, I had been able to pick out what I liked. Nice simple, solid color shoes. Those days are now officially over. Hello Velcro.

Billy the Kid

Billy the Kid has insisted on bringing his pistol to dinner the last two evenings.
Thanks Dad!

Sesame Street in Our Basement.

Braylon the Grouch!

Lando came to rescue his boy.

But Braylon didn't want to be rescued. He had a good time playing in the hamper. It reminds me of when I was little. Mom's hamper was one of mine and D.J.'s favorite hiding spots for hide-and-go-seek.

Open-faced Everything Sandwich

Braylon has been very into sandwiches lately. Which is odd because he has never actually been a fan of the sandwich concept. In the past when you give him a sandwich he has always disassembled it and eaten each of the parts separately, which has led over time to me not making him sandwiches...just giving him the parts. Well lately Bray has been stacking his meat and cheese on his bread, but not stopping there. He puts everything on his plate on the sandwich. This one was a ham, cheese, carrot, cucumber, apple, and chocolate chip cookie sandwich!

Reading the future

Some nights before bed Braylon likes to read Lando a bedtime story. Recently it has been "Bad Dog Marley".

Apparently telling the future, I caught Braylon and Lando on the page where Marley chews up the couch. In the book this is the last straw and Mom says they have to give Marley away.

I guess Lando has been taking lessons. Over the weekend, about a week after these photos, Lando chewed up one of the cushions from our couch. When I came down to check on him after dinner I found the cushion off the couch and foam and stuffing everywhere. I yelled, "Bad dog Lando" and Bray and Drew came down to see what was going on. I guess remembering that this is what was going to send Marley out the door, Bray said: "Do we have to give Lando away now Mom?" Lando is just lucky that the couch was old, free, and kind of ugly!

WVU Bowl Game

We vegged out and watched the bowl game at home on our comfy couch eating disgustingly unhealthy food. We were all very excited about the bowl win and proud to be Mountaineer fans. (I love when Braylon smiles big enough that you can see his dimple).

Braylon and Pat (in the back ground), warming up their throwing arms just prior to the start of the game.

Name Game

Jeni, D.J., and the kids got Braylon and Lando matching pajamas for Christmas. They are so cute. You can see Lando's name on his in this picture.

You can't see it as well, but Braylon's name is on his too.

Lando literally got under the Christmas tree for these pictures on Christmas night. As soon as we sent Bray off to bed Lando fell asleep...I guess his pjs were pretty comfy!

Speaking of names. Two stories:
1.) I was working on some posts earlier with Bray on my lap. He said,"I want to show you my letters to make my name." He then proceeded to point to the the keys, in order, to spell out his name. I have been working with him to learn to write the letters in his name but we had never really practiced spelling his name. So then I asked him to tell me how to spell his name and he rattled off B-R-A-Y-L-O-N. We of course had to call the grandparents and do it for them via phone. I am so proud of the little squirt. He wrote all of the letters in his name in Mom and Dad's anniversary card last week. They weren't in order, but they were all there.
2.) Last night as I was getting Braylon ready for bed he told me his whole name. I asked him if he liked his name, if Mama and Daddy did a good job picking out his name. He shook his head yes, then he said, "what are we going to name our baby sister?" I said, "are we getting a baby sister?" to which Bray replied, "yeah, we just have to ask God to give us one." Then he said "how do we tell God to give us a baby sister?" I told him that we talk to God through prayer so he immediately bowed his head and said:"God, give us a baby sister...please. Amen." Too cute! I hope God heard.

Christmas Day

After spending a nice morning with just the three of us, the grandparents came up to see what Santa brought Braylon and to have Christmas dinner. Having the close family at our house apparently put Braylon in a very Zen mood. I have a better picture of everyone but I like this one with Bray's pose better.

BooBoo and Papaw arrived late Christmas morning and we exchanged gifts with them. As always they spoiled us all. Braylon got a wheelbarrow, some yard tools, a bike, an easel that is a chalk board on one side and a dry erase board on the other, and several other things.

Then MaMaw and PaPaw arrived Christmas evening. We had already exchanged gifts with them on Christmas Eve. They got Braylon a camera, a keyboard and microphone, some clothes, a stocking full of goodies, a disc sled, and some other things. Oh, how have I managed to fit all of this new stuff in our house?
Then Lando was very cooperative for a photo shoot. Again, Braylon was all over the place and only about 5 of the 400 pictures I attempted turned out pretty nice. I love his one.
It is like Lando goes into good boy mode when the camera comes out. He seriously just lays down and lets Braylon do what ever he wants to.

Christmas Morning

Santa Came! And Braylon must have been a very good boy this year.

Santa ate all of his cookies and drank all of his milk. All the proof Bray needed to be sure that Santa had visited our house.

Braylon got lots of "cool Star Wars", two robots as he had requested, the plastic zoo animals he asked for (meercat, zebra, lion, polar bear, and grizzly bear), the stuffed animal leopard he wanted, a talking/information sharing globe, some books, Kung Fu Panda DVD...and that was just from Santa. Funny story about the robots. All we have heard for months is that Santa needed to bring him two robots for Christmas (so they could fight each other). But anyway Santa came through. When Bray opened the second robot he said: "Two robots! Santa are you kidding me?" Then after looking in his stocking he busts out "Holy God!", which I am assuming he picked up from someone at preschool because no one else he is around uses it.
Even Lando got a visit from Santa. He had this and the other toy he received completely destroyed within two minutes.

Christmas Eve Marathon, Phase 4

Phase 4 of our Christmas Eve was an evening stop off to Drew's Gramps' house in Calhoun County. We got to visit with Gramps and with a lot of Boo Boo's family. But again, shame on me, I didn't get any pictures. Braylon and Gramps did make plans to do some tractor riding and fox chasing sometime this Spring. Here is an old picture of Braylon with Gramps. I can tell by Bray's balding/comb-over that he was five months old in this picture. The five month mark was not a good hair time for Bray.

Christmas Eve Marathon, Phase 3

The third stop on our Christmas Eve is MaMaw Helen's house. I didn't get any pictures of her this year. Shame on me. We are not as good about getting family pictures with Mom's family as we are with Dads. Some years it happens, but most years it doesn't. I did get some pictures of the kids though.

Cousin Kayli

Cousin Amara...just look at those big beautiful brown eyes!

Cousin Noah

Cousin Kelsi, or at least her eyes. I love this kids eyes. (Maybe because she is the only member of the family with gray/green eyes like me...although hers are much prettier!)

Cousin Aleigha. She is developing quite a sweet, with a splash of rotten, personality.

Christmas Eve Marathon, Phase 2

Bray's PaPaw Otto and MaMaw Edith. Also Uncle Ronald, PaPaw David, Aunt Cindy, and Aunt Kandy. Uncle Dale didn't get to make it in until Christmas day this year. Dad's family is so big and MaMaw and PaPaw's house is kinda small, so we rent out the fire hall to have space for us all.

Cousin Sabrina

Cousin Joshua

Cousin Christine

Cousin Isaiah

My Little Man

Cousin Caden

Cousin Aryka with her boyfriend, Zack

JoLee showing off a dance move.