Brenson is 10 Months Old!

Today, Brenson is 10 months old. I generally have these posts all written and ready to publish on the morning of the "birthday", but I'm running a bit behind today. At least it's still on the same day, right? :-)

Here is Brenson today with Gerald. Isn't he (Brenson, not Gerald) looking so much less like a baby and so much more like a little boy?

Brenson is wearing mostly size 18 month clothing, although he has a few 12 month sized things that still fit. He wears size 4 shoe and size 4 diaper. This is the age that we started sitting Brianna on the potty before bathtime to get her used to the process, but we haven't started this with Brenson yet. We plan to begin soon, though!

Right now, Brenson is still taking four 8-ounce bottles of formula a day, plus two meals of solid food and a snack in the afternoon. He loves real food, and will only eat baby food from a jar if there are no other options. He especially likes anything that he can feed himself. I can't really think of anything that he will not eat, except for baby food sometimes.

Brenson is extremely mobile and very fast! He pulls up on everything and cruises along any surface he can reach (which is A LOT). He is tall enough to stand at our dining table, so now drinks are no longer safe up there (as he proved to me last week when he made a huge mess by pulling a drink down). He has started to let go of things and stand solo for just a second or two. I think it's going to take him a while to learn to balance, especially since he is so tall.

The bottle is not Brenson's favorite thing lately, so I decided that it was time to start using a cup. He does okay with the sippy, although he really prefers to just drink out of a regular straw. One day, I put his formula in a cup and let him drink it out of a straw and he gulped it down with no problem!

Sometimes, he still gags right before he begins drinking his formula, but he didn't mind it from a straw.

When Brianna was about this age, she started refusing to allow us to rock her to sleep. While I was extremely thankful for a child who can go to sleep on her own, I was also pretty sad that we no longer had that special rocking time. Well, Brenson has started to be the exact same way this month. Most nights, he'll allow us to rock him for minute or two, but eventually he will start fussing around and getting restless. When we lay him in his bed, he will calm right down and go to sleep. I know it's important for him to be able to soothe himself, but I also love to rock him. It's a double-edged sword.

As a side-note, we are still using the Angel-Care Monitor, but it has become a HUGE pain lately. Brenson sleeps great - generally 11 to 12 hours at night with no problems - but since he's so much more mobile, his monitor will go off sometimes 4 or 5 times in the night. The issue is always that he has rolled off the sensor pad (which is WAY too small in my opinion), so it can't detect his movement. It is so irritating to go into his room and adjust the monitor during the night. Sometimes, it doesn't go off at all, but it would be nice if the sensor pad were larger and we didn't have this problem. I don't think we're ready to stop using it yet, so it's just something we're going to put up with for a while longer. Many mornings, Brenson will wake up around 5:00 and we can hear him fussing around in his crib. After 3 or 4 minutes, he'll settle back down and go to sleep (rarely more than 10). I'm not sure what this is about? It is one instance where I love that he self-soothes, though!

We are definitely at an age where we are testing boundaries a lot. He for sure knows what "No" means and will heed the warning most of the time. Sometimes, if he's not sure about something, he will look at us before he touches it like he's asking for permission. If I say, "It's okay, you can have that" or something to that effect, he also understands what that means. He is very quick to find trouble, though. This day, he crawled into my bathroom and unrolled the toilet paper before I even realized he had left the room. Stinker

Brenson uses the words Momma, Dadda, and Hi all the time. He really doesn't say anything else consistently. I try to get him to repeat words after me all the time, but he will not say something unless he decides it's time to say it. A few days ago, he was sitting on Tia's lap at church and feeling the texture of her jeans. She said, "Brenson, say jeans, jeans, jeans" to which he replied, "eans". I got so excited! I couldn't believe he repeated after her. He was so proud of himself and had the biggest grin on his face. I told Tia that he won't repeat after me, so I don't get to hear him say much. She then told me that he says "cow" and "moo" in Bible class (she teaches his class on Sundays). What?!? I was so surprised! I had no idea he could say that.

Brenson is all about mimicking things right now. He will make kissing sounds, click his tongue, put his hands on his head, etc as we do it to him. He also will point to his mouth, nose, ears, etc when I point to mine and say, "Here is my nose . . . " Brianna is his favorite person to mimic. Just earlier today, she was sitting leaned against the couch with her legs straight out in front of her reading a book. He sat down beside her, put his legs just like hers, and grabbed a book. It was adorable! He does like to read more and more, and especially likes turning the pages in the book as we read it.

Brenson has been a Momma's boy since day one. However, just in the past week or so he has really become attached to Daddy. A few times lately, he has held his hands out for Daddy to take him when I have been holding him (unheard of before now . . . it was always the other way around). One day, Daddy didn't take him and he started bawling. He also gets super excited when he hears the garage door open in the evenings. Brianna has always listened for the garage door, and the minute she hears it she will run to the door and wait for Daddy. Now Brenson has started doing that, too! It's so precious how much they love their Daddy. I will admit, I loved being his favorite, but I want him to be close to his Daddy as well.

I think Little Man's favorite thing to do right now is push buttons. He loves any toy that has a button that makes a noise of some sort when he pushes it. He has figured out exactly where all the noise making buttons are on Brianna's toys and he'll push them over and over and over again. Brianna has a Little People wedding cake that plays the wedding march when you push the cake topper. One day, Brenson must have pushed that topper for an hour straight. I finally took the thing away from him. He cried when I did, but the crying was actually a relief from the wedding march, haha! He also LOVES the television remote and our phones. We do allow him to play with the remote as long as he's being gentle, but the phones are off limits. One day, he called someone while playing with my phone (sneakily) and I didn't know it! He does play with his toys, but Brianna's are much more exciting so of course he prefers them. 

A few other things: 1) Brenson is obsessed with the bathroom. He loves taking a bath and being there while Brianna is bathing as well. He is tall enough to lean over the edge of the bathtub and easily fall in, so Chris will often close the door while he is bathing Brianna. When he does this, Brenson will sit outside of the door and just cry. He also loves to be in there while Brianna is on the potty (and she HATES this). Poor girl has a hard time getting any privacy! We try to keep him out of the bathroom while she's using it, but he fights and fights us on this. 2) He has a perpetual bruise on his head (you can see one in the photo below). Boy child is all rough and tumble. 3) We call him Bren, Brenny, Bren Bren, and Big Dude most of the time. I'm trying to use his actual name more (I've never been a fan of cutesie nicknames). 4) Brenson gives the sweetest little hugs. It's one of my favorite things that he does right now.

Happy 10 months, Brenson. We love you so much!