Brenson is 18 Months Old!

Hi, Everyone! I know it's been a while since I've posted, but I'm hoping to get back into the routine of posting regularly. I have a lot to update you on, so I thought I'd begin with a recent biggie. 

As of August 10th, Brenson is now 18 months old! It's crazy to me to think that he's closer to 2 years old now than he is to 1. Wasn't he just born?!?

Last week, Brenson had his 18 month well check with his pediatrician. We are so blessed that he is a healthy, growing little man. He weighed in at 25 pounds and 7 ounces (only up 14 ounces from his 15 month appointment) putting him in the 45th percentile. His head circumference was 48cm and in the 56th percentile. He is still off the charts in the height department, measuring a whopping 35 1/2 inches tall! He's a full inch taller than Brianna was at her 2 year appointment, and 2 full inches taller than he was at 15 months old. Yep, 2 inches in 3 months . . . he's definitely our growing boy!

Bren wears mostly 24 month sized clothing with a few 2T pieces thrown in there as well. He wears 3T sized pjs, though. He has always worn larger sized pjs than regular clothes for whatever reason. He recently had a foot growth spurt and outgrew all his size 6 shoes seemingly overnight. We had one pair of 6 1/2s that were a hand-me-downs and they fit well. However, I recently purchased him two pairs of size 7s, and while they are a touch big for now, I know they won't be for long.

Bren is also wearing size 2T-3T undies. Yep, you read that right, he is wearing underwear during the day and doing great with it! When he was about 16 months old, he began showing interest in the potty and telling us when he had a dirty diaper. He even took his own diaper off once, but we squelched that behavior quickly! So, about a month ago we began potty training. He LOVES wearing his little undies! He wears undies full time at home and on short outings. For longer outings we still do a diaper mainly due to the car ride (like for music class, we drive 45 minutes and I don't trust him to hold it that long), and he still sleeps in a diaper (obviously way too young to hold it during sleep). He wears a size 5 diaper during those times. We are thrilled with his progress in this area!

I worried just a bit about his language development because I mentally compared him to Brianna who began talking at a very young age. However, in the past couple of months, his language has absolutely exploded! He won't generally repeat any words if we ask him to, but he will pop out with all different words/phrases on his own. He'll say two, four, and nine when counting to ten, and he can identify the letters B and R (his name is on the wall in his room, so we talk about the letters in his name a lot). He uses several "spacial" words and phrases. For example, he loves to say "over there", "up there", "under there", etc. His favorite word is probably "ball". He loves all things ball and saying the word ball! He can identify some of his colors, but not if we ask him to. He will point to blue or purple things often and say those colors, though.

Bren can often be a bit shy at first, but he also loves to perform if he's comfortable. When we go to church, he will walk around to everyone he knows and shake hands with them. It's seriously so cute to watch him offer his little hand :-).

Chris plays on a league basketball team, and Brenson loves going on the court with him to "play". Really, just about anything that involves Daddy is approved in Brenson's book! He's very much an outdoor, dirt, and sports lovin' kid!

He also adores water. We have worn out our water table this summer, spent lots of fun afternoons in the pool, gone to the splash pad multiple times, and even played in the rain. If he's outside, Bren is happy. If you add water to the mix, all the better in his book!

We are still going to music class once a week, Bren goes to Bible class on Sundays and Wednesdays, and he participates in our Fridays preschool class as well. Fridays is actually a class for children between the ages of 2 1/2 and 5. However, Brenson has been tagging along with us (it's a class where parents stay with their student) for about a year. He began pretty much fully participating about 2 months ago and is doing great! We love watching him participate in his classes.

Bren thinks he is as big as Brianna and can do everything she does. He mimicks her constantly and always wants to play with her or with whatever she is playing with. While he does play differently than she does, he keeps up with her pretty well. He would much rather bang a baby doll's head on the table than cuddle her, but if Sister is playing with a doll, he wants one too.

She was hanging from this bar, so he had to do it as well. Strong boy!

Eating and sleeping are complete non-issues for us. He is great at both! He takes one nap a day that lasts about 2 1/2 hours. He will eat pretty much anything as long as he is feeding himself. He will refuse to eat if we try and feed him, but he uses utensils (forks and spoons) really well for his age, so we don't mind too much. We are often AMAZED at how much the boy can eat, but he is very active! In fact, he will not sit and watch TV or movies. He could really care less about either one (unlike his sister at this age). He will sit for books or coloring or painting, etc, but only for 15 to 20 minutes at a time. Lately, we've been struggling with him in church service but I think it's a phase and we'll get through it.

We have had a little trouble lately with Brenson hitting his sister and really just being rough in general. He knows better and will often give us the sweetest faces when he knows that he could get in trouble. He is so cute that it makes it hard to discipline him, but we want to be able to be around him when he's older, so we do it. He's definitely entered the "trying" behavior earlier than Brianna did!

Brenson gives the sweetest hugs. It's one of my favorite things that he does. He's very affectionate with us and we adore it. He will race up to us (he runs everywhere!), say "hug", hold out his little arms, and squeeze us tight. He even has sound effects to go with it :-).

We are blessed beyond measure with this little guy. We are so thankful that God entrusted us with him!