Bren's antics...

In just the past few days, Bren has come up with some pretty interesting stuff for us. As of 2 days ago, that we know of, he can now get up and down out of his booster seat attatched to one of our kitchen chairs all by himself. The ease and grace with which he performed said "feat" leads us to believe that while we weren't watching, he was "practising." How he did it without falling and cracking his skull open is beyond me.

Also, now when we ask him if his diaper needs changing, he'll go over to our ottoman and climb up on it for us to change him. He's not consistent with recognizing himself when he actually needs a change or not as I just asked him this morning and he climbed up there and his diaper was completely dry. I think he finds it a "fun" game right now. He will also take the bound up used diaper and throw it away in the diaper pail for us. He's normally not allowed to go anywhere near the garbage area in our pantry, but now that he's throwing away his own diaper, we're making a small concession. He'd love to linger to look THROUGH all our recycling efforts (we have 5 bins due to the German regulations, plus a separate bag for used batteries) but he knows he's not supposed to.

He has, unfortunately, become quite adept at turning the faucets on. He can't reach our sinks, but when he's in the bathtub, I'm afraid he ends up with a smidge more water than he needs which then gets splashed out of the tub with his "drum playing" in the water.

He is becoming very "hepful." He likes to help me vacuum which usually means I and the hose go one way and he and the main unit go another or he tries to bring me the cord while I'm in the middle of it. We have outlet covers where you have to use the cord to twist the outlet cover open so you can plug it in, so he's able to unplug the vacuum, but not get it plugged back in thankfully. Of course by this point, I've already made my way back down the hall to re-plug it and "remind" him "no touch."

We still aren't having much luck in the talking dept., but he is vocalizing a lot more sounds so we're hoping it'll happen sooner rather than later. He always hits his "milestones" towards the end of his month, hence all the new stuff just this past week. He turns 19 months on Friday. Gramy and Grampy Franzen come Sat. morning and will be spoiling him rotten while Vin and I go into the hospital to have Alex on Monday the 21st--if all goes according to plan that is.

He still doesn't have much of an understanding of babies and pretty much thinks "Alex" is the word for bellybutton. We've asked him "where's Alex" and he typically points to my bellybutton but there have been a few times he's pointed to Vin's or his own so I'm pretty sure he's going to think ill of us when Alex doesn't come out looking like a 7-9lb. bellybutton. We'll see.

I thought he was getting the idea that when the kitties hiss, that's a bad thing. The other day, he chased Simon under my night stand and then got down on his belly to go after Simon. Simon gave a big ol' hiss and Bren got up, turned on his heel and walked past me shaking his head "no" which I interepreted to be, "wow, he's mad. I better not mess with him." I was so excited that he might finally have learned kitty-language. That bubble burst when Vin informed me that while he had Bren up in the office to do some web-camming with Grandma and Grandpa Lau, Bren took to chasing Cleo all over the office, trying to grab her tail with her hissing at him all the way and him not caring a lick. I guess that will be a hard lesson learned some other time.

We'll post pics of Alex and Bren in a little over a week and give an update on the boys' first meeting.

Love to all,

Shannon:)