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It’s been a big month here for us Brands.

Lloyd has been especially busy!  He had a tremendous project show at his Preschool where they showcased many of the art projects they’ve been working on since the beginning of the year.   Lloyd created these two magnificent clay creations, which he shaped, glazed, and then had sent off to a kiln.  Sometimes he says one is a whooping crane.

Beyond many wonderful paintings and sketches, Lloyd also worked with the rest of his class on creating a Human Body figure.   Lloyd made a leg out of some pipe cleaners, paper towel tubes, and a juice can.  They spent most of this semester learning all about their bodies, including their taste buds!

Although formal preschool has ended for the school year, Lloyd will attend many of their morning day camps throughout the summer, and in the fall he’ll increase to three days a week rather than two.

Lloyd has really taken to writing his letters, and can even write his whole name without instruction!   He can draw about half of the letters in the alphabet.

And his Uncle Matt worked with him and taught him how to draw people!  I love having our house littered with these little dudes.  They are so precious to me.

Here’s a video of Lloyd singing “Dinosaurs A – Z.”  We hear this about 5 times a day : )

Lloyd is also doing great with his potty training.  We still put him in a Pull-Up for nap time and bed time, but all his awake time (including at school and even on longer trips) is spent in underpants.

He continues to come up with elaborate stories about his future and past, and a new trend is to say, “You know Mom that SOME MOTHERS don’t care if their boys wash their hands…”   Too bad for Lloyd he’s stuck with the mother he’s got ; )

His sense of humor is also changing.  Scatological humor, while never my favorite, has become an essential part of our day-to-day life.  Whenever Lloyd’s in a bad mood, a simple fart or poop joke can usually turn a from upside down.  He also LOVES “Knock, Knock” jokes, so if you’ve got any, throw them our way.

As for Henry – he’s had quite the developments these past couple weeks!  His nap schedule is inconsistent, perhaps marking the change to one nap a day.  He’s popped out four additional teeth – including two molars!  He’s got two more teeth that seem imminent.

Henry at 13 months

Henry is very happy now that he can climb onto the couch.  Unfortunately that means that he spends a lot of time running on the couch, and giving me grey hair.  He can also climb up onto the kitchen table!

Whether he is very happy or very sad, Henry has really gotten into squealing.  Although we are definitely working on teaching Henry to stick to an “inside-voice,” we can appreciate the uncanny ability Henry has for imitating dolphin noises.  As for other forms of communication, we’re still limited to “Mama,” “Dada,” and a variety of animal noises.  He can shake his head “Yes” and “No” purposefully now, so we can get pretty far with a carefully worded line of questioning.

Henry has also shown amazing improvement in his diet and appetite.  He is a lot hungrier for “table food” (rather than baby food) and does a great job eating meats and essentially whatever else we’re all eating for dinner.   He has also, finally, gotten on board with drinking cow milk.  I weaned Henry this past month: when he moved into Lloyd’s room, I night-weaned him and then after that it was easy to convince him he didn’t need to nurse throughout the day either.  We took it very slow and transitioned with relative ease.  It’s a little sad to have the end of the baby era, but it’s also so exciting to see Henry grow into toddler-dom.

It’s been a very challenging month for our loved ones.   Poor Pa has spent the majority of the month in the hospital, but has since moved into a Rehabilitation facility where he can get the Physical Therapy he needs.  Grace has been tremendous – caring for him and keeping him company throughout his long days.  By chance, the most trying part of Pa’s hospital stay coincided with Matt and Erica’s end of the school year.   They were able to spend the days with Pa too, before they moved to Pittsburgh.  And Alison also was able to come and be part of the amazing hospital team for a whole week, and has since returned to help with Pa’s transition to Rehab.  We were able to make it to the hospital most days for visits.  My parents have been really wonderful watching the boys on days when it’s best to leave them at home.  We’re so lucky and honored to be a part of our loving community.

Woops!  It’s been a while since I’ve done an update on the boys. This Spring has been very eventful for us Brands, and as a result, I’ve neglected the blog.  March was exciting: we all got very sick, then recovered in time to celebrate our beloved Henry’s first birthday. And of course there was the tornado. April kicked off with Greg taking his Professional Engineering Exam – a test he’s been studying diligently for since practically New Year’s Day.  We won’t know the results of the test for months, but Greg feels pretty good about his chances of passing, and it will be a very nice accreditation to have for his resume and business card.

Here is a link to an album of recent photos

After Greg took his test, we decided it was time to move Henry into Lloyd’s bedroom (out of our bedroom).  We had prepared Lloyd for this transition about 6 weeks in advance and Lloyd seemed excited.  Lloyd’s bedtime ritual had gotten pretty out of hand – either Greg or I would read him about three stories (and he likes move involved books at this point), and then he’d beg us to sit on the floor of his room until he fell asleep.   We knew Lloyd would really respond well to not being alone at night, but we were unsure of Henry’s ability to sleep through the night.   In our room Henry was still waking up multiple times during the night, and because we were lazy and exhausted, he’d just end up in bed with us, with everyone tossing and turning until morning.

However, Henry adjusted perfectly to being in “The Boys’ Room.”    The first night he woke up just one time: Greg nabbed him out of his crib, I rocked him for a while and put him back into bed and he went back to sleep with little fuss.   Lloyd never complained about Henry crying (sometimes Henry will cry for about five minutes before conking out) and in fact, by the third night or so, Lloyd got really upset when we tried to sneak Henry out of the room to give Lloyd some peace and quiet!    It’s changed their relationship, making them closer and Lloyd more willing to try and get Henry to play *with* him.   There’s a lot of wrestling, giggling, kissing, and cuddling.  It’s really nice to see and I know that as Henry grows and builds his vocabulary, there is tremendous potential for them to be best buds.

In regards to Henry’s current communication skills, he says “Mama/Mom” and “Dada,”  although not on cue (just when he wants us or when we’re snuggling).  He “Ooo Ooos” when we ask him what a monkey says (even without having a monkey-image on hand) and, in the same fashion, he “RAWRS” when we talk about dinosaurs.  A cow says something closer to “Moo” and he’s even started saying “Bye bye” when it’s time for us to go.  He also has quite a bit of Henry-ese, where he has a distinct, musical “Ahhhh” that means “Cat” and an exclamatory “Deh!” that means “I want THAT.”  He also says “Hi-ya” and “Ar-row?” which are his greetings : )

Henry is 24 and a half lbs, in the 90th percentile for height and the 70th for weight.   He is cutting his seventh tooth and is working on two molars.   He can eat every food except nuts (because he doesn’t have enough teeth to grind them.  We’ve given him peanut butter and he loves it), and we’re slowly working on weaning, although he’s only nursing three or four times a day currently.

And if you haven’t seen him in a while, you’d be surprised at Henry’s mobility!  Right before his first birthday he started taking consecutive steps.  Now he practically runs and loves to climb.

Lloyd is doing great.  He has developed a very nice relationship, not only with Henry but also with one of our cats (Montoya).  He’ll have Montoya sleep in his bed with him and pets her very sweetly.

Lloyd’s big phrases right now are:

• “I never knowed (sic) that before!”
• “Once when I was older… [insert story he makes up on the spot about his life as an adult]”
• and also, he doesn’t know the difference between “universe” and “University of Michigan,” so sometimes he’ll say something like, “He’s the best artist in the whole University of Michigan!”
• When he’s frustrated, he’s started threatening to “break the house”

He’s still really into naming things with funny, Germanic names.  He tells me stories about his 20 older sisters named Glum, Glomb, Cleemp, Bllarng, etc…  And when I do my exercise he tells me he has an exercise he does called “Pllerng Plarng” and then he proceeds to spin in circles.   It’s very entertaining.
As for us adults, it’s business as usual for me, although there is a little bit of adjustment trying to ensure that the boys are ready for a nap at the same time as each other.   As for Greg, he’s transitioning to a new project at the University of Michigan.  He’s very excited for something fresh, but it’s sad that our honeymoon period of having him be able to come home for lunch each day is over.  It was a really nice run!

Came up with this idea for a fun learning project: I cut out tissue paper circles in primary colors and sandwiched them in some contact paper.  I put double-sided tape on one side of the circles and stuck them to the window.  Lloyd has been having SO MUCH fun sticking them on top of each other and seeing the new colors the layers make.   After just 5 minutes of play he had ‘Red and Yellow make Orange, Blue and Yellow make Green, etc….’ all memorized.   And when he puts all three of the circles on top of each other we yell out “ICK! BROWN!” and then laugh.

Henry also LOVES these circles.  He just sticks them on the windows and then un-sticks them and rearranges them.  Keeps both of the boys occupied for a good stretch of time!

Lloyd also made another beautiful Easter Egg – this is a very easy, toddler-friendly craft.  Tape some contact paper onto a window, sticky side facing out into the room.  The toddler artist places tissue paper shreds onto the sticky contact paper.  Place another layer of contact paper on top – sticky sides together, and cut out your shape!

What can you say?  An F3 tornado hit Dexter this past Thursday.   All of the pictures below show damage done within a half-mile radius from our front door.  We’re very lucky!  Our property didn’t endure any damage and we’re all safe.  There are no reported injuries for anyone in Dexter, which is a gracious miracle.  The town has been bustling – lots of community support, lots of lookey-loo’s.  Lots of reporters and constant helicopters.

We heard the tornado siren Thursday in the early evening.  We turned on the television and saw the storm front coming our way on the radar.  At first it looked like Dexter was going to miss the worst of it, but then it became apparent that the giant red swirl or doppler dread was going to hit us head-on.   Lots of rain, then thunder and lightening, then hail.  The siren went off again and when I looked out the window I saw the falling leaves sort of hang in mid-air.  We lost power and that’s when we all moved into the bathroom.  Thank God Greg was home – forever the cool cucumber, forever sane and calm, always what I hope our sons will grow to be.   I did my best pretending I was calm… Tra la la!  Yes that is big lightening!  Yes, Lloyd, this is a big storm!  Yes we will be fine – our house is over 100 years old – it’s seen many storms…  Thankfully that last reassurance wasn’t contradicted!

We hung out in the bathtub for about five minutes.  The storm passed by very fast.   Soon it was just raining with a little thunder and lightening.  We ate dinner by candlelight.  Lloyd was very brave.  He didn’t cry at all until it was bedtime and he realized that we were asking him to go to sleep without a nightlight or his white noise.  That was difficult, exponentially so because he has a cough and wasn’t feeling well to begin with.    But the power came back on by 11pm and we had been in contact with many of our family and friends thanks to cell phones.

Here’s some information on how to donate to Dexter Relief if you feel so inclined. I can tell you that what we’ve seen from this community has been amazingly heart-warming: this is exactly the kind of place you want to raise your children.

What a busy and eventful month!

If you didn’t see the post about our Valentine’s Day celebrations – it’s right here.

And here’s a little movie I posted on FB a while ago with all of Henry’s tricks. A must view, if I do say so myself  : )

We also celebrated President’s Day!

made henry a george washington hat

And of course Pa’s 90th birthday.  What a wonderful, fun, HUGE celebration!

Lloyd is really fun, although definitely more stubborn than ever before.

He uses these silly voices while playing, giving his toys different personalities.  He loves role-playing, but adds this hilarious touch of tacking on “… says Lloyd the cat.”   So for example it’ll be something like, “‘Let’s go find our water!’ says the boy cat.”  Delightful.

Lloyd with his cousin Logan

He continues to be the best eater.  He’s tried new foods such as sour cream, spinach, and guacamole and responded really positively to each one.  He even tried black rice, although that took a bit more coaxing.  It was a proud parenting moment for me: He saw the black rice and said, “That’s not for me, right? I don’t like that.” I said, “Well, it’s just rice, and you like rice.”

“But not that rice!”

“Why not? You like lemonade right? Do you like yellow lemonade and pink lemonade? This is the same.  You like white rice, and you like yellow rice!  I bet you’ll like this rice, too.”

Then I had him take a sip of his milk.  I said, “You like that milk, right?” Then I went and put a dot of blue food coloring in his milk.  “Now you’re milk is blue!  Do you think it will still taste good?” He tried it (laughing, because you know – blue milk!) and of course he was delighted to find out it tasted the same.  So then he tried a bite of the black rice and shouted out, “Pretty good!” and now he eats it whenever we have it.  So proud – of him and myself!

But Lloyd also has this fickleness that is a little challenging.  (e.g. “I NEED THIS” / “I DON’T WANT THAT!” / “GIVE ME THAT” all in the same breath… sigh).  But when he’s at his best, he’s the very, very best.

Henry is starting to make the big transition from baby to toddler.  He’s taken a couple of accidental steps, and can stand unsupported for close to 30 seconds.  He clearly says “Mamama” at me and “Dadadada” at Greg, although he will also mutter those sounds at several other objects and as he crawls about.  He “RAWRS” for all animals (including cows and sheep), but is starting to “Meow” at the cats.   When he crawls into a room or pretends to talk on a cell phone he says “Ah-row?” which is his version of “Hello!”  He also can clap, kiss, and wave all on verbal cues alone.  And he signs “More” but really he uses it to mean “I’M HAVING FUN! MORE OF THIS ALWAYS.”

One especially neat trick is how he plays with this little kid stereo we have.  He can turn the stereo on all by his self, then fast forward it to “When you’re happy and you know it.”  Then he claps along, and then after the clapping verse he will re-wind it to go back to the beginning.  It’s pretty special.  : )

Both Lloyd and Henry are true jokers.  They love making us laugh.  Lloyd tells jokes now, like “Hail! To the Cheetahs!” and “Blue light, blue light, what do you say?” (instead of red/yellow/green – trust me, this is hilarious to him).   And if we laugh at something Henry does, he’ll do it over and over again – looking right into our eyes the whole time.

Sadly, we ended the month on a rough note.  We all caught the norovirus, which is a particularly nasty stomach bug.  Everyone took their turn being an absolute mess – and sadly we infected the Crawford parents and our babysitter.

But now we’re all feeling on the up-and-up and ready for a festive March!