Bryer Family Blog

Gabe it’s hard to keep track of all the things you are saying. You are such a little expressive person. Your body language cracks me up to. I love when you say “wait a sec” and then you put your forefinger on your chin and look deep in thought while you try to put together what you want to say. You have your colors down and are identifying more numbers and letters now.  You are really becoming such a thoughtful big brother too. You always think of Miles and even speak on his behalf. If Miles is out of his snack you’ll come up to me and say, “Mizel wants more.” Or “Mizel come too?” if we are going out for a walk.  I just love how you pronounce his name.  Speaking of pronunciation, you call the kitchen the “chicken” and say “happy cake” for happy birthday. Which is funny because you can now say “Happy Halloween” so well! Speaking of Halloween, you have been really into crafts lately, but nothing beats a trip to a playground.  You still love your Wiggles and have been into the guitar lately. You love when Daddy brings up one of his big guitars and you jam together. Miles often joins in on the keyboards too! You have so many friends you enjoy seeing. And you love going over to your neighbor Maeli’s and Damien’s house to see if they can play. You are good at walking on your own and holding hands, but occasionally you still get tired and look up at me with your arms reaching high and say, “Mommy, I hold you?” (which is really quite the other way around… but it is so darn cute!)

Miles…  you’re walking! Although you still rely on the crawl when you need to get somewhere at lightning speed. You are becoming far more bold with your vertical exploration as well. You pretty much climb anything in front of you. You get lots of compliments on your Shrek hat… which just looks so whimsical on such a serious baby such as yourself.  The grapes are at the end of their season, but you still crawl over to the vine and eat as many as you can before you catch my attention. You are a bottomless pit right now. We still haven’t found a food you won’t eat and a volume you won’t consume as well! You could outeat your brother any day… and maybe your mom and dad too!  You are doing  a nice job of sleeping in your crib but you take forever to fall asleep. I just don’t think you want to miss a thing. You light up when your brother is anywhere nearby and want to do anything he is doing.  You just love quiet time to explore and are bsorbing everything that is going on around you. It’s amazing now that you have begun mimicking the things we do… I realize you have just been studying us all this time. Weather it’s holding up the phone to your ear or typing on the keyboard or brushing your teeth, you have figured us out. Speaking of, you can find the power button on any electronic item in the house. You can turn things on and off and reprogram them most of the time! You have certainly been keeping us busy!

Well, it has been a very eventful summer… and how could it not be with these two growing boys by my side.  Here are some memorable things I thought I would share for an older version of Gabe and Miles:

GABE:

You have officially discovered independence. You want to do everything by yourself now: make your own chocolate milk, zip up your own pajamas, get your own vitamins (which proves difficult due to the ole child safety mechanism.) You are so strong willed but I try to be patient as I realize little by little you will need to take on the world yourself… but for now, please let mommy help a little =)

You have always been able to crack us up, but your sense of humor seems to be growing as fast as the rest of you. You are always ready to make someone laugh with a funny voice or some good old fashion slapstick. Lately though, you pronounce, “That’s funny!” when something is silly or amiss or you have laid out an elaborate funny act. Your statement of the obvious seems to draw even more laughs.

Despite your love of trains (which is a love affair as strong as any in history) you do love to pretend to fly by swinging your arms behind you, arching your back and pointing your head in the direction your facing.  You announce, “I fly” and off you go. Planes in the sky and having superman rides on mom and dad are still a lot of fun.

You have a great imagination and yet when I say something like, “oh you’re a monkey.” or “oh you’re a dinosaur” you look at me like I’m crazy and say, “No, I Gabe!”  You are a big fan of  lions, bears, dinosaurs… pretty much anything that “ROARS!!”

MILES:

Despite many toys meant to be walkers, you prefer to use a little tikes kitchen chair to help you get to where you want to go. You walk a foot or so behind it and waddle quickly trying to catch up to it. You beam at everyone as you pass as if it say, “I’ve almost got it!”

You are OBSESSED with anything electronic. The coffee maker, air conditioner, CD Player, TVs, remotes… you just know the power buttons and can pretty much make mommy crazy trying to keep you from them. At your one year check up you shut off the scale before the doctor could read your weight. She said she never had a baby figure out how to shut it off before.  I also once walked into the room and saw you watching a Bob the Builder video which you somehow magically figured out how to play.

People refer to you as a Zen baby because you are often so chill, taking the world in. BUT you certainly have a touch of mom’s temper. If I dare take something away or you want to be held, you SURE make yourself heard.  And it sounds like you are really yelling at me. You say, “Muh muh muh muh, muh!”  It’s hard not to laugh sometimes you get so serious when you’re upset. Keep up with that centered, peaceful version of you, please!

You have fully established your pointing skills (perhaps a lab in a former life?) When you are held you just point to everything that fascinates you and if you don’t get closer to the thing you desire, your point becomes sharper and more animated.  You have found that people, light switches, toys, the dog, you name it, can be accessed with this motion and you don’t want to leave anything undiscovered!

More on you later, little ones. I have to go get you ready for your day so I can discover even more about what makes you tick!

Dear Gabe,

You are becoming such a little man… with each set of clothes I “retire” for you, I have to face the fact that you are growing up, making me laugh (and cry!) through all of your milestones. Here’s a couple things I thought you’d like to remember:

1. You are enjoying Bob the Builder in book and video form. You love to play with your toy tools and when something breaks you say, “Fick it like Bob”

2. You love to play with play-dough and chalk. We spend hours outside drawing a train track and trains and then running around it.  We have added many elements you love… like the “shaky bridge” and the station where you “get ticket for all aboard.”

3.  It has been a very rainy summer so you are pretty well versed on rain-related songs: Rain Rain Go Away, Drip Drop, Gum Drops, etc.  There was even one night when there was loud thunder booming over head and you ran to the window and yelled, “NO! AWAY!” At least you love your puddle jumping.

4. You are in the process of learning to sleep through the night in your big boy bed at night, but you do still come in to bed with us when you wake up… and you need to bring everything but the kitchen sink in with you… pillow, blanket, stuffed animals, books, sippy cup…etc. There is barely enough room in the bed for you too! Also, you LOVE being read to at night. When we are done you give us puppy eyes and say, “more book, peez.”

5. When someone sneezes you say “blesh”; when you see anything that resembles a pool you call it “papa’s pool”; and when someone is upset you say “I hug” and proceed to put them in a well-meaning headlock.

6. You LOVE to do something you invented called a “circle hug” which involves everyone in the room getting into a big circle to hug (as the name suggests.) You just call out, “circle hug” and everyone falls in line =)

7.  You have discovered that the ice cream truck indeed delivers ice cream and is not just a “music truck” as other children in the neighborhood still believe. You get so upset when we can’t get it… I have to lock the doors to keep you from running after it sometimes!

8. You are capable of counting to ten; however, sometimes I worry that you’ve bumped your head because you will occasionally count, “1,2,6,9…”  What? You have your colors down though and especially love Purple (Jeff) Yellow (Sam) Red (Murray) and Blue (Anthony).

9.  You are fairly fearless (check the soon to be posted pictures of Alex sending you down his slide inside a tunnel!) but lately you don’t like to too high on swings so you first ask to go high, then when you cross your comfort zone you follow with, “little high! little high!”

10. Grandma Barbie once told you that when I was little I used to say “All gone, have to buy more” when something was finished. Well, you have followed in my footsteps and say, “uh oh, have buy more!” whenever we are done with anything… even if you finished a slice pf pizza and there are five more pieces left in the box… or it isn’t something you can actually buy… like at the end of music class when we have to put the instruments away.

Dear Miles,

Since you have entered our world, there has been little time to record all of the amazing things you are doing!

So here is a quick list of some things you were doing in the summer of 2009:

1. Eating anything and everything put in front of you (and proceeding to try to condition your hair with the remains.) You just can’t get enough of rubbing your dirty fingers through those fine wisps of blond hair! Avocado,raspberries and cheese seem to be favorites… but it’s hard to measure your fistfulls of food. You even cried when I tried to remove the dog food out of your mouth that you snuck in while I wasn’t looking!

2. You have mastered the art of falling and are therefor getting more and more brave about cruising along the train table and pulling yourself up on just about anything you encounter. No independently walking yet though (thank goodness!)

3.  You love to have shrieking and laughing contests with your brother. Especially in the bath tub and when I am trying to conduct an important phone call. Somehow the pitch gets sharper as the volume rises… yikes!

4.  Although currently in the act of teething, you still only have those two little bottom teeth poking through. It is just the cutest smile and I’m sad that it will change soon.

5.  Currently your two favorite things are 1. Balloons (any color, any size) and 2. mops/brooms… I hope you aren’t trying to comment on the filth you are crawling around in!

6. You like to sleep with your feet elevated. You remind me of a little posturepedic commercial. You have a pillow under your head and one under your feet!

7. You say Mama, Baba, Uh-oh, and Dada (although we’re not sure you are actually directing it anywhere.) Oh, and lots of gibberish in between.

8.You could complacency sit in your outdoor red swing for hours. It doesn’t even have to be moving. You just like to hold onto the rope and take everything in.

9. You can wave goodbye in a cute little way where you look at your hand in disbelief that you are actually doing it! You are also clapping now… giving kudos to everything from the impressive to the fairly mundane. It’s so cute to see you get excited and cheer something on.

10. You got tubes four weeks shy of your 1st birthday and barely complained. Everyone made a fuss over you at the hospital and you were home three hours after we had left.  I think it took five minutes before you wanted to get down and play with your brother on the train table.  You are just so good-natured (with a touch of mom’s temper when you’re tired or hungry.)

Well, we are celebrating Easter a little early since we’ll be in San Diego next weekend.  Gabe and Miles looked so darling in their Easter sweaters.   And yes, sweaters were needed as it was pretty cool (but sunny!) today.

When Gabe woke up from his nap, we told him the Easter Bunny had hidden eggs and a basket full of presents in the backyard. After excitedly getting shoes on, he ran out to find the eggs. It was slow going at first, but once he realized that there were M&Ms inside the eggs, he made short work of finding the rest. He also got a Wiggles car with Wiggles characters and some Cars characters as well. He has been playing with them all day and they are laying in bed with him as I type! Man that Easter Bunny knows him well

In other news, we’ve been waiting for news of little Jack Jr.’s arrival. Or in Gabe’s words, “Aun Keem da baby.”

Gabe is getting in touch with his feelings lately. He will come into a room to announce “Gabe Happy!” which just warms my heart.  Occasionally we get a sad or mad report, but he seems to be in good spirits most of the time.

Miles is downing jars of babyfood faster than we can throw them at him. I can’t believe how big he is getting. He’ll be wrestling his brother in no time!  Although he does not have words yet, many people have been pointing out to me that when he is sad and sees me he makes a sad “Mmmmmuh” cry that sounds like “mom”… which I think is just guilt so that I step in and change the diaper or tend to his needs =)

Well, next week we’ll be in San Diego with Nana Nancy enjoying some (hopefully) nice weather and recording lots of memories to share!