Now that I am one...

I have so many things to tell you about my life. First of all, I am very upset with my mother. I have been one for almost two months, and she has not had any time to put pictures of me on our blog for you all to see. I don't know why she doesn't have time. I'm a good baby and never get into things I'm not supposed to! She did have time to make me a birthday cake and invite some of my friends over to celebrate with me.

She also had time to buy me a few birthday presents and make me my very own birthday stocking. I got new pajamas and new sippy cups for my birthday, since I am too big for bottles now. I also got some yummy snacks, but as you can see, I have a hard time keeping my brother away from my stuff, especially my treats.

A few weeks after my birthday, Daddy and Mommy took me fishing. This was especially fun for me, since I was the only one who caught any fish.

Then they took us all on a walk down some beautiful trails. I got to ride on Daddy's shoulders--I love my Daddy!

I stay pretty busy most of the time. Mommy worries about me since I'm not really interested in learning how to walk. She keeps trying to get me to push this silly little toy around so that I can learn to walk behind it. I would rather push my high chair all over the house. Just because I can't walk yet doesn't mean I can't get what I want. I can crawl really, really fast. I can also climb things. Last week I learned to climb onto the couch. I do not like to stay where I am supposed to. Mommy moves things around to block the doorways so I can't get from one room to another. But I just move them back when she's not looking. I'm sneaky that way. I can say a couple of words now: Ma-ma and hi. I can wave hello and clap my hands when I do something I'm proud of!

Brother and Sister love this giant blue bathtub in the backyard. Today, I helped them fill it up with water. I wasn't sure that I wanted to get in when it was full--bathing in cold water doesn't seem like fun to me. I like to go outside, but the grass and concrete do not feel good on my knees. So I mostly get Mommy to push me around in my little pink car. I also like for Mommy to take me on walks around the neighborhood in my stroller.

And now, time for my nap. I love my nap. I have a little doll, a blanket, and sometimes a stuffed animal that I like to sleep with. I especially like to take a little cloth diaper to bed with me, because it is just the right size for me to hold on to while I'm sleeping. I'm a good sleeper now--I go right to bed and most mornings, I like to sleep late. Mommy thinks this is really nice!!

As you can see, my life is getting pretty interesting. I'm discovering new things every day, and life is so much fun! Next time you see me, I will have learned so much and will have so much more to tell you!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

It has been a crazy few weeks around the Brady house! Birthdays, birthday parties, our anniversary---I've hardly been able to keep up with it all! We're getting ready for our church Easter Egg Hunt and Easter Sunday this weekend, and after that I expect to have a little more time to post some birthday & Easter pictures! I hope you all have a wonderful Easter weekend!

Happy Birthday, Nathan!

Imagine our surprise when we woke up on the morning of Nathan's 5th birthday to find 5 inches of snow on the ground! There was no snow in the forecast, so we were completely taken off guard. As one of my friends said, "I'm going to be busy this morning--I've got to shovel five inches of partly cloudy off my driveway!" Any snow in Southaven is a pretty special event, but to get snow on your birthday is really special! So, in honor of a very special day for a very special boy, here is a post dedicated just to Nathan!

Nathan doesn't really like to play in the snow. He likes to take long walks with Mommy when it snows and look at "other people's snow," but he doesn't want to roll around in it and get really cold, wet, and messy.

Nathan loves our (his) cat, Dorothy. We found Dorothy when she was just a kitten in the backyard of the empty house behind us. Matt likes to tell people that I stole her, but she had clearly been abandoned. Our previous cat hated Nathan, and her animosity towards him was the reason we had to give her away. Dorothy, on the other hand, adores Nathan. He carries her everywhere, and she lets him. No matter how badly he treats her, he is still the first one she runs to when she sees us. In fact, even after he threw her in the bathtub last night (he said he wanted to know if cats were buoyant) she waited until he was asleep and went to curl up in the bed next to him. I think poor Dorothy is a classic example of Stockholm syndrome.

Nathan is a little bit accident prone. When I saw this shirt that said, "I do all my own stunts," I had to get it for him! He has a tendency to hit his head in one particular spot--he has three different scars and a permanent knot all in the same place! Matt and I think we've done well if we can make it through a year without having to take Nathan to the ER!

He is an adoring big brother. Nathan is the early riser in our house, and each morning after he wakes up, he listens anxiously for the first sounds of stirring from Lily's room. As soon as he thinks she might be up, he opens the door and runs in. He got a little over-zealous a few times, so now we make him ask to make sure it's alright to go in! When he comes in from playing outside, one of the first questions he asks is "Where's Lily?" There was never a moment of resentment or jealousy when we brought her home from the hospital--he has loved her from the moment he saw her. He loves his big sister, too, and they spend hours playing together and coming up with creative ways to entertain themselves. I am so thankful to see the love that my children have for one another!

Nathan is also a big snuggler. I think that one of the reasons he gets up so early in the mornings is the hope that he will find Mommy or Daddy still in bed, so he will have someone to snuggle up and cuddle with. Sometimes this drives Lydia crazy, because when they sit down to watch a video together, Nathan expects her to snuggle with him!

He is the king of silly faces! It's so hard to get a picture with a serious expression or a real smile!

Notice his Auburn sweatshirt in this picture--Sunday night Lily and I came straight home from church and after I put her to bed, I turned on the Super Bowl. Matt, Lydia, and Nathan came home a few minutes later. Nathan walked in, glanced at the television, and ran to his room. In a few minutes he ran back in wearing his Auburn sweatshirt and hopped on the couch, ready to watch a ballgame!

This picture was taken the morning of his birthday. He wanted to sleep in his Auburn shirt after the Super Bowl, and since it was his birthday the next morning, we let him do what he wanted!

He is opening his "birthday stocking." Lydia and Nathan love getting their Christmas stockings so much that we made them a special stocking just for their birthday. I know, it's kind of odd, but they like it!

There are so many other things that make Nathan special. I remember watching "Where the Red Fern Grows" with him and Lydia. When Old Dan died and Little Ann was wasting away, Nathan jumped up and ran from the room. I was worried about him for a minute, but then he came running back in with a box of tissues--or as he calls them, "tennis-shoes." He has some adorable mispronunciations for words, and I know it will make me very sad when he quits calling buffalo "buffalopes" or meatloaf "meatwolf."

I can hardly believe my sweet baby boy is five years old. It's been a wonderful five years, and I have enjoyed every minute of watching God's hand at work on my son. In ways, it is sad to see him growing up, knowing that I will never have those baby days again. One day, he'll be too big to crawl in bed and cuddle with us. Even now, it happens less frequently. One day, he'll be embarrassed that he ever cried at the end of sad movies. I am looking forward to watching him grow into a godly young man, but I'm beginning to realize that he's not my baby boy anymore.

Traditon # 2: The Christmas Light Adventure

Now I know that going to look at Christmas lights is something that almost every family does during the Christmas season. I don't claim that this is unique to our family! We do have a certain way that we do things each year, though, that makes this tradition special to our family.

First--Pajamas! (Don't worry--Matt and I wear our regular clothes!) Second, hot chocolate for Matt and the kids and coffee for me. Then it's time to load up the van.

Here's Nathan, hot chocolate in hand, all ready to go!



Lydia seems just a little sheepish about getting into the van in her pajamas, but she graciously consents to having her picture made.

Lily has no clue why she's getting in her carseat when she should be getting into her bed, but if we're happy, she's happy!

OUR FIRST STOP ON THE CHRISTMAS LIGHT ADVENTURE!

Yes, my friends, that is what you think it is. The "hot now" sign at Krispy Kreme. And not just any Krispy Kreme. This is the very spot where Elvis got his doughnuts. Nothing goes better with hot chocolate than a nice, warm doughnut!

This blurry picture is of the lights at Graceland. It's not the best part of town, so we didn't slow down long enough to get a good picture. Besides, neither of us has a huge affinity for Elvis Presley. They do put up a lot of lights and a huge Nativity every year (go figure), and it's just up the road from Krispy Kreme, so we drive by every year just to say we've done it.

Now that we've gotten our dougnuts and seen Graceland, it's time to check out the Christmas decorations. Several years ago, I told Lydia and Nathan that when they saw Christmas lights, they should call out "Merry Christmas!" This was when Nathan was very small, and the best he could do was "Bevvy Kwistmast!" He's big enought to say it right this year, but I have to admit that I miss that little voice piping up "Bevvy Kwistmast" from the back seat. In fact, whenever we see Christmas decarations now, they both say, "Look, they have their Merry Christmas up," or "They have a lot of Merry Christmas at their house!"

Now that I've written all this down, it doesn't seem like a very big deal. But there's a lot of excitement at our house on the day we know we're going to get dougnuts and look at Christmas lights. I hope that one day, the kids will come home from college for Christmas and ask when we're going to take our Christmas light adventure. But if they still want to do it in their pajamas, I'll be a little worried.

Brady Family Christmas Tradition #1

The holidays are over and we are settling back into a normal routine! I had intended to write regular posts about our holiday "doings," but we got so busy "doing" that I never had time to post! So, here are our holidays in retrospect. (I plan on leaving the Christmas background on the blog until I'm done reliving our Christmas activities. It might be up for quite a while!)

Matt and I feel that it is very important to establish special traditions for our family. There's something about tradition that helps hold a family together. Because we travel so much during the Christmas season and are almost never home on Christmas day, our Christmas traditions invlove things other than the usual Christmas morning routine.

Tradition # 1 involves the decorating of the tree. Here's how we do it!


Step #1: Bake Cookies.
This should be done the morning before the designated tree decorating night. Any type of cookie will do, as long as you bake it yourself. We tried store-bought cookies one year, and even though they were really fancy little cookies from World Market, it just wasn't the same.

Lydia was a big help with all the baking.

Nathan wasn't a lot of help, unless eating the dough counts as helping!



It was all fun for Lily, even though she didn't get to eat any of the cookies.

Step # 2: Put up the tree.

Thanks to my parents, we have an absolutely massive Christmas tree. It must weigh a hundred pounds. Getting it out of the attic and setting it up is Matt's responsibility, but the kids get to help fluff up the branches.

Step # 3: Put on the lights.
When I was a child, this step took a LONG time. We had to stretch out all the lights, plug them int, then spend several hours pulling bulbs out and replacing them in order to get the whole strand lit and blinking at the same time. It was fun. Really. I would love to have some of those old lights, just for the memories. But, no--our fancy new tree also happens to be pre-lit, so we actually get to skip step 3. It's been done for us.

Step #4: Hang the ornaments.
When Matt and I got our first tree after getting married, I decided to decorate the entire tree in red and gold. A theme tree, if you will. We bought red and gold ornaments and made a fancy red and gold bow for the top of the tree. Then our good friend Regis decided that since we had just gotten married, we probably didn't have any ornaments. Since he owned a florist's shop, he had plenty of ornaments, so he gave us several. They didn't match my red and gold decorations, but I hung them on the tree anyway. Then our friend Ann decided that since we had just gotten married, we probably didn't have any ornaments. She gave us a bag full of them, and once again, they did not match my decorations. I hung them on the tree anyway, then stood back and looked at our tree. "I guess it's not a 'theme' tree after all," Matt said.
"Of course it is!" I replied. "The theme is love. All of these ornaments were given to us by people who love us, and we'll remember that every time we decorate our tree!"

Since our first Christmas, we've accumulated a lot more ornaments. Friends, family, church members, Sunday School parties, and endless games of "Dirty Santa" have resulted in almost more ornaments that we can fit on the tree. In addition, Lydia and Nathan are old enough now to make ornaments, all of which go somewhere on the tree. As we take each one out and hang it up, we talk about where it came from. Each year our list of "do you remembers" gets longer, and each memory grows more precious.

Lydia works hard at getting each ornament hung just right.

Step #4: Hang the kid's ornaments.
When Lydia was born, Matt and I decided that for every Christmas of her life, we would get her an ornament. When she gets married, we will give her the ornaments as a wedding gift. (Hopefully she won't want a theme tree.) As she got older, we let her choose her own ornaments. Some of the choices have been pretty interesting! We continued this tradition with Nathan, and will do the same with Lily. The last step of our actual decorating process is the kids unwrapping and hanging up each of their ornaments. This year, Lydia and Nathan both chose a baseball player jumping jack from our visit to the Louisville Slugger museum.

Lily hangs her first ornament.

Step #5 Drink hot chocolate and eat the cookies.
Of course, the hot chocolate has to be served in fancy cups. I saw this in a magazine when Lydia was not quite three, and made them to drink our hot chocolate out of that year when we put up the tree. The next year, she remembered and asked for the "candy glasses" again. These are made by dipping the rim of the mug in melted white chocolate, then in crushed peppermints. They make a huge mess when you're trying to drink out of them, but Lydia and Nathan like them, so they have become a part of our tradition!

I'm not sure what this sad face was about!

Here are a "few" pictures of our Thanksgiving in LaFayette with my family. We had a great time visiting my parents, my brother & sister-in-law, and our precious niece Kayla. I don't have time to write too much about these, but I wanted to get them up before it was time to start taking Christmas pictures!
Lily found something she really enjoyed while we were there: a box of legos! These were the medium sized ones--too big for her to choke on, but not so big that she couldn't pick them up. She would pull a few out, then dump the entire box over. I don't know what was more fun for her--the blocks themselves, or getting to pour them out.

She also really enjoyed having people get down in the floor and play Legos with her!

The deck behind my parent's house is lizard heaven. We must have seen a dozen while we were there. I think that the colder weather had made them a little sluggish, because we were able to catch quite a few of them. Lydia and Nathan treated theirs like pets. Nathan named his lizard Charlie and Lydia named hers Lucy.

This looks like a touching mother-daughter moment, but that big grin on Lily's face is because she is about to reach out an yank a huge handful of my hair!

After Thanksgiving dinner, we decided to risk getting shot and go for a walk through the woods. Lydia put on Uncle Dave's old hunting vest so that no one would mistake her for a deer.

Gidget is pretty sure that no one is going to mistake her for a deer.

Matt might try to pretend he's not an Auburn fan, but he can't hide his true allegiance!

The great explorer leads the way!

When I was only a little older than Nathan, my parents would take David and me on walks through the woods. There were huge old hickory trees and massive rocks near the branch that was miles behind our house. I noticed on this walk that the branch wasn't quite as far back as it used to be. The hickory trees were big, but not the enormous trees that I remembered. The rocks seem to have shrunk over the years as well.
I noticed as we walked that Nathan kept a firm grip on my hand and a close eye on his surroundings. I can only hope that he was seeing the woods the way that I had seem them when I was his age.

David was determined to play football after we ate lunch. He finally talked Daddy into playing, while Matt and Lydia played Frisbee.

Then it was back inside for a wrestling match.

The day AFTER Thanksgiving is a big shopping day for a lot of people, but not for us. We had something else on our minds...Auburn football.


Nathan is ready for the Iron Bowl!

Cousin Kayla is ready for the Iron Bowl!

Lily is ready for the Iron Bowl!

Matt and I are ready for the Iron Bowl, too! As it turned out, so were the Auburn Tigers! The only thing that could have made that game any better would have been a win for Auburn.

And last, but certainly not least: The Thanksgiving special at our local grocery store. I used to think that nothing could be worse than having ham for Thanksgiving instead of turkey, but apparently, there is something much, much worse!

And Now, A Word From Lily

Friends, it's been a while since I've had a chance to talk to all of you, and I have some things I'd like to say. First of all, I need to apologize for my mother. She does not post things on this blog nearly as often as she should. She says she's going to do better about that, but we're going to have to wait and see. Second, I would like to thank my Aunt Grace for the adorable outfit that I'm wearing. I look especially cute in this, so I made sure Mommy got plenty of pictures of me today!

I am eight months old today! It seems like just yesterday that Mommy and Daddy were bringing me home from the hospital. These past eight months have gone really fast. As you can see, I'm growing really fast, too. I am so tall that my doctor said I was "off the charts." I have finally learned to sit up on my own. It took me a while to get the hang of this--there's a lot of me to try and balance. And really, sitting up in one place is not that exciting. I've got places to go! I've just got to figure out how to get there...

I'm learning to get up on my hands and knees, and then I rock back and forth, back and forth, and then I push as hard as I can, and I go--backwards! I can scoot all the way across a room backwards, but I haven't figured out how to push myself forward yet. Mommy says she'd rather I wait until after Christmas to figure that out

I have finally decided that I like my baby food. It took me a little while to get used to it, but now I get really excited when Mommy puts me in the high chair and puts my bib on. I like most all my food, except for one thing. Green beans. Just when I think I'm going to get something yummy, like pears or sweet potatoes or yogurt, Mommy comes in with a jar of green beans! YUCK.

I'm doing much better about sleeping all night now. Sometimes I wake up and think that I need company and a little snack, so I call my Daddy. He's my favorite person to see in the middle of the night. At least that's what Mommy tells him!

The best thing about being me is all the love that comes with it. My days are filled with hugs and kisses. Mommy, Daddy, Lydia, and Nathan spend all day just loving on me. And when I go to church, my teachers there love on me some more. And then--there are the grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Lydia and Nathan have been telling me all about Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I can't wait! Mommy did warn me about Uncle Bart, though. Apparently, I'm not supposed to eat ANYTHING that he tries to feed me!