The Week in Review

This has been a busy week, so I'm going to catch up on the last 7 days in one post.  Tyler has had a few new firsts.  The biggest one is that he started eating rice cereal!  And, he seems to love it.  In fact, he started scarfing down bowls of it.  I've been giving him rice cereal, mixed with breast milk, for his second meal of the day (mid-morning) and dinner.  He has been eating 3-5 ounces of milk mixed with cereal at a time.  It's made our days a little more "normal," as he is now going longer between meals.  Tyler also discovered his feet and grabs them all the time, especially when he gets his diaper changed.

My parents and Debby visited last weekend so that they could watch the boys for us overnight, while Brian and I spent Saturday night in DC for Brian's office holiday party.  I was so excited to have a full night's sleep, and although it was great, I wasn't as refreshed as I expected to be.  I guess 5 months of interrupted sleep has depleted my reserves more than one night can catch me up on.  My mom brought a few crafts to work on with Brennan.  Brennan had a blast!  Aunt Debby also brought her iPad, so Brennan was all over that!

Brennan loved decorating the gingerbread men cookies, so we made sugar cookies on Wednesdays and decorated those with Brennan's friend, AJ, who came for a playdate yesterday.

Brennan has been hitting everyone up for dollars.  Since July, he has collected $45.  I let him go shopping with his own money this week.  We went to Toys R Us and walked the entire store.  It was a great learning opportunity for him.  I allowed him only to put things in our cart that he could afford, so he had to make decisions about what he really wanted - sometimes he chose to swap an item out of the cart, other times, he passed on whatever else he was looking at and kept the item in the cart.  In the end, he bought a set of Cars Squinkies and the Squinky Globe dispenser.  I never heard of these before and it definitely looked cooler in the package that it has turned out to be.  While I wouldn't recommend this item to a friend, I will say he has loved it and played with it non-stop since bringing it home.  He was excited to pay the cashier and get the change by himself.  He is now saving up for some other toys he had to put back.  Later in the week, while playing with his coins, I explained that 4 quarters = $1.  I told him we could go to the bank to change his coins into dollars.  We counted 12 quarters and brought them into the bank to get $3.  Brennan was so excited about the transaction.  We waited for our turn and then he asked the teller to change his quarters into dollars.  It was so cute and the tellers loved it!

Two days ago, Tyler started rolling over from his back to his belly.  He has been going from belly to back since he was about 1 month old, but from back to belly is totally new.  In the picture below, he had rolled from back to belly and managed to creep off the playmat onto the floor.  He has also started drooling a bit - maybe a sign that teeth are getting ready to push through?