Five

If you look really closely at this picture, you'll see Brick's fifth tooth, which made it's appearance this past weekend (it's on his left-side in the row of top teeth).

Expressive

I set up a mini "photoshoot" with Brick this afternoon. As usual, he wasn't too interested in smiling at the camera, but he did provide an abundance of silly expressions. It's so fantastic how expressive he's been lately.

This "hear no evil, speak no evil, see no evil" series was completely accidental.

Take 2

This weekend was the official Bluebonnet Festival in Burnet, TX. Interestingly enough, we didn't see a whole lot of bluebonnets at the festival itself. But on our way home, we passed this amazing patch of flowers. Since Bryan was with me, I decided to give bluebonnet pictures another try.

Like the first time, Brick stumbled a couple of times, but he wasn't nearly as irritated by the flowers this time around.



We also had quite a bit of wind to contend with.





As usual, Brick had very little interest in looking at the camera, but at least we ended up with one good bluebonnet shot for this year.

Again

There's that face again ...

Silly Boy

Getaway

Friday afternoon, Bryan recommended we take a little getaway. He'd been out of town most of the week, so it seemed like a good idea for us to have some fun family time together. We headed down to San Antonio for a quick overnight. Friday night we strolled Riverwalk.




Brick got to stay up late to hang out with Mommy & Daddy. After a quick hotel bath, he went to sleep.



On Saturday, we visited Sea World. We had record lows here in Texas. That combined with rain made for some FRIGID temperatures and very few crowds at Sea World. Bryan got to ride the Steel Eel all by himself.



We also had a good time feeding the dolphins, even if they are scary looking when they get that up close and personal.

Spaghetti

We enjoyed spaghetti for dinner tonight. Brick LOVES pasta. It's the one meal he's guaranteed to eat every bit of.



Of course, any spaghetti meal with a self-feeding child will require a bath immediately afterwards.

Good Move

Bryan and I don't generally feel the need to seek confirmation that our move to Austin was a good one. As soon as we got here, it felt like we were in the right place. We love the area. Love our house. Have settled into an awesome church. Met a lot of really great people.

There's a lot of development going on in the neighborhood adjacent to ours. The other day, Bryan and I drove through there to check out the homes. They're all these cute, bungalow style homes. I was curious, so I looked up the listings online. The least expensive one on the market right now has a list price of $450,000. Wow. Now, mind you, this is a golf community and membership fees are typically built into the selling price of the home, so they're bound to always be worth slightly more than the homes in our neighborhood, but still.

In our neighborhood, the least expensive home is listed for $20,000 more than what we paid for our home. The homes in our neighborhood are listed with an average selling price roughly equivalent to $110/sq. ft. That means we could reasonably put our house on the market right now and ask $50,000 above our purchase price. It took us 3 years in NC to make that kind of equity! We haven't even lived here 6 months.

At the Park

Brick and I headed to the park today. We had lots of fun swinging, playing on the playground and riding slides.

Brick's daycare teachers are always telling us what a "boys' boy" he is. No doubt. He is all boy. He had a blast getting dirty and scavenging for sticks.

Oh yeah, and he likes to eat rocks on occasion, or at least taste 'em. No actual rocks were eaten in the photographing of this moment.

A funny thing happened while we were at the park. Brick and I stumbled upon a beautiful, bright green caterpillar. I was just about the snap a photo of Brick investigating the caterpillar when two little blondies came up to us and informed me that this particular "tree house" (really only a cluster of trees and roots) was "FOR GIRLS ONLY." Poor Brick. The girls were soon distracted by the caterpillar and "allowed" Brick to stick around and watch while they poked at it and giggled every time it moved.

No worries though. Brick got his revenge soon after. Two boys (probably about 8 or 9 years old) were standing on the baby swings having a chat. Brick took one look at them, cried out, and they soon left. Leave it to the one-year-old to chase off two tough little boys.

Bluebonnets

Bluebonnets are the official state flower of Texas. In the springtime they pop up just about everywhere in gorgeous patches. About this same time, moms throughout the state of Texas dutifully trek their kiddos out to the nearest, safest bluebonnet field and snap a few pictures. Now what kind of Texan mom would I be if I didn't oblige?

This picture was taken almost as soon as we got to the bluebonnets. Brick was willing to look at the camera at this point, but he wasn't at all interested in going anywhere near the bluebonnets.


When I finally coerced him to check them out, I realized why he was not interested. These bluebonnets were about 6-10 inches tall. Plenty tall for a toddler who's just learning to walk to stumble over.


Most of the pictures I managed to shoot are a series of Brick either falling or pushing himself back up. Poor kid. Especially since I'll probably subject him to this at least once more this season in an attempt to get a great shot.


And finally, one picture that demonstrates exactly how much Brick enjoyed the bluebonnets.