Kyle Brandt is 11 Months Old

He just keeps getting bigger and bigger!  Highlights this month include:
He is standing up all by himself in the middle of the room.
He goes up the stairs.
He pulls things off the desk.

The books off the shelf.

He pulled the tablecloth to get to the bread on the plate and knocked over two glasses-one of water and one of grape soda.

He pulled the top of his bouncer.

He pulls books off of the bookshelves.
He figured out today that the cabinets open. We are in trouble.  We did manage to put up a baby gate into the kitchen that we hope will keep him out of there for a bit until I get some cabinet locks.
We call him Hurricane Kyle.
He is a super fast crawler and disappears down my many halls faster than The Flash.  Numerous times a day I am hollering-"Where's Kyle?" or "Everybody find Kyle."
He is waving bye bye and knows what it means.
He is giving kisses-open mouth-when we ask him too.
He knows what binki, bottle, daddy, mommy, Cayden, Connor, Caleb and Grandpa mean.
He eats 3 meals a day with still 3 bottles in between.  He is totally off baby food and eats whatever we are eating.  He doesn't like oatmeal that much but will eat it with chunks of fruit in it.  He picks up anything you put in front of him.  We even order him his own food sometimes like a grilled cheese or PB and J if mom has forgotten to make one and bring one for him.  He still has a hard time with pointy crackers like Cheeseits but he loves the Baby Goldfish and Multigrain Cheerios.
I am trying to teach him signs language a little.  Words like more, drink, eat, all done, please and thankyou are just some simple ones that I can remember.
He usually sleeps 10 hours a night.  He doesn't have a set bedtime though but we always try to get him to last until 9pm so that he wakes up around 7.  But if he has naps earlier in the day and is awake by 3:30 or so with his afternoon nap, he is super tired by 7pm and we are trying not let him fall asleep that early because that would mean just a 20-30 minute catnap for him and then he wouldn't go to bed until 11-like he did last night!
He is sleeping in his own room but with he and I both on the mattress on the floor.  I am reluctant to try to move him to the crib after he falls asleep because I am afraid he will wake up.  I also don't want to be running back and forth down the halls all night if he wakes up so I just stay in there all night with him.  I have not slept in my own bed since the first part of June!
He had another ear infection and went to the Urgent Care in Provo in July.  He may have another one after that because he was pulling on his ears alot last week but then he would stop for a bit so I would think he was ok.  Then he would start doing it again.  I never took him in to the doctor because he never had a fever and he never fussed like he was hurting.
He has 4 teeth on the bottom and 3 on the top.
He turns pages in books or tries to rip them out.
He can say the "ah" in "ah oh" when something falls.
He looks for thing when they drop.
He says mama and dada.

This is his Hillbilly Highchair while we were in McGill.

He is wearing mostly size 12-18 month in clothes.  

If I remember to put shoes on him like for church, he promptly pulls them off.

He DOES NOT like the carwash!  

I told myself that I wasn't going to let him watch any TV until he was 2 but I gave in this month and let him watch a few of the Baby Einstein movies we have.  I put him in his bouncer and he will pay attention for a few minutes, then play with the toys and then look back and watch again.  It keeps him busy for a little bit when I am trying to get dinner done.  If he is not in his bouncer, he will crawl up to the front of the TV and pull himself up so he can be closer to the animals.

He realized we have a dog-it scared him the first time he went up to the kennel in the kitchen and the dog moved.

He likes to be on his knees and fling himself forward onto the mattress of me if I am there with him.

We love you Kyle Brandt and mommy already ordered your birthday presents!

McGill

The first weekend of August we took a little trip to McGill to get out of the heat and visit the town where Don grew up before they moved here to Logandale. We drove around McGill and Ely while Don showed us the houses he lived in and the school he went to. We saw the ball field where he played and the playground Grandpa helped get put up for the kids. We saw the old Artic Circle where Don was scarred for life in an incident in the drive through. We stayed at Don's parents house.  It's a house that they bought a few years ago to use when they visit McGill. Connor has been there more times than we can count and the house is where they stay when they go hunting up around Ely so Kyle and I were the only ones that the place was new to. We went to the train station, the Coke ovens, and drove many many miles through the hills and around the area Geocaching and looking for elk and deer.  We had a picnic up by Camp Success, a boy scout camp Don's dad was in charge for a few years.  We even saw a little wood mouse burrowing in the ground.  We named him Phillippe.  We were able to open the house at night and feel the cool night air and rest and relax in a small laid back town.  It was a nice getaway.  On the way home we stopped to Geocache at a dirt road turn off where there was a cattle guard.  It took us a long time to find the cache and Cayden actually fell down through the cattle guard.  He bruised his knees really bad but we were very blessed that he didn't break his leg or ankle since we were in the middle of nowhere with minimal cell reception.  I'm grateful for those tender mercies that we are blessed with each day.

The elementary school.

The ball field.

The playground Don's dad helped get put in.

The train station.

The coke ovens.

Our picnic in the hills.

Geocaching in the hills.

Geocaching at the Alien Jerky store at the ET Highway turnoff.

The only restaurant in Ely. 

Cayden's Swimming Lessons

I put Cayden in some swimming lessons the last week of July. It was at a private residence with a lady who used to work for the Parks and Rec teaching swim lessons a few years ago before she had kids. Cayden was a class with some of the neighborhood kids so we car pooled. The kids were a lot younger than him but he didn't mind and he really needed the lessons. He did a good job and was really comfortable in the water. His teacher said that she would give him private lessons but since it was so close to the end of the summer we decided to wait until next year. He did really good considering swimming is hard for him but he still loves to be in the water to just play.