Sweet Brady boy, time has flown by lately!  I stopped writing a monthly entry about you after you officially turned two years old. I still try to do a monthly “family” event blog entry and take a least one good photo of you with my professional camera…. which turns into approx 100 photos. Anyway, you have really blossomed the past couple of months. Your vocabulary and personality have really exploded! Your little quirks are adorable and it’s so special that we get to see those things develop.

You call food “hanno” for whatever reason… You call a snack “sack” (A LOT. ALL THE TIME). YOu constantly eat. Breakfast is your favorite meal. You’ve been pretty good about staying in your big boy bed at the appropriate times, but we had to get the alarm clock that turns green when it’s ok to get out of bed – which you’re fascinated with and yell and announce when it turns green and request my presence to share in the joy of the green light!  January was a pretty mild weather month, thankfully. We went on lots of bike rides and played outside a lot – your school playground, our neighborhood playground, the back yard, etc… I still have to cut your hair about every 6 weeks, because it grows so rapidly. I just don’t want to cut off your curls, so finding a happy medium is always tricky.  Your favorite shoes are your black monster truck rain boots or your brown boots like Dad’s. You love selecting your underwear (yes! You’re potty trained thank goodness!)  Whenever you count you say “twos” over any over… so, instead of “1, 2, 3…” it’s “twos, twos.. TWOS!”, which is also how you pronounce tools (“twos”). It’s pretty cute.  This is such a fun and glorious age, but also a very trying age. The terrible two’s is no joke. Thankfully we have more good times than we do fits, but  by golly they’ll getcha sometimes.  You’re very independent and love to figure stuff out on your own “No, Baaady do it!”  You also have this really cute playful pout voice where you draw out your words and act like your pouting kinda… there’s a photo of you doing this below.

We took a quick weekend trip to Katy/Houston for a photo job and you had a blast with Rara and George.  We celebrated New Years days at the Parker’s house and then celebrated Warren’s birthday at their house later in the month. You love your friend, Warren.   I took you to Northpark Mall after school one day and we had such a fun mom & son day! We played at Bookmarks (the little library at the mall) and shared delicious cookies at my favorite restaurant, BreadWinner’s.  You can tell people that you’re TWO (which you then try to hold up two fingers, but can’t do it with one hand so you hold up both pointer fingers or just your hold hand in attempt).  Did I mention you LOVE SNACKS? It’s ironic because my college nickname was “Snackie”. The legacy continues!

Uncle Dan got you/us a family pass to the Dallas Zoo so we tried it out before Dad headed back to the Rig this month. We had a lot of fun, but it was a little desolate, because it is January. You got to see different types of monkeys, elephants, zebras, penguins (!!),  birds, a lioness, and you even got to feed a giraffe! The giraffes were the best. We hope to return a few more times before leaving Dallas. Dad and I started doing some small home repair projects to prep the house for sale in March.

Your Dad and I finally wrote out our Allen Family Mission Statement. We’ve discussed doing it for years and finally sat down together and wrote it out. This is what helped determine our decision to move to Portland, Oregon this summer.  It was a good month entering the new year of 2015!