Braymen, Party of Three

Dressing Ourselves

tbraymen — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 03:19:18 +0000

We’ve reached that magical age. Cara’s turned into a little person. She’s about 95% potty trained. She has opinions about what she eats. She speaks in sentences, usually to tattle on other kids at school. And now…dressing herself. Do not even try to persuade her into wearing something she doesn’t want to wear. It won’t work, you will lose. Thank you Montessori method for giving my daughter the skills and sense of self-sufficiency she needs to pick out these gems.

Pants? Pants are for suckers. Diapers – those are for suckers, too. Thankfully, now that she’s good with the potty, going bottomless is a nearly risk-free proposition. By the way, the version of this picture from behind is hilarious but slightly NSFW so we’ll keep that to ourselves.

And then there was this. Saturday morning Cara woke up and instantly started saying “dress! dress!” This is different from her normal demands to eat as soon as her eyes open. She went into her room, opened the drawer and pulled on this little number.

My attempts to convince her that this was a shirt and not a dress fell on deaf ears. I expect I will amass quite a collection of these type of photos in the next few years.

Who swims like a little fish?

tbraymen — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 01:42:42 +0000

Cara, that’s who.

Christmas 2012

tbraymen — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 03:56:20 +0000

Christmas has come once again into our little house. Once again, we persisted in having our very simple, very quiet, extremely low-key Christmas celebration. It started on Christmas Eve with our usual fire and s’mores.

Marshmallowy! Then this happened. This is a completely unstaged picture. Sean and I were rolling with laughter as she set this up.

I guess she decided to camp out in front of the tiny tree to wait for “Ho Ho” to show up. We opted for the tiny tree that I used to put up in my office, and we’re glad for that. It didn’t seem worth the effort of constantly pulling her off a full sized tree and the inevitable trip to the ER that a full sized tree would bring. So we set up the little one and covered it with scraps of ribbons. Cara instantly set to work pulling it apart, knocking it over, and generally being nearly 2 years old. Yep, we made the right decision. In this picture, Cara is reading the Christmas book my parents recorded for her last year. She was particularly fond of the pages Papa recorded. Show a grandmother some love, kid!

Who doesn’t love that look on Christmas morning? Despite the promise of our traditional Christmas morning cinnamon rolls, Cara insisted on downing a bowl of cereal before setting to work on the presents. Opening gifts is hard work, not to be taken on an empty stomach.

SHOES!!! I got Cara a pair of the shiniest, most glittery, most sparkly shoes I could find. She loves them. LOOOOOOOoooOOOOOOvvvves them. Sean had to pry them off her feet after she was asleep. Maybe I should have cut back on a few Sex and the City reruns the past couple years.

The cart. We hadn’t wanted to get a gift this big, we really wanted to keep the gifts small because space continues to be at a premium. But then Cara discovered toy shopping carts. She will throw down on any kid who gets between her and a toy cart at school. At playdates, she commandeer any toy shopping cart. About a month ago, the grocery store started setting up toy displays in a couple parts of the store. One display was of little toy cars like this one. Every time we passed it, she’d start screaming “CART!!! Mommy! MOMMYMOMMYmommyMOMMY cart CART CART CARTTTTTT.” After a few weeks, the display disappeared. We walked past the spot where it used to be and Cara looked over and asked “Cart?” She turned, looking harder, a veil of panic spreading over her face. “Momma…cart?” She held her hands out in her little “where did it go?” gesture. “Cart? MOMMY! CART?!?!” Panic…panic rising…panic….the carts are gone. She put her head down on the handle of our cart and proceeded to weep. Not cry, not scream. Weep. Tragic, painful, panicked, pitiful weeping tears when she realized that the one thing that she loved most in the world was gone. I sighed. I realized that if she really remembered a toy that much at her age, she deserved to have it. It took a couple trips to find one that wasn’t covered in cartoon characters, but based on her reaction here, I think she’s satisfied with her gift.

We celebrated Christmas dinner in that ever traditional fashion – with a Chinese food buffet. Cara liked the soft serve ice cream. I liked the all-you-can eat crab legs. Overall it was a very merry Christmas!

Franklin’s BBQ

tbraymen — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 19:38:31 +0000

I come to you today in a bit of a meat coma. You see, we have recently returned from our first trip to Franklin’s Barbecue. This place has quickly turned into an Austin institution, and now we know why. It started in a trailer but now lives in a small brick-and-mortar building on the east side of downtown, not far from my office. I first learned of it when Bon Appetit magazine named it the best bbq in the country. Take a moment to process that. The best bbq in the country. Barbecue is something that people will throw down over. You’ve got all your regional varieties and everybody believes theirs is the best, but Bon Appetit rated Franklin’s the #1. A bold move. Since reading the article, I’ve started hearing more and more about it. Finally, on a whim, we decided to check it out. To be clear, you don’t just waltz into Franklin’s and enjoy a plate of meat. They open at 11. My friend Scott was first in line today. He got there at 8:30 in the morning. We got there around 10 and had to wait about 2 hours before we made it to the front of the line. Franklin’s isn’t a quick (or cheap) lunch, it’s an adventure. They open at 11 and close when they run out of food. There is no other closing time. While you wait in line, a lady comes out and asks how much you plan to order. When she gets to the point that they know they won’t have enough, she tells everybody else in line to go home. This adventure took place on Christmas eve in the very chilly rain. Cara was a tropper…mostly. She was an angel the whole time, not screaming or throwing her little body around or trying desperately to get the lady behind us to end her 2 hour cell phone conversation. Yep. Perfect angel…and please don’t try to confirm that information with anybody at the restaurant today. When we got to the counter, the guy cutting the meat said “it looks like someone is hungry and needs a nibble!” He cut Cara a free slice of brisket and she set at it caveman style. That’s my girl.

Sorry for the fuzz. Cell phone picture. That’s my plate up front, and Sean’s 1.5 lbs of ribs and brisket in the back. Cara nibbled where she wanted but mostly just wanted the white bread. Fine with me – more meat for us! I couldn’t finish my plate. While it wasn’t a ton of food, it was the richest meat I’ve ever tasted. The ribs…well…I didn’t order any, but Sean was kind enough to share some and he’s lucky I didn’t punch him, steal the rest, and head to Mexico. The pulled pork was wonderful. I really get why Bordain is all pork crazy when I taste pork like that. It was sweet – actually sugary sweet. Not because it was cooked in sugar at all, it was cooked right and pork cooked correctly tastes sweet. It was an amazing meal and a fun adventure on a dreary Christmas eve.

Sean gives a rib-related action shot. The people you see in the window behind him were waiting in the line that stretches out the door and around the building. Those people probably waited a good 2-3 hours to get food.

Potties and Paints

tbraymen — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 23:00:03 +0000

Warning: much of this post is about bathroom habits. If you don’t like to read about toddler bathroom habits, feel free to move along.

So we are required by law, as parents, to have at least one potty shot to show future beaus and gentlemen callers when they come a’courting. To wit (somewhat censored):

So it’s potty time. Cara’s been really interested in the potty for a while. She uses it on a regular basis, knows when she needs to go, and frequently wakes up with a dry diaper. Since Sean and I will be home with her through the new year, we figured this was a good time to actually buckle down and actually work on potty stuff. I got her some pull-ups, put up a little sticker chart for when she goes, and figured we’d just see how things went. So far, they’re going gang busters. She’s only had one accident in the past 2 days, she had a dry diaper when she woke up this morning, and she’s done all her necessary business in the potty. This picture was taken after she had peed and she jumped up and said “book! book! POOP! Book!” Then she ran, bare-assed naked, through the house and got her hippo book. She ran back to the potty, gently opened the book to the page with the covered wagon on it, sat back down and said “book! POOP!” Then she pooped. Apparently the need for bathroom reading material starts very young.

If you’re wondering about her head – a run in with a teeter-totter is to blame for that gem of an injury. Hey, it happens. Today we went to Torchy’s for lunch. Torchy’s is situated directly next to a fire station. After we ate, we walked out to see the firemen doing work on the truck, lights flashing. We walked over to show Cara and ended up getting a tour of the whole thing. Cara got a badge as an honorary inspector detector. Then the very concerned fireman asked about the gash on her forehead. Mom of the year!!.

Finally, some non-potty stuff.

Those expressive brush strokes. The bold use of color. It’s deep, man. Deep. It’s about that struggle that lives in all of us. Good v. evil. Civil v. wild. It’s about man’s inhumanity to man. It’s about all that is beautiful and all that is ugly in a single stroke of the brush. It’s everything and nothing all at the same time. Brilliant. Simply brilliant.

Our Little Star Twinkles, Twinkles

tbraymen — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 02:36:08 +0000

Tonight was the Christmas pageant at Cara’s school. Every kid in the school was part of the play. The older kids portrayed the birth of Christ, complete with mooing cattle in the barn. It was hilarious, in an adorable way. It had everything you’d expect in a preschool Christmas pageant. Screaming kids, a kid yelling “Hi Mommy!!” in the middle of Mary and Joseph’s ride into Bethlehem, a kid who was clearly told to “sing out Louise” so he sang (screamed) the songs at the top of his lungs. It had it all. Including Cara. Cara’s class was in the choir and they sang two songs – Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Jingle Bells. I expected disaster, but Cara was happy and content. Of course. Why wouldn’t she be? She was at the front of a church with every eye in the place on her. It was the All Eyes on Cara campaign taken to the next level. There was just one little problem….

Every second of her first on-stage debut was spent with at least one of her fingers firmly planted up her nose. Yep. She’s a classy kid.

Pizza Night with Daddy

tbraymen — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 21:17:04 +0000

A couple weeks ago I got home from dance class to a dinner of homemade pizza. Sean told me that Cara had helped make it. Really. Not like she clung to his leg while he made it, she actually assisted in the creation of dinner. Since then we’ve been putting her to work in the kitchen on a regular basis. She loves it. Granted, it’s not the most efficient use of resources in the kitchen, but it’s fun. And since that fateful pizza night, every time she has seen the picture of a pizza slice in one of her books she points at it and asks “Daddy? Daddy? Pizza? Daddy?”

Yesterday pizza night rolled around again. Sean wasn’t home from work, so I decided to start dinner and see what the girl could do in the kitchen. I told her we were going to make pizza and she rolled her sleeves up and started rubbing her hands together saying “soap?” Good girl. Wash before cooking! I got the ingredients out, put her on the counter and started working. I rolled the dough out and put it in the pan. Cara patted every inch of the dough saying “pat pat pat” quietly to herself while she smacked it. I spread the sauce out just as Sean got home. Then he took over.

He held the cheese while she carefully sprinkled handfuls onto the pizza quietly saying “cheese cheese cheese” with every addition.

Test bites were taken. He gave her a package of pepperoni and she laid each piece out muttering “meat meat meat” to herself. He gave her olives and she shoved them into her mouth by the handful. She loves olives, we didn’t get to enjoy any olives on the pizza this time.

Friday Night Family Fun

tbraymen — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 04:16:46 +0000

Tonight we took a trip to the Domain to take Cara on a carriage ride. They’re free (tip the driver) every weekend for the month of December! Tip if you choose to go: go to Domain II and take the carriage there. There was absolutely no line! In Domain I there was a line that probably resulted in an hour or more wait, but NO LINE in Domain II! Cara is obsessed with anything that resembles a cow, and that includes horses. She saw the horse as we walked up and was instantly entranced. “COW!” she shouted joyfully. We climbed in the carriage and off we went.

A nice lady took this picture. Thanks nice lady.

Holy pumpkin coaches, Batman! This is a picture of a kid who is having the time of her life. As soon as the coach started moving, Cara started giggling. And she didn’t stop giggling until we had to get out of the coach at the end of the trip. Even the driver was cracking up at how much fun Cara was having. We got to learn about our new horsey friend (Jeb) and what he’s like. It was great! Maybe we’ll go back next weekend for a repeat. After the ride, we wandered down to the turtle where Cara took another little ride. Turtle is one of her favorite words right now.

I love this picture.

Dance Party

tbraymen — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 03:29:50 +0000

I’ve been trying to capture a picture of Cara in her hip scarf for a while, unsuccessfully. Whenever I put it on her, she gets so excited that she runs around like mad and all my pictures are fuzzy and of her back. Finally! Presenting Cara in the hip scarf that was given to her by Chris. I was practicing a dance for a show this evening and Cara decided to join in the fun. Sean grabbed the camera and this is what happened next.

Continuing to play…

tbraymen — Tue, 29 Nov 2011 18:04:24 +0000

No point to these pictures, just shots I liked from our new camera.

First picture ever taken with the new camera.

And the second. Oh, the angst.

Playing coy. To answer your question: black beans.

On a mission in the cloud jammies. The flash on this new camera is really strong, so it casts a shadow sometimes. I need to figure out how to avoid that.

Apparently Dana needed a nap. Cara took her blanket, doll, and book over and put Dana to bed. She tucked her doll in with her, read her a little book, then covered her up with the blanket. Then she patted her gently and said “Night night.” Dana didn’t really seem to appreciate the treatment as much as one would hope.

Chilling on the dock after feeding some ducks.

Kitty is surprisingly willing to sit for photographs. She’s shiny, no?