Photos of Berc at 6 mos

Well I saved some money with Berc's 6 month pictures by taking them myself in my neighbors basement. I know it sounds crazy but they actually turned out pretty decent. Good enough to print and put up on the wall at least :) Hope you enjoy the pics...

So this one is obviously not in a basement. It's the next best spot

for pictures....the tree in the backyard :)

I just love his expression in this pic.

He truly is a happy little baby...

His big boy pose....

Protective Brother

Torin and Vaughn definitely have their differences. I personally have come to the conculsion that besides looking like brothers that these two children have nothing else in common. From the day that they were born they have been different.

Initially, Torin was in love with Vaughn. Everything about him was "cute". As Vaughn got a little older Torin would test the boundries of roughness with his brother. Come to find out that Vaughn was one tough cookie. As the years have progressed there have been more fights with one another than there has been loving moments.

However, no matter what comes between these two Torin will always be concerned and protect his younger brother. Last Saturday Torin had baseball practice so Vaughn, Berc, Bjorn and I went over to our friends Amy and Ben's to have Vaughn try out a tag-along bike. The kind that is attached to the adults bike, sort of a tandem but smaller for a child. I wanted to purchase one but wanted to have test it out first to make sure it would be worth it. Vaughn did great and loved every second of it.

We bought the bike from Amy and Ben and of course the next day Vaughn wanted to go on a family bike ride. Torin on the other hand was not really sure about Vaughn doing this. He told him "Vaughn I know that you did this yesterday but I didn't see it and well I'm just sort of nervous for you to ride it. I mean, if you fall off it's really going to hurt you." Torin studied the bike over and you could just tell that he was thinking whether or not his little brother should do this. Vaughn got on the bike and we headed off. Torin was amazed and shouted to Vaughn "WOW, Vaughn you are really doing it. I'm so impressed with you. Good job Vaughn. Mom I was just so nervous for him."

I told Torin that no matter what their differences are in life that he is always going to love Vaughn and look out for him. Torin agreed saying "Yeah, sometimes I fight with him when he takes my toys or hits me but I am just nervous about him getting hurt. Like when we were in Florida and he kept going so close to the edge of the pier. I was so afraid that he was going to fall in that I could hardly look at him."

The tenderness that Torin has for his brother is pretty cute for only being 6 years old. Don't get me wrong Torin will give Vaughn a good punch or kick from time to time but he will always look out for his little brother.

ATTENTION: MOVING BABY

It's official the little man is crawling. At about 6 1/2 months it started with the army crawl and was quickly replaced with what we termed the butterfly move. He would get his body up so that his arms were straight and throw himself forward. Seriously, he can move pretty fast doing this. The last few days the knees and hands have connected and he is non stop moving. All of sudden we are finding ourselves saying over and over again "Bercan, no, no.." As he is going toward a cord, stereo equipment or whatever it is that he shouldn't be by.

His other cute move is that he does the downward dog yoga move. He will have completely straight arms, butt in the air and legs slightly bent...I'm working on him getting them straight :) I know this is only the beginning and am praying that he is not like his father walking at 9 months. It's just not something that I have the energy for right now :)

Concerned Heart

We do not watch the news with the kids and rarely do we talk about the bad news that occurs with the kids. Maybe it's a way of sheltering them from the sinful world that we live in but some of it is just not appropriate for their age. I'm not sure where Torin heard about the Maplewood Police Officer being gunned down last week but he definitely knew about it.

He was talking to Bjorn about it the other day and asked if his soon to be Uncle could ever be shot like that. His soon to be Uncle is in law enforecment. Bjorn tried calming Torin in saying that he really didn't think that it would happen to him or that is was less likely to happen to him. Obviously, this really didn't calm Torin as his reply was "Dad, do you have Dion's work phone number? We need to call him at work and talk to him." We haven't done this yet but it was interesting to see just how concerned that Torin is about the people that he loves.

Auntie Cole is engaged!!!

We are all excited that our Auntie Cole got engaged to our soon to be Uncle Dion but really Torin is the MOST excited. I don't think that I have ever seen him this excited about something. Don't get me wrong Florida was pretty exciting but the way that he talks about Dion is just something that is special. When he talked to Auntie Cole on the phone he wished her congrats on the news as he is super excited to finally have Dion as an Uncle.

He told Bjorn and I that it was really weird because whenever he talked about Dion to his friends at school he always called him Uncle Dion, and now he was really going to be his Uncle. Literally, any time that he talks about it he just grins from ear to ear about it.

He also had some suggestions for Auntie Cole on how he could help out and what he was going to wear. He thought the colors should be black, white and red. He thought a red bow tie would be good. Not sure where he gets this stuff from but it's quite funny. Just the other day he was telling Nana about the red bow tie that he was going to wear for the wedding. She informed him that it didn't fit into the color scheme of the wedding. I don't think that he was very satisfied with that reply :)

Marketers dream

Torin can always impress us by how he will remember the details of any commercial that he sees or really anything that he hears. It's really quite canny the amount of information that kid can recite back to you. However, Vaughn has REALLY surprising us with the logos that he remembers. Any restaurant that we have ever been too he will shout at when seen from an ad on a bus, billboard, newspaper, really anywhere.

The other day the boys and I were driving home and I had the book "Parenting with Love and Logic". It's a book that I bought from church when we took a class about it. Vaughn picks it up and says "Mommy, this book from church, right?". "Yes Vaughn, it is. How did you know that?" With a very wide grin I get the reply "Because I'm smart Mommy, that how!". He opens the books and begins to "read" it. "God is happy when you don't sin. You sin when you throw your toys at your friends. That a sin. That make God sad." Turns to the next page "You shouldn't throw toys at your friends, that's bad. You get from far God when you sin so don't sin."

I'm in the front of course thinking it's the cutest thing in the world and wishing that I had a video camera to capture it. He is one smart little boy, isn't he :)

Bercan's Words

About two weeks ago Torin can rushing into our room...."Mom, Dad...you know Bercan...he has all the words in his head...he knows them...he just can't get them all out....but he just said....haaallllloooo. Really, he did! He's talking...it's amazing!" A few mornings ago we were welcomed with both Torin and Berc in our room with Torin trying to get him to repeat "I want that!". He was convinced that Berc had said that to him when they were in his room playing. It's really cute the way that Torin interacts with him and how he is trying to teach him to get all the words that are in his head to verbalized :)