McDaniel Family Journal

Dear Brighton,

Last week you turned 3! We can’t believe it. Where has the time gone? Where is my little baby that never crawled, was a pro at using baby sign language, had pudgy cheeks, and was shy around anyone but us? I’ll tell you. He’s that 3 year old running faster than the adults can catch him, speaking better than most pre-schoolers, slimming down by the week because he grows like a weed, and walking up to people, shaking their hand, and saying “Hi! My name is Thomas Brighton McDaniel”.

Not to get too mushy on you, but I am so very proud of the little boy you have become. You are intelligent, confident, caring, strong-willed, opinionated, thoughtful, empathetic, and just an overall joy to be around. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to express how much I love you and how much you mean to me. It’s not something that I can put into words. I miss you when you’re asleep. I can’t wait to see you after work. I look forward to taking you places on the weekend. You are this really cool little person that says the funniest things, makes the most adorable faces, and holds very interesting conversations. I love you!

As for growing and learning new things, you do this everyday. I can never stress enough how well you speak, and how complete your sentences and sentence structure is. You are also doing very well at counting items, and memorizing your books. The other night you and Daddy were reading this book where they have you count things and you counted the 7 things they had on the page, and he asked “Can you count those in Spanish?”, and you replied “Sure…uno, dos, tres…” It was great!

Daddy has also taught you to swim really well. He has done such a wonderful job with you. You put on your floaties and you head for the deep end. No fear, no trepidation. You can also do pretty well without those on, but you prefer with since it’s a little easier. It’s definitely amazing watching you grow and learn all this new stuff.

Last weekend we had your 3rd birthday party. The last two years we’ve held it at our house, poolside, but this year, will me being 6 ½ months pregnant we figured it might be more fun for you and less cleaning for us if we had it at this place call “Sliderz”. It’s the large building with every large inflatable slide and bounce house known to man. You had a ton of classmates show up, family, friends…about 35 people. It was great, and you had a BLAST! After all of the jumping fun we had pizza and cake in a separate party room where you got to sit at the head of the table in a throne-type of chair. It was very cute. We did everything in a Backyardigans theme, down to the cake and 3-foot-tall balloons of Uniqua and Pablo 😉 You had a great time and spent the majority of the time flirting with the 6-8 year old girls who sat next to you and thought you were the cutest thing they’d ever seen 🙂

You got a ridiculous amount of presents that have taken you a week now to open. You’ll open one thing, play with it, then a few hours later open something else. It’s very cute. Grandpa Dan mailed you some money and a police car, complete with lights and sound, and Grandma Pat also mailed you some spending cash.

In other news, we are now in the home-stretch of this pregnancy and Baby Benjamin will be here in 12 short weeks. We have been trying to prepare you as much as possible, but who knows how you’ll take it when he gets here 😉 I’ve been getting you to talk to him sometimes and you tell him about your new cars. When you do he kicks like crazy. He really responds to your voice. You and Daddy really get him amped up.

Since we are so close, we’ve also been trying to get things together. I need to organize your room to fit him in, and last week, I finally bought a new car 😉 I needed something bigger so you boys would have more room, so I bought a 2009 Kia Sportage. It’s awesome. Brown with tan interior, I can hook my iPod into the radio, and you love it. I’m excited. The Corolla was 9 years old, so it was definitely time for a change.

That’s about it for now.
I love you, Baby…Happy 3rd Birthday!

Love,
Mommy

Filed under: It's all about Brighton, What Brighton is up to now on June 18th, 2009