A Belated Birthday Tribute

So over a month later I'm paying tribute to my sweet Brady for his birthday!

6 years ago on August 23 2004, Brady Robert Brinkerhoff was born into our family. He arrived at a whopping 7 lbs 1 oz and surprised us right off the bat as we were 99.9% positive he was going to be a girl. When he popped out and the doctor flipped him over I was shocked to see he was a boy! Of course I was thrilled, since I didn't care either way if I had a boy or girl and little did we know at the time that Brady would continue to surprise us over the years!!!!

I knew right from the get go that Brady was a special little baby boy. In fact, the first night in the hospital I was holding him. He was awake and as I looked in his eyes I knew that he was a good one so I turned to TJ and told him! There was just something so wise in his deep dark eyes and there was a calmness in him (surprising right?) that I knew would be a blessing in our home. I was absolutely smitten with this little bundle from the moment I laid eyes on him!

Brady was a PERFECT baby. He ate well, slept well and would only cry when he was sleepy and during that 'witching hour' in the late afternoon, early evening. In fact one night TJ was taking Jackson to soccer practice so I decided I'd head out to the grocery store with Brady and Natalie. I figured he would just sleep in his bucket (baby carrier) but oh boy was I wrong! About 3/4 of the way through my shopping trip he started to wail! He would only stop crying if I was holding his bucket and that was rather difficult, as you can well imagine, seeing that I was trying to push a grocery cart, keep track of Natalie and hold a fussy baby in his carrier. Well I powered through as fast as I could and made it home. Thankfully I was able to find the humor in the situation and was telling some friends about it the next day. They suggested I get a baby bjorn to tote him around in and as it turned out one of my friends had one that she gave to me. From that day on I would strap Brady on to me during his fussy time of day. It solved the problem and made those 2 hours in the evening easy to deal with!

When Brady turned 2 we decided he needed to get rid of his soos. I thought he would have a terrible time with the loss, but he surprised us again and didn't skip a beat! When he was 2 1/2 I decided it was time to potty train him. Since he hardly spoke I figured he wasn't ready but I wanted to give it a whirl. I fully expected to have to attempt several times before he learned but he had #1 down in about 4 hours! He seriously had 7 accidents in the morning and by the afternoon he had the whole thing figured out and never had a pee pee accident again! Another surprise! It was then I realized that Brady was really very smart! And that has not changed!

Over the last few years we've realized that Brady is our kid who marches to the beat of his own drum. He is his own little dude and that quality is one of the things I love most about him!

He is wicked smart, creative, imaginative, energetic, loving, playful, and silly. He loves to build things, fix things, and take things apart just to put them back together again. He wants to know how things work or why something isn't working. Then he wants to figure out how to make the broken thing work again. This summer the DVD player in our car broke. TJ was fixing it and Brady sat to assist TJ and watched every thing he did. He even suggested some things TJ could do to make it work again!

Brady has so much energy and is, for lack of a better term, exhausting, but to know him is to love him! He lights up my life, blesses our home and brings joy to everyone who is lucky enough to know him. He truly is unique and I feel so blessed to have him as my son! 6 years later I'm still smitten with him and oh how it hurts my heart that he is getting so big so fast. But the world is his oyster, and at the risk of wishing time away, I look forward to seeing who and what Brady becomes! I love you Brady! Happy 6th Birthday!