MERRY CHRISTMAS (and happy New Year!)

Merry Christmas! Well, since it's New Year's Eve I should probably be wishing you a happy New Year instead. We had a great Christmas this year--the snow storm did put a damper on most of our plans. We missed out on some of our Christmas parties which was sad, but there was nothing we could do about it. I got a lot of cleaning and organizing done those 3 days we were snowed in :)

Brooklyn continues to make us laugh. She is saying more words now, doing all sorts of hilarious facial expression, imitating sounds and actions, dancing anytime music comes on, etc. She is not walking yet but getting closer. She will walk along furniture or with the help of your hand, but instantly sits down when she realizes she's standing by herself. She had her 1 year check up this past week and everything looked great. She got 5 shots and was NOT a fan of that! She continues to eat very, very, very well (as you can tell by her cheeks :) Last night my Mom got her a happy meal and she ate 3 of the 4 chicken nuggets, close to half her fries, and drank all of her water in her sippy. Sometimes (okay, most of the time) she amazes me at how much she can eat. She is not a picky eater which is so nice. We are transitioning her from soy milk to whole milk and so far it is going okay. I am sooooo excited to not have to buy any more $14 cans of soy formula!!!!

Here are a few pictures of Christmas. I have more on my camera that I need to upload but can't find the cord to do so right now. We hope you had a wonderful Christmas celebrating the birth of our Savior!
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Opening her first Christmas gift

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This is her new smile...real cute, huh!

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This was my attempt to get a good picture of Brooklyn in her Christmas dress. She wasn't so cooperative...

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And yes, there is that LOVELY smile again :)

Happy 1st Birthday Brooklyn!

Brooklyn celebrated her first birthday on the 22nd. It's hard to believe she is already a year old. Time sure does fly! We had a fun night celebrating with family.
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Here's the birthday girl!

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Mmmmm...frosting :)

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Hanging out with Daddy

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I'm SO BIG now that I am 1!

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I have been trying for months to get a picture of these 4 where
they are all looking at the camera and smiling...NEVER going to
happen! This is as good as it gets!
Emma, Addison, Brooklyn, and Jazilyn

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"It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..."
This was the beginning of the meltdown...

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At home eating a piece of cake. I was waiting for her to dig

in and make this huge mess, but she never did. She took about

two bites of frosting and said, "all un" (all done). Not sure if she

didn't like my baking or if she is a neat freak like me and couldn't

handle the thought of being so messy :)

Hope you had a happy first birthday Brooklyn. We love you!

A few of my favorite things...

We hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving!! We had a fun time relaxing and enjoying time with family. We all have colds over here so we have been spending most of our time resting. I did however brave the Black Friday crowds and go shopping with my Mom at 3:30 Friday morning. I figured I am getting up every morning between 3:30-4:00 with Brooklyn so this wouldn't be much different. We ended up getting a lot of good bargains and most of my Christmas shopping is done :)

Anyway, on to Brooklyn. She is in to EVERYTHING!!! Why are parents excited when their children start crawling/walking by furniture? I turn my back for 1 minute and she literally can destroy the whole room, eat some remnant of something off of the floor that she shouldn't be eating, get into the DVD player and DVD's, empty out an entire cupboard, and then crawl away somewhere where I can't find her. I miss the days of setting her down in the room with some toys around her and walking away knowing she would be right there when I came back. Now every door has to be closed, the baby gate up, every shoe put away, etc. I feel like I am chasing her around most of the day...oh, but it is fun though :)

Here's some of Brooklyn's favorite things to do:

Unload any and every diaper bag, purse, backpack, grocery bag, etc. that she can find. She will not stop until every single item is taken out.


She also does the same thing with her toy basket. She will throw things out of it and the living room will look like this in 2 minutes.


Another favorite thing Brooklyn likes to do is giggle. She giggles so easily and sometimes over the most random things it is hilarious. Here is Brooklyn having fun with a Pringles can.

Sorry for the lack of pictures. I haven't taken any good ones recently so these will have to do!

Family pictures attempt

Hello everyone! It's been awhile since I have blogged because life has been busy. Brooklyn had another ear infection last week and then had a bad reaction to the antibiotic that she was one so we had one crabby, crabby baby for a week. I don't think we slept more than 4 hours a night for that week. It was a L O N G struggle to get through. Now, I think we are on the mend....until next week when she will probably catch some other bug and be sick again. I swear the kid was born with half an immune system. Whenever the doctor says, "Well, there's a 1% chance that..." it seems like Brooklyn always falls into that category and gets anything/everything possible. It's frustrating!!!

A few Sundays ago it was such a beautiful day we decided to go up to my folks and try take family pictures. Oh boy....was that ever a chore with 5 children under the age of 7!!! You can see below how well it went :)

So Addie and Brooklyn didn't want to look at the camera...

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so we thought we would try a leaf pile instead...Brooklyn did NOT like this idea!

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Now all the grandkids together. Addie and Brooklyn were

not too sure about this...

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Melting down...

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Nope, not going to happen!!!

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So then we were going to try get a good picture with the 3 of us and

Brooklyn decided to totally cheese out the remainder of our photo

shoot. No, this is not going to be our Christmas card (although I do laugh

every time I look at it!). We might have gotten one good one we might

be able to use.

Pictures were sure less of a chore before Brooklyn came along. I think we were all sweating by the time it was done and no successful grandchildren picture was captured. I guess that's the way it goes! Have a good week!

I finally have time to update our blog again. Two weeks ago Brooklyn had another ear infection. The next ear infection she will have tubes put in :( It is her fourth or fifth ear infection since April so I guess enough is enough.

One of the moms of my students was willing to watch Brooklyn this past Tuesday since our daycare provider was out for a week because she was really sick (we hope you get better soon Carrie!). When I got to their house after school I found out that Brooklyn had thrown up (sorry Kristi!). She threw up two more times once we got home and so Eric stayed home with her Wednesday and thankfully she did make a speedy recovery. Yesterday Eric came home from work with the stomach flu so he was home today sick but is feeling much better now. Thankfully it was only a 24 hour bug for both of them. UGH! I HATE sickness and winter hasn't even started yet!!!!

Besides that things have been going good. Brooklyn has been doing much better at nights. She is basically sleeping through the night (if she isn't sick). She still is an early riser but as long as she is sleeping consistently at night, I am not going to complain!

We have nothing up this weekend which is wonderful. Tomorrow is supposed to be nice so we hope to get a lot of yard work done and get the garage cleaned out and stuff put away for winter. I'll leave you with a few pictures. I have a couple of cute videos of Brooklyn but am not going to post them now since they take awhile to upload and I want to go to bed! Have a great weekend!
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Check out those big blue eyes

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Practicing her "So big!"

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Here we are visiting Grandma Buys at her new assisted living place.

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This is what Brooklyn does when Dad and Mom have work outside they need to get done. The other day it was nice out and she sat and watched us like this for an hour and a half! We were very happy she held out for that long!

Life

Life has been busy but normal around here lately. Our nice warm weather is ending and fall is here :( So much for all of our outdoor activities we have been doing lately. This past Saturday was beautiful so I took Brooklyn to the Tri-State band parade in the morning and then we went to the park with Grandma Marilyn and Papa Harley, Emma, and Addison, and then went fishing at night. Brooklyn loves days where there is a lot going on!! This week is a short week for me at school but unfortunately I have the Heartland Teacher's Convention at Dordt on Thursday and Friday. I used to look forward to these meetings, but now that I have Brooklyn I would much rather spend the day at home with her :) She is such a goofball lately. I get such a kick out of watching her. Tonight my mom stopped by and it is so funny to see Brooklyn interact with her. It puts a smile on my face :) Now, on to the pictures...


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Fishing again--this time off of the dock

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Not too smiley today...

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So everyone thinks I look just like my cousin Addie. What do you think? (I know...my cheeks are WAY fatter...just look past that!)

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Here's a video of Brooklyn being herself :)

Gone fishin'

So Brooklyn found a new hobby this week--fishing!!! Last night we took her fishing and for an entire hour she sat holding a fishing pole, staring at the water without making a single sound. It was the cutest thing ever! The minute Eric or I would try help her hold the pole or grab it to reel in the line, she would grunt and pull it away from us. Too bad we waited until mid-September to discover this new love. Here's a few pictures of our night.

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A truly beautiful sunset. What an awesome God we have!

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My favorite...so cute!!!!

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Another one of my hobbies....watching the Twins with Dad :)

We are back in the routine of school and things are going well. The first 2 weeks were an adjustment for all of us (including my students), but this week it finally seems like we are in a "normal" routine. Brooklyn has been sleeping through the night this week which is AMAZING!!! She still gets up every day between 5:00-6:00 which is a little early for me, but as long as we are not up with her a lot during the night, I am not going to complain. We have tried pushing her bedtime back an hour, in hopes that she would sleep a little longer in the morning, but that doesn't work. It usually results in her having a meltdown for that hour we are trying to hold her off and then she still gets up at the same time the next morning. She occasionally will still wake up during the night, but usually we just put her pacifier back in and put her blanket by her face and she will fall back asleep. The last 2 nights we didn't even have to do that so we are hoping this trend continues!!

Other than that, we haven't had much going on. We have been having beautiful weather so we have been spending a lot of time outdoors going on bike rides, walks, and playing in the park. I just love this weather!!! I don't have any fun or exciting pictures to post so these will have to do for now.

Brooklyn and her big fat cheekers (with a little sweet potato residue....this is what she looks like after Dad feeds her :)


Contrary to what it may seem in this picture, Brooklyn actually does love going to the park!

Have a great rest of the week!

Here we go again!!

Tomorrow I start school. The beginning and ending of each school year is always bitter sweet. I am excited in some ways, yet nervous and anxious too. This year is going to be extra tough because I will have to leave Brooklyn each day (and be out of the house at 7:00 a.m. fully functioning on little sleep!!!). I know she is receiving awesome care while I am at school, but after being home with her every day all summer, it will be an adjustment for both of us!!!

We all have been sick here. Eric first had a bad head cold/sore throat. The next week Brooklyn got a bad cold and after a few days developed ear infection. Three days after that I went in and had a sinus infection. No fun!!!! I am hoping we are on the mends here and that the sickness doesn't continue on and on like it did during the school year last year. I guess that is one of the joys of being a teacher--you are exposed to a lot of crud each day! Hand sanitizer has become my new best friend.

We haven't really done anything fun lately so I'll share a few pictures of everyday life.

Brooklyn enjoying her duck tub that we got from her cousin. The first few baths she screamed because she was deathly afraid of the thing--especially when it quacked (you need to pinch its beak)! Now she loves it!!

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Daddy getting me out of the tub.

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Brooklyn cheesin' out

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Her first corn on the cob experience

Sorry these videos are so dark. Our digital camera isn't exactly high quality :)

Uneventful

Uneventful...that basically sums up our life right now. Last week Eric was gone on a fishing trip to Pierre so Brooklyn and I spent a lot of time outside going on walks, swinging at the park, and swimming in her little pool. I am going to miss doing this stuff during the day with her when I go back to school. I love spending so much time with her!!!! Brooklyn has been doing absolutely wonderful lately. Two weeks ago I took her back in because she was projectile vomiting after each feeding and I was sick of scrubbing my carpet 5+ times a day (and all the blankets, bibs, spit rags, shirts, etc. and everything else that got hit). We would sit her on blankets or towels on the floor and somehow she still would manage to get our carpet! The doctor put her on Zantac again and the combination of that and the soy formula has done the trick (when she was on Zantac at 4 weeks old, she was still on milk-based formula and not soy). After her third dose of the medicine she slept from 9:00 p.m. until 4:30 a.m. straight!!!!! She has basically done this now every night since then and sometimes even makes it until 6:00 a.m.!!!! It is wonderful to get a large amount of interrupted sleep again...it had been WAY too long! She is also napping more during the day. She is so happy and makes us laugh non-stop. She is at such a fun age and it is so neat to see her develop/change each week. Here's some pictures for you to enjoy!

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She likes to cock her head to the side now....hmmm, is this an Auntie Shelly trait?? :)

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Swimming in my pool...

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Just lounging in Dad's chair...

As you can see in the pictures by her many rolls, Brooklyn loves to eat. Awhile back I was unloading the dishwasher and Brooklyn was in her saucer watching me. As I took some of her baby spoons out of the dishwasher she started to shake and get all excited. I put the spoons in the drawer and she started crying. I took one back out and showed it to her and immediately she stopped crying and started to pant and get all excited. It was hilarious!!! Here is a video showing you how excited she gets when she sees food. I wish you could hear her panting in the video. Watch her arms and legs go though...she gets the shakes!!! ;)