Is it spring yet???

Man, am I ever sick of winter! I cannot wait for all this snow to be gone and for it to be warm enough to play outside with Brooklyn, go on walks, go to the park, etc. I get excited just thinking about it! Hopefully spring will bring health! Brooklyn had an awful cold/cough for about a week before it turned into ear infection. Her ear drum actually ruptured. Poor girl! She also had a sore throat/swollen glands so she was put on an antibiotic and a cough syrup with codeine. Since we have been on about every kind of antibiotic and Brooklyn has reacted to quite a few of them, she is on a sulfa antibiotic now that is like thick chalk. The pharmacist couldn't flavor it b/c it lessens its effectiveness so it is a full-fledged wrestling match to get her to take her medicine twice a day. The doctor switched her allergy med too so we will see how that goes. It's a lot cheaper than the one she was on before, but she doesn't take this one very well (it's a liquid where her old one was a powder we would mix with applesauce). She is finally getting back into the habit of sleeping through the night again but is up every day by 5:30. SO EARLY! Sometimes by the time I get to school I am already exhausted. I am hoping that daylight savings will help her sleep until 6:30. That would be awesome!

Other than that, not much else is new. Both of our jobs are going well. We stay quite busy with school and church. Eric is a deacon and we are also youth group leaders. Every other spare moment we have we stay home and sleep. I know, we are such losers. There are many weekend nights where all three of us are in bed by 8:30. LOL...we are dorks!

I haven't taken many pictures lately because the minute I haul out the camera, Brooklyn is in my face trying to grab it out of my hands which usually results in pictures of her arms or fingers.

She loves playing piano. Playing piano while climbing on Dad is even more fun!

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Addie and Brooklyn eating cookies at Grandma's house.

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Dalton and Brooklyn

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Going up and down the stairs is her new favorite activity. Last week Saturday she went up and down our stairs 19 times in a row (yes, I counted!). Maybe she'll start losing some weight now! :)

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and reading books...another one of her favorite things!

Have a good week!

Back in the swing of things

After all the Christmas business, things are finally back to normal again. Brooklyn had another ear infection the beginning of January. A few days later she had her appointment with the ENT in Sioux Falls. We had been anxiously waiting for this appointment to see if Brooklyn needed tubes or not to help with all her ear infections (she's had 6 in the last 9 months). The ENT told us that tubes, in her case, will not be beneficial. He said 9 out of 10 kids have pain from ear infections because of the fluid on their eardrum. Even though she had an ear infection at her appointment, the Dr. could see little to no fluid which even if she didn't have an infection, was unusual. So, she is the 1 out of 10 that suffers from a pulsating ear drum and tubes will not help with that. He also agreed that her infections are probably due in part to allergies so we are keeping her on the Singulair for now and in the future, he suggested adding Claritin also. We are not having her tested for what allergies she has because a) it's a lot of money insurance doesn't pay for and b) at her age the treatment is the same regardless of the allergy. The Singulair has helped clear out some of the mucous in her sinuses/throat....she doesn't sound like a percolating coffee pot anymore when she breathes :)

She is also sleeping better at nights. Not sure if this is due to the allergy medicine or the fact that she is a year old and should have been sleeping through the night a long time ago! She still has her nights where she gets up 3 times (I think b/c of her cold or her molars or a bad dream) but they are becoming fewer and farther between. Some nights when she does sleep through I find myself awake at 2:30, 3:45, etc. just because my body is so used to that. I am not going to complain though as long as I don't have to get out of my warm bed to calm a crying baby :)

She still eats like a champ. Some days she eats the same portion size as I do. It amazes me how much the girl can eat. She loves about any and every food. A few of her favorites are bananas, any kind of noodle/meat hotdish, yogurt, raisins, and oatmeal. She is on whole milk now too. For the first 2 weeks I had to mix half soy milk and half whole milk to see if she still had a milk allergy but now she is on all whole milk and doing fine. She is getting weaned from her bottles which she really doesn't mind too much. She doesn't really care how she gets her food, just as long as she gets it! :)

She is not walking yet. Today I found her standing in the middle of the living room for about 10 seconds and then she drops to the floor. She cruises along furniture without a problem but doesn't seem too interested in walking by herself. I guess I can't blame her....she can speed crawl to about anywhere in the house in a few seconds. I am constantly looking for her b/c I literally will set her down, go get the phone, and then come back to an empty room. She is into everything too. She can unload any drawer, cupboard, purse, diaper bag, etc. in no time. I am realizing my house is no longer going to be "picked up." While I am cleaning one room, she is destroying another :)

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Brooklyn is quite the talker (hmmm...wonder where she gets that from???). Just recently she started having a gibberish conversation with herself or on her play cell phone. It's so funny to listen to! Her favorite word by far is "Emma." She is madly in love with her cousin Emma. She crawls to our fridge, points to Emma's picture, says "Emma! Emma!" and then blows her a kiss. She also says "all done", "hi", "uh oh", "momma", "dada". "papa", and "owww" (out). We have been working with her to say Addie and today she did repeat it once but I think it was by mistake.

She recently has been a pill in the car....usually crying most of the trip, trying to squirm and arch her way out of her buckles. My morning drive to Hills is no longer a peaceful start to my day. No long car trips in our future...that is for sure!

I will leave you with a few pictures of Brooklyn. Have a great week!

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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!