I dee doo...

Yesterday I said "I love you" to Brooklynn and she responded with "I dee doo" which translated in my opinion is her first "I love you".

MegaBlocks

Brooklynn loves her MegaBlocks. (Which are the toddler version of "Legos" for those of you who don't know.)

She also is quite the smiler these days, totally cheesing it out when I tell her to smile. What a cutie.

Gender Predictor Tests

Wow, all three of these tests say I'm having a boy. We'll see if they're right! Last time with Brooke they were like half and half.

67% chance of a boy

33% chance of a girl

Congratulations!

The old wives tales indicate that you are having a boy!

Chinese fertility calender:

Congratulations! It's a boy!

According to the Chinese fertility calendar, you're expecting a son. Time to brush up on those baby boy names.

Based on your age, you have a 50% chance of having a boy.Want a second opinion? Try our other gender prediction quizzes on Parents.com.

Parents.com quiz:

Congratulations! It's a boy!

Congratulations on your pregnancy!

Based on your answers, we predict that you'll have a baby boy!

Bye Bye, Brooklynn!

Brooklynn started hiding in her book cabinet the other day. I think she was trying to hide from the camera to tell me that she was done but then she ended up liking this game way more. So fun.

Publish Post

Fun at the Farm

I've been trying to get Brooklynn's animal noises on video for a while now...it's not going so well. I decided to take her to the farm to get her pumped up and maybe that would help. She kinda had fun, we had more fun last time we went, I think she was really tired and just not in the mood. But when we left she was VERY upset with me, so I think she really did have fun. Here are a few pictures from our time.

I was confused with the above video why Brooke's response to "what a pig says" was...but then when I watched the pigs I think she was just trying to imitate them.

13 Week Appointment at the Birth Center

So yesterday I went in for my second appointment. I had Gazelle who was with me about half the time when I gave birth to Brooklynn. It was fun to see her again. Josh met Brooklynn and I there after last time (which did NOT go so well.) Josh agreed that she is out of control and DID NOT LIKE when they felt my belly and tried to hear the heartbeat. She cried and cried. I did notice a difference having Josh there, though.

We did NOT get to hear the heartbeat. :( She tried for a while with the regular Doppler and then switched to her "early Doppler" which they did when Brooklynn was so tiny. (And it worked with her.)

Then she got out the ultrasound machine and we SAW the heartbeat which is good. We also got to see baby Smash swimming around and being all feisty. Hopefully next time we will get to hear it. So everything was fine. I was starting to get a little worried. She said it is rare to not hear it at 13 weeks but not completely off. She was encouraged that we got to see it and she could tell it looked nice and fast like they're supposed to be.

Harmonica!

Brooklynn is having a lot of fun with her harmonica. She's getting pretty good, actually.

New Game

Brooke has been playing "shoes" constantly. She loves it. I've realized that most of them don't even fit anymore. Brooklynn has the hardest feet ever to fit into shoes, I think we'll have to get them specially made, eventually. :(

They're LONG, SKINNY, and she has really HIGH arches. Impossible.

But she sure likes to pretend to put them on and off, trying on every single shoe over and over.

Fun with Levi

We got to babysit Levi the other night. He did great! We had so much fun playing and remembering what life with a 9-month-old is like.

Brooklynn loved having him there, too, although she did get a bit jealous. She was FURIOUS when we wouldn't let her have any of his puffs. (Which is mostly because she didn't eat any of her own dinner.) Overall they had a lot of fun playing together. Brooklynn LOVES Levi.

Computer Geek

That is my daughter, Brooklynn. Constantly attached to the computer. She loves to watch videos. If they're of any of her cousins or other babies she recognizes she tries to kiss them on the monitor. What a little sweetie. I don't mind if she watches videos because I feel like she gets to see people regularly that way. She LOVES it. First thing in the morning (or anytime, really) she climbs right on up on the chair like she's trying to say, "OK, I'm READY for my videos!" Sometimes I put it on a playlist and just let her watch several and other times we sit with her and snuggle. I love both. Brooklynn loves it more. It's hard to get her to do anything else these days.

"new" desk

I finally brought Brookynn's desk up from the storage room. She has been coloring more and more and I thought it was time. I was pretty nervous before that she would somehow hurt herself by climbing on it, but now even though she'll probably climb on top of it soon she won't get too hurt. SHE LOVES IT. She sits there all the time. I even let her try out some markers. The paper I put in front of her hardly had any marker on it but the desk, chair and her all had plenty of marker all over it. Good thing I only have washable markers in there. I still have to weed out all the craft stuff that she could actually do from the stuff that is way too advanced (like glitter, etc.) and bring that up. For now it will mostly be coloring. She is having so much fun.

Busted!

Today we were cleaning and I noticed that Brooklynn's "library book bucket" was empty so I had had her fill it up with some of her own books. I stayed in her room and made the bed, put away her clothes, and a few other things and she took off with her bucket. When I came out I "caught" her reading. I had set them right next to this piano bench and she just made herself at home right there and started reading them all. It was funny because it looked like she was trying to hide from me like she was doing something naughty. Then after I took this picture she drug them over to the couch and plopped up on there to read. (the cushions are weird because I was vacuuming earlier and hadn't fixed the couch yet.) What a silly girl.

Oh Yeah, I'm Still Pregnant...Almost Forgot!

9-13 weeks:

I haven't remembered to take any pregnancy pictures...mostly because I keep forgetting that I'm even pregnant, but also because it's been around 90 degrees and most days I barely feel like even showering or really putting much on besides sweat pants so when I think to take a picture I do NOT want to capture the mess that is currently me forever on film.

A quick update, around 10 or 11 weeks I stopped feeling nauseous completely, so much that I felt GREAT and figured I was already in my second trimester, which made me a little nervous that I was a few weeks more pregnant than I thought.

My ultrasound confirmed that I was, in fact, 13 weeks. They also said that my due date is ACTUALLY January 25, but I like that January 29 is a little later and if I get it stuck in my head that it is later, I won't be so annoyed when I go even past my due date. If I go earlier I'll just be excited. So I'm still going to say my due date is January 29th. The Birth Center was closer with Brooklynn, so I'm trusting them.

In case you're interested in reading about my pregnancy with Brooklynn, here are the following posts: 10 weeks, 11 weeks, 12 weeks

Doll Babies

Brooklynn has really taken a liking to playing Mommy to her "babies". It is so cute, she sways them back and forth, gouges their eyes out (eek) lays them down to go "ni ni" and hands each one to me for a turn. So fun to watch. I think she is practicing being a big sister.

She has named at least one of them, or maybe all of them "Meme" and wanted to take her nap with Baba AND Meme yesterday.

A Visit with the Murrays

Today the Murrays came over for a visit. They moved to California in (November?) and are back for a visit to take the girls to camp. It was SO good to see them and Brooke was running around showing off the entire time. I think she liked the attention JUST a little bit. We really miss them and now we were going to have to figure out a visit to them. Thanks for coming over!

18 Months Old

Happy 18-month birthday to my Brooklynn!

Her latest antics:

• She has mastered the "kiss pucker" and uses it as often as she can. ;)
• Climbing on anything and everything. If you sit on the floor she sometimes climbs up to your head. She is a complete monkey.
• She says more words all the time, and when it comes out she looks at you like, "what, I say this all the time, you just don't hear me." And then if you repeat it b/c you understood she can't help but change that expression into shear joy.
• Her newest words: eye, nose, ear, mouth, banana, baby...and she continues to say a whole bunch of other words. I can't even keep track anymore.
• Throwing tantrums several times a day. For no particular reason. I think she is just practicing for something to do.
• She takes 3-4 hour naps and has been sleeping like12-13 hours at night. She is such a power-sleeper, I love it. It has been so nice for me with this pregnancy before we start over with up half the night.
• She LOVES people and will go up to everyone and say "hi". But if they try and say "hi" to her first, she gets REALLY shy and won't even crack a smile. It's hilarious.
• Her new favorite movie is "Babe" and makes animal noises the entire time. At the end where the crowd is cheering she goes absolutely crazy. Even jumps up and down clapping. We really need the DVD, I only have it on VHS right now.
• She can do almost every farm animal noise and a few other ones.
• She can find objects if you ask her to....she understands so much more than she can verbalize now. It's amazing. (see video below for an example)
• She likes to wave. She waves all the time, every time we say "hi" and "bye" to anyone or anything (note: ALL airplanes) and we even wave and say bye to the bath water when it's all drained.
• She also likes to high five. She has been doing this for a while, but a simple game of "high five" can keep her entertained for quite some time.
• She has been doing this awesome hulk face that I've yet to get on camera. We call it her "smash face" because whenever we say, "Baby Smash" she makes fists and just bears down, it's so funny. I don't have it on video yet but hopefully soon.
• She also loves to dance. I noticed today that whenever ANY of my Black-Eyed Peas songs came on she would stop what she was doing in order to start dancing. Her dance moves are pretty limited to three moves: the squat/bounce, the spin, and the back and forth sway. It will be fun when she can do a few more but for now she does them all quite well.
• She's been eating pretty well with her fork, but sometimes will just hold her fork and shovel food into her mouth with her hand. I don't blame her, it just works better.
• I'm the most impressed with her tiny alphabet books. The other day they were lying all over the floor and she noticed the letter "Pp" book face down and pointed to it and then made a pig noise. I turned the book over and looked at the front and sure enough there was a pig on the front. She does this every time we show her the letter "p" and can do a few of the other letters, too. (If she knows the animal sound.) I can't believe it. I had no idea kids this young could recognize letters, but she definitely knows that letter is different than the other ones. A-MA-ZING.

She does so many things. She is such a complete joy right now. Definitely we have days where she drives me crazy, but for each one of those we get about 5 days of complete bliss.

Lunchtime?

Do you think Brooklynn was trying to tell me something today?

Sprinkler Park with Sadie & Wyatt

Sadie and Brooklynn at the Sprinkler park...BFFs.

The girls kidnapped my "coffee" and split almost the entire thing. (It was a vanilla bean so it was more like a milkshake)

Even Wyatt got in on the action...

I didn't know we were coming here so we borrowed one of Sadie's old swimsuits...which fits Brooklynn better than any of her current ones. We didn't have a swimmy diaper, either so she went without. I just love her hiney sticking out.