Uh-Oh...

Good thing we recently bought the DVD...just in case. 

More Brooklynn-Proofing

Yeah...after several days of Brooklynn taking off the outlet covers and proceeding to try and stick her fingers in the holes...it was time for a change. I tried duct tape over the covers. (And I should have learned that duct tape doesn't seem to hold Brooklynn back.) SO then I had to unscrew the cover, put masking tape over the outlet and then screw the plate back on....obviously a temporary option until I could get to the store to buy something else. I ended up going with blank outlet covers....who knew they even sold those?!?! I can't really use the outlets now but that is ok!

A Close One...

Eeeeeeek.
So today's nap Brooklynn keeps playing. I keep hearing her Little People guys clinking on the house. Once I went in and I found two of them all the way down her pajamas near the feet. Another time there were about 10 of them lined up on the window. I think she is slowly phasing out of her nap, especially when all we do in the morning is go to the Doctor's office...not much opportunity to blow off energy there so she's just not tired.
She's gone to the bathroom twice on the potty (I've gone in there and she says "potty".)
Mostly I'm just letting her have some down time and play quietly. And then all of a sudden through the monitor I heard the distinct sound of velcro tabs from her diaper opening. Uh-oh.
Sure enough, I went in, feety pajamas with safety pin through the zipper are OFF bundled up on the bed, and her diaper is about 1 second away from being thrown off her body. (This was the second time she went on the potty, actually.) I'm not sure where she was hoping to GO to the bathroom, but at least we're making grounds in the potty-training department. One of these days I'll be brave enough to put her in underwear and skip the feety pajamas and throw a potty seat in there or take the child lock off her doorknob so she can go to the bathroom by herself. But am I setting myself up for disaster? I just have no idea when to switch. I guess one of the days it will just happen. Maybe I'll have to cover everything in saran wrap or something and then just go with it. I'm just not ready to risk it.
So now that she's figured out the safety pin...I will be putting masking tape around the pin so she can't take it off. Not sure what else to do.
**Note: The masking tape only worked for one nap. I had to switch to duct tape.

Another WONDERFUL Nap Experience.

After I put Brooklynn down for her nap today, I came out and nursed Gabby on the couch. I fell asleep along with Gabby. Then suddenly I heard a loud CRASH and Brooklynn was crying.
I went in there and her night stand had been knocked over. She was standing up in the crib, which was filled with clothes and stuffed animals. There were clothes all over the floor. (Which made me start blowing steam out of my ears because this is her VERY FIRST nap that she's been in there after working my butt off to put child locks on all of her drawers to prevent this problem.) More of her blinds were ripped off and the winter plastic was ripped off of the window. I put her in her bed and told her to go to sleep.
Soon after that she was still whining, I kept hearing her playing MORE with the window plastic. I went back in there, changed her diaper and told her again to go to sleep. (Sometimes she doesn't fall asleep if she's wet.)

5 minutes later I heard velcro...she was standing up, pants and diaper off. (Thank goodness she didn't have a poopy diaper to just top off our wonderful nap experience today.) But she WAS wet again. So I put another dry diaper on her and told her again to lie down, not to SIT up, not to STAND up, not to MOVE until she had taken her nap. Less than a minute later she was crying saying "stuck! stuck!" Her leg was stuck in between the mattress and the wall. I un-stuck her. Explained that she shouldn't have been stuck, she should be sleeping. Don't let it happen again. I think she is finally asleep. Just in time for Gabby to realize I've been dealing with her naughty sister and not her, so of course she's awake now. 

I give up on finishing my nap.

I'm Going to Need More Child Locks...

Yup...we're in trouble. Before a few days ago Brooklynn's room stayed pretty clean. She occasionally got into her clothes but only if we left the drawers open a little bit. She knows how to open them all by herself now...and this is how her room looks every time she goes in there now. 

On a positive note...I think she's graduated from poop smearing to clothes scattering...I'll take the messy clothes ANY day.

Discipline

So we started a new discipline system yesterday. Throughout the day whenever Brooklynn does something naughty (we're talking REALLY naughty like hitting, head butting, kicking, throwing things at Gabby, etc...) she gets a sad or what Brooklynn calls "mean" face. And then I try and catch her being good and give her a happy face or "nice" face. After day one I could tell she was REALLY trying to be nice by the end of the day, she actually got two more sad faces and only had 2 less smiley faces than sad faces so she ALMOST caught up. She was being pretty bad that first day. I am really really trying to give her some grace and also help her not to get the sad faces, I really don't like keeping them on there all day. (She is also getting a time out when she gets a sad face.) And the smiley faces some of the time were things that were obviously nice, but I'm really having to stretch to find nice things. (yes, she's being that bad the last couple days.) For instance, I gave her a smiley face today just for sitting on my lap so nicely while she watched her videos. So far that is her only smiley face today. I needed something visual for me since I am SUCH a visual person...and frankly, it helps me strive to help focus on the positive more. I look at the little smiley faces as little tiny "rewards" throughout the day when I "catch" her being good.

 Anyway, each day that she has more smiley faces than sad faces she gets a "special princess card" (which is only a piece of card stock with a Cinderella stamp on it.) But when she earns 10 of these she gets a special prize. I'm curious to know how long this will take her to achieve. Hopefully not too much longer than 10 days.

It was really fun to wash her hands super well at the end of the day (especially the sad faces) and tell her she gets to start over tomorrow. 

I'm still trying to decide if 10 princess cards is too many. Or if I should have something a little more exciting. I randomly made her a princess card on Sunday and she carried it around the rest of the day, it was so sweet. (She was SUPER good on Sunday, I think she might have had only 1 sad face and a whole bunch of happy faces if we had been keeping track then.)

So anyway, we'll see how this works. Anyone out there have other things that are working for them? 

So Much Dress Up

Brooklynn loves to play dress up. I put all her dress up stuff in a laundry basket in her room and she will often surprise me with different outfits or just accessories that she puts on from there. What a silly girl.

A Day at the Park

We had lots of fun playing at the park. It was a little cold but we didn't care.

I tried to tell Josh he was about ready to "dump out" Brooklynn. He swears he wasn't, but look...she is parallel to the ground. And this wasn't even the shot, there was one time where I swear her head was lower than her butt.

Brooke showed off her skills on the big kid swing. My baby is growing up.

We did a little goose chasing. Brooke likes to call ALL birds of any kind "duck" but I think she said a little "goose" today.

Brooke did a little more monkey bar game with Daddy. She is out of shape, though. She can't do it nearly as long as last fall. We'll have to keep working on it.

Brooke was seriously cracking us up on this toy. She LOVED it.

Yeah, I kinda got stuck. Look at the last picture of Brooke in this collage...she's like, "Mom, you suck. I'm just gonna crawl off since we're not going anywhere."

Date with Daddy

Brooklynn and Josh often do special things together on Tuesday nights. (Since Tuesday is MOMMY NIGHT!!!) This particular night they went to the mall. And she insisted on wearing her Barbie pajamas over her sweatpants...out in public.You can tell she thinks this outfit is AMAZING. Look at her posing by the fountain, for everyone who sees her to think, "WOW, someone pretty awesome must have picked out that outfit."

The Last Cupcake

I let Brooklynn have the last cupcake from her party after dinner last night. I decided to document how "neatly" my daughter likes to eat her cupcakes. She sure knows how to savor things, though, I will give her that!

Part Two: The Sugar High kicks in.

Brooklynn's Cookie Monster Birthday Party

So we thought it was about time we had Brooklynn's 2nd Birthday Party, since she's been two for almost a month now and everything. :)

Actually, we thought about having it earlier. The one Saturday we had free in January was my ACTUAL due date with Gabby, so just in case we didn't schedule it. And then if I went late for some reason, I could have still been pregnant, REALLY recovering or even in labor on the 5th. I knew I'd most likely have the baby by the 12th but probably not feel up to having a party yet. So we went with the 19th. Sorry, Brooklynn. You were so patient. (Plus we thought she wouldn't mind and probably not even notice if it was later.)

It ended up working out great timing-wise. I felt up to everything, plus it was a great excuse to give Brooklynn some focused special Brooklynn time. I thought it would be great because even though we have been trying really hard to do lots of that, you can tell she's still struggling and is still jealous of Gabby. 

If only it wasn't GORGEOUS on Friday. Instead of actually working on party prep we played outside all morning. And then Gabby barely let us put her down that afternoon and evening so it was hard to work on stuff. 

Here is Brooklynn color all her Cookie Monster pictures for the decorations.

Here are some of our decorations. I wanted it to just be cookie overload for Brooklynn. Cookies are still her favorite things and so we had a Cookie Monster theme. I wanted to have tons of cookies. And we even let her have as many as she wanted all day. We're still detoxing a little bit. (She actually got to a point when she stopped eating them, and was finally full of cookies. It took a while, though.)

Here is Brooklynn in her Cookie Monster birthday outfit. We ordered it off Etsy. She looked ADORABLE. 

Gabby was a big hit of the party, too. It was great having other people there to hold her. I felt so free!

Brooklynn did SO good blowing out her candle! We were actually a little shocked. I didn't even know she knew that she was supposed to blow out the candle.

And of course she did a number on that cupcake...or did it do a number on her?

I almost forgot about opening her presents. We had them underneath our table because there wasn't really a spot for them. Someone reminded me and I was like, "Oh yeah!" So I asked Brooklynn if she wanted to open her presents and of course she shook her head "yes."
She knew just what to do. What a big girl. I think one of these days I'll just wrap all of her toys up while she's sleeping and let her go to town. 

I had Josh pick up a balloon at the store...this is what he came home with. It is HUMONGOUS!!! She of course, LOVES it.