Non-Christmas News

Besides Christmas fun, we’ve had a lot of other stuff going on around here too. I guess the biggest news of the last few weeks is that Little Sister now has a name! Some of you may remember the process that we went through to pick out Brooklyn’s name :) Well, we saved our lists from last time, so we started with those lists, added some names, and took others out. I think it ended up being much quicker this time for a couple of reasons. #1 – We already had a name from last time that we both really liked. #2 – We had VERY FEW other names that we both even halfway liked. If we ever have Baby Girl #3, she might be in trouble…haha! So, without further ado…Little Sister is going to be Savannah Leigh! (I’m sure most of you have heard this by now, but I wanted to document it in the blog anyway.). So, Savannah was one of the top names on both of our lists, and since neither of us loved many names on the other’s list, Savannah it was! The middle name was probably harder to decide than the first name. I thought it needed to be something one-syllable since Savannah is a long first name, and after I convinced Travis of that, we narrowed it down to 2 names. I won’t share the other middle name in case we use it for another girl, but I liked it just as well as Leigh. So, there you have it! We’re glad to be able to call her by her real name now :) Brooklyn is still mostly calling her “Sister”, although if we ask her to say “Savannah”, she will give it a try. Usually, it comes out “Vannah” or “Uh-Vannah”. She’s close! :) And, just in case you’re wondering, our girls are NOT named after cities. We just really liked the names.

Here is my picture from last week (at 22 weeks along). I’m still feeling good, although I’ve been much more tired lately. I’m going to blame that on traveling, Christmas, and chasing Brooklyn around though :) Savannah’s kicks have gotten much stronger in the past couple of weeks, and Travis felt them for the first time last week. I have my 24 week checkup next week, and hopefully we’ll be able to schedule our 4D ultrasound for sometime in the next few weeks as well. I’m afraid that they’re going to tell me it’s time for the glucose tolerance test, which is terrible timing considering all the junk I’ve eaten in the past month! Hopefully I can still pass it :)

Before Savannah arrives, we’ve got some projects around the house that we are trying to get done. The first of those is finishing up our garage organization. Back in the spring, we repainted the walls and trim in the garage, and that alone was a huge improvement. The walls were really dirty and scuffed up, and the trim was an ugly shade of pink/beige. It was hideous! So, just painting made it look much better. We also hung new blinds on the windows in the garage to match the rest of the windows in the house. Then, a few months ago, we bought some big metal shelving units to store a bunch of stuff on. The last step of the project is installing the Rubbermaid Fasttrack system on some of the empty walls in the garage. We’ll be using that for hanging things like yard tools, power tools, sporting equipment, and other stuff. This week, we’ve already hung 2 strips and have been able to clear a bunch of stuff off the floor in the garage. It’s so much easier to walk around in there already!! I can’t wait until we get it completely finished :)

It may not look like much, but it makes a huge difference!

Now, onto some pictures and notables of Miss B from the past few weeks:

Jon, Katie, and Graham visited at church a couple of Sundays ago, and we managed to get Graham and B to sit next to each other for a picture. This is what Brooklyn does when I try to take her picture these days. Totally non-cooperative! Graham, of course, is posing like a model :) He’s gotten so big and is so cute!!

Brooklyn tried out one of her paint by water books for the first time the other day. She made a pretty big mess though, so I think from now on she’ll have to “paint” in her high chair…haha

She still loves to push her stroller around the house! I had the cutest video on my phone (until it got deleted) of her pushing her stroller as fast as she could and wiping out when the stroller tipped over. It was hilarious! She doesn’t have a “slow” mode, that’s for sure!

This morning, I bundled up to go jog around the neighborhood, and Brooklyn saw me and wanted to wear a “hat” too. So, we took our picture together! :)

More Brooklyn “News”:

* I may have mentioned this before, but Brooklyn has started to play this “game” where she runs into an empty room and slams the door shut. Then she is stuck in there until we open the door because she can’t open it herself. Well, a couple of weeks ago, she decided to run into our bathroom and shut the door. I didn’t think much of it, and I decided to leave her in there for a couple of minutes to see if that would teach her not to do it. She apparently had plans to teach me a lesson of her own :) When I went to open the door, it was locked!! That doorknob has a push button lock, which is different from all of the other doors in the house. I never even considered the possibility of her locking herself in! I didn’t panic immediately…until I decided to call Travis at work and realized that my cell phone was in there with Brooklyn on the bathroom counter…haha! Thankfully, it only took her a few seconds to turn the knob a little and release the lock. She has only done that one other time, and that time Gabby was trapped in there with her. (I’m sure Gabby was having a panic attack of her own.) We obviously need to get a different doorknob for that door! :)

*I’m starting to think that Brooklyn knows some of her letters. A few weeks ago, she pointed to the “B” on my Alabama hoodie and said “B!” We have never gone over the letters in the word Alabama before, so either it was a coincidence or she really does know that letter. I’ve worked with her on spelling her name some, and she usually knows that her name starts with “B, R, O” and sometimes will say “K, L, or Y” too. I think it helps that her name is spelled out on the wall above her crib, so she can look at the letters easily.

*Speaking of letters, she is starting to sing the Alphabet song. She gets the tune down pretty well, but a lot of the letters are garbled. It’s still cute though! Her favorite song is probably still “Old McDonald” – she loves to randomly sing “E-I-E-I-O!!!” at the top of her lungs :) She also knows several Bible class songs and will sometimes sing along when I am singing them at home.

*I think Brooklyn is going through a growth spurt right now. She stepped on the scale tonight (fully clothed), and it said she weighs anywhere from 26-27 lbs. She is also definitely getting taller because her 24 month/2T pants are finally fitting pretty well in the length. She seems to be hungry ALL THE TIME (or else she just loves to beg for snacks??). Who knows? She also took a record-setting nap a few weeks ago. It lasted from 1 PM to 4:20 PM in her crib, and then she woke up still acting really tired, and so she slept in my lap in the recliner until 5 PM. After that marathon nap, she still went to bed and slept through the night. Where did that come from?? I don’t know, but I wish it would happen more often! :)

*Just a couple of months ago, Brooklyn was starting to really expand her vocabulary. Well, now it has exploded! She is like a little parrot and will attempt to repeat almost anything you ask her to say. She is saying lots of 2 and 3 word phrases now too, like “Daddy work,” which means “Daddy is at work”. “Daddy nose” means “Daddy is blowing his nose”. She will also ask for things now like “More strawbies?”, which means “More strawberries?” It’s nice that she is able to let us know what she wants now instead of us having to guess. Tonight when I was getting ready in the bathroom, she popped out in front of the door and said “Boo! I see you!” She thought that was just hilarious to try to “scare” me…haha. There are still some things she says that we have a hard time understanding, but for the most part we can interpret everything she says or asks.

*She absolutely loves her Paw! Hopefully it doesn’t hurt Rae Rae’s feelings too much, but Brooklyn will say “Hey Paw!” and “Bye Paw!” over and over when we are talking to Rae Rae on the phone (and Paw is at work)…haha. Of course, she loves Rae Rae too, but there’s just something about that Paw I guess :) She also likes to say “Hi” and “Bye” to everything. Sometimes, when we are heading to the car, she will say things like “Bye door! Bye kitty! Bye chair!” It’s pretty funny :)

*I think I mentioned that Brooklyn climbed out of her crib at Paw and Rae Rae’s house last week, so we tried to get her to sleep on a twin mattress on the floor later that night. Travis and I laid down beside her on the mattress/floor to see if that would help her fall asleep, but we didn’t have much luck. Obviously Brooklyn knew we wanted her to go to sleep though because she started fake snoring! She was definitely not asleep! Maybe she thought if we thought she was asleep, then we would leave and she could get out of the bed. She is so sly! :)

*I’m afraid we are just starting to enter the terrible two’s. Just in the past week, Brooklyn has started screaming “NO!” whenever she doesn’t want to do something we ask. When she’s feeling especially defiant, she will pitch a real fit and throw things or run away. So yeah, that’s been fun to deal with. I’m hoping she will be past this lovely stage by the time Savannah comes. Pray for us! :)

*If you’ve made it this far, your name must either be Paw, Rae Rae, or Cici…haha. Anyway, the last bit of “news” I can think of is that Brooklyn is going to be a flower girl in Nate and Becky’s wedding in mid-May. In case you’re wondering, that’s about 2 weeks after my due date. I’m hoping we aren’t too crazy for agreeing to this! At least Brooklyn has done it once…maybe she will do it again. Here’s to hoping! Travis and I will need to wear some good eye makeup that day to hide the dark circles…haha. He’s actually a groomsman in the wedding too, so it will be a busy weekend for all of us on little sleep. Eek! If you’re at the wedding, I may be soliciting you for help!! :)

Well, I guess that’s a wrap for the year 2014! I may or may not make it until midnight tonight :) Probably not! This has been a great year filled with so many blessings, and we are really looking forward to what 2015 brings. Happy New Year to all of you! :)