The First Weeks of 2016

Somehow it’s already the middle of January, and I’m not sure where the month has gone so far. I feel like we’ve been pretty busy, but then I think back and can’t even remember what we’ve done. The days just seem to run together because they are all the same: Wake up,nurse every 3 hours or so, eat breakfast, change diapers, play with toys, wipe up spit-up off the floor every 10 minutes, watch a movie, attempt to clean up, eat lunch, change diapers, naps, clean up, fix dinner, clean up, baths, bedtime routine. On the more exciting days, we venture out to run an errand or go to storytime at the library. But, most of our days are pretty much the same. What makes them fun is all of the funny/sweet stuff that Brooklyn says, and then watching her interacting with Savannah. That’s more than worth all of the monotony (most of the time…haha!).

Last weekend we headed back to Trussville to celebrate Mom’s birthday. Also while we were in town, Mom had planned a surprise party for Dad to celebrate his retirement. He retired from SRI at the end of 2015 after 43 years! It was the only place he worked after graduation…pretty crazy! So, Mom planned a party for him at the clubhouse in their neighborhood. She invited people from their church and a few other friends and got BBQ from a local restaurant. Dad was definitely surprised! He kept saying that he didn’t have a clue about any of it :) I was glad she pulled it off!

Thanks to a few ideas from Pinterest, we came up with some easy and cute decorations too…

“Work is for Dum-Dums” – centerpieces for the tables :)

A couple of frames with some funny quotes ;)

…and a bucket for people to give Dad their “bucket list” suggestions!

Brooklyn and Savannah also contributed to the party! We made Paw a candy card with a “happy retirement” message from the girls on it. It was another Pinterest find…I just changed up the wording a little bit :) It was fun making it! We had a little trouble finding some of the candy (mostly the Now and Laters), but Travis saved the day by stopping by a couple of gas stations on his way home from work Friday afternoon. I think Paw liked it!

The finished product!

Getting organized before making the card :)

We had a great turn out at the party!

When it was time to eat, of course Brooklyn wanted to sit right by the guest of honor. She loves her Paw!

Mom made up a trivia game to see how well everyone knew Dad. It was fun!

And, there’s Brooklyn again right by her Paw :) 

Last but not least, Dad opened some funny gifts and read some cards. It was a fun evening!!

Since we were “technically” going to the Trussville to celebrate Mom’s birthday, I asked Brooklyn if she wanted to help me make Rae Rae a birthday cake. Of course she said yes! She wanted to make a “sprinkle cake”, so what did we do? Make a homemade funfetti cake ;) Brooklyn was thrilled!

Of course, she wanted to eat the sprinkles that didn’t make it into the cake batter :)

She was so excited to help spread the icing…

…and put MORE sprinkles on top!

Happy birthday, Rae Rae!

We hope you enjoyed your cake! (B was definitely way more excited than she looks in this picture…haha)

She also enjoyed helping Rae Rae open her birthday gifts too!

Other than spending last weekend in Trussville, here’s what we’ve been up to around home:

Savannah has gotten a lot more mobile in the last couple of weeks! She is now primarily crawling on her hands and knees instead of army crawling. She isn’t very fast yet, but she can definitely get where she wants to go ;)

She has surprised me several times recently by getting up on her knees to reach things that are above her head. I guess she will be pulling up to her feet before I know it!

“Look at me, Mommy!”

With her new found mobility, she has started discovering things that she never knew about–like all the magnets on the fridge! Daddy has been sweeping them out from under the fridge every night lately ;)

This bookshelf has interesting things on it too!

The most interesting thing of all, though, is the kitty cats’ water bowl. For some reason my mommy and daddy won’t let me splash in it and knock it over. And it’s very rude.

Brooklyn loves Savannah so much! She especially loves to be in any pictures that I’m taking of Savannah ;) “Take my picture TOO!”

She is still learning about sharing (see the picture below), but she really does well for the most part. She really enjoys being a helper and keeping Savannah happy. She is always quick to bring me a burp cloth or put Savannah’s paci in if I ask her to.

But, she does have her moments! This is a typical shopping trip to Publix ;) Savannah (a.k.a. the Little Swiper) spends the whole trip trying to steal Brooklyn’s sippy cup and snack cup, and Brooklyn gets more and more annoyed every aisle we go down. It’s interesting because she can’t get away from Savannah, so they are stuck in a confined space for at least 30 minutes to an hour. I guess they will learn to get along eventually, right? :)

Brooklyn is still loving her new “playground”. It doesn’t matter how cold it is, she’s asking to go outside anyway…

The slide is super fast, and Brooklyn loves it!

This particular afternoon, I’m pretty sure it was in the upper 30s. No bother for Miss B!

This tire swing will be even more fun when Sister is big enough to sit on the other side and balance it :)

This bucket swing works for either girl at the moment!

Brooklyn enjoyed pushing Savannah in the swing one afternoon this week. Savannah thought it was pretty fun too!

Sometimes, she’s just happy to hang out in the stroller though :)

Cutie!

Brooklyn has really gotten into having “tea parties” lately. Not sure where that came from? Here, all of her animals are “drinking tea” out of special tea cups ;)

Yummy tea!

They also had a special picnic after the tea party was over :)

Besides having tea parties, we’ve also put together lots of puzzles in the past few weeks. She got several new ones for Christmas, so it’s been good to try out some different ones than the same two we’d been doing for months :)

Savannah has decided that she really likes food here lately! She tried yogurt for the first time last week, and after making a face when it tasted cold, she really ended up enjoying it.

She even likes green peas now!

Of course, when I take a picture of Little Sis, I have to take one of Big Sis too ;)

I don’t really remember Brooklyn doing this as a baby, but Savannah loves to chew on her bibs! Sometimes after every bite she will chew on her bib until she eats the next bite. It’s pretty funny…and usually makes a pretty big mess too!

Monday night, we got REALLY brave and took the girls over to Matt and Maggie’s to watch Alabama play in the national championship game. (Roll Tide!). The game didn’t even start until 7:30 PM, which was almost their bedtime…so this was a big gamble. I figured they’d be falling apart by halftime and we’d have to head home….

…but they really surprised me! It couldn’t have gone any better. They both stayed awake for the whole first half, and then Savannah nursed at halftime and slept in my arms for pretty much the whole second half. She got disturbed a few times and cried out, but never really woke up again. Brooklyn stayed awake until like 10:30 PM (really late for her!), but never acted up or got in trouble. Then, she slept on the couch for the 4th quarter. The best part (other than the fact that we won the game!) was that we got them to the car easily, they slept most of the way home, and they went straight to bed without a fuss and slept the whole night! We didn’t get home until 12:15 AM, so we felt really lucky that it went that well. I’m sure if we tried it again, it would be a disaster…so we consider ourselves very fortunate to have had such a great evening ;)

Other Notes about Brooklyn: 

• For a few days, she had an imaginary friend named “Corder” that she talked to and talked all about. Then, after a few days she stopped mentioning him, so I’m not sure what happened to him? She has a pretty wild imagination, so who knows!
• Brooklyn will sometimes volunteer to say her own prayer before she eats instead of us saying it for her. It usually goes something like this: “Thank you, God, for the food we have to eat. Thank you for the house we have to live in. Thank you for the sunshine and the rain. In Jesus name, Amen.”
• One of her favorite things to ask is “Who brought (bought) this for me?” She wants to know where everything came from: Who bought her shirt for her? Who bought her shoes? Where did her toy come from? Etc. Etc.
• It’s starting to become very obvious just how observant she is. It must be a genetic trait, and it didn’t come from me…haha. She notices things like a piece of glitter on the floor….stuff that I just gloss right over. She is quick to notice things that people accidentally leave at our house. She noticed that Baker left his coat on our couch yesterday, and they had only been gone for about 2 or 3 minutes. She just sees things all the time that I don’t see. It’s really interesting how detail oriented she is and she’s not even 3 years old yet. She is also very particular about things. She always asks for us to turn her bath water “softer”—she doesn’t like it to come out very hard. She even sleeps holding a particular corner of her blanket.
• Uncle Tyler and Aunt Alisha gave her Toy Story for Christmas, and it’s quickly become her new favorite movie. She is always talking about how Woody and Buzz are going to come over. She also thinks it’s fun to call me “Buzz” (she tells me I’m tall like Buzz is), and so for fun I started calling her “Woody”. So sometimes when I am walking around the house, she’ll chase after me saying, “Wait, Buzz, wait!!”
• We bought catfish at the grocery store, and all day after that she kept asking to see the “fish”. I told her the fish was in the freezer and we would take it out and cook it for supper one night. She was very concerned, “Will we see their faces?”
• She is very silly and loves to make us laugh. I think she has more personality than I ever had! I hope she’ll be as spirited and full of joy as she is right now.

Well, that’s all I can think of for now. Hopefully I will find the time to update again before February gets here! :)