23 months old

1/22/2015
23 lbs
Size 4 diapers
size 18 month clothing

Brooklyn is such a doll and so much fun to have around.  Her vocabulary has really taken off this month.  She has started to pick up words left and right.  Most days she will spit out 3 or 4 new words and she will just repeat them all day long.  One of her favorites is animal, the day she learned that word she said it as she fell asleep and then was saying it when she woke up.  She is starting to connect more words together.  She will get 2 words together fairly often and 3 every once in a while. She loves her letters and can recognize every letter and can say them all except W.  She can recognize her numbers 1 through 5 but onlys says 2, probably because Craig was telling her she was going to turn 2 soon. She has learned a lot more colors as well.  We are still working on red, which you would think would be one of the easier ones, but I'm sure it will come soon.

She has shown a lot of interest in the potty recently so we picked her up a potty at Walmart and will hopefully begin potty training her when we get back from our trip to Boise.  When she has to go poop she will run up to me and say stinky and say bye and then run off to the kitchen to do her business.  If she doesn't have somewhere private to run to she will go to a corner and cover her eyes, thinking we can't see her.  She has started to do this lean thing whenever we take her picture.  She says cheese and then leans to one side, typically her left side.  She still loves to go to the gym and she will even go to nursery now without her burp clothe.  She loves to play with other kids now instead of just by herself.  She doesn't like to sit in her high chair anymore, she like to sit in her booster chair up to the table with everyone else.  I can't believe my baby is almost 2.  She cracks me up all the time and even on her "grumpy" days she is still such a sweet girl. Love her to pieces!!

We went for a walk around the neighborhood on New Year's Day and this is the outfit we came up with.  I was just happy she would wear her hat and mittens (she is anti anything warm)

Killing some time at the mall on a cold day

she loves to watch T.V. in her bee

Trying out the new potty

Fun at the Zoo with her buddy Peyton.  I love that we went to the Zoo in the middle of January

She found the diaper boxes we have been saving to pack with.

Christmas Time

for some reason she really wanted to hold our hands in the pictures

Christmas was a lot of fun this year.  We stayed in Memphis and it was just the 3 of us, but Craig had 2 weeks off from his externs and Brooklyn understood a little bit more about the whole thing this year.  She was so excited to help me decorate the Christmas tree the day after Thanksgiving.  I think she liked that the tree was just her size.  She did pretty good about not touching the tree, well at least with her hands.  She liked to test us, she would stick her hands behind her back and touch it with her tummy or she would walk really close to it and let her elbow brush it or she would hold one of her stuffed animals and let them touch it.  She though she was pretty sneaky, but she did get a few timeouts because she just had to touch the tree.  We didn't put any presents under the tree though until she had gone to bed on Christmas eve.

Since Craig had time off we decided to go see the march of the ducks at the Peabody Hotel again.  Brooklyn loves ducks and is a pro at quacking so we figured she would enjoy it.  We got there early and looked at all of the beautiful Christmas decorations.  Brooklyn loved the huge tree with the huge ornaments.  She really liked to see the ducks walk by and watch them swim in the fountain.

We didn't go see Santa this year.  We were pretty positive that she wouldn't take a picture with Him so we didn't want to waste our time.  At our gym there was a mechanical life size Santa that would dance and sing if you pressed a button and it totally freaked her out, but because of Him she thinks that all Santa's dance.  Anytime she sees one she starts to dance.  On Christmas Eve we went to Texas de Brazil for dinner...so good.  Brooklyn did great.  She loved to people watch and she liked all of the meat.  She really liked the coke bottle that the brought to Craig for his Cherry Coke, it was just her size.  After dinner we came home and lit the fire and read the story of Christ's birth from the bible and drank "fancy juice" (sparkling cider), which Brooklyn thought was awesome.  She loved the fire and pulled her little chair up in front of it and just watched it.  we then got her ready for bed and she watched a little bit of The Grinch with us and then she was off to bed.  Craig and I finished the movie and brought out her presents.

Christmas morning was a blast.  When she woke up that morning we brought her down and we were hoping to get her to eat a little breakfast before she opened presents but as soon as she spotted the presents there was nope hope for breakfast.  I told her she could open some after I changed her diaper, well that wasn't soon enough for her so she took off toward the tree and grabbed 2 presents and ran out of the living room.  So we let her open one small gift and then we changed her diaper and she ate a banana and then we let her open the rest of her presents.  After each gift she was content to just play with that gift.  It took us a little while to convince her that there were more toys for her.  She loved all of her toys,but I think her favorite is her Mickey Mouse stuffed animal.  she is obsessed. After gifts we then ate breakfast of monkey bread and an egg casserole.  A little later we went to the park and went for a walk and then that evening we had a nice Christmas dinner.  It was a great day that we were able to spend together as a little family.  Later that day I told Brooklyn that her birthday would be soon and that she would get to open more presents and she asked if they would be under the tree, what a sweet girl.  So grateful for this wonderful holiday and the chance we get to celebrate our Savior.

Brooklyn is 22 months

December 22, 2014
23 lbs
Size 4 diapers
Size 18 month clothing

I can't believe my little girl is almost 2, time truly does fly.  She is continuing to talk more and more.  Still not putting sentences together but she knows a lot of words and communicates what she wants and needs very well.  She loves letters.  She has some toys and puzzles with letters and she can identify quite a few letters and can say a good amount of them as well.  We have been working a lot on colors.  For the longest time everything was blue regardless of what color it actually was.  She all of the sudden could say orange, and no we did not purposely teach our daughter blue and orange (go Broncos!), she did it all on her own.  She now also can say grey.  She can recognize a lot more colors but refuses to say them.  She is completely obsessed with books, we read a minimum of 30 books a day, I guess that is a good problem to have though.  Her favorite food at the moment is banana.  She eats one a day, sometimes two if daddy doesn't realize she had one earlier.  Between her and Craig we go through at least 12 bananas a week.  She has started to show a little interest in the potty.  Sometimes she wants to sit on it, but she has yet to actually go potty in it.  I don't think she is quite ready for potty training, but hopefully it will be sooner rather then later, but its not something I am going to push too much.  She loves to go to nursery and still loves going to the gym. She is really happy most of the time, we do have to do timeout every once in a while, but that is to be expected.  Her naps are starting to get shorter and somedays are non-existent, which makes me sad, but I will have to deal with it.  She has had a cold with a cough and runny nose and also been teething the last few weeks.  She didn't sleep well for a little while because her cough kept waking her up but she is now back into her good sleeping habits.  She is now just barely tall enough to reach the door handles.  She loves to open and close doors but she can't turn the handle, so there have been time when she has got herself stuck in a room and can't get out until I get her.  She is so much fun and such a joy, I am so grateful I get to spend everyday with her.

She wanted to wear one of mommy's scarves

fun at the zoo with her friend Peyton

She was saying "moo" as the picture was being taken

Her new favorite thing at the library is to sit on the zebra

She loves to crunch leaves, a girl after my own heart

Rockin' her boots and sweater dress

Loving the cupcakes I made for my primary class, she just kept wanting more frosting

Brooklyn wanted Daddy to check her eyes after my exam

Happy Thanksgiving!

Since most of our SCO friends are no longer in Memphis, we decided to get together with some families from our ward.  There were enough families that we needed to do the dinner at the church, which Craig is not a big fan of, but it worked out really well.  Everyone brought a few items of food.  There was more than enough food and everything was fantastic.  Brooklyn had a lot of fun with all of the other kids around.  She didn't eat a whole lot since she was preoccupied with all of the people, but she got enough.  She did get locked out of the nursery on accident and got a little scared because she couldn't get back in and didn't know how to get to the gym.  Luckily one of the other moms found her and brought her back into us.  We all had a very enjoyable day and are so grateful for the friends that we have made in our ward.  I just wanted to list off a few other things that we are grateful for right now in our lives:

Loving and supportive family, friends, the education and training that Craig is receiving, my jobs (even though they aren't much they do still help), our health, our beautiful daughter and the joy she brings into our lives, our house and cars, the knowledge that we are an eternal family and all of the many other blessings that the gospel brings into our lives.  

Craig had his eyes closed in every single picture

A few of the families and missionaries that we had dinner with

Brooklyn with Emma McKonkie

Caleb Bockholt and Brooklyn