17 Months Old

July 22, 2014
21.2 lbs
size 3 diapers
size 12 month clothing

This past month has been really fun with Brooklyn, her personality just continues to blossom as she continues to learn and understand more.  One of my favorite things from this past month is that she recognizes Jesus in pictures and can say His name.  At our church building there are a ton of pictures of Christ along all of the hallways and so one Sunday I was in the hall with her and just started to point out Jesus in all the pictures and by the third picture she could point Him out and say His name.  It was so cool and it just makes me think that she might still remember Him.  She is also now saying out, bath, baby, kitty, ball, and says hop hop for bunny rabbit.  She can climb down from the couch and any chairs safely and is so close to being able to climb up onto the couch by herself.  She still loves bath time and will drop anything and everything when we tell her it is time for a bath.  She loves to blow kisses and wave at everyone.  When we walk into the gym she just starts waving and when we leave she blows kisses at everyone.  She has really gotten into her stuffed animals and baby doll this month.  She will try to feed them her food and give them drinks from her sippy cup.  She also will lay them down and try to put a diaper on them.  She likes to wrap the baby up in the blanket but if she can't find the blanket she will grab a dish towel.  She has been doing better this month with eating her vegetables.  She absolutely loves stir fry veggies and frozen green beans.  Her favorite food is still fruit of any kind, she recently tried a plum for the first time and loved it.  if I let her she would live off of fruit. She got in one new tooth this month so she is up to 10.

She still loves to read and we have started going to story time at the library most Thursday mornings.  We always check out 5 or 6 books so that we can have a few new ones to read at home.  She still loves to dance and will stop what she is doing to shake her groove thing whenever music comes on.  One day at the gym I went to pick her up from the child watch and they were having a dance party with the older kids, but she of course had to join them and she was going to town.  I just stood there and watched for a few minutes, it was too dang cute.  We will definitely be getting her into dance class as soon as possible.  She is totally gluds to her burp clothe, it just keeps getting worse.  She knows where I keep them and if she wants one she will just go stand at the closet door until I grab one from her.  If she is playing she forgets about it.  She always has one when we go into the gym but they say she forgets about it within a few minutes, so that's good I guess. I swear someday she will just have it when she sleeps, but man is it convenient to be able to give it to her and know she will calm down and be content.  I guess I will have to suck it up sometime soon and just do it.  She has thrown a few more tantrums this month, luckily not in public places.  Man when she gets pissed, she gets pissed.  One time Craig took a crayon from her because she brought out to the living room and she gave him the nastiest look ever and refused to go to him or even look at him for like 20 minutes.  Luckily she forgives fairly quickly and totally forgets about it.  If it is just me and her at home and I do something she doesn't like she will stomp off down the hallway to the laundry room for a minute and then will come grab a burp clothe and then will finally come to me.  Oh the joys of toddlers.  She has also started squealing and happy screaming at a lot of different things, it is so cute and you can't help but laugh. She gets so excited when Craig gets home in the evening.  She can hear when he pulls up and she automatically points to the garage door and says "daddy" and when he walks in she runs to him and then runs away and then runs back and gives him a kiss. Same routine every night but it is so cute to watch.

Her new baby doll

She loves to brush her teeth with mommy's tooth brush (it will keep her occupied for like 10 minutes)

She still loves the swings and the park in general

She likes to eat bananas all by herself now

She shoved about a 1/3 of a banana into her mouth

Fun at the botanic gardens

Going through the junk mail with daddy

I am now realizing how often she wears this outfit

Somehow I missed an arm when I was putting on her shirt

Lots of Family Fun

Craig had 2 long weekends in a row, he had the last Thursday and Friday of June off because the staff doctors all had a conference and then he also had Friday the 4th off and he took a personal day on Monday the 6th.  Brooklyn and I were very excited to have him around.  Since he had these long weekends we wanted to make sure to actually do things and not just sit around.  On the Thursday he had off we decided to go down to the Mud Island River Park.  It is an exacted replica of the Mississippi river from start to finish.  They even have water running through it and they let the kids get in it.  The Coles came a long and the kids had a lot of fun splashing and playing in the water.  After the kids played for a while we decided to grab some lunch.  We decided to try out an awesome diner downtown called the Arcade.  It was super good and would recommend it to everyone. I mean you can't go wrong with deep fried french toast, just ask Craig.

they had a map of the city and we were standing where our house is

Brooklyn trying out the water

walking over to see the real river

Brooklyn decided to step down all by herself and she scraped up her knee pretty good.  I definitely need to start carrying band aids in the diaper bag.

We made it all the way to the Gulf of Mexico

Memphis' skyline

Our 6th wedding anniversary was on Saturday the 28th, but decided to celebrate on Friday because we had free babysitting that night.  We dropped Brooklyn off at a friends house in the ward and headed out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse.  It was so nice to be able to eat slowly and not feel rushed.  We definitely need to get out more just the two of us.

The next Friday was the 4th of July and we went to a Redbirds game with some friends from school.  The weather was absolutely perfect, which is weird for Memphis in July normally we are burning up, but luckily we got a small break from that.  Brooklyn once again enjoyed the game and especially the fireworks.  One of our friends brought glow sticks for all the kids and she really liked that too.  She crashed on the drive home, which included waiting almost 50 minutes to get out of our parking garage.

the child watch at the gym drew stars on the kids on the 3rd

On Saturday we had some yard work to do and when I say "we" I really mean Craig.  Brooklyn did help me pull a few weeds and sweep out the garage while Craig did the rest.  Then we filled up her little pool and let her play.  She had a lot more fun with the filling up of the pool then the actual playing in the pool.  She also really enjoyed her Popsicle, she even shared a bite with me and Craig

had fun sticking her finger in the hose and spraying herself

she totally did this on her own

yummy popsicle

Then on Monday the 6th we decided to go to the zoo.  We hadn't been in a while so we thought it would be a good time.  It is a lot easier to go with Craig because Brooklyn likes to get in and out of the stroller to see the animals and that is much easier with two adults.  She gets to see more animals when Craig is with us.  When we first got to the zoo there was a worker out front with a tortoise and Brooklyn made a bee-line for him.  She just kept following him around and petting him.  She also loved the ducks in the farm area.  I think she could have stayed there all day chasing them around.

It was so nice to have Craig around, but sadly he had to get back to his normal schedule this week.  It is always hard to have him go back.  We had a great couple weeks, Brooklyn loves spending time with her Daddy.

16 Months Old

6/22/2014
20.8 Lbs
Size 3 diapers
Size 12 month clothes

It is getting harder and harder to get this little girl to hold still for a picture.  When she sees the camera all she wants to do is look at the pictures, so most of the time the picture is of her walking toward the camera.  She finally got a few more teethe through in just the last few days, so the count it up to 9.  She has the 4 front top and bottom and the one molar and she is currently working on the 3 other molars.  She has become a much pickier eater in the last little bit.  I feel like she is just eating the same things everyday.  She still loves fruit, but I am having a hard time getting her to eat veggies besides tomatoes.  I guess now begins the sneaking in of vegetables. She eats a lot of mac & cheese, PB&J's, hot dogs, yogurt, and cheese.  I hear she is not the only toddler that is picky and from what I'm told I was a very picky eater.  Hopefully someday she will grow out of it. Her hair is getting so long.  It has to be up in a pony at all times or she can't see.  It's not quite long or heavy enough to tuck behind her ears.  It doesn't seem to bother her to much when it is in her eyes, but it bugs the crap out of me, so as soon as she wakes up I put it into a pony.

We finally switched her over to her toddler car seat at the beginning of the month.  She seems to like it.  She loves to look out the window.  She has started to really play with her toys.  She entertains herself pretty well and has really grown to love all of her stuffed animals.  She likes to try to feed and give her dogs drinks and she also like to brush them.  I think it is about time we get her a baby doll.  We were finally able to find her a little chair and she loves it.  She like to sit in it, but she also like to have her stuffed animals sit in it.  She also likes it because it is light enough for her to carry so she will take it to where she wants to sit.

She has learned a few new things this month.  She can fold her arms, typically she folds them for a few seconds at the beginning of the prayer and then when we say amen she folds them a gain real fast .She loves to spin in circles.  She also likes to do calf raises and squats (no I did not teach my 1 year old exercises, she just started doing them and so I just gave her the name for what she is doing).  She is also a wonderful trash collector.  She loves to take things to the trash can, which is awesome when I am being lazy.  So far she has yet to throw away any toys, I'm sure that day will come.  She hasn't learned anymore words but she does know what a sheep says, Baa.  She still loves the song "head, shoulders, knees, and toes" but she now also loves "patty cake" and "the itsy bitsy spider" and she does pretty well with the actions, especially the "roll it and roll it" part of patty cake.  She likes to wave bye-bye to the water when the tub is draining or a toilet flushes.  Her favorite show is The Mickey Mouse Club House and she still loves to do her Donald Duck quack. She also loves to do the Hot Dog dance that they do at the end of each show.  She likes to use the car keys to "unlock" any and every door.  She also likes to press the button that pops the trunk open on the car.  So pretty much every time we get in the car I have to close the trunk before we go. She has also started to enjoy coloring.  She does pretty well with staying on the paper and it keeps her entertained for a while during sacrament meeting. She is still absolutely obsessed with her burp cloth.  I have been trying to slowly wean her off of it, I don't want her to go into nursery with her burp cloth hanging out of her mouth.  I'm glad she has something to comfort her, but it's not nearly as cute as it used to be.  I feel like whenever we start to make any sort of progress, she starts to teeth again and everything gets thrown out the window.  So maybe after she get her wisdom teeth in she will finally be able to get rid of it.

She had a neurologist appointment last week and the doctor said that her head was looking good.  He wasn't worried about her head rounding out at all and he told us that he didn't need to see her back, so that was great news.  On the other hand she had her first public tantrum at the grocery store the other day.  Normally if she gets a little whiny I will give in and give her the burp cloth, well she was whiny to begin with and so she had her burp cloth from the beginning.  That kept her content for the first half of the shopping trip, but when we got to the meat department she decided that she needed me to hold her, while we were looking for the pork butt and me trying to calm her down and her crying I had a couple of old women ask Brooklyn "why do sad." Why people feel a need to throw in their 2 cents, I'm not really sure.  Eventually I gave in and awkwardly held her and pushed the cart while trying not to run into everything.  I guess it is about time for me to decide how I'm going to handle those type of situations, give in or tough love.  I guess we'll see how it goes next time.  i was really hoping we had a few more months before the tantrums came.  I'm giving her the excuse that she is working on 3 molars. Other than a few random things like this tantrum, she is still such a good baby and really who could ever get angry at such a cute thing.

I accidentally left her water bottle in the pocket of the diaper bag and she decided she was thirsty so she got down on her knees and got a drink all by herself.

Undie wars!

She figured out how to take her skirt off, hopefully this doesn't become a daily occurrence.

She dumped her water out onto her tray, it kept her busy for a while so I was good with it

Shoving her burp cloth into her mouth

Up close and personal