Picture Post

Time to catch up on some pictures. I will not post near as many as I should to actually catch up but I'll pick my favorites to post for each kiddo. Considering I haven't posted a single picture on here in 18 months, I might crash Blogger if I tried, hehe. (For whoever is keeping score, I narrowed it down to 76.)

The proverbial Daddy and baby pic. This time playing Xbox instead of the computer.

Kaylee with Great Mamaw

Brendan right after a haircut and Daddy's fuzzy beard he was growing for Ren Fest.

Propped up and not too sure as to why.

Hey brother, whatcha doin?

Christmas morning

I love how Kaylee looks like she's looking at our cat in the background.

Papaw, Nana, and Kaylee

Brendan liked our White Elephant gift.

Aww... cute sibling cuddle time

One of my favorite pictures from the park that day.

Look how well I can hold my head up at 4 months old!

Cute brother and sister pic in their brother and sister shirts.

Family Christmas picture

3 month pic

4 month

5 month

Love that grin!

This was the best we could get of them together. So silly.

Great smile. 6 month pics, I'll have to find the rest of what we did for her monthly pics. We didn't make it the full year. She'll probably hold that over my head when she's older. Sigh.

Cute hat pic

Cute dress pic

Swinging at the park and Grandma photo-bombing, hehe.

Easter 2011

Aren't they adorable?

Brendan's first school performance. As soon as he saw me and Grandma, it was all over. Shortly after this he ran off stage to us.

Chilling by the lake in Arkansas.

Brendan had a lot of fun feeding the goats and deer.

He did NOT want to touch the baby alligators though!

Uncle Matthew had fun meeting his niece on the Arkansas trip.

Brendan's 3rd birthday party.

His awesome cupcake cake from WalMart.

Kaylee giggling on July 4th.

Brendan geared up to play in the sprinkler in Grandma and Grandpa's backyard.

Proof that my hubby still gets to skydive... sometimes...

Preparing for his jump.

There he is, coming in for a landing!

This was the best shot I could get of Kaylee's first day of school.

Kaylee's 1st birthday!

Family (minus Brendan) pic

All ready for cake! (Actually, cupcakes made by me!)

She helped a little bit with opening her gifts.

She loves her coat that her Great Aunt Karen and Great Grandma gave her. (This was the only non-blurry pic, she smiled in a blurry one of course.)

Butterflies on a trip to Moody Gardens in Galveston.

Aunt Shannon is really good at picking up butterflies.

I could not believe how close we could get to that monkey. Kind of scary actually.

Cute bow :-)

Bat Girl!

Batman!

At cousin Blake's 2nd birthday party.

My awesome turkey creation for Thanksgiving. These were fun to make AND delicious.

At a local Christmas tree farm to pick out our tree.

Daddy and Brendan with our tree

Brendan and Kaylee

Brendan had fun sledding on the hay hill. (Hope you get a kick out of this one Susan, this is how we roll in Texas!)

Tried for a cute photo opp. Didn't work.

Putting the star on our beautiful tree. (This tree was the greenest tree we've ever had, definitely going to the farm again next year!)

Kaylee in front of the decorated tree.

Brendan's second school performance. He had a lot more fun. I was at the back and didn't get any good pics from it unfortunately. Video will be posted later!

Family pic at Christmas

Look at all those presents!

Tried to take my own posed pics of the kids. Didn't work.

This is what greeted us Christmas morning. All they would tell us was that someone down the street wasn't having a good Christmas. I found the incident report later and it was labeled a "mental health incident" or something like that. It wouldn't let me read the report of course.

Kaylee and Mommy on Christmas

My cowgirl and cowboy all dressed up for Go Texan Day!

Easter baskets

In his Sunday best

Kaylee and I on Easter

Daddy and Kaylee

Hunting for eggs

I think Kaylee will enjoy this more next year.

Playing with our cousins from Israel.

Bubbles!

Kaylee didn't leave Grandpa's side much that day.

Playing with kites.

Kaylee wanted to blow bubbles too!

So next will be a video post and any pics I find on the external hard drive to add to the catch-up (forgot to look there). No new stories for now. 

Video!

Yeah! Video post! So this is Kaylee trying to get brother to let her see what he's doing on my iPod Touch.

And this video is Kaylee playing with brother. She started doing this the other day and I happened to catch it on video this time. Funny how girls learn from a young age to use their finger nails for evil purposes :-)

Well, I'm already behind. I had decided Friday would probably be a good day to skip and then just didn't post on Saturday and Sunday either. We even found ourselves on Saturday afternoon staring at the TV and our daughter and wondering what the heck to do. I gotta tell you, that was a GREAT feeling. So we watched a couple of movies On Demand that we missed in the theater. The Other Guys and Friends with Benefits. Both hilarious movies. There are many weekends that I find myself wishing we could just stay home and do nothing all day. C'est la vie.

Ooh, we also saw Hunger Games Saturday morning. They did well. Didn't follow the book exactly like I had read somewhere on Facebook but still a good movie. If you haven't read the books, I do recommend them. Just don't expect the quality of J.K. Rowling or J.R.R. Tolkien (apparently in my mind you must have initials to be a good writer, lol).

But you didn't come here to read about our movie-viewing weekend, did you?

Kaylee continues to be adorable. I forgot some more words she is saying. One day, out of the blue, Aunt Shannon came over and she lit up and said "hi Shannon!". Blew us away. She says hello and bye-bye complete with an adorable wave. She also says "I know" and "all gone" and "again". And much earlier than her brother learned... Daddy can hug you and comfort you when Mommy goes off to work and you're crying. I watched her walk to him this morning as I was leaving. Poor baby. I know it's a phase but it's still sad. She cried when we dropped her off at church yesterday but lit up and waved hello when we came back like nothing had happened. Kaylee is obsessed with my hair at the moment. She loves to play with it but usually ends up pulling it. We're all (except for Kaylee, lol) in need of hair cuts right now!

We're back in church again, yeah! And we joined our new church, Friendswood Community. So nice to feel like we belong again. Met some awesome people at the membership class and saw most of them on Sunday and got to introduce them to Brent. And one lady is someone we knew ages ago when we were at the Methodist church and she was so happy to see me and hear about mom.

Brendan came back from the lake house Sunday with all sorts of stories to tell us. He caught two fish and threw them back. He was VERY proud of himself. He got to see his Great Mamaw on the way back. We've got to make a trip over there to see her soon. We've been very bad about that since Brent's Grandma died almost two years ago (hard to believe). And because of my lazy weekend, I didn't set up his room for night-time potty training like I wanted to. This Friday I shall!

So next Sunday is baby dedication at our church and since we finally found a new church home, we're getting Kaylee dedicated. I'm on a mission to get a cute pic of her smiling to send to the children's minister. I sent her a cute one of Kaylee and I from Easter but she wasn't smiling. Silly girl.

I'll leave you with this: http://warrenbarfield.com/ If you've never heard his music, I highly recommend "Love is Not a Fight" and "Waiting for the Right Time". He is also VERY passionate about sponsoring kids so that they have enough food to eat and water to drink. Amazing and talented man. We had the privilege to hear his music and his story yesterday at church :-)

P.S. My next post will mean I have posted more in 2012 than in 2011. Sad but true.

Probably gonna stop putting titles for this daily blogging stuff cause there's no way I'll be able to come up with witty titles for a month.

I forgot something Kaylee says! Thank you! And she always says it with THE cutest grin on her face. I love it. I told this story on Facebook (or maybe Twitter, who can remember?) but it's definitely worth repeating. I took them to Target recently cause Kaylee needed new shoes (and WalMart is sadly lacking in the shoe department). So we found her awesome no sparkle, tiny bit of pink, silver and blue shoes that light up when she walks! I handed them to her and she proceeded to tell me thank you about 20 times before we left the store. Brendan decided he needed a toy so we got him a Cars toy (it was one car and one he didn't have yet, Finn McMissile). I had to say to him "say thank you". Stinker.

Brendan also has been enjoying Bugs Bunny's Bugs Bunny Road Runner movie on HBO Go. He's constantly running around going "eh, what's up doc". Although usually he mixes two of Bugs' phrases and says "what's up cooking doc?" And he always follows it up by mimicking Bugs' carrot chewing. I love watching the movie with him cause it has some of my all time favorite Bugs cartoons. Including "Kill the Wabbit". I just wish it had the ones with Gossamer.

The kids are still loving school. Although Kaylee still hates being dropped off in the mornings. Her teachers love her. Even when she decides to dump an entire thing of applesauce on herself like she did Tuesday. Which begs the question... why would you hand a cup of applesauce to an 18 month old? Maybe I baby my kids too much but I prefer to avoid messes. And Kaylee does handle a fork better than Brendan did at this age. But then again, Brendan doesn't eat many foods that require such a utensil. Brendan hates being picked up in the afternoons. He asks every day "go see Grandma?". And most days we say no. Poor guy. I think he misses his days with Grandma.

That's all for today!

Challenge Accepted!

My cousin issued a challenge on Facebook the other day to blog 6 days a week for a month. So I have accepted her challenge and it starts today. I think between pictures and anecdotes I will be able to oblige.

So Kaylee is 18 months old now. Very hard to believe. Especially since Brendan was that old when I got pregnant with her. She is talking more and more and more everyday. I LOVE that she will answer yes or no questions. Although usually she answers uh huh (yes). Let's see, I'll try to come up with a list of what she is saying now: uh oh, uh huh, lights, woof woof (for dog), high five (this one shocked me the other day), and oh no (her favorite). That's all I can come up with for now. She really does talk a lot and if you listen carefully you can understand. She's still being a bully. She even did it at church the other day. The teachers said she would get really quiet and just be observing the room and then she'd walk over and take whichever toy she wanted. Mean girl! She just got over a horrible bout with diaper rash. I finally called the doc after nothing was working and they said to put Lotrimin on it for 3 - 4 days and if it didn't clear up with that to make an appointment. I can't tell you how odd it was to put athlete's foot cream on my daughter's private parts. But it worked! And I am grateful. Around this time she was VERY cranky and running low grade fevers. I think she was also trying to cut a tooth. Poor little girl.

I had a moment at WalMart the other day where I was regretting having a daughter. I was looking in the big girl accessories since our daughter, like her brother, has a huge head. I came across the underwear display. You read that correctly. They had the underwear laying out just like they would at Victoria's Secret and any other women's lingerie department. They had hipsters and bikinis and other styles. Thankfully I did not find thongs among them (didn't have the stomach to look actually). But still, I have a BIG problem with this. Girls are supposed to wear Fruit of the Loom and Hanes and day-of-the-week underwear and be happy with it! They don't wear things that require different types of underwear like women do! I am not okay with this.

On to the boy. He is going through a scaredy-cat phase at the moment. He loves talking about lizards and caterpillars and other bugs all day long. But get him near one and he pulls his arms in and crouches and will not go closer than a couple of feet from it. Silly boy. His favorite movie right now is Puss in Boots. And my mom found boots, hat, belt, and sword for him to play with. If you come over to my house at any given time of day, he will be in them. Even when he's napping/sleeping. His talking is night and day from this time last year. I'm still gonna call the school district to get him tested. Mostly to see if there is anything we should be doing. Don't really think there will be anything wrong though. His teacher told us he was the first kid in his class to tell her all the days of the week! Thank you Mickey Mouse calendar episode and the fact that he constantly asks when school is. He is so smart. One of my favorite smart kid moments came at dinner time a couple of months ago. We didn't have any chicken nuggets but we had some steak fingers. So I gave him those. He looked at them funny and said brown chicken nuggets? We said yes! After many funny-faced bites, he ate them all. The next night I had been to the store so I asked him if he wanted chicken and he said (with a concerned look on his face) white chicken? He makes us laugh a lot. Potty training continues to go amazingly well. We've even managed to get him to quit running back to us from our bathroom naked. He'll actually put his underwear and pants back on first (and his aforementioned costume pieces, lol). We have a few other issues to sort out, but we're getting there. We still haven't attempted night-time training. But since he's off to the grandparent's lake house this weekend, I'll actually have time to get in his room and get it setup for that endeavor.

Brendan is still a picky eater. Kaylee has her moments. She's still eating broccoli and green beans (yeah!) but getting her to try new things seems to only work when they're on my plate. Not sure when we'll be able to convince Brendan to try stuff again. We usually have to bribe him when we try. So frequently there are four meals made in the house. Ridiculous. But since we're trying to lose weight, it's sometimes the only thing we can do. And a lot of times I give in and just make Kaylee the same thing as Brendan but I don't want her to fall into the picky trap. She's also been eating less recently. Hoping we're not about to start the hunger strike phase that frustrated us so badly with Brendan.

We bought the zoo membership again. This spring has been way too pretty and we want to enjoy it! We went on Monday and the weather was amazing. Kaylee's favorite part was the reptile/amphibian house cause I actually let her out of the stroller to run around. Brendan's favorite part was the Komodo dragon I think. We got a cute pic of him laying down like the dragon. It was funny. We love having something as a go-to outing. It's also nice to not feel like you have to do the entire zoo every time you go. It would be nicer if it was closer but it's not too bad a drive on most days. It has gotten very popular though. Parking has been awful every time we've gone so far.

That's all for now :-)

Safety

Subtitle: Safety in our house and the next stage of potty training. We have a two story house, which means we have stairs. When we put Brendan in his "big boy" room, we decided to put the baby gate in his room. We didn't want him falling down the stairs in the middle of the night if he woke up and we keep a monitor in there. Fast forward to today... I stopped using the gate in his room once Kaylee was mobile cause we needed it at the bottom of the stairs to keep her from going up them during the day. So we had put one of those doorknob covers on his door instead. Now that we're doing well in daytime potty training, I'm starting to try things to help with nap (haha, like he still takes those!) and bed times. So we removed his doorknob cover and started putting the baby gate in the hallway at night. He has yet to come out of his room at night. The last time I tried that, he bolted out as soon as I put him in his room at night. It's like he's had a barrier for so long he won't go past it now. I've even closed his door and yelled to get him to open it. Poor baby. So we'll probably stay in pull-ups at night for a while. I even showed him that the bathroom light would be on and have left pull-ups on the counter in there in case he does decide to get up in the middle of the night. During the day he usually goes by himself. I think I'm just gonna have to go buy an extra set of sheets (or two) and grin and bear the accidents. He pretty much knows that he can pee in the pull-ups, so he does. At least once he decided to poop in the potty, he knows he doesn't like doing that in his pull-ups. Lol. The other thing I'll need to do to help him out is box up some of the toys so he doesn't constantly have an obstacle course between his bed and the door. His room has been so messy recently, he frequently sleeps on the floor instead of in the bed. I guess Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon need the bed more! Note: I know, I know... time to be a mean mommy and make HIM clean up his toys. I'm getting there! Meanwhile, we're starting to contemplate our options for when to move Kaylee into a "big girl" bed. I think we've decided taking the front off of her crib to convert it to a toddler daybed is our best option. The bed Brendan has is technically hers, but we have no idea what to do get Brendan furniture-wise for now. He is desperately in need of a bookcase (might have to go to IKEA, darn!). And there is a spare bed cause it's a bunk bed set, but that would require purchasing a bunkie board and mattress. So... cheap is best for now. We don't really have a good spot to store the crib anyway. And we haven't decided yet if we'll need it again (that opens another can of worms for another post). And to end the post... a word of warning. When putting up those oh so wonderful baby gates that adjust so perfectly to your walls and keep your children safe... try not to pinch your finger. It hurts and leaves a nasty bruise :-(

Leap Day Post!

Figured I'd post today since I can't post on this day for another four years! ;-)

So we've had three appointments now with our new pediatrician (had to switch when Brent changed jobs, boo). I like our new doc. He's a nice guy. Their office is terribly absent-minded. If I had to guess, they've just changed systems. After the first appointment, we didn't get a printout with the recap of the visit or Kaylee's height and weight. Second appointment was crazy. I took both kids for a checkup (cause Brendan needed a form filled out for school). The doc mentioned fluid in Brendan's ears but didn't write a prescription or anything (could've been that it wasn't necessary, but still, odd). He also needed to write a prescription for Kaylee (if you really wanna know what for, send me an email or message, odd but common thing) and forgot. I forgot too cause of the craziness and had to go back up there to get it. Third appointment we were with a different doc but we liked her too. Could've sworn she said we'll give Kaylee steroids here to make sure she can tolerate them and I'll write a prescription for them. Then we didn't get a prescription for that, just the antibiotic and inhaler (which I realize has steroids in it). So I leave quite confused after most appointments. But overall, the wait times aren't bad, there are fish in the lobby for the kids to look at, and the staff is really nice.

Here are the results from the checkup appointment:
Kaylee
24 lbs (but she weighed 25 two weeks later, so don't think this was correct)
31.5 inches

Brendan
35 lbs
39.5 inches
135/61 blood pressure

Don't ask me why they attempted to take a 3.5 year old's blood pressure. Obviously he didn't like it! Lol. The new doc recommended we get Brendan's speech checked out by the school district. So we'll probably look into that after tax season. And that's about all, medically, to update on him.

Kaylee, on the other hand, is a mess. Has anyone noticed how no doctor just diagnoses anymore? They just say they're treating it as such now. Drives me up the wall! Anyway, so I THINK Kaylee has asthma unofficially, lol. We have an inhaler for her along with a mask and chamber thing. Let me tell ya, that's fun. But I am incredibly grateful that it keeps us from having to do a third breathing treatment. That is an awful thing for any parent to have to experience. I don't like making my children cry when they're not misbehaving. (Not that I like it then either. Ok, maybe SOMEtimes I do.) And besides, the machine that administers it is in the shape of a car (for the kids anyway) so it'd be hell trying to keep Brendan away from it. She is also on an antibiotic for an ear infection. Poor baby girl. Since that breathing treatment, she's been acting like a whole new baby. Makes me wonder just how long she was feeling bad. Or if it was just teething before she got sick.

Brendan is talking more and more and more. And repeating more. Makes for some VERY funny situations. He is the BEST cheerer during sports events. Which is hilarious since cheering used to make him cry (see posts from fall of 2009). He plays by himself a whole lot now. But, just like his mother was (and probably still is), he is very possessive of his toys. He yells at Kaylee a lot. Trying to work on that. He is a big helper too. Starting to work on picking up toys. Though most nights, I just do it cause I don't want him to stay up till 10 doing it.

Kaylee is developing quite a personality. She loves playing games with all of us. She'll let Brendan entertain her from time to time. She can be impatient though. Goodness. Gets that from me :-( She looks like she has my hair. And her eyes don't look as blue as they were. I actually think I'd call them hazel now. They're definitely not as deep a brown as Daddy and Brendan's eyes are. She's getting a lot better at walking. She still eats lots of foods. Though she gets really mad if brother gets chicken nuggets and she doesn't. Silly girl.

Brent and I have started a new diet. You can read all about that over on Skinny Beans again. Can't believe it has been almost two years since we posted on there! Time for change :-) Have a great Leap Day!