During the snowstorm that gave us many inches of snow, Dallas decided to take Brooke sledding.
The fact that we don’t own a sled didn’t deter my creative husband. He fashioned a sled out of an old diaper box, rope, and lots of packing tape.
I had no faith the sled would be snow-worthy, but Dallas knew what he was doing. It worked beautifully. Brooke had a great time!
It’s also Dallas’s birthday today! Happy birthday, my love!
Here are our Christmas activities documented through pictures:
Our Christmas Eve program. My grandpa brought his friend, Mr. Fuzzy. Somehow my grandpa could make Mr. Fuzzy move on his own. It looked freaky and I wasn’t the only one who thought so. During the act, Brooke tried to get as far away from Mr. Fuzzy as possible and then said “Ew!” over and over again.
Christmas day. We didn’t take many pictures, but Dallas has a great video of Brooke he’ll need to post. She was a wild child all day. Maybe it was the excitement of gifts. Maybe it was the fact that she only ate Swedish Fish and Cocoa Puffs all day. In any case, she provided lots of entertainment. Her favorite gift was a box of diapers leading us to all wonder, “Why buy the toy when all kids want to play with is the box?”
My Dad was excited to cook prime rib. He seasoned it with rock salt. Lots and lots of rock salt.
Dallas enjoyed the prime rib.
Here I am losing at the game Set against my brother, Ben. By the end of the week I almost beat him! Ben, I declare a rematch!
Things are going far better in the paci department than I dared hope they would. Brooke is taking this pretty well. There have been a few nights where it’s taken her close to an hour to fall asleep, but she hasn’t been hysterically crying; she mostly just whimpers and hollers at us.
Now when I give Brooke her paci she looks at it, sees if the end is snipped, and since it is, she says, “Ew!” Once she even handed back the paci when I gave it to her. I guess soon we’ll see if she wants to throw them away and we’ll be rid of them once and for all.
I’ve been dreading this day for 18 months. Yesterday we decided to start the process of weaning Brooke from her pacifier.
It seemed like a good idea. Up until now she really only used her pacifier to go to sleep. However, lately I could see she was starting to get more attached to it and I wanted to end that before it got out of control. She just learned how to say “paci” and would say it a lot. She also figured out how to pull the basket containing her pacifiers off her shelf so she could get them. When she got hurt, she would beg for paci. Dallas and I decided that this week we’d get ourselves a paci-less daughter.
Dallas’s sister told us that she cut the ends of the pacifiers off a little at a time to wean her children. That seemed like a good idea so we snipped Brooke’s pacifier.
It was HILARIOUS to watch Brooke try to figure out why her good friend paci wasn’t acting the way it was supposed to. She would put it in her mouth in every direction, try to suck, and it wouldn’t work. She’d take it out and inspect it. I felt kind of bad for snipping her paci and a little worse for finding her predicament so funny.
We put her down for her nap. I would walk by her room and hear murmers of “Paci,” and “Uh oh.” It took her a while to fall asleep, but she finally did without too much fussing. However, she didn’t sleep for very long.
Then it was bedtime. Again we gave her paci and she was confused. We put her to bed and again it took her a little longer to fall asleep, but once she did, she didn’t wake up until 8:30 in the morning. Angel.
When we went in to get her, she’d chucked her pacifier out of the crib and didn’t care about retrieving it. I think we’re making good progress.
She took a bad nap again today, but hopefully bedtime will be good. We have our fingers crossed.
Brooke has learned how to make a joke.
The poor girl has been battling diarrhea for a couple of weeks. Her little bottom sorely suffered from the unpleasantness. She had the worst case of diaper rash in the history of her short life. Trying to change her diaper was like trying to get a bucking bronco to hold still while tying a bow around his tail.
Bath time used to be a fun time, but with the diaper rash the water would sting her bum and send her into convulsions. She would cry, “Done!” and want to be let out the second she got in.
Luckily, she seems to finally be getting better. Her backside has had time to heal and the diaper rash is nearly gone.
This means bath time should return to being fun. And it is, just in a different way.
Now I stick Brooke in the bathtub and the moment she sits down she looks up at me with a mischievous grin and says, “Done!” Then she looks so proud of herself. I say, “No, we’re not done yet!” and then she giggles at her clever joke.
I must admit, she is pretty clever.
