A Day in the Life

New Entertainment Center

Andrea — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:45:34 +0000

We have this alcove in our family room that houses our TV, along with movies, components, wires, Wii stuff, remotes, etc. It is a nice space, and we’ve always wanted to do something more with it. So a few weeks ago we talked to Zac’s cousin Ryan, who can build just about anything, about doing a built-in entertainment center. He said he could do it, and with a little bit of Zac’s help, one week later he was at our door ready to install it! We were not quite prepared for how fast he got it done, so I didn’t get to take a “before” picture, but if you can look past the child in the foreground, here is a picture I found of what our alcove looked like before:

Before

Just a TV and and IKEA entertainment center (which I sort of broke). And now:

After

We love it! I have some storage space for movies, toys, DVD player, plus some! And I don’t know what to do in those pretty shelves above, but I’m sure they’ll get filled up. Thanks Ryan!

BONUS! There was an estate sale on our street last week, which means TONS of cars were coming up our street for 3 days straight. So we put the old entertainment center out on the sidewalk with a sign that said “FREE” on it, and it was gone within 10 minutes. Saved me a trip to CCA!

While Addie was “napping”

Andrea — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 21:45:56 +0000

Addie is in the process of trying to drop her nap. Some days she will sleep, some days she will not. It has moved steadily back from starting at 12:30 and going until about 2 or 2:15, to starting at 1:30 and going until 3:30ish. When she actually falls asleep. On the days she does not sleep, I ask her to read or play quietly, or rest in her bed, and she has “rest time” for about an hour. She still comes out of her room a couple of times during the hour, but I just remind her that it is resting time, and she will continue to lay down and rest, or play quietly. Quietly is a loose term, since most of the time she is singing while she is playing, which I am fine with.

Today while she was “napping”, she made a royal mess of her room. She pulled out toys I didn’t even remember we had. And to top it off, she found a pack of stickers and tore them all off and put them on the floor!

I was about to be seriously ticked when I looked a little closer, and saw this:

She had split up the stickers and placed them into groups! What an organizer! Maybe I should enlist her help organizing the rest of my house.

Cherish

Andrea — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 20:40:57 +0000

Someone I know or knew chose one word each year to focus on all year long. She made it sort of a mantra that was meant to inspire and motivate her to be better. I can’t remember who you are, but if you are reading this, feel free to take the credit for this idea. I want to do that this year. I have been reflecting on how things are going (which is pretty smoothly) and I want to remember these years as a time I cherished, instead of just endured. Because I think many of us can agree that sometimes it seems like there is no end in sight of nighttime feelings, teething troubles, eating battles, toddler tantrums, potty training, etc. I know I sometimes get bogged down in this kind of stuff. But why not focus on the precious hugs and slobbery kisses, bedtime snuggles, joyful smiles, ticklish tummies, first milestones, and kid-like excitement that comes with every holiday where candy is involved? Almost every time I am in public and someone whose kids are grown sees me struggling with my kids, they always smile knowingly and just say, “Cherish these days. They go by way too fast.”

That is why this year I have chosen to focus on the word Cherish. I will cherish my sweet baby and my fiery yet totally fun preschooler. I will cherish my thoughtful husband. I will cherish my caring parents, siblings and in-laws. I will cherish my friends. I will cherish memories we make, and hopefully I will write more of them down so they don’t slip away. That is my goal this year.

I am so far from perfect and am working on being a better sister, daughter, mother, wife and friend. But I am hoping that as I find joy in this little life of mine, that I will be able to improve on my flaws and just be a better, happier person.

Donut making

Andrea — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 21:32:50 +0000

We made donuts! Addie found some video of a kid making donuts on youtube, and asked if we could make our own donuts. I had never done it before, but Zac had, so while he was home we decided to give it a shot. I was surprised they turned out so tasty! They don’t look great, but we learned a few things for next time. Like, don’t make them so huge! If they were smaller we could have browned them slightly on the outside and they would be done on the inside. Addie is a great helper and helped me cut out the shapes of donuts she wanted (heart, pumpkin, circle). It took about 3 hours, and Nolan was a dear and slept almost the entire time!

Step 1. Mix the dough and let it rise for about an hour. Then roll out the dough and cut into shapes!

Cutting them out

Cookie cutters work

Step 2. Let the dough rise another 30 minutes to an hour.

Getting a little messy!

Step 3. Heat up the oil, but use a thermometer to check if it is hot, NOT your fingers. Addie missed the memo on that one, and burned her finger. She spent the next 10 minutes soaking her fingers in cold water. It was sad, but funny because Zac had told her 3 seconds before she did it “Don’t put your fingers in the oil, it is HOT.” Then she promptly put her fingers in the oil. Ouch!

Soaking her finger

Step 4. Toss the donuts in the oil, and flip them with chopsticks when they are brown.

Guess I should have dressed up for this photo shoot

Almost done...

Step 5. Take them out when both sides are browned, and glaze them!

Before the glaze

Step 6. Eat! Addie loved eating her donuts!

All glazed and ready to be eaten

She liked the donut holes...just her size!

Nolan at 8 months

Andrea — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 21:15:45 +0000

This was a good month! Nolan is becoming more predictable and easier to read, which makes it easier to figure out what he needs. Mostly he just wants food and to be cuddled by his mama. There were some challenges this month too, but overall it was good.

Nolan at 8 Months

Nighttime sleep- I am not going to go into too much detail since that backfired on me last month, but I will say things are very good in this category. A few weeks ago Nolan started staying awake at night even after I nursed him, just fussing and wanting to be held and rocked, so I figured his waking at night was not because he was hungry. I finally got the guts to let him cry it out, and after two nights of some crying, he hasn’t woken at night since. Hallelujah! there, we’ll see if that backfires…

Naps-Nolan takes 3 naps, each about 1.5 hours on average. Except the last one, which is usually about 45 minutes. Although one day this week he took two longer naps, and i can see the days of two naps coming soon! I love the two nap schedule. It seems like there is so much more time to go play! Ninety percent of the time he goes to sleep without a fuss. Sometimes if he is overtired, he will fuss or cry for a few minutes, but most of the time he will fall asleep all by himself.

Nolan Supports our Troops

Nursing- Nursing is still kind of a challenge with this kid. He pulls off a lot, bites on occasion, and grunts and cries afterwards. Sometimes he will burp and then be totally fine, but if not, I usually supplement with a bottle if he seems grumpy after nursing. I’m not sure if we’ll make it to a year with him, but I’m going to at least try to make it to 9 months. He gets much more comfort out of nursing than drinking a bottle at this point. He nurses either 4 or 5 times per day, depending on what time he wakes up in the morning, how his naps go, etc.

Solids – Nolan is becoming much more adventurous in the eating category. His interest in food is almost alarming to me. He wants to eat anything we eat, so I’ve started giving him bits and pieces of food, instead of just pureed baby food. He has tried puffs, bits of pears, bananas, noodles, and pureed sweet potatoes, green beans, applesauce, oatmeal, rice cereal, peaches, etc.

Temperament – He is very much a mama’s boy, and absolutely LOVES to cuddle me. He cuddles anyone, but is pretty partial to his mama. His face lights up when I’m in the room, which is so cute (since Addie was very independent, she was never too attached to me). I sort of fear he will never get over this, but I’m enjoying it for now. He is now able to play by himself on the floor, but constantly looks around to see where I am. If he is in mama’s arms, he is the most happy, content guy. If not, he is a little more unpredictable.

Likes and dislikes – He LOVE to stand up and jump. He HATES to be on his tummy. We think he will never crawl, but he’ll just skip to walking. We’ve been working on getting him to start moving on his tummy, but all he can do is rotate about 90 degrees, and scoot backwards, a a rate of about an inch per hour. So progress has been slow:) I’m okay with this, since I don’t have to babyproof my house yet, but it seems like he would be so much happier if he could get to his toys all on his own. He also LIKES to chew on everything still, and will sit and chew for quite some time as long as there are toys within reach. He likes the exersaucer, but prefers to stand outside of it where he is free to roam, rather than inside where he is cooped up. He LIKES to be tickled, and has the most awesome belly laugh. Oh how I love to make this baby laugh!

Milestones – He wears 9 – 12 month clothes and weighs about 18 pounds. He can roll both ways, but doesn’t do it often. He still just has the two teeth. His hair is starting to come in now, and it looks like it will be light, like Addie’s. He can stand if he is holding onto something, but isn’t cruising yet. Crawling remains a mystery, but he sits up and plays with toys pretty well.

Trampoline Family

Zac — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:45:33 +0000

These last two weeks we have had lots of fun being home together as a family. We have been going places like the mall playground, the museum, Grandma and Grandpa’s, the bowling ally, and the park. However, the best part was just spending time together as a family.

Trampoline Family

P.S. Doesn’t my new fence in the background look great…

Fort Worth Museum Day

Andrea — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 16:35:32 +0000

We went to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History this week, and took advantage of the HUGE children’s section, filled with all sorts of things to explore and play with. Addie loved the grocery store section. She probably spent 30 minutes just filling her cart with food, checking out, putting all the food back, and filling her cart again. She also enjoyed the hospital section, where you could drive an ambulance, check some x-rays, and care for the babies in the nursery. She was excited to wear the white doctor’s coat, and I must say, this girl is a natural at this stuff. It wouldn’t surprise me if she ended up as a nurse or doctor someday. Or at least wanting to be one. Who knows if our genes combine to make a smart enough person to be a doctor.

Dr. Addie Inspecting Her Patients

A Proud Doctor

Nolan and mom

Nolan was a champ! He was so good the entire time, and even fell asleep in his stroller for about 40 minutes (which was good because we were bad parents and kept him there WAY past nap time, we just wanted to see everything!)

Playing at the water station

There is an outdoor water station, where you could make awesome water fountains from PVC pipes, make boats float, spray water guns, etc. It would be really fun in the summer. The Dino Dig was closed, so we didn’t get to dig in the sand for fossils, which is okay since you tend to get a little messy there.

Other exhibits we liked were the George Washington exhibit and Energy Blast, which is an exhibit all about alternative energy resources. Sounds boring, but it was seriously cool. It has a ride, movie, experiments, and tons of information which is meant to get you thinking about alternative energy sources. Addie was impatient during this part, so I didn’t get to spend a ton of time in there, but I would like to go back sometime. In fact, we ended up buying annual passes so we COULD go back a few times this year. We went out to lunch on our way home, and Addie asked, “Can we go back to the museum now?” after we ate. Haha! I guess that annual pass was a good idea.

Box fort

Andrea — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 04:16:26 +0000

How many boxes did you throw out this week? We had a huge tower of boxes that probably could have cleared 30 feet. So we decided to make a fort. As soon as I mentioned this to Zac, I could see the wheels turning in his mind. He is a hands on kind of learner, so I knew he would take this and run with it. He got to work and made this awesome fort/castle that Addie loved playing in.

Flower box window

Putting the flowers in order for the flower box

Shutting the drawbridge

Out the round window

Showing her kitchen table

It might not look like much, but it included a few windows with shutters, a drawbridge door that actually works, a look out telescope, a flower box with flowers, a flag pole, some furniture inside (table and couches), a chimney, and a milk jug bugle (you know, for announcing visitors). Zac did the whole thing, and I’m seriously impressed it has stayed together so well! Maybe he should have been an engineer…

Other Christmas happenings

Andrea — Thu, 05 Jan 2012 04:00:41 +0000

Since I have been so lame at posting this last month, here are some other things we have done, some Christmasy and some not. The first was Addie’s dance recital. She looked precious in her costume, I love it! It was really more of a normal dance class with a few run-throughs of their big dance at the end. They got to hold teddy bears and dance with them. It was seriously cute! Although it was good they did it a few times, because the girls got a little distracted by all the parents taking pictures and videos of them. It was awesome.

Ballerina Pose

She just can't hide that personality:)

Addie and Savannah

Addie and her cousins Austin and Caleb attended Grandma Taylor’s First Annual Grandma’s Christmas party too. They made a craft, decorated cookies, watched a Christmas movie, and open a couple of presents. They had a blast, and when I came to pick up Addie, she hid in the bathroom and yelled, “NO, I want to stay and play with my cousins more!” Man she loves those boys.

Addie, Austin and Caleb

We made a few of our own crafts at home too. Thanks to Pillsbury, we made a few successful batches of gingerbread men, decorated them with frosting and M&Ms (mint, mmmm), took pictures of them, and then promptly ate them. Yumm. We also made some snowmen out of toilet paper tubes. It was something we found on a blog and Addie though they were worth trying. I think they turned out cute, but then again, I had to make most of them because her attention span for crafts is about 4.2 seconds.

Christmas cookies and snowmen

We saw the Coppell santa again this year. Addie did much better, although the conversation went sort of like this:

Santa: What do you want for Christmas this year?

Addie: I want a Belle phone (she has been asking for this phone for weeks. It is just something she saw in the Target checkout line, and really really wanted it. Enough so that it was the only thing she wanted to ask Santa for)

Santa: ooh a Belle phone. I’ll see if my elves can get one of those for you. What else would you like?

Addie: (silence…..she had only rehearsed one thing to ask for, Mom and Dad didn’t tell her she could ask for more than one thing…)

Santa: Do you like princesses?

Addie: (continues to stare at Santa in silence)

Santa: Would you like a candy cane?

Addie: Yes! (Addie is loving all the treats I am letting her have this month. This will cease soon, after I eat it all up)

So, we got a picture and left. I think it was a successful visit, even if she totally clammed up.

Addie and Santa

Christmas 2011

Andrea — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 04:00:26 +0000

Our Christmas was busy and fun, but also fraught with runny noses, sore throats, coughing, sneezing, headaches and sleepless nights. All four of us got the gunk, and it has been merciless. We all got sick right around Christmas day, and are still feeling kind of yucky. Even antibiotics hasn’t taken it away completely. But other than that, we have had a great break. Zac is off work for two weeks (yay!), so we’ve spent lots of time together. My siblings all came home for Christmas, so we had a big Brassfield celebration and spent almost all day every day hanging with them. A little too much family time is how we like it

Christmas day started at our house, and my parents and siblings all came over at 7:30 am to watch the little ones open their presents. It was so fun to watch Addie open presents this year. Last year was fun, but this year she picked out all the presents, handed them out to each person, asked me or Zac whether it was okay if they opened it, and helped rip open the wrapping paper. It was heaven for her, and so cute to watch. The funniest thing was watching her climb under the Christmas tree (which was dying rapidly and shedding pine needles like crazy in her hair and clothes) to find the last presents. She got a few princesses, an awesome new backpack, a Belle phone from Santa, some books and clothes, and a HUGE trampoline. Addie was SO excited about this one. She has so much energy and loves to jump, so this was a perfect gift for her. It’s too bad she has had a bad cough since Christmas, so we only let her jump for a few minutes at a time, since it aggravates her cough more.

Christmas morning

Nolan's toys all had to pass the "chew" test

New princesses and backpack

Are there any more presents back there?

Loving it!

Zac

Nolan got some chewy trucks

Cami and Mom

We eventually went to my parents house and rest of the day there, with their presents and some yummy food. (my family doesn’t do ham for Christmas dinner because my parents don’t like it, so we did prime rib). Addie LOVES to be there, and gets lots of love and attention as she is the first grandchild. We were also treated to a reenactment of the nativity, with Addie as Mary. It’s too bad there are no more grandchildren to round out the story, but we did our best with just her. I can’t remember what my mom was dressed as. A shepherd? Joseph? the angel?

Riding the donkey to Bethlehem

Cradling "baby Jesus"

After church, since we were all dressed (well, we’re 3 for 4) and looking like normal people again, we took some family pictures.

Family pic

The whole gang

Hope your Christmas was full of fun and good memories too!