Picture update

Well, I'm not sure that even "almost daily" qualifies, but I'll keep trying. Here's a few pictures taken over the last couple of weeks. Brooke is already three weeks old! Time flies!!

First day home

Daddy's girls

Hanging out with Grandma Lisa

First bath

Great Grandma and Great Grandpa visit

Great Grandma just sang Jesus Loves Me to Brooke as she has to all her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Snow White says, "Shhh, the baby is sleeping."

Brooke Elizabeth!

Brooke decided that her birthday was January 24, 2011. We had a great labor and delivery experience and a healthy baby born! She was 7 lbs. 13 oz. 20 1/4 inches long. She's a beautiful baby. Here is a link to a sneak peek of the newborn pictures we got to have done yesterday. They turned out so well and there's more to come. I'm so excited to see what else Cherise took!

Photos by Cherise Kiel Photography

You do not have to have a facebook account to view these photos.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=273777&id=209615276552&ref=mf

More video fun!

We are just killing time here waiting for Brooke to make her debut. Lainey and Daddy had a fun day yesterday and wore each other out playing hide and seek, soccer, and the spinning game. Here's what spinning and flying with Daddy look like. Lainey loves it!

And here's a video of Lainey at dinner last night. We were practicing some signs. She is still signing really well and I think it'll be really cool as Brooke learns to sign to see them together!

Flying a kite

Lainey got a Tinkerbell kite from Pop-Pop (my dad) for Christmas. We haven't had a good windy day to fly it until this week. Lainey had a lot of fun and we took a few videos. These are a couple of the better ones.

I peeped

"I peeped."

This is the statement I am told when Lainey has an accident. We halted all potty training attempts around Thanksgiving. She was fighting me on trips to the potty and having more accidents which only led to me being very frustrated. I didn't want to have a toddler power struggle over this, so I just let it go and stopped all references to the potty or panties. About a week ago, Lainey started asking for certain pairs of panties. Usually Dora or her ballerina frog ones. And that's when this new phrase came about. "Mommy, I peeped." I think it's really cute.

The best part is, we've had three full days of panties only for little Miss Lainey- all by her request. She has special Sleeping Beauty pull-ups to take naps in or if we have a long set of errands to run and I'm too nervous to try without the back up. But she's mastered that as well. Sleeping Beauty's star fades if she gets wet and Lainey doesn't want to lose the star. We even ran errands yesterday and the day before in panties and she asked in the store when she needed to go! I'm really proud of her. She's only "peeped" once in the last three days and that was today at the park after lunch and no potty to run to. I'm not holding my breath that we are getting close to being fully potty trained though. I have a feeling when Brooke arrives, we'll have some regression. But hopefully it'll be short lived.

And now, being 38 weeks pregnant... I have to go peep... again. ;)

Do you want to go to bed?

I used this threat tonight when Lainey didn't have her listening ears on. She was outside and it was time to come in. She didn't want to come inside. I've been trying to use counting to three less often as it has become a bit of a crutch, but I don't like just dropping a consequence without at least some kind of warning. So after asking her to come inside and telling her I needed her to listen, I pulled the bed card. "If you can't listen you'll have to go straight to bed. Do you want to go to bed?" The funny thing is, she said yes. So off to bed we went and she didn't complain once about the going to bed part. She lost out on helping feed the dogs dinner and that was a little upsetting to her, but she knows that she lost a "pivilege" for not listening. She's answered yes to this question one other time with the same result. That time was even more shocking though because we were at Pop-Pop and Noni's house and it was an hour before bed time. I never expect her to say yes, but I guess when you're tired, you're tired!

Perida

Lainey has named her first doll. Perida is her name. I have no idea where the name came from or how she came up with it, but it's definitely this one doll's name. And it's kind of funny because if you change the spelling it becomes a Spanish word... Perrita. It means small female dog if you translate literally, but it's usage is more along the lines of the term for female dog in English slang. There's no changing it now, so hopefully we don't offend any Spanish speaking people in the next few years. We'll just be very careful not to roll the "r" and pronounce the ending with a D, not a T. :)