December already?!? oh man

Happy belated Turkey Day! We spent ours low key with family at Grandma and Grandpa Meibos' house. The food was awesome, as always, and it was fun to have the Gurr gang as well as a couple of Tyler's friends there to celebrate with. I unfortunately did not remember to take pictures (typical), but you can imagine a bunch of us laying around upstairs, and a bunch more of us laying around downstairs. After the chow down of course!

So, just for those who may be interested - my fingers are still numb, and the numbness has spread down the side of my hand and into my wrist a little. I'm definitely finding myself dropping more things than usual with that hand, and can feel its strength slowly diminishing. That sounds a little dramatic... Anyway we're researching some insurance options for me to jump on so I can get it checked out. Probably should hop on it as it's been almost two months. :0) Hurrah!

Also, we are in much need of a Brooklin update!

I called her "Brook" yesterday - without thinking about it - and I've come to the realization that it's going to happen, and that I'm okay with it. I was very anti "Brook" - and strictly "Brooklin" or any other nickname as long as it wasn't "Brook" - but I actually kind of enjoyed the feeling after I'd said it. This is big for me. I took pause and imagined our baby girl as a tweeny choosing to go by Brook instead of Brooklin and I smiled, instead of the usual no way! So that's good.

Also, she's sitting up on her own - as long as she wants! She just leans over and plops onto her tummy when she's ready for some change. It happened s

o fast! Ryan was in town visiting a couple of weeks ago now and Brooklin wanted to impress him, so the first time she made her debut she plopped on the floor and just sat there for the longest time to date - we were both impressed! Ever since then she's just been a pro! She even enjoys sitting up in the tub and smashing her hands into the tub in front of her. The water must feel different from that angle or something. Silly girl!

She's chatty - using more consonants and different letter combos. She still loves looking at lights - and enjoyed watching our shadows today on the way back from getting the mail. It was adorable! She was grinning and randomly shouting out in joy because let's face it, shadows are really that entertaining! Hah We put up our fake, pre-lit Christmas tree a couple of days ago, and that's also a joy for her to look at. Except tonight while we were sitting in awe of it's beauty, i noticed her head was turned towards the corner where an

ancient exercise ball resides (one of those heavy ones that's just bigger than a basketball) and realized this girl still hasn't been introduced to one of the joys of childhooddom - the BALL! We need to get on that. I have the feeling she will fall in love.

Oh, another "update" for the little monkey - she refuses to have her fingernails cut. I don't know what to do at this point. She doesn't fall asleep in convenie

nt nail cutting positions or places, so that's a bit out of the question, and she also won't hold still long enough to clip the nail, even if she was distracted by sesame street while I attempt. Today I was begging her to hold still long enough to cut the most vicious ones, and she obliged for half of one of her thumbs, but then shrieked and pulled away right when I was about to cut the second half. grrr. haha it's not such a bad life when my biggest problem is trying to convince an almost 8 month old to hold still.

She's graduated to 12 month size pjs! Well, in everything except the fleece carters. For those she's still sporting the 6 monthers. Also, some of the 12 month ones we almost waited too long to have her start wearing! The costco stretchies are continuing to be a size smaller than what the label says. Good thing I was feeling optimistic and had her

try all those "big girl" jammies on!

In the eating department, she's a rock star! She hasn't "refused" anything we've tried on her yet which has been squash, carrots (which she LOVES), peas, green beans, sweet potatoes, banana and most recently peach puree. We thought for sure she'd go nuts over the fruit, but she loves them just as much as any of the veggies! I would even go so far as to say her carrot, green bean and sweet potato yearnings would be greater than peaches or bananas! She's nuts. But we don't mind! She's really well behaved while she eats, which I wasn't anticipating since her doctor suggested giving her a spoon that she could play with while we fed her with a different spoon so as to distract her. We did do that for a couple of days, but when I was telling mom that's what we were doing she mentioned that it might messier later on,

and Brooklin might start to refuse to let us feed her and only want to feed herself. I'm kind of ocd about food messes (unless it's a stack of dirty dishes, let's be honest here) so I immediately decided the bonus spoon wasn't going to happen anymore, just in case. And she hasn't missed it at all. We don't use a high chair when we feed her - no room and we're lazy - so I usually just hold her in my lap and feed her that way. It seems like a hard way to do it, because we're both facing forward, but it's actually become one of my favorite times of day. She'll sometimes turn her little head up and look at me and just GRIN a big fat baby grin - so of course I kiss her little face and she giggles like crazy and we get distracted and play like this for probably just a few seconds until she realizes that she's starving and faces forward again with her mouth opened wide. :0) SO CUTE!

And how could I forget to mention this biggy -- she's got her first little tooth! Very hard to capture in a photo - but we'll keep trying. It's adorable. It just appeared! She wasn't super fussy or super drooly - at least not more than usual, and Trenton for some reason had his finger in her mouth (she was probably demanding it as a chew toy) and announced she had a tooth! A couple of days after it appeared is when she got a little more cranky and drooly than normal, but it only lasted a day or two. I'm assuming there's another one coming in shortly, but I don't feel anything in there so who knows?

Anyway, it's late, and Trenton's asleep on the couch - and I'm cold and well, late is a good enough reason to end.

And on that note - a picture of Brooklin in the "newly washed and ready to be worn" 12 month pjs: (taken just before she was tossed into bed this very evening)

So the shirt's a little long still, but the saying is so true! Ha...