Nursery Time!!!

When a baby hits 18 months in the LDS church it means nursery time. And that is something to celebrate!
Our Brookie is so fun to have around. She keeps it real. :) She is the boss. Her mood determines the rest of ours. She is turning into quite the girl and we love her to death.

She is now in love with playing with my makeup. I love this. She does have a girl side to her. For a while i was worried! :) Every morning she gets to sit on the bathroom counter and play with my powder and lip gloss while i do her hair. It works like a charm!

She loves brushing her teeth. While I am getting ready I give her her tooth brush and she will sit on the counter and chew and brush her teeth the whole time.

Her and Kyler are true siblings. They can play so cute together and giggle and laugh. And then the table turns and they are fighting....usually Brookie getting mad at Kyler for taking her toy or wrseling her to the ground.

She is a funny eater. She scarfs breakfast. Her #1 favorite is oatmeal, but pancakes and cereal are close seconds. Just this week i got brave and started putting milk in her cereal, i used to just give her the dry cereal and milk in a sippy. She is in heaven She is a master at the spoon and fork and i feel bad i didnt do it sooner. She even lifts her bowl up and drinks the milk out of the bowl. Lunch she will eat sometimes....it just depends. She always eats her snacks, BUT dinner. Nope not at all. It is rare for her to eat anything at dinner time. It is so frustrating to me, this is why she eats breakfast so well i am sure.

She has a hard time with daycare. Its a constant fight for my attention. Especially with the baby that is just 2 months younger. The two of them are not good friends. I was hoping they would grow up together and be happy to play with one another. BUT tis not the case. Brookie is a bully to her most of the time. She doesnt like sharing mom. Not one tiny bit. Which is weird seems how i have had daycare here since she was 2 weeks old.

She talks more and more. Not too many new words, but she uses the ones she knows more frequantly. Her favorites to use are "MOE" or more "Uh Oh" and "nigh, nigh" which is her blanket and "Go" She hasnt learned no yet which i feel is a blessing. She will occasionally say "Stop it".Other words i might have mentioned before but will again, she says: eyes, ears, nose, more, "nigh nigh", go, uh oh, more, done, ouchy, papa, gma, "diapa" diaper, wow! hot, cold. She loves to make the meow sound and giggles each time i do it to her. She can bark like a dog and as she has for a long time she does the horsey sound.

She loves to color. She loves to take the lids on and off the markers.

She seems to have intrest in the potty. If we werent moving I would have tackled this. Maybe if she adjusts well to the new house, we will attempt before the baby comes. How cool to only have one in diapers!

She is a snuggle bug and is such a good hugger. The last week or so she has started rubbing your back when you hold her and will stroke your face when sitting in your lap. What a lover.

She loves her daddy. She screams and runs to him when he comes home from work.

We love this lady. She is an adventure we have enjoyed being on for the last 18 months!

Ky

I have to do a quick post on Ky. Seems how Brookie gets a monthly one.
Kyler is awesome. I love that kid more than i ever imagined i could love someone. He is so smart. He has SO much energy. He is so social. He is hilarious. He loves to talk. He loves his sister. He adores his daddy. And Im pretty sure he loves me tons too! :)

Kyler is so smart. He now can count to 10 perfect. He can recognize tons of the letters. He comes home and tells me all the different stuff he is learning at preschool. He loves to make up his own songs. His favorite song to sing is, "lolly lolly poo poo, lolly lolly poo!" or "hanny, hanny poo poo" This is a happy song that has nothing to do with "poo" He sings it all day long.

He has so much energy. This boys goes and goes and goes. He dances, runs, jumps, crawls, gallops, trots all the day long. He never stops. Never. He loves to be outside running and crawling around like a dog or galloping like a horse.

He is so social. He loves his friends that come to play everyday. He knows what they all like. He knows their full names and knows thier parents too...what 3 year old cares about that kind of stuff! He is so lost when they dont come. His best friend as of right now is Gus. Gus and him are two peas in a pod. Gus has horses at his house, which is huge bonus points. :) Gus and him go to preschool together, and then play all day here. They are trouble. His next best friends are the Hatch's. He loves Jed and Madi and thier baby Emi. He begs to go play at their house almost daily.

He is hilarious. He loves to make people laugh. I'm so sure he is going to be the class clown. He has the funniest dances, and says the funniest stuff. He now loves knock knock jokes. Don't get him started. He will never stop. He is always smiling (obviously minus when he is throwing his 3 year old fits!) It stresses him out when someone isn't smiling. When I get after him, he will let me scowl while i am getting after him, but the minute im done he will reach over and smooth out my eyebrows and will say, "Make your eyebrows happy mom, not mad, make these happy again!" This makes me smiles almost every single time. If I don't it really stresses him out.

He loves to talk. He never shuts up. He talks and talks and talks. He makes so much sense too. Often I am blown away as to how grown up he sounds. They grow up so fast. Last night we were sitting on the couch and i kept reminding him he couldn't jump onto me cause it will hurt the baby in my tummy. He looks up and says, "mommy, help me name your baby" m:"what is our baby, boy or girl?" k:"a girl. Hey lets name her Betsy, Betsy is a girl name and she is on Curious George. I love that name!" Also, last night we sat down for dinner, and 9 time out of 10 Ky will immediately say the prayer before anyone has a chance to take that responsibility away from him. But, last night Kyler says, "daddy i wanted to say the prayer, but you haven't shot your elk yet, so you better say it tonight." Thanks bud, daddy needs all the help he can get.

He loves Brookie. He I think loves her too much and is defiantly the big brother that attacks and will wrestle her down. Watch out bud, she is almost as tall as you, she will get even! :) He will go into her room some nights just to make her giggle and laugh, then go back to his room to bed. He loves to make her laugh in the tub. This usually results in a flooded bathroom. Mom and dad Dont appreciate it, but Brookie sure does.

To end off this post, i have to show you this picture. I went up stairs to go to bed and check on the kids. And i found Kylers light on. Gerrr this irritates me. So I walk further in to find him out cold backwards in his bed with his book wide open to the poliece man page. He is lately in love with police men. It made me smile.

First Snow

I felt a little left out yesterday. All my SLC friends kids were outside all day playing in their snow. We had none. I was so bummed. Then this morning we woke up to it!!
I dont know who was more excited me or Ky! We scarfed our breakfast and headed right out. I was not quite prepared. Brookie has no snow pants, niether kid had good snow gloves, so our first trip out was short.
After a quicky trip to Richfield to get a few other things we stopped and got gloves for both kids and snow pants for Brookie. Now we are prepared for winter fun! 
Then this afternoon when Brookie went down for a nap, me and Ky headed out to build the promised snow man. He turned out great. Then we painted a snow castle we made, flew down the snow covered slide, made snow angels, and even made a now sea lion and whale.
This brings me to a funny story. Kyler layed down on his tummy after doing a snow angel and asked what he made. I told him it looked like a sea lion. He then told me to do what he did. I did. He then looks at the print i made and says so matter of a fact "mom, thats not a sea lion, thats a WHALE!" oh my bud that was so not nice! :)
By now i was freezing, i didnt dress myself as well as i dressed Ky. I asked if we could go in. He said no, we were staying outside. So we threw snow balls at the rock climbing wall one the play ground. I asked again, he said no. I said hey if we go in we can have hot coco and sugar cookies......It worked. He is now sipping his hot coco ate his cookie and enjoying being wrapped in 3 blankeys. Perfect afternoon. 

coloring snow

Brookie loved it too!

This is how Brokie spent the majority of her time. She would want to run and would fall right over. Poor girl.

I asked Ky to make a snow angel...he didnt remember how, so i told him i would deminstrate. He wanted to be the photographer....not flattering. :)

Kys attempt at a snow angel

My Snow Babies

Catching snow flakes

I think i have cute kids. Brooklyn looks so pretty and Ky is just a nut!

Rolling our body ball

adding the face

Our first snowman of the season!

we built a snow castle with our sandcastle bucket. It worked so well! Then we broke out the spray bottles again and tie dyed it. Can i say that i loved this as much as he did!!

life.

Life can be so complicated and beautiful and everything in between. We have had an incredible several months. And by incredible i dont mean it in the positive way. I mean it in the hardest time in my life. I have never been so worn out, frustrated, worried, stressed, irritated, and stretched to my limits. I always thought my life wouldn't ever be as complicated as it was when i was dating my soon to be husband, planing a wedding, working part time and taking 18 credits at the end of my degree that required tons of projects etc. I hardly slept, I was stressed. These last several months put that time to shame.
Why do i want to complain. Well i dont mean to complain. In fact i really don't want anyone to torture them self with reading all that will follow this. I just want it recorded for myself. So i can write it and forget it, or can come back some other day when i think about it and remember all that i learned from all that has come my way. Because as i take a break tonight and breath, i realize i am learning. Learning so much. Learning about myself, my husband, my children, my Heavenly Father. Learning and stretching and growing.
So if you want, keep reading. If you dont really care to hear me list my trials you can skip to the end and just read how i really feel at the end.

September we finally heard that we were going to be able to move forward on the short sale we had made an offer on the end of April. This is when all heck seemed to break loose. Even though this is when we got excited for this new opportunity, i think we really needed to learn something.

Kyler and his Tummy issues
At this time we were already starting to worry about Kyler. He has had diarrhea for a long time. Long story short at his 3 year well child check back in May our dr recommend we go back to the GI clinic at primary Children's and get it figured out as to why. Since then the dr told us to give him dairy back, we had him on a lactose free diet for just over a year until that time. So we changed his diet. They took some blood, ran some tests. Found his Pancreatic enzymes and Liver enzymes were elevated. We waited 6 weeks, took blood again. Liver enzymes were elevated from the last time, Pancreatic were the same.  A ultra sound was ordered on his liver/pancreas and they found a enlarged duct. Drs worried he had a blocked duct or a split in his pancreas. Both a bad deal. A MRI was scheduled and they sedated my little guy and had the MRI. MRI came back good. Relief. Back to the dr. Ordered us to go back to a dairy free diet! (This was one of the most frustrating things. He didn't care that he never got yogurt/string cheese/ice cream before because we took it away at such a young age. Then we could give it to him we let him have it all. So now, dairy free again it is rough. He really loved yogurt. He really really loved string cheese. And what kid doesn't like ice cream. So we are adjusting. He is a tough kid.) Now, after a couple other tests since his MRI they don't believe its his Pancreas. Relief. Dairy free seems to help. We still don't have answers. This trial is still not over for us and my baby boy thats not too baby.

Me and my Tummy issues
This summer I had my own pancreatic issues...odd, really odd. But it all worked out and im fine there. But while i was in the hospital for that issue it came about that i really had tummy issues. So they did a allergy panel on me with my blood and it came back that I am VERY allergic to dairy. Everything dairy. Whey protein, Casisen, all things dairy. I was irritated and love milk so it took a while for me to be motivated to do anything but give up my precious glasses of milk and milk on cereal. Then i got pregnant and bless my pregnant body it really hated milk. So now, i have had to go dairy free for real. Its hard. Diary is in everything. This is the hardest thing I have had to do. I am slowly learning how to make dinner for my family that tastes good to those who can eat whatever they want, and is good for those of us that cant have the really good stuff. :) Its been a challenge. I have honestly hated every minute of it and have gone about it kicking and screaming. Then, at Stake Conference a speaker was talking about our health and eating healthy. At the end of her talk she said some people are given food illnesses to teach them to be more disciplined in their life. This hit me so hard. So SO hard. This is exactly what this is. It was then, that i realized i can be stronger than i was being. Since then i have almost cut dairy out completely. I just need to fill my pantry with good stuff for us and donate my other food to lucky neighbors and friends. Then it will be even easier.

Baby #3
During all this i got pregnant. It came much quicker than we planned. Kyler came to us after a year of fertility treatments, Brookie came to us after 5 months of fertility. So I planned somewhere between there for #3. baby #3 came after 3 treatments. Miracle. blessing. Then came the sickness. Say what! I was never sick with the other 2. only puked once with Brookie and that was after a long day of eating too much and then going on a windy road sitting in the middle of a 15 passenger van. This pregnancy. Rough. Puking daily. Never feeling good. Exhaustion. Thanks to finally getting some pills that helped with the puking and then moving into my 2nd trimester i think i might live. :)

Primary
In the last 2 months i have written the primary program and tried to organize my side of this responsibility. I love primary. I love the kids. I adore the presidency i am a part of. They are all 3 blessings and good good friends of mine. Just been busy. :)

Mom
My mom is where she should be(on a mission in Canada), but man oh man i miss her like crazy.

Daycare
During all this I am still working full time. This shouldn't be such a big deal. But it is. I work from 7:30-5:30. No break. I cant go to the post office. I cant run to the store. I cant run to the bank. 99% of the time im stuck home, or as i like to put it im under house arrest. I have been able to take Kyler and 2 other kids to preschool 3 days a week, so i do get to load 7 kids up in my car and drive 4 blocks drop off 3 kids and then come back. Just that much helps, but still. I love being able to stay home with my kids. I love the kids that i tend. But 50 hours a week, thats a lot.

Buying a Short Sale
DONT EVER DO IT!! its not worth it!! Ok with that said, it was a great deal. So in a way it could might maybe be worth it. In the last month and a half i have had to send 59 emails back and forth to the mortgage broker and realtor. I have attached or faxed over 50 different documents. I have more phone calls than i care to count, and spent more minutes on that phone than i care to count. Doing all this while working, raising my family and attempting to feed them. :)

Renters
We had to rent our house we already own. Obvioulsy we would need renters. We found great ones. I was sooo excited. They back out. We had to find renter in a week. No one would come look. We heard of a couple people that we wanted to rent, but they wouldnt come or call.  Finally someone came. They wanted it. They signed a contract. They have been so great to play the stupid bank games they have made us play. Its been rediculous. Sign a contract, the bank not like it, come back sign another one, the underwriter didnt like it, come back and sign another one. SERIOUSLY!!! They arent the ideal renters, but hey they signed and resigned and played a dumb game so they deserve it.

Last night we signed on the house. It was as if a load of stress that had been lifted. As I was driving home all alone. No kids, no husband, all my defenses were down and I lost it. Once i regained control of my emotions (blame pregnancy for at least 75%) I turned on my favorite Jim Brickman Christmas CD and just thought. It was during this time, humble and teachable that i realized all this is for my good. All this is preparing me to be the kind of woman i have always wanted to be. Im no where near her. She is a woman i hope to become. But after all the struggles, stress, tears, and frustrations, I know my Father in Heaven has been there the whole time. He was walking right along side of me and Brandon. We weren't doing it alone. My testimony is that much stronger and i know that with discipline and prayer i can achieve who i hope to become.

Advice Needed

We are moving in about 2 weeks. While this makes me most excited! and i cannot stand it, why, oh cause i will have a bathroom in MY ROOM!! Not down the deadly flight of stairs. This is important to pregnant woman. Also to have a nice kitchen with an island. So many things, i will post more on why i love the new house when i get in it....BUT
I am stressed. There is 2 bedrooms for the kids upstairs. Because we have to finish the basement for daycare, daycare is going to have to be upstairs for a while meaning i need a playroom. So one room has to be for that, the other will have to be the 2 kids. Then the baby will get the 'playroom' when its born.
Do you see why i have stress? If you have young kids i think you would. Brooklyn will be 18 months when we move. Kyler is 31/2. Brookie is still in a crib. We wanted her to stay in the crib because i wont lie, its just easier....but we aren't totally against her moving into a toddler bed either. Kyler switched at 19 months.

So my question for you all is:
A) do i keep Brookie in her crib and listen to her scream while she sees that brother is free to move about. This is a 100% reality.
B) do i move Brookie into a toddler bed and keep Ky in his twin
C) buy bunk beds and pray Kyler doesn't fall off the top bunk

The other half of the advice i need is:
If your young kids share a room how in the world do you get them to not play and sleep? Kyler has been known to sneak into Brooklyns room and make her giggle till she cant breath while they are supposed to be going to sleep. So in the same room i know it will happen. Right now, when it happens i let it go for quiet some time cause i think its so cute to hear them playing and giggling together...but every single night. That will get old real fast.

Help a sister out!! :)