Getting Personal with the Pearsons.....

Grandma Gwen's 90th Birthday!

2012-01-23T22:29:00.002-05:00

A fee months ago, my Aunt Debbie came to me to tell me that a few weeks before that, Grandma Gwen had asked them to pick up her prescriptions for her, and in the process of doing so, found out her date of birth was 9-9-21, meaning that she was going to be 90 years old this year! For the past several years she's been telling us that she's turning 81, 82, 83, etc and we all thought she was going to be 84 this year, so we were shocked to find out she'd been lying to us! She's so silly!

On her birthday, she had to have a procedure done, so I took her to the doctor and then took her out to brunch. We went to Denny's which is right across the street from her house and is 'one of her favorite places to go' because - get this - there are always a lot of old people there. Really Grandma Gwen? :) She said it made her feel comfortable. *note* that all of these old people that she was pointing out were like 65 ish. A full QUARTER CENTURY younger than her. lol I guess when you become an adult those gap really do get smaller!

The next day we all met for lunch at Olive Garden to really celebrate (since her birthday was on a Friday and ppl work). We had a great time enjoying the whole family. Here's a pic of Uncle Mitch with sweet Abbi, and then one of Freddy helping Grandma Gwen out to her car. :) I'm so thankful for her and how sweet she is. I'm grateful that the Lord has provided for her all these years and is still doing so!

Happy Birthday Grandma Gwen! We love you!!!

Black Friday Antics!

2012-01-05T11:44:00.001-05:00

Most people who are friends with me on Facebook know that we spent the week before Thanksgiving camping out at Best Buy to get some good deals. :) But many people have asked me about the details so, here they are!!!

My mother in law has gone to Best Buy 4 out of the 5 years that Mitch and I have been married on Thanksgiving morning, or the night before to 'camp out' for deals. We always do Thanksgiving with them the Saturday before, so she's free for the day anyway and has gotten some really great deals. This year when the ad came out saying that they had a $200 42" tv, we talked about joining her, camping out Thanksgiving day again, but some crazy person decided to set up tents at the northside Best Buy on Sunday night, by Monday night everyone in the city was getting the idea. We went ahead and decided to wait until Tuesday and headed up there Tuesday morning. I borrowed a tent from my friends and picked up my brother in law (who was saving our spots for the majority of the time) and set him up at the Best Buy in Regency.

When we arrived there were several people in front of us, namely 5 tents. There was 3 small tents that were supposed to have 1 person each, then a tent with 2 guys, a tent with 4 people and then us, making us 12-14. (people wise). As the time went by, the numbers changed for all but one of those tents and by Wednesday there was some very frustrated people. The people in the first three tents hadn't been there at all Tuesday night, and had shown up in a camper in the parking lot Wednesday morning. They were claiming that they had 20 people buying and that was NOT going over well with the people who had been sleeping on the ground for 2 days while their tents sat empty. Not to mention we had no way of knowing if they had one person or 20 people in that camper to begin with. The basic rule had been that as long as you were putting in time there each day or had someone saving a spot for you, you were good and each person could basically save a spot for themself and one other person. So, by the time Wednesday night came around we had decided we would have 4 people buying instead of 3 because everyone else had changed their numbers anyway. So Wednesday night, Mitch's Mom, Mitch's brother and I all slept there, and I have to tell you that it was a lot of fun! We talked to each other, played games, one guy brought a 40" flatscreen and an XBOX, so several people were playing games. By Wednesday night there were about 40 people in line.

Thursday morning, I stayed while Mitch's mom and brother went to get showers, and then I headed to my mom's for Thanksgiving brunch with my family. Mitch met me over there with the kids and we all went to brunch. After eating, Mitch rushed back to Best Buy so that no one could get mad that we didn't have everyone there. I planned to go to my sisters for a few hours but after Brax blowing out 2 outfits and getting a late start on brunch to begin with I didn't see how I could drive out there and make it back to Regency by 2, so I just took the kids with me over there for a few hours and after my mom got some rest, she came and got them around 4:30. Here are some pictures of them playing at Best Buy with Nay Nay and Aunt Jen!

By 4 pm. the line was wrapped around the side of the building. By 7 or so we all started taking down our tents and putting things away. At 10 pm we had to be ready for them to come out with the vouchers for the big items. (like the tvs) Around 9:30ish, people started lining up their chairs closer together so as to mark exactly who was in line and who was not. (ie kids or parents who were just there to help carry or pay) (there were 2 15 year old boys who had been there since Tuesday with one parent, so the other one's parent came around 9 since she was paying, but he was the only one in line). By this time the parking lot was filling up and the line was around to the back. There were also several people who would just stand in front of the doors like they were going to get to bypass the line. Ha! When the manager asked us to line up single file, we all started putting our chairs against the wall and standing up, when this black women came and stood right between the people in front of us and the group in front of them. OF COURSE, that didn't fly and we were all pushing to get in front of her and telling her to move. She started yelling and pushing saying "I've been here. You can't skip me!" And we were all like "Um, no." The police officers came over and asked what was going on and we told them, and they told her to go to the end of the line. Actually, they said "Go to the end of the line, or get arrested". She left. :) They started coming out with vouchers at 10, and passed them out if you wanted that particular item, until they were out. Computers, tablets and cell phones, blue ray players and the like for 45 minutes or so. Finally they came out with the vouchers for the tvs that everyone had come for! We were expecting them to have about 40, but as they started passing them out, it became obvious that there were much fewer than 40. We were numbers 17, 18, 19 and 20, and we were the last people to get vouchers.

We felt really bad for the people behind us, but all of our tvs were spoken for. :( When the doors opened at midnight there was some pushing from people trying to get past the front people, and there were some guys in the line who just grabbed the other people by the collar and said "Don't get yourself hurt by being stupid, because I won't let you trample these people". I thought it was very interesting. We ran once we were inside and got the xboxs, leappads and ps3s that we wanted and then got in line with our vouchers. The lines were ridiculous and we were there until 3:30 or so. Mitch had to work at 7, so he got home, slept and hour and then left for work. Talk about a long day! We did get everything that we wanted though, so that was good. We sold a lot of the stuff we bought on craigslist and ended up making about $600. We kept a tv and a 10.1" tablet for ourselves and are definitely loving them!

It was a lot of work, and a lot of fun, we'll definitely be doing something for black friday next year too, but I doubt it will be that big! lol

It's been a MONTH!!!!

2011-12-28T23:10:00.001-05:00

Holy Cow. It has been a month since I posted, and now I feel REALLY behind. Brax has a surgery next week, so I'll try to get myself occupied by posting while he's back there, instead of pacing. lol :) Updates coming soon!

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree!

2011-12-01T18:08:00.000-05:00

This year as we started getting into the holiday season, I started saying to myself "We'll do this at this time, and get that done the next weekend" and on and on as I planned out the holidays in my head. Unfortuately, we got to Thanksgiving week (and I usually put our tree up the Sunday before Thanksgiving) and realized there was no time set aside for putting our own tree up. So, in haste, while the kids were taking an unusually long nap on Tuesday, I went into the garage, and got the Christmas tree down out of the attic (yes, by myself) and put it up in the living room. Mitch got home as the kids got up and I had him come out and 'catch' the Christmas boxes as I pulled them out of the attic too. Then I had Mitch put the kids in their Christmas pjs, brought the 2 boxes in that had the ornaments and stockings in them and started decorating. :)

The kids got in the spirit right away, Brookelynne remembering from last year what she was supposed to do. She was showing Brax and within a few minutes, he was hanging ornaments too! I'm so thankful for my sweet kids who love learning new things, they melted my heart as they interacted with each other and us as we decorated. We pulled out ornaments that had significance and told them what they meant and sang Christmas carols as we decorated!

The kids had a great time and so did I. I can honestly say that our Christmas decorations this year consisted of what I accomplished that night, not even bringing in the other 3 boxes of decorations. Too bad! lol I'll do better next year! haha. Weren't they adorable!

Moments to Remember: She's Cracking Us Up!

2011-11-29T09:30:00.000-05:00

Brookelynne has started not wanting to go to sleep in her bed once again, and as always, I am still making her do it. Each time we cycle back through this fight, I end up having to find a new way to get her to stay in her bed and go to sleep. The most recent thing keeping her from going to sleep is that she's pitching fits once I close the door behind me. So we went through several ideas of things to keep her in bed, including talking about it, time out and spankings for screaming at me, giving her extra toys to take to bed with her, and yet, nothing had worked.

Sooo, last night I had gone back into her room to put her back in bed, tucked her in, kissed her head and said "Sweet dreams, baby doll" (like I always do) and before I could make it to the door, she had sat up in her bed, screaming at the top of her lungs, kicking her feet and slamming her fists into her mattress. [in case you were unaware, that behavior is not acceptable lol]. So I immediately turned on my heels, going back to her fully intending on putting her in time out. As I reached for her and started to speak, I saw "Baby Doll" (her baby doll she was sleeping with) and remembered what my friend Angela had started doing with her daughter, which was putting the toys in time out instead of her daughter, and it had worked great.

Soooo, I grabbed Baby Doll instead of Brooke and said "You know not to act like that, and because you're pitching a fit, Baby Doll is going to time out and baby bottle is going too" (the baby's bottle) At which point she screamed "NOOOOOOOO" I stepped over to the time out place, which is on the other side of a big piece of furniture and not visible from the bed and sat the doll up against the wall in the same place we sit Brooke for time out, with the bottle in her lap, and stood up to see the funniest. thing. ever. :)

Brookelynne slid off her bed and 'ran' over to where time out is (it was only a few steps) and looked around the 'corner' so that she could see Baby Doll and when she saw Baby Doll, she screamed "Noooooooooooooooo!!!", covered her eyes with both hands and turned her back to 'the sight of Baby Doll in a corner", crying. I literally had to turn away from her to stop from laughing but it was just so pricelessly dramatic!

She's such a mess! Don't worry, Baby Doll got to come out of time out a minute later and everyone went to bed shortly after.

On a side note, I thought I would keep using this technique as needed, but tonight when I tried to put Baby Doll in time out, Brookelynne got all excited and jumped out of bed to 'do it herself'. Saying "I'm Mama, I do". Not exactly what we were going for Brookelynne....

FBC Preschoolers Fall Festival

2011-11-19T22:49:00.000-05:00

This year our church had a great fall festival planned for our preschoolers, complete with tons of crafts, different age based games, bounce houses and a hayride! When I saw the flyer, I knew I wanted to take the kids, but since it was on a Friday night, I didn't know if we would be able to make it once Mitch got off of work. The kids had both had ear infections for the week before, so it wasn't even sure we were going to attempt it Friday morning, but I told Mitch to hurry home anyway, and if the kids were acting well, we'd go. :) Sure enough they were great! Mitch was able to get off around 4:45 and we were on the road to church at 6.

They had coloring sheets and thank you trees set up at all the tables, and Brookelynne enjoyed those for several minutes. Once she was done coloring we moved to the texture bins in the back of the dining room. These were so fun for both of the kids since they had multiple bins set up with different items hidden in beans or corn or sand. Here's a shot of Brookelynne fishing something out!

Braxton enjoyed these too, but we had to keep an eye on him, because [as usual] he wanted to eat everything! lol While we were there, Shelly got up and spoke about thankfulness and how God wants us to be thankful. They had a slide show as well as a 'table talk' packet for all the parents that was filled with different Biblical topics to discuss with your preschoolers at the dinner table as well as how to explain those topics in their language.

Once the presentation was over, we went into the 'Under 2' room to play. :) Braxton went straight to the ball pit, and loved it! He was picking up all the balls and kept rolling around in them. Daddy would pick up the sides and shake it a little so that it would move all the balls around and Brax would laugh, it was soo cute! Here's a shot of him and his friend Davis sitting together! Look at that grin on my boy!

Then we moved onto some of the other toys which included a tunnel. Brookelynne showed Braxton how to crawl through it, and he followed suit very well! :) Here's my little man coming through the tunnel, laughing as he comes!

As we got out of the tunnel, I picked up Brax and saw blood running out of his ear. I was definitely not happy. As I mentioned, both of the kids had had ear infections that week, and we had been 'cleaning ears' every night before bed, and by 'we', I mean 'me', but Brookelynne saw things differently. Right before we left the house, I heard Brax scream, ran into the room and found Brooke holding the little tool I use to clean their ears, and when I asked her what happened, she said "I clean Brax ears". At the time, I calmed Brax, looked in his ears and didn't see anything, so we came to church like planned. At this point, after seeing the blood, I decided to call the doctors office. While waiting for a call back, we migrated to the craft tables, and Brookelynne took advantage of many of these. Here she is making a turkey. She had to place the tissue paper and then press it down :) She had so much fun making it and the teachers assigned to the tables were very impressed with her!

Braxton and Brookelynne both did hand prints and Daddy helped them so much! We put them on the fridge and LOVE them! After the hand prints were done, we moved to the next room and Brooke did more crafts in the older room.

When the doctor called back, they said that we should probably go to the ER just to be safe, so we rounded up the kids and hit a few more 'attractions' before heading across the bridge. Brookelynne did the blow up slide outside (even though she didn't want to at first) and once she had done it once, she didn't want to get off! She slid at least 10 times after that!

And of course, we got a family photo at the wagon! :) We had a great time and were so thankful that our church planned something so sweet for their youngest members! Can't wait for next year!

And for those of you who are dying to know what happened with Brax's ear, we went to the ER where they put us in a 'fast track room' and a doctor came and checked his ear out. He had to clean out the blood several times (like 5 or 6 cue tips worth) and still couldn't see well, but was sure that Brooke had not punctured the ear drum, but had scraped the side of the ear wall and caused it to bleed. This was later confirmed by his pediatrician when we went back for the ear infection follow up. (Which hadn't cleared up, so we're onto another antibiotic. See if this works)

A trip to the Zoo.....

2011-11-10T22:52:00.002-05:00

Mitch has been on vacation this week, so we've been trying to get a lot done. Unfortunately, we really haven't. lol. But since we weren't getting stuff done around the house, I figured we should get out of the house all together! So we took a trip to the zoo! We love going to the zoo with Brookelynne because she loves it so much and now Brax is getting to the age where he is starting to notice the animals, so it's becoming even MORE fun! This was the first time we've gone as a family of four!

We had a great time and started by heading toward the back instead of taking the African loop, and before we even got 15 yrd down, we saw a very active leopard pacing in his habitat. :) We got both kids out of the stroller and were so glad that he kept pacing. Braxton saw it and watched it very intently! Then we stopped at the giraffes, because we wanted the kids to feed them. It's one of our favorite exhibits, especially when its not crowded (which it wasn't), so we got to go up to the giraffes all by ourselves, and not worry about people pushing or rushing us. :) Brookelynne and Braxton both got to feed the giraffes and Daddy helped them do it! Of course, we stopped by the giant metal elephants for a picture, and then headed toward the Jaguars.

We stopped to see the flamingos, one of Brooke's other favorites, and Brookelynne reminded us how they stand! :) It was so cute! And then we headed to the bird sanctuary there. We went in and saw several birds bathing at the entrance, as well as some very active HUGE turtles in the water. Then we walked over to the otter window and were delighted to find two otters playing and swimming. They played and swam for 15 minutes while B&B watched them and chased them back and forth. Mitch took about 100 pictures of this, but I'll just give you a few :).

On our way out of the exhibit, we let the babes stand on a bench and look at the group of ducks sitting together. They really liked that! Then we checked on the jaguars (which weren't there, as usual) and headed into the "Lost Temple" exhibit. We saw snakes and frogs, as well as a lizard eating. Then we saw some very active bats, and 2 very funny armadillos! They were chasing each other around in circles and Brooke thought they were very funny! Then the kids got to stand and watch the anteater pace in front of them. Brax really liked that!

Then we headed on back to the Austrailian loop, because I really Mitch to see the exhibit where you can feed the birds and they land on you. Because, well, that's just awesome. lol. We didn't buy any nectar this time because the last few times I've been in there, the birds were full, and I've come to the conclusion that if you arrive after about 9:45, then there's no point because the school kids have all fed them. Anyway, we walked in and I was happy to see only 3 other people in the exhibit. And there were several birds, right by the door at eye level or lower for B&B. I got one to step onto my finger, but Brooke was not going to get close to it! lol. Brax liked it, but I'm not sure he was even aware that it was an animal and not a toy! We walked around with Brooke pointing out the birds and then she saw another lady feeding a bird, and she was VERY interested in that. A minute later, as the lady was about to leave, she asked if we'd like the rest of her bird food, to try and feed one. We happily accepted! While still holding Brax I went around until I found a bird I thought would like some food, and sure enough he did! So I showed Brookelynne how to hold the cup, and then let her feed the bird! It was soooooooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOooooOOOOOOooo SWEET! :)

After a minute or so, I got the bird on my hand so that we could move away from the corner we were sitting in. Once we sat down, Brax was bound and determined to get that bird. And then he saw another cup. One that only had a little bit of nectar in it, and started reaching. I was really hoping that he wanted to feed the bird too and had decided to do it, but alas, he only wanted to eat it. (Which I didn't allow him to do, of course!) But he was sure cute trying!

When we left the Australian bird sanctuary, we went to see the penguins. Once again, we found some very active animals. There were 20 or so penguins swimming right in front of the glass. Brooke got Daddy to pick her up to look down at them, but Brax enjoyed just looking up at them from the ground!

Before heading home, we stopped at the petting zoo. Something I RARELY do, lol. Anyway, I took Brax in and kept him from falling in the gross stuff and touching anything dirty, and we let Brooke pet/brush/see the goats. :) Here are some pics of that too!

I'm loving the days we have to go to the zoo as a family and am very thankful that my sweet husband took pictures most of the day, so I'm actually in them! lol :) Hope you enjoyed seeing the zoo through our eyes!

Braxton is 9 months!!!!

2011-10-25T15:23:00.019-04:00

Okay, so I have to apologize, because I didn't do an 8 month post, and life has been sufficiently hectic that I've almost forgot to do a 9 month one, but alas, I couldn't let another month go by wit

At his appointment, he was 20 lb 5 oz, 28.5 in

* He can stand all on his own!
* He started pulling up around 7.5 months and since then has been standing up on EVERYTHING! He loves to pull up and look around. It wasn't long before he started letting go and standing all by himself!

* He's eating 2 times a day. He's not as good of an eater as his chubby cheeks would suggest, but he eats well enough. To be completely honest, he'd probably be a better eater if I were more consistent in feeding times/amounts/scheduling. But that's neither here nor there. lol.
* He's still not sleeping through the night consistantly. But he's getting close! He'll sleep great 2 nights, and then wake up for 3. It's totally random, but hopefully it won't be much longer! The last week or so, he's been pretty consistent, sleeping from 8-5.
* He still drinks 6 oz bottles during the day and then a 10 oz bottle right before bed.

* He's outgrown all of his 6 and 9 month clothes! We pulled out his 12 month clothes a week or so ago and most of them aren't even 'big' on him. They fit just fine. :)

* He pretty much never wears shoes. I keep trying to put them on him and they're either too big or too small, but never seem to fit well. I'm trying more often now though, because he'll be walking before too long and will need shoes!!! :)
* He's still a super happy baby. We're so thankful for that!

A new camera makes Mama feel goooodddd. :)

2011-10-14T17:46:00.000-04:00

How many people have gotten a new camera and found themselves taking picture of everything they can see? That sounds a lot like me these days :). Last year on Black Friday, we picked up a great Canon camera for a really good deal. It takes really good pictures and while it's a little bit bigger than my older camera, it's still small enough to put in my pocket or carry around my wrist. I've really enjoyed it. Mitch decieded to get it because he was having trouble getting good pictures of ebay items on the older one and thought this would be better. It was. But it's still not perfect, but since we still hadn't actually started listing much, he wasn't going to invest any more into it. Luckily for me, he started listing recently, and we've been doing pretty well, so he started looking into getting an even better camera. :) lol

In talking to his co-worker, he was mentioning how he had been looking on craigslist and ebay for a Nikon D3000 or a Canon Rebel, his co-worker mentioned that he had a new Nikon D3000 that he had bought last year because he wanted a really good camera, but once he got it home and realized how big it was and difficult it would be to keep handy, he put it in a closet and hadn't touched it sense. He then followed with the sentence that has had me grinning for a few weeks now... "You can borrow it if you want". :) YAY for me! :) He brought it to work the next day and Mitch brought it to meeeee. Haha.

I've been loving all the pictures that I've gotten. For those of you wondering what difference it can make, here are some comparisons!

New Camera :

Brookelynne is 2!!!

2011-10-08T13:07:00.000-04:00

Brookelynne Starr is officially 2 years old and *big surprise*, I can't believe it! She's growing like a weed and amazing us each day with all that she's learning and doing. She's surpassed all the milestones that are 'average' for her age to be learning and is saying new words every day. It's been such a joy to see her turn into this little girl before me, from the helpless infant that I brought home from the hospital 2 years ago. Here are some stats from her 2 yr visit

Height: 35.5 inches
Weight: 26lbs

Here are some more facts from Brookelynne's every day life!
~She loves being the center of attention, and will squeal, shout, nudge or sneak to get your attention back if she so desires it.
~ She's day time potty trained. While she still uses a diaper during naptime and overnight, she's completely in panties during the day, any accidents she's had have been few and far between. The biggest source of 'accident' is when she gets to the potty but either can't get her pants down fast enough or doesn't pull them down far enough, and ends up with damp underwear, but usually, its not even bad enough that it gets through her panties and on her pants. [On the potty trained note, the doctors have been EXTREMELY impressed with her. I remember when I told them at 18 months that we were starting potty training, no one was very optimistic and said things like "don't get your hopes up" or "well it's fine to try, but remember she's still young". When we went for her 2 year appt, and a week later with a different doctor for an infection, both of them asked if we had 'just started wearing big girl panties', to which I replied, "No, she's been potty trained for about six months". :) Both Dr Kim and Dr Baker were very surprised and impressed. It was definitely a proud day for this Mama! ]

~ She's a great big sister! She loves 'helping' with anything I'll let her help with, from changing diapers to picking things up for Brax. She loves hugging him and kissing him, sometimes to his detriment. We have to keep an eye on her and occasionally say "Let go of your brother" or "Don't squeeze him so tightly please". lol
~ She can't pronounce her 'f's. Instead of making an 'f' sound she makes an 's' sound which is absolutely adorable! :) We're eating it up, since we know it won't last forever. It's only a matter of time before 'no suss' actually sounds like 'won't fuss' :)

~ She LOVES football! Each week when we turn on college football, she gets very excited and starts saying 'sootball' over and over! She says that it's "gameday" and "Go Noles" each week and LOVES doing the chop!
~ She knows all the words to "Jesus Loves Me" and will sing it with you (even though she calls it 'This I know") And she'll come to me and say "Sing This I know, This I know" :)
~
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~ She's becoming quite the little mommy. She has 4 baby dolls now and plenty of accessories to go with them. It's not unusual to see her pushing her shopping cart with Baby Doll around the house, or changing a diaper at her changing table.
~ She is doing really well in all of her classes. She's been very good about going into her class on Sunday mornings and behaving well. On Sunday and Wednesday nights, she's been up on the third floor with the kids a few months older than her and she's been keeping up easily! Her teachers a few weeks ago told me that she was wonderful, participating fully in each activity and doing everything they asked of her, and she was one of the only ones who is potty trained.
~She LOVES sweets! She will eat candy all day if you would let her and rarely turns down any other sweet.

A morning locked out of the house....

2011-09-28T14:16:00.000-04:00

So yesterday Mitch and I laid sod in most of the backyard, and it looks fantastic. One of the most important things about putting down sod is making sure that you water it enough that it's not dead in a month. And therefore, it was a priority this morning to go out and set up the sprinklers, and then move them accordingly. I had gone outside 3 different times to set up/adjust them and went out to turn them off and while moving the hose, Brookelynne was knocking on the sliding glass door. So I hurried to turn off the water and went back to the house to get inside. When I reached the door, it was locked. No, no I'm not kidding. Brooke was right there so I tried to get her to unlock it, but she wasn't understanding me.

I ran around the house and opened the garage. I never, NEVER lock the door from the garage to the laundry room, but Mitch apparently locked it last night because it was locked. I looked for the key where we keep it hidden, and it wasn't there. I ran back out of the garage, and tried the front door, just to be sure, but as I knew it was, it was locked. I ran next door and asked to use my neighbor's phone. I tried Mom's cell, but she didn't answer. I don't know her work number and Mitch is in the middle of the ocean going deep sea fishing today, so I didn't know what to do. I went back to the back door and Brooke was standing there crying. I called Mom again and then he (our neighbor) looked up the number for the church and I called Mom at work. When she answered, I told her what was going on and she got on the road immediately. I stayed at the back door, trying to get Brooke to calm down.

Braxton was asleep in the swing, and I could see him from where I was, so I just tried to get Brooke to calm down. We sang her songs, and then she had to go potty (something that she doesn't think she can do on her own anymore) so I told her to take her pants off, and then I told her to go. She cried, but she did. When she came back she sat down in front of the door, and then Brax woke up. He started crying, and I told her to go help him. She wouldn't. When I told her to go hug him, she started screaming. Once she went in there, she didn't hug him, or kiss him, she just cried and they both cried louder. At some point, she decided she was okay, got a book and went and sat on the couch. I'm still sitting at the back door singing their favorite songs at the top of my lungs, hoping to calm Braxton. It wasn't working. He wasn't calming, and Brooke didn't want to help. Then Braxton started to throw up. He gagged a few times (something I can hear from a mile away since Brooke throws up EVERY time she cries hard) and then he started to throw up all over himself and the swing. He was in a reclined position, so I immediately started to think about how quickly I could break the bathroom window, climb in and get to him. I waited for a moment after he stopped throwing up, and he didn't cry immediately. I threw myself against the sliding glass door and it didn't break, but he did start to cry again. I called mom again and she was getting off at our exit. I called Brookelynne and she stood up on the couch and looked toward me. I told her to get down and give Braxton a toy, and she looked at him and looked back at me, said "No" and sat back down. I once again almost came through that door. I yelled her name again and told her to come to me. She did. I told her to get Brax a toy and she did. About the time she handed Brax the toy, my mom drove into the neighborhood. I kept singing until she came around the corner to our house, and then I ran and met her at the car. She gave me the key and I ran back to the front door, unlocked it and ran inside to Braxton. My mom started laughing as she came inside to the sight of Brookelynne sitting in the middle of my big couch, with a book in her lap and the phone up to her ear. She didn't seem to be the least bit bothered by the whole thing. (Little Stinker).

Mom helped me get Brax bathed, the swing cover washed and some bottles cleaned (because he needed to eat and they were in the sink) . When Brax was eating, and Brooke was playing with mom, I just started crying at the sink. I was just so glad it was over, and they were fine, and I didn't freak out during it happening. I handled it well, without getting weepy, or acting rashly. And I'm glad of that. I'm also very thankful for my neighbor being home, and outside at the time, and for Mom being at her desk.

Milestone Moments of Braxton James: Crawling AND Pulling Up Edition! :)

2011-09-26T13:19:00.001-04:00

I know that this shouldn't be possible, but my little man is crawling!!! He's been scooting around the room for a month or so now, getting up on his hands and knees and then falling the other way so that he's moved a foot or so from where he was, but he definitely wasn't crawling or even 'rocking'. And then, almost overnight, he just started crawling. And I don't mean a short distance, or just once or twice. He's crawling across the house, down the hall, into the kitchen. It's crazy!

On top of that, on the same day, the 'pulling up' thing just clicked as well! He's been pulling up on your hands or whatever for a few weeks now, but if there was something stationary, he couldn't pull up on that. Then today he just crawled over to the coffee table, reached up, grabbed on and pulled up! Amazing! He also crawled into the bathroom and pulled himself up on Brookelynne's sink stool.

He is SOOO proud of himself and we're pretty proud of him too! He's so big! Yay for Braxton!

A week alone....

2011-09-23T21:24:00.003-04:00

So anyone who knows me more for more than a minute knows that I am a very social person. One of my biggest struggles with being a Stay at Home Mom is that it greatly limits my two way interaction (although Brooke is learning to talk better each day). Every day I very much look forward to Mitch's arrival, because 3 days a week that's the okay other adult I see all day. So a couple weeks ago when he told me that they were sending him to class in South Carolina for a week, I was less than thrilled. lol. Espcially since it was the longest he'd left me since we had Brookelynne, much less Braxton and 5 nights with no "Daddy" was not in my 'to-do' list. Anyway, we survived, and here are some highlights of the 'ups' and 'downs'. :)

He had to be in Brunswick by 1 on Sunday, so I said "goodbye" to him before church Sunday morning, and went to Sunday School with just me and the kids. After church we went to lunch with my parents and then home for naps. Lunch, nor naptime went as planned and we didn't get up in time to get to Meet at the Met (the special churchwide service at Metropolitan park) but I didn't care. I was NOT going to add a night of bedtime routine w/o Daddy if I didn't HAVE to. So I put them in the car and headed out. :) We arrived just as Dr Brunson started preaching and met up with the Polizzis. It was a good message and my kids did really well with not making alot of noise. After the service, we spent the next hour or two playing and enjoying the nice weather and cool breeze. Here are some shots of the kids playing!

Monday we had no plans so I worked really hard all day to try and get things clean. Tuesday, I had Mom2Mom at church and we really enjoyed the morning out. I came home and had heard back from a person selling something on Craigslist and made plans to buy it from them on Wednesday. That meant that when I got home I had to make room. Our new addition, you ask? A new 3 piece entertainment center. :) I had to pull all the stuff out of our current tv entertainment center, and move it out of the way to make room for the MUCH bigger model. :) Needless to say, I had to do that once the kids were asleep, so I didn't make it to bed until midnight.

Wednesday morning, my dad came over (as is his usual Wednesday routine) and entertained the kids while I tried to clean up the kitchen a little bit. Then our friends Kelly and Jeff came up to help me. Kelly, Dad, Brookelynne, Braxton and Malachi stayed here while Jeff and I went over to the house to pick up the furniture. The person selling it to us ended up being someone I had worked with at Chili's, so it was a very comfortable environment as he helped us move the pieces. They are solid wood, with beautiful glass doors and shelves, and seriously weighed like 300 lbs a piece. And we had to bring them down stairs. Not fun. :) Anyway, it took us a little over 2 hours (longer than I had hoped), but once we were done getting them into the house, we all went to Chicfila. The kids played while we ordered and got the food and then we ate and visited for a little while. It was really nice. When we got back home it was naptime for the B&B and PawPaw (my dad) headed out, so it was just me. The kids fought me hard on naptime, crying for like 25 minutes (something they NEVER do). I was so frustrated that they were crying and I needed to shower before church and Tama was barking outside, that when I went to the back door to let her in, I didn't even look at her to notice that she was DRIPPING mud. Muddy Tama turned into Muddy House, and an exhausted/frustrated Mama into a I've had one-thing-too-many-go-wrong-so-I-give-up-Mama. I rushed and rushed to try and get ready for church but it just didn't happen, so we stayed home. Before the night was over, I went and picked up a carpet cleaner and once the kids were down for the night, I cleaned the carpet in the living room and hall. Didn't get to sleep that night until 1. No rest for the weary!

Thursday morning didn't go as planned (because my brother's cruise came docked earlier than expected, so Mom had to pick them up first and then come up to my house) so I didn't get anything accomplished until after noon. But once my Mom and Dad got here, we got to work. We moved the couches around and cleaned the carpet underneath them. Then we rearranged the living room. It looks SOOOO Much bigger! Mom, Brooke and I went to Walmart and picked up some new rugs for the living room, hall and front door and then moved the table back into the living room too. Mom helped me bathe the kids and then headed home.

She came back on Friday to help me finish putting everything away and do some actual cleaning, since my house had seriously been turned upside down. I'm so grateful for all of her hard work, and help with the kids. I don't know what I would have done without her. She headed home in the afternoon and much to my surprise, Mitch got home around 5, instead of 8 as expected! :) We spent the evening at home since Mitch had just spent 6 hours in a car. I was VERY grateful to have him home!!!

Moments to Remember: She's Cracking Us Up!!!

2011-09-14T08:08:00.004-04:00

Brookelynne learned how to turn around in a circle a while back and occasionally will turn all the way around while playing, but she usually does it once and then goes back to whatever else she was doing. In the last couple of days she's started standing in the middle of the room and turning as fast as she can, as many times as she can, all the while laughing hysterically at herself, and then she'll stop and try to walk. It's so funny!

August Wrap Up!

2011-08-31T13:42:00.000-04:00

August has been a very busy month in the Pearson home! We have had big things going on in everyone's lives! Mitchell has been doing well at work, and we're almost done with his 7 month stretch between vacations. (He had planned on having one in the beginning of June, but had to take it early when I was having trouble after Brax's birth) We've just got to make it through September and we'll a week of vacation, start up peak season, his last vacation in November and then the home stretch through Christmas. In addition to UPS, he's always had a desire to find a way to work from home, and has thought that buying and selling online would be a great way to do that. In the last year or so, he's talked about starting something multiple times, but never really followed through. Well at the beginning of August, he decided to 'follow through' :) and started an ebay store. He's been picking things up at thrift stores and garage sales and listing them online, and I've been handling all the correspondence with buyers as well as shipping and handling. It's been quite a roller coaster ride trying to figure out a balance to be efficient and effective while not spending so much time that we're neglecting other things. We've sold 35 things so far and are actually making money already! We've gotten a few 'high dollar' items that we purchased for $2 and $3 respectively that we sold for $50 and $95 respectively. :) It definitely makes you want to work harder for sure!

The kids have been quite the little accomplish-ers lately as well! Braxton started the month out by sitting up all by himself! I've been working with him for a month or so but he never could sit for more than a few seconds before losing his balance and falling over. Then one day it 'clicked'. :) I sat him up and he stayed that way for almost half an hour! He's really enjoyed playing by himself and being able to reach for toys and such.

He's still not crawling but if he's sitting up he can manage to 'scoot' a couple of feet forward. I'm really not sure how he does it without falling over, but he does!

Brookelynne has been doing great too!! She is starting to say more and more and more words each and every day. Sometimes I just look at her like "seriously? You just said __________?!?!?!" :) It's because she's awesome. lol (that's Mitch's response when I'm impressed by her) Anyway, she's also become interested in water. I know, now, at the end of the summer, when the pools are closing and the weather is cooling down, now she starts to like water again. But this is the situation we have! She really does love it now and every time she sees water she starts screaming to get in! I'm going to try to get some extra water time in before it gets too cold. We'll see!

We've also had a trip and some sicknesses, so I'll update on those soon!

Busy Busy Busy Days....

2011-08-17T22:58:00.000-04:00

Our life would seem busy enough to most people but alas, my husband must not think so. :) I will preface this post by saying that I have absolutely no idea how Mitch's mind works or in what ways he comes up with or supports his ideas and/or decisions.

A year or so ago, Mitch started picking up 'good deals' at thrift stores and garage sales. He did some research into what sells well on line since he works so close to the 'fifth riches zip code in America', he was sure he could find great items at the local thrift stores. And low and behold, he has. Unfortunately, all that became of such purchases was a packed front closet and nothing else. Then a couple months ago, the bug seemed to get at him again. We were looking for a few things on craigslist and happened upon some fantastic deals, and all of a sudden he was back at the buying. Making a trip to a goodwill, or garage sale most days, my living room is now covered with '100% cashmere' this and 'gymboree' that, 'justice' here and 'cole haan' there.

About 10 days ago, he got on ebay, set up a store and started listing. And the listing has gone pretty well! :) We've posted about 73 items, with 35 still active, 24 selling and 14 not selling. (For those of you who are unaware, that's actually a very HIGH percentage for beginners, most beginners who end up being successful don't even have 1% of their items sell in the first year! Much less, week!) This means however that I have much more to keep up with. While he does the shopping and most all of the listing, I do pretty much everything else. I check and respond to messages, I package all the items, I print the shipping labels and I do the shipping! It's been crazy to see how many things I've sent out in the past 10 days and to think that we've made over $200. Seriously, its just ridiculous. Anyway, it is going really well and we're both very excited about it.

The only down side is that it does take time and we don't have a lot of that to spare so we're trying to be even more wise about our time management than ever before. I better hit the sack, because I'm pretty sure that blogging when I could be sleeping would not qualify as 'wise' in Mitch's eyes! lol

How often I fall short...

2011-08-08T10:06:00.000-04:00

I don't think it would be a surprise to anyone who knows me to say that I take my 'job' as a mom extremely seriously. I think very long term about the smallest of things that we do with our children and line up our priorities so that in 20 years we have 2 'legal' adults who love the Lord with all their hearts, love others more than themselves, and live their lives thinking for themselves and making wise decisions in accordance with God's word. I truly want those things and believe that that is what my God has called me to do. This requires full devotion to this task and while no one is perfect, and I include myself in that, I could definitely do better than I have done.

Anyway, there are a few instances lately that have really reminded me of that and reminded me of how EXTREMELY BLESSED we are at the Pearson home. One of which, happened the other night when I went outside to clean up the back porch. We're done with all that we're doing on the swing set, so I wanted to get all of the tools and such, that we'd been storing on the porch, back in their correct, respective locations. I brought Brooke and Brax out with me, put Brax in an exersaucer, and let Brooke play on the porch. We were only out there for 15 minutes or so, so I didn't think anything of bug spray and didn't even notice until the next afternoon that Brax had gotten (as we would say on the westside) All.Bit.Up. Seriously, he had 20 or 30 knat (sp?) bites all over him. I felt Horrible. Seriously. Not so much that he had gotten the bites, but that I didn't even notice them for like 20 hours. Seriously, where was my head? I'm totally aware of instances where that many bug bites on baby caused blood poisoning or other serious complications, like allergic reactions. And what did I do, but bring him inside, change his clothes and put him to bed? What is wrong with me?

Another instance where I've been reminded of God's Grace and Mercy happened this weekend, once again outside. (Maybe 'outside' is the problem??? lol Anyway...) Brookelynne has been climbing up the stairs all by herself for 2 weeks now, and easily gone up them 200 times without incidence. Of course I tell her to "pay attention" or "be careful", but I no longer run over there to stand behind her every. single. time. that she climbs them. "I know she's growing up so fast, and besides, I've usually got Braxton to be entertaining as well." Anyway, Saturday morning she was outside playing and climbing up the stairs to the fort, and when she got on the fort, she lost her footing a little, went to step back, stepped out of the fort, grabbed the wall right next to her, swung around and out of the fort, and then fell the 5 feet to the ground, landing on the wooden footer. She cried (of course), and her butt bruised the next day (not surprising) but other than that, she was fine. And not even scared. Seriously, how blessed are we? I can think of 100 variations on that story that could have made it a little or aLOT worse, and by God's grace, it happened just that way. I don't know what caused Brooke to grab on just right so that she didn't tumble back down the stairs. I can't understand how she at 21 months old held on just long enough to turn her around, but not fling her out or back under the platform. I don't know how it worked out that she fell on the ONLY part of her body that could provide enough cushion that no bone or organ would be hurt, but she did, just an inch or so south of her tailbone. Seriously, how good is our God?

Now I could easily use these two incidents to tell myself that I'm horrible or that I should have known better or paid more attention, but really, that's not solving anything and once again, they're both fine. "No harm, no foul" comes to mind. But while I'm not freaking out or beating myself up, I am deciding to take it as a reminder that while I can make all the plans in the world, and I can be diligent to teach them or train them, to love them and protect them, that without God's grace and mercy, it is worthless. They can be taken from me in an instant, or they could choose to reject all that I teach them, only God knows and neither of those things can change what I need to do. I have not been called to prevent such things, I've only been called to be obedient. Obedient to teach them, obedient to love them, obedient to pray for them and mostly obedient to live out in front of them a life that is pleasing to my Lord. So today, I'm grateful for my God's mercy in not giving me what I deserve, and his grace in allowing me the joy of being His child, my husband's wife, my children's mother, my mother's daughter, my preschoolers teacher, and my friends' friend, and above all that I can find my identity in Him.

Only He knows what tomorrow will bring and I was reminded of that once again last night when I met a sweet little girl who was in the 3 yr old class I was working in. She's 5, non verbal, doesn't eat orally, still in a diaper, crawls, but can't walk, and obviously mentally slower than her age, how much so, I don't know. I was asking her mother what she had that caused this, expecting to hear an explanation such as cerebral palsy or another 'she had it from birth' reasoning, when she told me that it was something to do with the way her body's cells processed energy. They don't know what happened but one day they stopped processing correctly, and this is what has become. "She was a normal one and a half year old" she said, as my heart stopped. "And then this happened". This? Seriously, "This" is all the doctors can say because no one knows what "This" was. Was it a fall, like Brookelynne's, that jarred her brain just the wrong way? Was it a bug bite, like the 20 Braxton got, that her body had a reaction too? There's no way to know and all I can do is pray for that sweet little girl and thank my God that my children are healthy, and pray that they stay that way.

But as we've been learning in Job, God is Good no matter what, and we should equally be willing to accept adversity from the Lord since we gratefully accept good from Him. I pray today that as I praise Him in good times, I will even more so praise Him in bad ones, for His character never changes and His love is constant and everlasting, and we are nothing, and have nothing without Him. Since the kids are now up, I'll end this they way that true Southern Baptists often do, "Amen and Amen" :)

The Entertaining Adventures of Brookelynne Starr: Talking Edition :)

2011-08-07T23:28:00.000-04:00

Well my sweet baby girl is far from a baby and looking more and more like a kid everyday. (as apposed to an infant). She's been saying words for a while, but with the exception of 'up please' (which is pronounced 'uppppa') she hadn't started saying anything but words. Not phrases and definitely not sentences, until this week. :) She seriously amazes me at some of the things she has begun to say, and almost all of it came over night. Here is a list of some of her new phrases....

*We love to eat salad here, and by salad, I mean lettuce, tomato and cheese with dressing on top, and whenever we do, we cut up a tomato for Brooke and give her some dressing to 'dip' it in. Whenever I buy salad stuff, I buy a lot and we eat a little at every meal for a week or so, so on the second or third day of it, at lunchtime, I pulled the tomato out of the fridge, and out of no where she yelled "Cut em up!" She'll say it over and over and anytime you ask her what we do with tomatoes, she'll say "Cut em up!" with this big goofy grin on her face!

*She's MASTERED possession. I don't know if I'm the only mother who thinks of her child's achievement as checkmarks in an English textbook chapter list, but I do, and she totally get's possession, lol. Her favorites are "Mommy's Car", "Daddy Car" [these are said EVERYTIME we see the cars], "Mommy Cup", "Gabba's Truck" (Grandma's Truck), "PawPaw Truck", "Gabba House"[everytime we get in the car], "Brooke Bow", "Ba's Hat" (Braxton's hat) and "Mommy Bag" [this is her diaper bag that we need to get before we leave her classroom. Every time I go to pick her up, before she'll come to me, she tells me to get her bag by saying "Go, Go, Mommy Bag, Mommy Bag, Go" :)]

*She has a new sound association, and that is the very unique noise that trucks, and more specifically, Paw Paw's truck makes. Most people say that cars or trucks say 'Vroom, Vroom" and that's what I tell Brooke that Mommy's car 'says', but my dad makes noises for things that actually sound like the thing sounds. Anyway, Paw Paw's truck says "Nunnnnn, nunnnn, nuunnn" and for some reason it clicked this week. For a full day she said it over and over, "Paw Paw truck, nunnnn, nunnnn, nunnnnn" and it's hilarious. Seriously :) [oh, and apparently Gabba's truck makes the same sound]

*She's started saying 'more ____ please', instead of just whatever it is she wants over and over. :)

*Her new favorite thing to say is "Nap time over" lol. She even told me that when nap time had just started the other day! haha. Silly Girl!

Anyway, Husband needs the computer and I need to get to bed. I'll post more later!

Milestone Moments of Braxton James: Sitting Up Edition :)

2011-08-04T11:05:00.001-04:00

Well. Its official. My baby boy can sit up on his own! It seems like this has been a long time coming, but at the same time, it feels like this came on so fast! We've been 'working on' or 'practicing' sitting up on our own for about 2 months, meaning that every couple of days I would sit him up and sit near him to see how long it took for him to fall over or throw himself backward. This usually only took 15 to 20 seconds before we had to start over again. We would 'practice' for anywhere from 1 to 20 minutes, but he never kept his balance for more than about a minute, and it really seemed to me that he just didn't 'get it'. Like it wasn't important to him, so he wasn't going to try. Do you know what I mean? Anyway, today I sat him up like I do most days and to my surprise, after a couple of minutes, he still hadn't fallen over. So I grabbed the boppy and put it behind him, and started doing other things, waiting to see how long it would take him to tip, fall or flop. Twenty, count them 20 minutes later, he was still sitting up playing with toys! Talk about a proud Mama! I am! It was the craziest thing ever because it seriously seems like when I sat him up today, something in his little brain just 'clicked' and he thought to himself, "It appears that Mama thinks I'll like doing this sitting up stuff, so maybe I'll give it a try today." lol. Anyway, he does enjoy it, in fact he lovvvvvvvvveeeeesssss sitting up and playing with toys, he can reach for different toys and really play with more than just rattles. He'll occaisionally be playing with something and just stop, look around until he sees someone who's looking at him and then give them this huge grin! Seriously cutest thing ever!

Guess who's 6 months old already?!???!?

2011-07-22T07:15:00.003-04:00

That's right! Mr Braxton James Pearson is!

Seriously. Where. Has. The. Time. Gone??? It seems like it has flown by even faster than it did with Brooke. I guess it really is true; the older you get the faster time flies.

Anyway, lets get to the stuff you really want to know, right? Our big boy is growing like a weed, and while I don't have his stats yet because he doesn't get his shots until next week, I can tell you he's at least 16 lbs already. I'll update his official stats when I get them, but in the meantime, lets look at all the other things he has going on!

Height/Length:
Weight:
Head Circumference:
Percentiles:

* He is in 6-9 or 9 month clothes. I had to put all of his 6 month clothes up a little over a month ago because he was just not fitting into them. He wears most of his 9 month stuff well, but the pants are a little longs still.

* He LOVES to swing. Seriously loves it. We have put up a play set in the back yard and of course have a baby swing for him, and he loves it. He'll contently swing back and forth for an hour or more, as he watches Brookelynne play around him.

* He can sit up if his legs aren't straight. I know that sounds silly, but if you put him on the edge of a table or in a chair that his legs and bend at the knee, he'll sit up by himself and not lean back on the back of the chair, but if you sit him up with his legs straight in front of him, he can't stay that way. I'm pretty sure he and Brookelynne have the same problem that their Mama has, short muscles and little flexibility!

* He regressed for a few weeks this month and went back to waking up in the middle of the night for some reason. I tried not to feed him, but just give him his paci and sooth him, and most of the time he would go back to sleep. Needless to say, I was getting exhausted pretty quick with all the other things we have going on, so I'm happy to say that little man is back to sleeping like a big boy, all night long. :)

* He is becoming so interactive! He's always loved for you to be entertaining him, and would smile, coo or laugh in response, but now he's physically reaching for things that you show him or trying to play with toys when he sees Brooke doing it. My dad was holding them both just a few days ago with a pop up toy in his lap. Brookelynne would pop 4 of them and then Brax would reach over and push the button to pop the other one! He was so cute and happy to play with them!

* I finally found shoes for him!!! lol I know this may sound stupid, but the boy would NOT keep shoes on his feet. Not sandals, not dress shoes, not tennis shoes, nothing. Within a couple of minutes he would have managed to kick them off. I was starting to get frustrated that I would have a walker that wouldn't want to wear shoes, but I finally found some that fit him and stay on his feet! We even made it through a whole day at the zoo without them coming off!

* He went to VBS! :) Just like Brookelynne did last year (and this year) Braxton went to Vacation Bible School this year and loved it! He had an entire room full of ladies loving on him each day and teaching him about Jesus. He also got to go outside with Mama's class (Brookelynne's class) one day and ride on the train and ride on a horse! Here's a picture of him riding the horse! He really liked it, and he enjoyed the train as well! :) We're so thankful for a church that values preschoolers enough to have such great programs for them!

* The comment I get most often about our baby boy is "He's a happy baby isn't he?" No matter where we are or what we're doing, someone will see him grinning as big as possible and be so impressed with what a happy baby he is!

* On July 2, Braxton went to the beach for the first time! :) He was the only boy among girls and had a great time being loved on, napping and feeling the water and sand on his toes!

Gone Consignment Crazy, Fall 2011 Edition

2011-07-13T15:46:00.000-04:00

Well it is that time of year again and the Fall Consignment sales are starting to form! I've finally been able to get dates for them so I can now officially update you all on our old favorites and some new exciting ones too!

Jacksonville Kidsignment Sale
Dates and Times:
* Presale for Volunteers Only: Friday, August 5th, 6:30-8 pm
* Public Sale: Saturday, August 6th, 9am- 6pm
*Half Price Sale:Sunday August 7th, 11am-4 pm

Location:
510 Fairgrounds Place, Jax FL 32202
(Jacksonville Fairgrounds)

Details:
Jax Kidsignment Sale

Smock A Doodle Doo!
Dates and Times:
*Presale for Consigners Only Thursday, August 11th, 6-8 pm
*Presale for First Time Moms, Thursday, August 11th, 7-8 pm.
*Public Sale* Friday, August 12th, and Saturday, August 13th

Location: 4841 Reed Ave. Jacksonville, Fl 32257

Details: This is a sale for only smocked, monogrammed or appliquéd clothing, all in like new condition. They will also be accepting bedding, bows and shoes. If you have any questions or would like to consign, just contact Maddison Dorminey through the facebook page set up for the sale!
Smock A Doodle Doo

Finders Keepers!
Dates and Times:
*Presale for Consigners* August 31st 10am-6pm
*Public Sale* Sept 1st & 2nd from 9am-6pm
*Half Price Sale* Sept 3rd, 9am-3pm

Location: Morocco Shrine Center Auditorium
3800 St Johns Bluff Rd S, Jacksonville, FL

Details: This is the largest of the local consignment sales. They accept everything that you could ever need for or use as a child, from bedding and clothes to toys and furniture. You price your own items, and keep 65% of your sales, minus a $12 consignor fee. This is my mother in law’s favorite of all the sales, because she loves the large selection!
Finders Keepers Website

Warehouse Sale Jacksonville .
Dates and Times:

Location:

Details: While not a true consignment sale, this sale has the boutique quality smocked, appliquéd and monogrammed clothes that you want without the boutique price. These ladies buy overstocked items in bulk and then sell them to the public at a discounted rate twice a year. If you need a special Christmas, Easter, or other special occasion outfit for your little one, this would be a great place to look!

WeeTrade, San Marco Location

Dates and Times:

Location: 1666 University Blvd. W. (Lakewood Shopping Center) Winn Dixie Side @ San Jose Blvd & University Blvd (Opposite End of Winn Dixie, near Beall's)

Details: At WeeTrade you keep 66% of your earnings, (minus your $5 registration fee), or if you don’t have time to price, tag and hang your items, you could also just drop the items that you want to consign off to the sale, and let them do it for you, still keeping 40% of your earnings (minus the $5 registration fee, of course). They also have 2 sales this year, so if you don’t sell everything in the first one, you can always take part in the second, without changing all the work you’ve already done!
Wee Trade Website

Two Silly Friends (Formerly "Between Friends")
Dates and Times:
*Consigner Only PreSale* Sept 21
*Public Sale* Sept 22nd through Sept 24

Location: 175 Hampton Point Drive, St Augustine, FL 32092
Inside the Watson Realty Building on CR210W, 2nd Floor.

Details: This sale has some great perks, including no consigner/registration fee, and you keep 70% off your earnings! They also have a “drop-n-go” service, where you can drop off items that they will consign for you, for a 60/40 split, as they like to call it. It is located in St Augustine, so much more convenient for some of you mandarin and St Augustine residents! You must consign 10 items to be eligible for the presale!
Two Silly Friends Website

JumpNJax, which was our first sale in the spring, is seventh in order this fall!

Dates and Times:
*Presale (Mom 2 Be, New Grandparent, & Military )* August 3rd, 1pm-7pm.
*Public Sale* Aug 4th, 9am-7pm, Aug 5th, 9am-6pm, Aug 6th, 9am-3pm
*Half Price Sale* Aug 7th, 1pm-6pm.

Location: 5501 Roosevelt Blvd
Jacksonville, Fl 32244.

Details: This sale is my favorite. Consigners earn 65% with no registration/participation fee, and can bump up their earnings to 75% by referring 5 new consigners.

Upscale Kids Sale, Ponte Vedra

Dates and Times:
*Presale for Consigners and Volunteers* Sept
*Public Sale* Thursday & Friday Sept 9:30am-7 pm
*Half Price Sale* Sept 9am-5 pm

Location:

Details: This sale has no consigners fee and you earn 70% of your sales, 5% more for some volunteers. With a presale for consigners and a half price sale at the end of the weekend, as well as 3 locations, this just may be the sale for you!

Kids Go Round, another St Johns County sale, comes in at number nine.

Dates and Times:
*Public Sale*

Location: Faith Community Church
3450 CR210 W, St. Johns, FL 32259
(Located on CR210, 3 miles west of I-95, opposite South Hampton)

Details: Consigners earn 65% of their sales this weekend, with the opportunity to make more if you refer others! If you consign 25 items or more, you receive a pass to the consigners presale.
Kids Go Round Website

WeeTrade, St Johns Location
Dates and Times: *Presale*

Location: TBA, Just West of I95, convenient to 9A Shoppes of Bartram Park~Publix Shopping Center

Details: At WeeTrade you keep 66% of your earnings, (minus your $5 registration fee), or if you don’t have time to price, tag and hang your items, you could also just drop the items that you want to consign off to the sale, and let them do it for you, still keeping 40% of your earnings (minus the $5 registration fee, of course). They also have 2 sales this year, so if you don’t sell everything in the first one, you can always take part in the second, without changing all the work you’ve already done!
Wee Trade Website

Upscale Kids Sale, Orange Park location

Dates and Times:
*Presale for Consigners and Volunteers*
*Public Sale*
*Half Price Sale*

Location: Jefferson Crossing Shopping Center.
179 College Drive, Orange Park, Florida 32065.

Details: This sale has no consigners fee and you earn 70% of your sales, 5% more for some volunteers. With a presale for consigners and a half price sale at the end of the weekend, as well as 3 locations, this just may be the sale for you!

That just about wraps it up for this fall! As I get more information on sale dates and times I'll update!

Braxton is 5 months old!!!

2011-06-22T22:20:00.002-04:00

Who can believe that its been 5 months since this sweet little boy entered the world? Because I surely cannot! He is growing so much each day and gets just a little bit more of my heart every time I look at him. He laughs and coos all the time and rarely gets upset. He has such a sweet disposition and everyone says he look just like his Uncle Josh. Ironically they also say he looks like Brookelynne who apparently looks 'just like Mitch' and anyone who knows Mitch and Josh knows they look nothing alike, lol. :) Here are some pics and stats from the past month!

* Can sit up for short periods of time, but I really haven't been working on it with him very much because of how busy we have been.

* LOVES his toys!! Rattles are his favorite right now but he also likes playing with his paci pets. (The frog and dog that are connected to his pacis)

* He's rolling over everywhere! If you put him down for any amount of time, he'll roll over within minutes. :) He doesn't mind being on his belly but once he's tired of it, he'll let you know.

* He's going through 2 to 5 bibs each day between his drooling and spit up. You would think he would have a tooth or two by now but none in sight! He's got the best toothless grin though!

* Is quite the socialite! He talks to everyone!

* Loves to stand up/straighten out. Anytime you lay him down, he's as straight as a board. They should have no problem measuring his length any time soon because he's as long as he can be every time he lays down! He also loves to stand up. You have to fight him to get him to bend at the waist most days, but if you just put his feet on the floor he'll hold his own weight for 30 minutes or more. I've even started holding just his hands or just putting my hands on his hips, and while he's not super stable, he'll stand on his own for short spurts.

* Is about to pop out of all of his 3-6 month and 6 month clothes. We pulled out the 9 month clothes last week and are starting to clear out his drawers and replace them. I've noticed that we don't have many 9 month church clothes though. Guess that means I'm going shopping soon! :)

* He naps in his swing often times, mainly because he's in the 'fighting sleep stage' and it's much more effective to put him in the swing and swing it fast to get him to fall asleep than to hold him tight and make him go to sleep because as soon as you put him down, he's up again..

**** He's sleeping through the night!!!!!! ******** :) He started this at about 4.5 months, and has done great with it. He takes his last bottle around 9 and then I just lay him in his bed and he goes right to sleep! He's so precious and hardly ever fusses. If he does fuss, I let him do so for several minutes until he's about to cry and then I walk in there and give him his passy. He immediately takes it and is out in seconds.If you try to give it to him any sooner than that, he won't take it. (Little stinker!) :)

* He's starting to know my voice even from across the room. If I'm outside of his classroom at church and talking, he starts turning his head to me and immediately smiles when he sees me! Its so stinkin cute! (Oh, and in case you were wondering, he has the best smiles ever!)

* He doesn't have any favorite toys yet, but does like playing with rattles. Especially the ones that he can shake and make a good amount of noise.

* He puts EVERYTHING straight into his mouth! I know this is 'normal' but it's so new to us because Brooke never did that. Literally everything that his hand touches goes in his mouth, so we now have a much more clean-conscious Mama over here! It never bothered me with Brookelynne if she dropped a toy on the ground or even if she picked something up off the ground because 95% of the time, she'd just play with it and then put it down/back. Not Little Man, he immediately tastes it, meaning when he drops it on the floor, he puts those germs right into his mouth. Not cool. :) It makes me wonder what type of learner that will make him. Hopefully I figure that out soon! haha

*We finally found a song that he likes!!! Unlike his big sister and his Mama, he was not at all concerned with music for the longest time! You could sing and sing and it didn't calm him a bit. I stumbled upon a tune that he likes and we now officially have the first 'Braxton James Song" :) It goes "Where is Braxton James, Braxton James, Braxton James, Where is Braxton James? He's sitting right over there" We also substitute "I love...he's our sweet baby boy" and Brookelynne's name for more variations of the song.

* He's eating solids! He has had carrots, sweet potatoes, pears, green beans, peas, peaches, strawberries, kiwi, spaghetti squash and butternut squash. He doesn't like the squash though! :) We started him on it right at 4 months, and it took him quite a while to get good at eating off of a spoon, but he's gotten it now! We knew he wanted to eat, because if you kept at it, he'd eat 2 or 3 ice cubes worth each day for the first week or so and then 4 to 6 ice cubes each serving after that. He eats great now, just as long as its not squash, lol.

* He LOVES his big sister! He thinks she is hilarious and loves when she plays with him or talks to him. If she comes into his line of sight he always smiles and usually laughs anytime she does or if she makes faces at him. She'll play peek a boo with him, which they both love, and she loves to do 'giccha giccha goo" with him while she pokes his belly!

Backyard Playspace....

2011-06-20T10:20:00.000-04:00

When we bought our home four years ago, one of the selling points for me was the beautiful view on from the back door and nice large covered back porch. I told myself I'd sit out there regularly and enjoy the breeze coming off the lake and that we would get plenty of use out of it. I lied to myself. LOL. :) But since Brookelynne was born, we've gone back and forth about what to do with it. As she gets older she wants to spend more and more time outside, and lets just be real for a second, I do not like getting dirty and sweaty if I can't go take a shower as soon as I'm done. And lets just face it, with two kids, I barely get my one shower each night after everyone's asleep, there's no way I'm getting one at 11 am after playing in the park. So when we started talking about getting the playground stuff for the back yard, I started thinking about what I could do with the back porch for rainy days or time in the shade. I have wanted to get a 'playhouse' but knew there was no way I was going to pay $80 or $100 for one, and I knew I'd like a slide and coupe car, but wasn't paying full price for those either. So a few weeks ago, my mother in law, Jeanna, called me to tell me she was at a garage sale and they had a few different things and she was getting them for her house so the kids could play in them. I told her that I had been wanting some things like that and she said that she would keep an eye out for them. Later that day she called me back to tell me that she had found another garage sale and had cleaned up! And that she'd have the stuff at her house for me to pick up whenever.

So a few weeks ago, we started on our porch playyard, by putting together her new-to-us house. :) I started by bleaching them really well and scrubbing each piece and then put them together on the porch. Brookelynne was in love right off the bat! A couple days later I stopped by there to get the slide and 'picnic table'. We repeated the scrubbing process and added a step of spray paint to give them some new life and *tada* we had even more to play with!

New Slide and Picnic Table! (The parts that are red were very faded, almost white. They look GREAT now!)

Braxton having a blast on the slide and Brookelynne playing house!

Then I started searching craigslist for my coupe car. :) To my excitement, I found one that was being sold in a lot with 2 other ride on toys that I had liked anyway, so I bought all three on my way over to visit my nieces the other day. While at Jeanna's house that afternoon, she mentioned that the sand table was also supposed to go to my house, so we left the motorized ride on toy for my nieces, and loaded up the sand table to take home. Needless to say, we have quite the collection of plastic toys out there. Hopefully I can get the yard and house cleaned up in the next few weeks so we can have some of Brooke's friends over to check them out too!

My babies in their cars!

Scary Moment that I never want to repeat....

2011-06-07T18:26:00.000-04:00

So today we had VBS training/planning and I was at the church all morning. We didn't even leave the parking lot until 2:30 and even though it was past nap time, I had to stop at Sam's on the way home. We went inside and I stopped in the book section as always and headed back to the produce. I grabbed the salad stuff I needed and some green grapes for my favorite 20 month old and headed to get the tea bags. Brookelynne of course wanted to start eating the grapes, something I always allow her to do, so every couple of minutes I would pull 3 or 4 out of the container and give them to her to eat. We strolled through the store and up to the front. She was standing in the buggy, next to Brax's carseat (which he was in) and eating grapes, one at a time. All of a sudden she kind of coughed, and at first I thought she had accidentally swallowed some juice down her wind pipe, something that obviously corrects itself after a couple of coughs. A second later I realized that she wasn't just coughing, but choking with her mouth open and her face turning red. I didn't even think, what came next was just my training/instinct taking over. I 'swiped' her mouth out, feeling the grape that was lodged in her throat, but not able to 'get behind it', so I yanked her up out of the buggy, hitting her back with my right hand, as I positioned her on my left hand for the infant/child's version of the Heimlich. Before I could turn her over/hit her again, it popped out and she started screaming. I turned her around and just held her and calmed her down.

It wasn't until minutes later that I started shaking and thinking about all the what ifs. I mean my daughter eats grapes all. the. time. And she's been eating them whole for 6 or 8 months now. She's never had a problem. What if I hadn't been looking at her when this happened? What if we had been at home and she had taken some grapes into the other room (something she often does when she's snacking) and this had happened? Would I have even heard her? Would she have been able to cough it up or get to me in time? What if it happened in the car? There's no way I would be able to get off the road, back to her seat, her out of the seat and try to help her until 45 or 50 seconds after realizing what was happening. Seriously this could have been so much worse and I am so grateful that if it was going to happen that it happened this way and even more grateful that I have had cpr/first aid training to know what to do. Even though I haven't be 'certified' in 5 years, it was like I had been trained yesterday, I just immediately saw the diagrams in my head and began positioning Brooke accordingly. How great is my God that when he created me, he created my brain to work in such a way?!?! So grateful to Him, not only for Brooke being okay, but for being such an amazing creator!

TEAoBS: Potty Training Edition: Bloopers. :)

2011-06-01T14:16:00.000-04:00

So we have some good news and some bad news.... lol. The good news is that she is good enough to tell me that she needs to potty and even if she can't quite hold it until we get the bathroom, she can stop herself once she starts.

So today in Target, I'm walking around the children's clothes when she tells me she needs to potty. I go to pick her up to find that her panties are wet, but they're not soaked, so I ask her if she still needs to potty and she says yes. I changed her pants/panties and then we trekked to the front of the store. We went into the "family restroom" (officially my favorite part of the store now!) and she potty-ed on the potty. She got off, I cleaned everything, put it all back into the buggy (which was where Brax was happily sleeping in his car seat) and rolled us all out the door. A second later, Brooke said "Potty" again. So I asked her if she needed to GO potty, to which she said yes, so we went back into the family restroom and repeated the process. After which we headed back to the baby department to pick up the bottle liners and toilet cover that we actually came to get.

I picked up the bottle liners and headed to the isle with all the potty training gear and started comparing prices and features. I was looking at the toilet seats that you put on regular toilets, because we need one that can permanently be in the bathroom and not have to come with us to public restrooms. These were all hanging on the top shelf, so while I was aware that Brookelynne was near my feet, I wasn't watching her every move or anything. A minute went by and I realized she was quiet, so I look down, and my sweet little daughter had pulled one of the portable 'potty chairs' off of the shelf, lifted the lid, pulled down her pants and potty-ed right there in the middle of the Target Baby Department. I quietly squeaked out her name and she replied by looking up at me, saying "potty" and clapping for herself. I didn't have a mirror but I'm pretty sure this was the moment that I turned about 18 shades of red.

So I grabbed her wipes, knelt down and cleaned her and pulled up her panties. About that time, Brookelynne reaches for the part that comes out saying "dump, dump", just in time for me to realize that there is no where to 'dump' this anywhere around here. So I tell her I'm doing to dump it, to which she about pitches a fit. I make her get into the buggy and let her hold the rest of the potty chair as I walk through the whole store, back to the front, pushing this buggy with now 2 crying/fussing/pitching a fit babies with one hand and trying not to spill pee out of this container in the other.

Needless to say we purchased this potty that we didn't really need and I got out of that store as FAST as I possibly could. And just because of my embarrassment, a copy of this post will accompany her on every first date for the rest of her life! lol :) jk

TEAoBS: Potty Training Edition, Part 3 Car Seat Trained! :)

2011-05-30T07:56:00.000-04:00

We are almost there! :) I know it sounds crazy, but my baby girl is car-seat potty trained. (Meaning she will hold it until she gets out of the car!)

Yesterday we had a Sunday School Day Retreat to the Hurst's Lakehouse a couple hours from here. We got up and loaded the car and put a diaper on our "Little Miss". For good measure, we brought her potty with us (since I didn't know how many bathrooms there would be, and how 'occupied' they would be throughout the day. That, I now know, was the best idea ever. lol

We got on the road, and made it to 103rd St before Brookelynne started saying "Potty, Potty", so Mitch looked at me and I said to ignore her, she had a diaper on, and she had probably already gone in her diaper (like she did in the car on Wednesday). But a minute or so later she started yelling again and I told him to pull off the road. We pulled into a parking lot, pulled the potty out and sat her on it. All she did was try to turn around and see the cars. She kept saying "Car" over and over until I finally decided to just put her back in the car. We looked at each other and agreed, she's just have to go in her diaper, because we weren't going to stop 20 times for 'false alarms'. When we missed our exit on Blanding, she started screaming again. Mitch said, "Just go in your diaper" and she freaked out! She was screaming "No Ma, No Ma, No Ma!!!" So, we told her to hold it until we could get off the interstate.

So we got off at Roosevelt, turned onto a side street and into a parking lot for a closed business. She went potty this time and we got back on the road. We had to stop 2 more times on our way down but she made it all the way with no accidents or 'wet diapers'. She didn't have any accidents at the house either! I was so proud of her. Then when we headed home, we had to make 2 stops and she did fabulous! I had so much confidence that she'd make it that I didn't even put a diaper on her to go home! I'm so proud of my little angel!

Funniest part of the day was when the adults were outside having our Bible study and most of the kids (including both of mine) were inside with a few of the adults, Mrs Sturgill, my high school Sunday School teacher, looked around and noticed Brookelynne's panties on the ground and no Brooke in sight! Needless to say this new grandma was a little anxious about such a fact! haha. I'm so proud of my big girl!!!

TEAoBS: Potty Training Edition Part 2: The Training Begins!

2011-05-25T08:32:00.008-04:00

Thursday Morning we began this whole process known as 'potty training'. I was armed with a potty chair, easily sanitized toys, blockaides for the kitchen, shop towels and plenty of lysol and lysol wipes. :) I woke Brookelynne up, took off her diaper and brought her into the kitchen. I'm not sure this needs to be said, but that morning was the longest I've had in a while! lol. My sweet darling who usually fills a diaper within 20 minutes of waking up, didn't do any 'business' for almost 3 hours. And then when I had started pumping, Braxton had just started crying and I was about to scream she stood a foot from the potty and peed everywhere! I almost screamed. Seriously. It was more than trying my patience! lol.

By the time she got up from her nap, my back was aching from being in the kitchen all day. I don't know whether it was standing doing dishes, sitting straight up in the chair or playing with them on the floor, but my back was Killing Me! So, I had un-'blockaided' the kitchen, brought her potty chair into the living room and put it on a towel so that I could sit on the couch. By the time Mitch got home around 7, I was extremely frustrated. While she had used the potty 4 or 5 times, she had also had 'accidents' 4 or 5 times and I felt like I had spent my day cleaning up stuff, sanitizing myself and Brooke while taking care of Brax as well. By bedtime I was just glad the day was over.

Friday morning we got up and repeated the process. Clean her bottom and leave her sans diaper. My mom was coming up around noon so that I could take Brax for his 4 month appt/shots, so I was interested to see how she was going to do. She had 1 accident Friday morning (mainly because she had climbed up into her high chair and couldn't get down in fast enough to get to the potty.) I had her take an early nap, so she'd be in a good mood for my mom. My mom thought I was crazy to let Brooke walk around without a diaper, but I tried to explain to her that if you put a diaper or pull up on her, that she just potty-ed in it with out reservation. I left and went to Brax's appt and when I got back, Grandma was a little frustrated too. lol. She had put a pull up on Brooke, and she immediately pooped in it and then took it off. And since it was Grandma, Brookelynne as insisting on being held and she had a little accident on Grandma's hip. When I got home, I put panties on Brooke and when Mitch arrived shortly after we fought the battle of making her keep them on! lol. My sweet innocent little girl had quickly decided she wanted to be a nudist! haha. Needless to say, that was not acceptable.

Saturday morning I got out of the house and ran an errand before the kids got up, and when I got home, Brookelynne had already potty-ed twice. She was still having some issues Saturday with starting to pee in her panties before she got to the potty, but it wasn't much and didn't leak through. She still wasn't very good at telling me that she needed to potty, but by Saturday night, she was more than good enough to go and potty with out any help.

Sunday was a crazy day, and she had 2 accidents during Sunday school, but the teacher was trying to make her go like 35 feet before she started peeing, and that was just not realistic yet. So by the time we got back to her class, 70 minutes later, she was in a diaper. Mitch and I were already scheduled to be in her room that week for the service hour, so when we got in there, I went ahead and put her back in panties. She went to the potty twice during that hour for us without any accidents, so we were really proud of her! After church we put a diaper on her for the car ride down to Aunt Tricia's so that she'd have one on if she fell asleep. She did great and didn't use it though. We had Abbi's birthday party and then I took Brax back to church while Brooke went home with Daddy and continued doing great, with no more accidents. But she still couldn't pull her panties down by herself.

So Monday was the day of 'panty basics' lol. We pulled them down and then up and then down and then up and then down and [can you guess it] then up! :) By 10:30, she was doing really well with it! So much so, that I even called Mitch at work to tell him about it! By noon, I decided to go ahead and move her potty back into the bathroom, because I felt good that she could realize she needed to go, get her panties down and get down the hall in time. She did very well, and only had one accident the whole day, and that was when we were on our way home from the store. She had made it through 2 car rides and 2 stores, 2 hours gone from the house without an accident and had one less than 2 miles from our house! Needless to say, I felt horrible, that I hadn't paid better attention to help her be successful.

Tuesday she did even better, with no accidents all day (except getting her panties a little damp once, but not even enough to make them wet.) And I can honestly say that I was thrilled and very confident that she had it down! We are super excited that she's basically done. Each day she gets more and more control and is able to hold it longer and have more notice when she needs to go. We're not going to push her to be car trained (except for 10 or 15 minutes at a time) or nap trained until she's ready. We'll see how long that takes!

The Entertaining Adventures of Brookelynne Starr: Potty Training Edition Part 1 :)

2011-05-24T13:21:00.001-04:00

First off let me start by asking a question. Who else, besides me, CANNOT believe that my baby girl is old enough to even start this discussion, much less do it? I'm just saying, that at 19.5 months, my daughter should not be so insistent on doing this, but insistent she is, so we are going for it!

It all started a few months ago when Mitch bought Brookelynne a 'potty chair'. He said she was smart enough to get potty trained and that that was the first step. I didn't want to get a potty chair because I felt like I would have to train her twice, once on it and then again on a regular toilet, and since I didn't plan on training her until the end of the summer, I figured we could just train her on the regular toilet, but Mitch disagreed, so we bought one. We opened it up, and put it in the bathroom and would take her diaper off occasionally (mainly right before bathtime) and sit her on it. Then we would sit on the potty next to her (usually not even using it) and tell her "This is where we go potty". She peed in it a couple of times but never with out prompting.

Then I spent a morning (probably a month and a half ago) in the bathroom with her sitting on the potty, hoping she would go, so she would figure out what we were wanting her to do. After 3.5 hours in there, toes and fingers painted, multiple songs sung and toys played with, she didn't 'potty'. I almost put it away then, since we weren't going to be doing it 'anytime soon', but she liked it, so I left it. Occasionally, she would say "potty" and go sit on it and I would take her diaper off so she could, but she never did anything. I don't consider any of that potty training, because quite frankly none of it was intentional or what not.

All that led to the day that she set her mind to potty training! Last Monday morning I was in Brax's room changing him when Brooke came into the room with her diaper half off saying "potty". So I took it off and out of the room she ran. She was still sitting on the potty (with no avail) when I left Brax's room a couple minutes later. I made Brax a bottle, put him down and started checking my email, completely forgetting that I had a half naked child running around the house. 15 minutes later she came up to me and said "potty, Paaaaaaaaa-T" I got up, thinking she wanted me to come in there and sit in front of her while she sat on the potty. When we walked in there, she pointed and said "potty". Sure enough, I looked in there and she had peed and pooped in there already! So I praised her and took her to her room to put a diaper on her. I put her on the changing table and she started freaking out, saying "no diaper, no diaper, no diaper". So I told Mitchell, we needed to buy panties and start the potty training process. We had plans Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thursday morning, the madness began!

Braxton is 4 months old!!!

2011-05-23T14:28:00.000-04:00

I seriously cannot believe that it has been 4 whole months since my precious baby boy took his first breath. We are so incredibly blessed to have him in our lives. :) We just got home from his 4 month appointment with Dr Kim and he checked out great! He did much better at his appointment than Brookelynne ever did, went right onto the scale with no fussing and even smiled while he was getting weighed, and then was fine throughout the entire exam, cooing and smiling at Dr Kim. Here are some stats for the records as well as a list of his 'what he's doing now' :)

Height/Length:               24.5 inches
Weight:                           14 lbs 11 oz
Head Circumference:   43 cm

* He is firmly in size 2 diapers. There were a couple of weeks where he could still fit in size ones but was about to pop out of them, but now we're in full swing with size two. (We still have 4 pks of size ones that I guess will go into the garage to await baby #3!)
* We pulled out his 3-6 month and 6 month clothes a couple weeks before he turned 3 months and he's already out growing some of them! He's such a big boy!

* He's in size 2 shoes for the most part, but some of them are a little too big still. He doesn't wear shoes often, but he does wear them to church and they're super cute on him!
* He's still eating about 6 oz every 4 hours during the day. A 'normal' day has him eating at 8 am, noon, 4 pm, 7 pm and 9:30 pm, as well as one time during the night at either 2 am or 4 am. He also has cereal in his 9:30 bottle. We're going to start him on food tomorrow and hopefully that will be the extra thing that gets him to sleep through the night.
* He doesn't stay in his bouncer very often at all, and has really begun to enjoy his swing and other toys.
* We pulled out the Jumperoo last week and while he's not jumping in it yet, he can touch the ground and has really enjoyed hitting the different things on it. Brookelynne tries to 'bounce' and 'swing' him. Obviously, we had to stop that fun game! lol

* He is super smiley! He smiles all the time and always smiles when he looks at you.
* He has started giggling! He giggles at all kinds of things including my ponytail, peek a boo games, and 'getcha, getcha goos'. He even laughs when Brookelynne 'gets him'. She pokes his belly and says "gooda, gooda, gooda". It's hilarious for all of us! :) His laugh is sweet and understated (not like Mama and Brookelynne), not a belly laugh, but like he laughs just long enough to realize that he might miss something if he doesn't pay attention, and quiets back down! :)

*He loves tv. No I'm not kidding. The kid can be anywhere in a room, and if there is a tv on, he's looking for it and staring at it. Too bad for him that he's not going to be a tv or computer game baby.

* He especially loves Basketball. We've been watch a lot of it lately with the NBA playoffs going on and needless to say, it's his favorite thing to watch! He sits on Daddy's knee and they cheer on the Heat!
* He still sleeps in a swaddle blanket. My mom asked me to stop, but quite frankly he sleeps better with it, and I would much rather him 'need to be swaddled' than 'need to have a paci', so we'll be sticking with it at least a little bit longer.

* He as several nicknames. Brookelynne still calls him 'Braaa". Daddy and Mama call him "Man", "Brax-Man", and "Dude". I call him "Man" more than anything most days. I'm constantly saying "Hey Man, I see you" or "Hey Man, I love you" :)
* He can hold rattles, shake them and switch them from one hand to the other. :) Yeah, he's pretty much a genius! hehe

* He still doesn't like his carseat but behaves pretty well for short periods of time. Wednesday nights are really hard on him. I haven't figured out exactly why, but he pretty much screams the whole way home every week. Even if I leave early, stay later or feed him on the way, it doesn't matter, he's just mad and tells me about it at the top of his lungs all.the.way.home.
* He really likes his big sister! :) She'll come up to him and pop into his field of vision and start talking to him and he'll start grinning as big as he can. This of course encourages Brookelynne to continue what she's doing and thus begins minutes of entertainment for Mama and Daddy! :)

* He still hasn't gotten any teeth, but he's started teething, because he'll have days or hours where he slobbers non-stop and gnaws on everything! :) He especially likes his fists or our fingers!

* He "talks" all. the. time!!! :) He's much more talkative than his sister ever was! He ooos and aawwws all the time and it is super cute! If you have him face to face and talk to him for a minute and then stop talking, he'll start talking back to you! It's so adorable! I think he'll be talking much sooner than others!
* We've started working on 'sitting up', but he's not taking to it very quickly. I'm sure he'll master it in the next few weeks though! And we're very excited about that because that's when they start to get SUPER fun! :)

All in all, our little man is fantastic and we're SOOOO thrilled to have him and see him grow! :)

Happy Birthday to My Mom! (& Excerts from Mom's Book....)

2011-05-11T08:51:00.005-04:00

I told you in my post about Mom's party, that I'd share the things that Josh and I wrote to Mom, so in honor of her birthday (officially 60 today!), here they are!

We're so proud of her and the amazing Godly mother she's been to us. I hope you enjoy them!

Here's Josh's:

"To You My Mom,

"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life". ~Abraham Lincoln

I found this quote as I was thinking of what to write down for this book and I thought it exemplified one of the biggest elements that makes you the great mom that you are! I feel your prayers daily as you poor your heart out to Jesus asking him to protect me and guide me. Mom, for this I love and thank you!

There is no way that I could write down every amazing memory we have, there isn’t enough paper in the world to publish them! So instead I picked a few of my favorites to remind you of on your 60th birthday.

“When I was sick and you were young, you lived between my shin."

I remember my birthday party when we had thirty kids in our back yard and even though you were working full-time and tired and sick, you pulled out all the stops and made it great. Thank You Momma!

I remember the fifth grade and working so hard to make the patrols; and when that teacher gave me a 'C' that I didn’t deserve, that got me kicked off, you went to bat for me. Every time I needed someone to fight for me, you were there. Thank You!

I remember every time you taught me right from wrong and all the times you showed
me how to be a good man. Mom because of you, I am who I am. Thank You.

I remember getting a call one Saturday morning that would change our lives. Mom those were the longest two months of my life and you will never know how just how truly thankful I am that God chose to heal you that year! You fought so hard when so many others would have thrown in the towel. Mom you have shown me how to fight and what it means to survive. Thank You.

I could go on for days and days of memories I have of the great times we have had threw the years but I will leave you with this. Mom you are beautiful, kind, loving, passionate, intelligent, bold, and everything I want to be. There is no one that could have given me what you have given me. Enjoy your 60th and I cant wait to enjoy another 60 years learning from and loving You!

Thank You for being my mom.
~Love Your Son

"If you have a mom, there is nowhere you are likely to go where a prayer has not
already been." ~Robert Brault" "

Isn't he sweet? I sure think so, and Mom loved it! :) Here is what I wrote....

"Mom,

When I try to think about my favorite memory of you, there are obviously too many to name. Most of the things that come to mind include the events or times when we laughed too hard or the ones where I could see on your face that I made you proud. Of course there were plenty of memorable times when you would sit Josh and me down to dish out whatever punishment that fit our current crimes, but in hindsight, most of those are even fond to me now.

Over the years, we have had a lot of tough times, but you always made it clear to me, that with God, you and Josh, we could make it through anything. I always smile when I think of the Three Musketeers and the way that we always supported each other. “All for One and One for All.” I’m so thankful that you didn’t give us an option, whether we wanted to or not, we were going to be at each others games, competitions and plays and be kind to each other. I don’t know that I would love Josh as much as I do today if you weren’t the Mom that you were to us, and I’m so grateful for that. I honestly cherish the times of cheering Josh on and seeing him succeed more than I do my own successes and the fact that at the end of the game, we celebrated as a family was always so special to me.

I remember so many times when we would misunderstand you and end up laughing hysterically over what we thought you had said. Like, “When you were young, and I was sick, you lived between my shins!” I can still see us laughing in the middle of that Walmart isle for what seemed like 20 minutes! I wish we had written them all down because I’m pretty sure we’d have days worth of entertainment by now! I was always so grateful that you were able to laugh at yourself and didn’t take things too seriously, because that’s something that I have to work at. Seeing you laugh at yourself, makes it easier for me to lighten up too.

In the past few years, I have had the privilege of developing a friendship with you. While I’m so thankful for that, I am much more thankful that you choose to be a mother first. So many parents refuse to take the hard stances and fight the hard fights and while I know it wasn’t easy or fun, I’m so thankful that you choose to do what was right and be my mom first. I wouldn’t be the woman that I am today without those standards, so Thank You.

When I think back and determine which moments with you that I am most grateful for, I can honestly say that they are the ones where I knew that I made you proud of me and did something worthwhile. I remember the day that I had Brookelynne and watching you hold her after everyone had left and seeing how truly proud of me you were. I’m so grateful that the Lord has allowed you this ‘borrowed time’ to spend meeting and knowing my children.

Most of all, I am thankful for the woman that you have been in our lives. None of us are perfect, but you have always strived to seek the Lord’s wisdom in raising us and to point us to Him. I have grown up watching you put what seemed like unwavering faith into our Lord and His sovereignty even when things seemed impossible to overcome. While I don’t remember you saying the words, I remember knowing that you truly believed that if the Lord chose to take you away from us, that that must be the best thing for us and that you wouldn’t waiver in your faith if that was what He did. What a testimony that has been! I remember you praying for us, not just saying you would or had, but actually praying for us, in front of us. Each night you put us, our futures, our mates, our problems and our successes before the Lord, and asked that His will be done. Each day I pray for my children and I pray for their salvation and for their mates. I pray for their futures and that they will live their lives honoring and glorifying the Lord. That’s a heritage you started.

When I look back on my wedding day, I remember the look on your face when they called you to the dance floor to dance with me. You were so confused and surprised, and while unconventional, I had known the first time I heard that song that I had to dance to it with you on that day, because you truly are “Somebody’s Hero”. You’re mine.

I love you ALLLLLL Much!
Jenny "

Hope you like them!

Brax's first batch of baby food!

2011-05-04T11:22:00.000-04:00

For anyone wondering how to make you're own baby food, I decided to do a picture 'step by step' for you. :) And for me too, because it encourages me to keep doing it! :)

First step is to buy the produce that you intend on using for your baby food. I make a point of watching for sales and purchasing it at its lowest price. Sweet potatoes are usually $1 per lb at our local Publix, but were on sale for $.49 per lbs, so right there, I've saved 50%. I bought 7 lbs of sweet potatoes (2/3rds of it is pictured here. I did the other third in a separate batch)

With most of your choices, you will want to peel them and then wash them thoroughly (sweet potatoes, squash, carrots, apples, pears). There are certain things that you can't peel, like green beans, sweet peas and corn. Those you'll have to make sure you wash especially well.

After they are peeled and cleaned, chop them up to cook.

[When I made baby food for Brookelynne, I chopped them into smaller pieces, but that made it difficult to keep a thicker consistency in her food. (This caused us to have to put rice cereal in almost all of her food after the first week of eating because we found that she ate the thicker consistencies better than the thinner ones)]

Fill with water, and boil.

[You want to use as little water as you can while still cooking the food. A portion of the nutrients come out in the water, and while you will be using some of the water to get the consistency right, you won't be using all of it, so the less you have left over, the few nutrients you're throwing away.]

Then spoon the chunks into your blender or food processor and 'blend' :)

Continue to add water and blend until it reaches your preferred consistency. As you see, I like mine to be the consistency of soft serve ice cream. Any thinner and I feel like it's so much more difficult for them to keep in their mouths.

Once you've gotten it to your liking, spoon into containers of your choosing. For at-home feeding, ice cubes of food work great! Especially starting out, most babies don't eat more than one ice cube worth per serving anyway. As they begin to eat more, you just heat up more than one ice cube as needed. I also freeze jars worth of food for when we're not at home. Its much easier to just grab a jar out of the freezer than to find a container to hold however many ice cubes you need. With Brookelynne, we ended up buying baby food, just so we would have the convenience of a jar. So I saved those jars and lids and now freeze them full of homemade food. Best of both worlds!

Those potatoes you saw up top, turned into this! 6 and a half ice cube trays and 12 stage 2 jars of baby food!

Just put them in the freezer (uncovered to begin with) and all the 'hard work' is done!

6 to 8 hours later, go back and loosen your ice cube trays. This way, the food is set in its form, but not so frozen that it's stuck in the tray. You can also go ahead and put the lids on your jars at this point too, since the food will have already expanded.

In another day or so, go back and pop all of those ice cubes of food out of their trays and put them in a resealable bag. :) Then you can just pull them out one at a time as you need them!

I can honestly say that I really enjoy doing this. It only takes an hour or two (and I do big batches) per food and if you do one a week for a month or so, you'll have plenty of food for your baby!

Also, since this is my blog and I am therefore allowed to say whatever I want, I will add that there are some things that just aren't worth making. One of which is applesauce. Its much more expensive to make it, takes a LOT of time and is difficult to get the right consistency. I just buy the big containers of 'all natural' applesauce when it goes on sale and call it a day. Also, green beans weren't worth it for me either. I didn't feel like I could clean them enough to make myself happy, and I didn't like having to worry about strings in my baby food. I also don't do meat. That's just gross to think about! lol. So we watch for sales/coupons and stock up on those as needed. We have 50 or 60 jars of baby food that we got for $.10 a jar last time there was a bogo with a coupon. Not bad since I will re-use those jars next time around! :)

Mom's Surprise Party!

2011-04-24T16:58:00.044-04:00

Yesterday, the culmination of months of hard work and secrecy came together perfectly to surprise my Mom with a 60th Birthday Party! I've known for years that I wanted to throw my mom a surprise party one day. I had always planned on it being a 15th anniversary party for her lung transplant (which will be Feb 1st) but really didn't see how I could justify doing it so shortly after her 60th birthday without it looking like I just hadn't thought about it before then. So when I found out about my pregnancy with Brax, I went ahead and told Josh to start saving a little each week so that he could help me out with the costs associated with it and that we'd talk about details as it got closer.

Well the fall was a little big busy for us, with Brooke's first birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, 2 baby showers and just getting ready for Brax in general, so I didn't get plans finalized for date/time/place until the week before Brax was born. I went ahead and put down a deposit on the place and waited for Braxton's arrival to do the invites. I also had my sister's baby shower that I was throwing a month after Brax's arrival, so that first month was jam packed! I finished the invites one night, and had Mitch check them, just to tell me that there was a typo. I was pretty much ready to shoot myself. Just saying. Anyway, I printed them again and got them out the next week.

As a gift, we decided to make a memory book for her with different memories or letters from her friends and family. So after the invites went out, I started receiving everyone's imput and compiling pictures to start her book. I spent hours typing, proofing, editing and adding page after page of people's memories with, thoughts of and letters to my mom. It was such an encouraging project for me, because while I know how wonderful my mom is, you never know if others see that too. What a blessing to know that they do!

I then got started on decorations and planning the food. I checked prices, waited for sales, bought materials and made centerpieces. For the centerpieces, I wanted to incorporate the pictures and stories that I was getting from others and somehow display them on the tables, so I thought about Easter Egg Trees. I bought some at Micheals, spray painted them white so they would really pop, and pulled out all the branches so that I could put the pictures and stories in them like they had gotten 'caught' in the trees. They turned out really well, unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of them. :(

The week of the party was very hectic, trying to get everything ready and done and trying desperately not to leak it to my mom! I'm telling you, this was a hard secret to keep! But when the weekend came around, we went to running! Friday I met Josh and Amy at Costco to buy the food, and Amy took a good amount of it back to her house to prep for us. (Thankfully) I headed home and tried to rest up enough to have the energy for the next day!

We got up bright and early Saturday morning, and I got the kids to take an early nap. I loaded and loaded and loaded up the car some more and when the kiddos woke up, I loaded them too! lol. We all met at the community center at 1 to get started on the decorating and food prep. Mr Larry had gotten a smoker/grill from his bank so that he could cook all the chicken, and Mrs Teri and Sarah had come with Amy to help out. I was so overwhelmed that they would both give up their whole days to come and help us, it was just so sweet, and GREATLY needed! :) Sarah got put on baby duty and had some one-on-one time with Brax as well as some ball-rolling-time with Brookelynne while Amy and I pulled out the tables, and Mrs Teri got started in the kitchen. With all the help we were rolling along splendidly! It was looking great!

Josh was helping Mr Larry season, and cook the chicken outside and coming inside occasionally to check up on us or get more drinks. Before I knew it we were almost done! I had to leave at 4 to go and pick Mom up, and had thought that might be rushing it, but everything was pretty well done when I loaded the kids up to head out. I left Mrs Teri and Amy in charge and got on the road! The kids did well until about a mile from Grandma's house and then Brax lost it! Needless to say, the drive back was a little loud. Mom didn't blink and eye when I called Mitch and asked him to meet us at the car since Brax was crying! When we pulled in, there was a spot right out front, what luck! :) Mitch opened Brax's door and said "Oh, he's really crying" And I wanted to be like, um, YEAH! ;) But Mom didn't hear him, so no harm, no foul. With everything in hand, and Mom carrying Brookelynne we walked to the door. Mitch opened it for my mom as everyone inside yelled "Surprise!" :) It was priceless!

She started to back up and I had to push her so she would go inside! :) She was looking around like "What in the world?" and started crying as soon as she started to recognize all the people who had come to celebrate her!

These are some of the hugs and hellos she got!

We all gathered around and Josh asked the blessing over the food and thanked the Lord for Mom and all of the 60 years that He's given her so far, and everyone dug in! There was chicken, green beans, corn, salad and several appetizers, so everyone had plenty to choose from! And the star of the meal was definitely the chicken! I don't know how he did it, because I've never had a piece of barbqued chicken that wasn't dried out, but Mr Larry's was DELICIOUS!!! And everyone said so! Mom got to visit with everyone and while everyone was eating, Josh and I read her our entries in her book. (I'll post them in a separate post). She cried, as did Josh (I love my sweet brother) and everyone loved them. It was a sweet time of honoring my mom and the woman and mother she is.

After the food, we had her blow out the candles, :) She was obviously very excited about doing so! (and about the fact that I didn't actually put 60 individual candles on the cake! lol.

Thank you to everyone who came out and who contributed to her book. She LOVED it and is so grateful for all of you!

Welcome Annaline!

2011-04-04T23:12:00.000-04:00

My sister called several months ago, and asked me if I was I would be upset if she was pregnant too. :) I said that I definitely would NOT be! She was very surprised to find out herself, that she was expecting her third child. While Annaline was not planned, they soon were anxious to meet her! Since both of her other children had come at 37 weeks, Tricia was sure that Anna would make an early entrance, but at 39 weeks, they went ahead and induced since Anna hadn't come yet!

Here is the proud Mommy and Daddy

Me and my sis shortly before she started pushing!

After inducing at 7 am, Tricia was about ready to start pushing close to 1 pm. She was a champ and Anna came after only 7 or 8 pushes. She was precious and perfect. I was so thankful to have been able to be in the room and help (as much as anyone can really 'help' to begin with!) on this special day!

As you can see, she was 7 lbs, 15 oz!

Tricia, Chris, Annaline and the Doctor who delivered her!

Sweet Daddy-Daughter Moment!

Davis and Abbi were out in the waiting room, anxious to meet their little sister! This is them in their "Big Sister" and "Big Brother" shirts!

Just like Mama and Daddy got special bracelets that match Anna's, Davis and Abbi got special ones too! :)

And of course, we have to have a picture of Annaline and her Aunt Jenny! :) I put the bow on her, just because I can! lol

ALS Walk...

2011-04-02T12:00:00.000-04:00

Today we participated in the ALS walk for the second year. ALS is the devastating disease that took the life of my sweet friend Starr Bishop. So each year, as a way for us to raise awareness and money, Mitch, the kids and I join my best friend Sasha and her husband, as well as Starr's parents to do the local walk. We tye dye shirts for all of us each year (something that Starr loved doing was tye dyeing shirts) and wear them to the walk. Just like last year, we got a lot of compliments on our gear! :) It's really important to me that my kids be a part of things like this, not only to remember a good friend, but so that they always remember how very very VERY blessed we have been. I want them to know that there are people out there suffering and that we need to do what we can to help them. They need to know that we live in a fallen world, and because of sin bad things happen and diseases like this one exist. While we work toward and pray for a cure, or even a treatment, we praise the Lord knowing that he sent Jesus to redeem this fallen world! I'm so thankful that I have that hope, and can share it with my kids.

Please consider supporting me in this, the walk will be in April of next year, and its never too early to donate. Also, consider taking up a 'cause' yourself. Its so humbling to work with those less fortunate and be reminded that it doesn't matter what you have or how 'powerful' you are, a disease like ALS can affect anyone. Starr was 19 years old, and died less than 2 years after being diagnosed. The highest ranking officer at Mayport would have never thought that he would have to depend on someone else for everything, but after ALS, that's his new reality. How blessed am I! Thanks be to the Lord for all he has given us! And thanks be unto Him, even if he takes it away.

A Day at Nay Nay's

2011-04-01T06:00:00.020-04:00

Yesterday we went over to Mitch's Mom and Dad's house for the afternoon to hang out with them, Mitch's sister and our nieces. Alana is 6, Jaqlyn is 4 and Brookelynne is 18 months, but they played together so well! Alana and Jaqlyn loved doing things with Brooke and she's more than happy to follow the 'big girls' lead' :)

She got on the rocking horse and really liked it!

Of course Nay Nay had all of the toys out for the girls since Jaqlyn and Alana had been there all week, but she also pulled out the special ones for just Brooke. (You know the 'little girl toys' :) ) Brookelynne enjoyed the big ones though, like the big rocking/bouncy horse. Alana and Jaqlyn wanted to take turns a little more often than Brooke liked, but I made her share! If she had had it her way, she would have been the only one on it, and if Jaqlyn (below) had had her way, Brooke would have been a better listener! haha

Braxton spent the day inside, mainly because it was hot and, well, he's a baby. :) Alana took a break from playing though, to come inside and hold him! :) She was so sweet with him. Soon Jaqlyn was inside asking to hold him too! (I'm told she's a little mimic! lol) Here is a picture of Brax with his sweet cousins!

Of course we had to get a picture of all the current grandchildren, so Brookelynne jumped up on the couch too! With Me and Nay Nay pointing the camera at them, they were a little confused on where to look and when to smile! :) These were our two best shots!

Brookelynne also spent some time with Aunt Jen. :) She got to pet Aunt Jen's cat (Zoey) and Aunt Jen even let her drink from a big girl cup!

Nay Nay and Poppy with their only grandson!

While Poppy was holding Brax, Aunt Jen was playing peek-a-boo with him! He thought she was so funny! He wasn't quite old enough to laugh yet, but he sure did try to!

By the time we left, Brookelynne had decided she was 'at home' at Nay Nays and proceeded to go outside with out me, climb the slide by herself and she even went over and played with Poppy! :) This made Poppy very happy because she usually doesn't go to him very well.

Fun at MOSH

2011-03-30T23:15:00.027-04:00

Lately I've been trying to figure out what we're going to do during the summer, since my baby girl and myself are busy little people! We can't stand to be home all day every day, and once Mom 2 Mom is over in a few weeks, my guaranteed weekly 'outing' will be gone and I need something to replace it! We have zoo passes, but for the hot-hot days, I want to have an indoor activity that Brookelynne can enjoy and get her energy out. So, I thought about MOSH. And since my sister had passes to get us in, we planned an afternoon playdate there!

This is Paw Paw (our dad) with our kids! Davis, Braxton, Abbi and Brookelynne

Abbi and Davis LOVE Brookelynne so much! (And she loves them too!)

Paw Paw with his newest addition (even if only for another few days)

Abbi picking Brooke up! haha

Me and my little Man!

Tricia, Braxton, and Me :)

Davis is such a sweet cousin that he wanted to hold Brookelynne's hand and take her to his favorite spot! (The Indians)

Abbi making herself at home in the Jacksonville History exhibit!

After going through the whole museum, we went to the playroom. Here's Abbi and Davis making a dam.

Abbi also showed Brooke how to 'drive' the cars!

Brookelynne

Davis helping Brookelynne up the stairs.

We really did have a great time, and Brookelynne thought the exhibits were really cool. I'm looking into the season pass, and strongly considering it because it's so close to church, and their doctor's offices, so we could easily 'stop by' there for an hour every couple of weeks and it would be really fun. Not to mention that it's air conditioned! lol

Trip to Lakeland....

2011-03-28T19:29:00.000-04:00

This weekend my cousin Clay was getting married in Lakeland, so we happily made a trip to be there! A few years ago when his brother Cole got married, Mom, Mitch and I just made a day trip down there, but with the kids, I knew that I would not be up for that. So Mom, Brookelynne, Braxton and I headed down there Friday morning so that we would have the whole afternoon and next morning to spend some time with family and go see/do the things we wanted to. We stayed at my cousin Laura's house and she was so kind to host us so graciously. She's such a sweet person and has a beautiful home. (which is quite spotless, I might add)

I didn't take us long to make ourselves at home, as you can see. Brax and Grandma took a short nap soon after we arrived. After all we had a busy night planned!

We ate dinner and visited for a couple of hours after the kids got home from school and then headed over to the ball field to watch Taylor play baseball. :) Brookelynne was quite interested in this! :) She stood at the fence watching the boys warm up and then regularly 'checked out the action' in between her climbing adventures on the bleachers! haha (She would go up and down the first two steps, and she also found and stole Grandma's water a time or two!)

Taylor's team played well, and while he struck out his first time at bat, he did get a hit his second time. Not only did he get a hit, but his hit brought home the boy on third, breaking the tie, so that they won the game! Brookelynne loved clapping with everyone! She even said "GOOOOO TAYYYY" one time! :)

She was such a sweet girl most of the night and took a couple of trips to the concession stand with Hannah. :)

Toward the end of the night, you could easily tell that it was past her bedtime, because my little booger got Grump. E. !!! We headed home and I was just sure that Brookelynne would go to sleep, but boy was I wrong! lol She got a bath, which she was a little hesitant about at first, but quickly started to enjoy herself in the tub with the cup and ability to 'slide'. (Our bathtub is textured on the bottom, so she can't slip at all, but Laura's was not textured, so I would pull Brooke from side to side and she LOVED it!) We also put Brax in the bath, and he really enjoyed it. I hadn't brought his bath chair, so I just held his head out of the water and let him rest in the water, which I guess is better to him than his chair, but I'm not really sure how. Braxton fell asleep shortly, right after his 9:30 bottle, and right along with his normal schedule, but Brookelynne Starr did not fall asleep until at least 11:30. Oh.My.Goodness. lol It was quite a fight to get her to go down, but then she was out!

We woke up the next morning at 5, but after I pumped and fed Brax, I made Brookelynne lay back down with me and we slept until 9ish. Aunt Betty had made us a wonderful breakfast of biscuits and gravy when we got up, and we all enjoyed a few hours of getting ready and hanging out. Josh and Amy arrived around 9:30. And we all headed out around 11 to go to the cemetery. I know that may sound morbid to some, but it's a really sweet time for us to go and visit my grandparents grave and put flowers there. I don't know how others handle that type of stuff, but I take that time to talk to them and tell them the things that they've missed, and how much I miss them. I know they can't hear me and that they're not even there, but it seems so much more real when I talk to them there than if I did it anywhere else.

After that, we went to Chili's for lunch.

Aunt Laura took some time while we were there to love on Brax! :) Aren't they so sweet!

When we left Chili's, Mom, Amy, Josh, the kids and I drove by my Grandparent's house to show it to Amy. It was definitely bittersweet to see how badly the people are taking care of it and the land. Then we drove by Uncle Elam and Aunt Vera's old house and stopped at Uncle Jimmy and Aunt Darlene's house to see them. Aunt Darlene wasn't there, but Uncle Jimmy was there with some of our cousins working in to install a lift. Josh decided to stay with them for a little while and help them finish up. :) We went back to Laura's house and make Brookelynne take a nap, and when I say "made her", I mean that I had to hold her in the 'laying down' position until she fell asleep. She cried hard for several minutes, and then my mom came in there and held her and she fell right to sleep. I went ahead and took a shower and started getting ready for the wedding and packing everything that we had to take home. Here is a picture of Mom and Aunt Betty before we headed out!

The wedding was at a large Catholic Church in Lakeland, and they had quite a ceremony! With 14 bridesmaids and 14 groomsman, but only 1 step, they had a line that stretched across the whole church! The bridesmaid dresses were beautiful and pink. And Heather looked amazing, as Amy put it "a real life sized Barbie!" The ceremony was sweet and much shorter than the last Catholic wedding that I went to. (That ceremony had Mass as a part of it). Brookelynne was clapping after each song, so we were trying to keep her quiet. When the priest had us all stand to pray, I told Brookelynne to bow her head because it was time to pray. Unfortunately the priest didn't start to pray immediately, he just talked for about 2 minutes and then read a verse that had "Amen" in it. When Brookelynne heard that, she looked up at me and said "Amen" just in time for the priest to actually start praying. I kept whispering "Bow your head, we're praying" and she kept shaking her head going "Na, Na, Na" and trying to grab a book. Finally my mom had to take her out because after we sat back down, she was looking at a book, turned the page and got so excited that she squealed! *Talk about blushing* And since we were family, we were sitting on the third row. Thankfully, Braxton slept through the whole thing. :)

We headed over to the reception site, which was at Lone Palm Golf Club. When we walked in, there was a candy bar for everyone to take advantage of. Grab a bag, fill it with your choice of candy and head into the ball room. There you found cheese, fruit, shrimp and such for everyone to start on while we waited for the wedding party. There was also an open bar, with anything you could want. We had seats right next to the dance floor and it was great to get to see everyone come in. When they were announcing the wedding party, Brookelynne was very interested in it! :)

Here is a picture of the happy couple's first dance. It was very sweet and easy to see how very much in love they are. :)

Here is a picture of my mom, Aunt Gail and Aunt Linda. They were catching up during the interlude between the bride and groom's first dance and when Heather danced with her dad. It didn't last long though, because Aunt Gail was up next to dance with Clay!

Then they cut the cake! :) I didn't get to see it because I was feeding Brax (and myself) at the table, but hear that they did get each other dirty, at least on their faces!

Here is a picture of Aunt Linda and Uncle Chet! They are super sweet and I just love getting to see them. I wish I got to see them a lot more often, but unfortunately we just don't. I loved that she got to spend a little time loving on my little man though! :) Here's Braxton and Aunt Linda!

The whole reception was a lot of fun. The toasts were fantastic, especially Cole's. He was practically a stand up comedian! lol. I took advantage of the dance floor a couple of times, one dance with Uncle Jimmy, and then a line dance just because I can't pass a line dance up! :) Brookelynne spent the night being a little ham, but everyone seemed to love her and be totally fine with that, so I was too. :) Didn't my little man look great in his little suit? :)

We left around 10:30 and headed on home, so that the kids would sleep the whole way home! (Which they did) I dropped Mom off around 1:45, and got home at 2:15. Brookelynne went to bed with Daddy and I pumped, fed Brax and got to bed around 3 am. Up and atem for church came quickly, but we made it to Sunday school on time, so I call it a success!

Uncle Jimmy, Me and Brax, and then a picture of me and my sweeties before I changed them into their pjs! :) Can't you tell that it was late and they were a little cranky? lol

An afternoon with Paw Paw....

2011-03-25T08:00:00.025-04:00

Last weekend we had a lot going on and by Sunday we were tired and worn out, so we didn't see my dad at all. (We usually see him for Sunday lunch). Monday I got a call asking how the kids were and telling me how much he missed them. Tuesday he called, hoping I was still in town so he could meet up with us. Wednesday I got another call, when he realized we weren't going to be around this weekend, asking to see the kids. "I can't go two whole weeks without the babies" was all I kept hearing! lol. Anyway, I had a few errands to run on Thursday, as well as a TON of things to get done, so I told him that if he wanted to, he could come up and help me with the kids so that I could get more done.

Needless to say, he took advantage! haha. He got here while Brookelynne was taking a nap, and spent an hour or so holding and talking to Brax, and then when Brookelynne woke up, he was in full-on "play" mode! Braxton and I headed out to go to the store while Paw Paw and Brookelynne took walks, played outside and read books. As always, Brooke had a ball with Paw Paw. When I was out, I picked up some shovels, one for Brooke and one for Brax. They immediately got put to use when I got home...

Brookelynne with the shovels

Digging with Paw Paw

"Put it in the bucket"

Concentrating so hard!

Tire fun!

Paw Paw would put the tire on the shovel, and say "Ready Set Go" and then let it fall and roll to Brooke!

She LOVED this!

She's READY!

I love that my dad loves my kids and is constantly wanting to see them. I never have to even think about how long it's been since my dad saw the kids, because any more than a week and he's blowing up my phone! haha Its so nice to know that he loves my kids, and even though he's not even close to perfect, he tries and does everything he can to show how much he loves them!

Visiting with our sweet cousins...

2011-03-23T20:10:00.043-04:00

Growing up, we had a lake house on Lake Brooklyn in Keystone Heights, only a few doors down from my Aunt Cathy and Uncle Mike's lake house. I have wonderful memories there with my cousins. Even though they were all several years older than me, we always had so much fun. In the last several years, as we've all grown up and moved out of our parents homes we've not seen each other as much as I would like. One of those cousins made it a little harder to see them last year when they moved to Costa Rica! Kelly, her husband Daniel and their boys Luke and Ben are missionaries in Costa Rica these days and came home for a short visit. :) Mom and I took the kids over to Aunt Cathy's house so that we could all spend some time together.

Luke and Ben wanted to sweep up the leaves

Brookelynne wanted to help too!

Braxton James hung out with Grandma most of the time. How handsome is he?

Aunt Cathy and Brookelynne pushed Ben on the swing

And then Brooke came back to help Luke finish cleaning!

The boys found a catapiller and Ben decided to show it to me, but he didn't want to look at me when he did! :)

We tried several times to get a smile, but the yawn and "showing his teeth" grins were the best we could get!

We had a great time talking about their time on the mission field and the new baby boy they have on the way! Hopefully they will make it back to the states in 6 months or so and we can get some more time with them then! :) Until then, please keep this sweet family in your prayers. They are in a very poor and dangerous area of the country and Daniel helps host teams of people each week doing all different types of ministry. They are reaching people with the gospel and disciple them as well!

Our boy is 2 months already!

2011-03-21T21:25:00.000-04:00

Braxton James has truly worked his way into every little part of our lives and heart and we love it that way! I can honestly say that the sweet boy has parts of my heart that I didn't even know existed! It seems that my heart just grows bigger and bigger when I have more people to love. And that's the way I like it. :) We don't have his 2 month appointment for a couple of weeks, so I won't have those stats to give you now, but I'll update them when we see the doctor!

Height/Length:
Weight:
Head Circumference:

Here are some of the high points of this last month....

---He has been in size 1 diapers all month, but some of them are barely fitting now! His pampers size 1 diapers are still fitting, but target brand, and seventh generation diapers are definitely getting too small to go around him!
---He's fitting well into 0-3 month clothes, but I have a feeling that I'll be pulling out the 3-6 month clothes before we hit April!
---Brookelynne still loves him and he's gotten to the point where he seems to know her. She will come over and get in his face going "Booooo" or "Braaaaa" (Brother and Braxton)
---He's eating 6 oz every 4 hours
---He takes his last bottle at 9:30ish, sleeps until 3, eats again and then sleeps until 7ish (most days).
---He's still in size 1 shoes, but they're getting a little tight. If he grows at all, he'll be in size 2!
---He still likes his bouncer, but has begun to spend more time in the swing. While he doesn't like to go side to side, like Brooke did, he does like to go front to back, so we've turned the swing and he loves it!
---He loves being outside! The other day he was screaming in his carseat and I walked outside, set him on the sidewalk so that I could load the car, and he stopped crying. He sat there totally content until I put him in the car and closed the door. He LOVES the sunlight!
---He sees us! It has been frustrating for me because I felt like he wasn't actually seeing me or able to focus on me, but in the last couple of days he's definitely been able to do that! :)
---This past Sunday morning, he went to the nursery for his first day of Sunday School!
---He spent most evenings being very fussy from about 3 weeks on, so after his dedication, we had talked about him possibly being lactose intolerant, so I've cut all milk products out of my diet for a week now. He's been better, so I'm going to stay away from most of them for a little bit longer and then start eating a little at a time to see if he gets worse again. We'll see.
---He likes to be patted on the back hard! People in the nursery were saying that he didn't like it, and I kept saying, "hit him harder", and sure enough, as soon as they did, he calmed right down! Don't ask me why, but he's happy as a clam that way!

Also- I will add pics to this post as soon as I can get my external hard drive to work again!

Back to the grind....

2011-03-16T22:25:00.001-04:00

Tonight I started back to work...don't get too excited about it, it's just the nursery at church on Wednesday and Sunday nights. :) I am going to be covering in room 221 for a while until the regular worker in there finds out if she'll be able to come back to work, and if so, when. Anyway, tonight also marks the first time that I've put Braxton in the 'church' nursery (he's gone in the nursery on Tuesday mornings during mom2mom, but that's not the same). It's also the first time that he's been in the nursery at night. I dropped Brookelynne off first in her normal room with Angela and Lindsey there to take great care of her, as always, and then took Brax back to 202. Our sweet friend Julie is working in there through the rest of her pregnancy, and assured me he would be taken care of! (Don't tell anyone, but she said she takes 'extra' good care of our babies! jk) Anyway, I then headed back to 221 to start a new adventure with kids that I've never worked with before. Our age group was 2 1/2 year olds, and is quite a different experience for me because they are potty training, and talking and MUCH different!

Halfway through the night, Julie appeared at our door to tell me that Braxton had been very fussy/upset. This isn't unusual for him, since he was 4 or 5 weeks old, he's been getting fussy from 5 to 9 each night. So I went to 202 and he was sitting with Natalie, screaming bloody murder. His little face was beet red as I picked him up and tried calming him down. It took a minute or so, but I got him calm and gave him some milcon (gas medicine) and gripe water (colic medicine), as Julie went ahead and warmed a bottle for him. I left a couple of minutes later with him still calm, and walked by Brooke's room on my way back to mine. Angela came to the door and told me that she was doing great and had finished every bite of her food. I told her that they had come and gotten me because of how fussy Brax was, as tears came to my eyes. I said "I know he's not a bad kid, and they don't hate him or anything, but I hate feeling like my kid is the one that they are going to dread seeing." She and Lindsey both told me that that wasn't going to happen and Lindsey said that the fussiness was just a boy thing, that Chandler was fussy all the time, but grew out of it. I said "I know that this will pass, its just that I want them to love him and love having him because everyone loves Brookelynne and it just breaks my heart that they won't love him". Angela assured me that that won't happen and I dried it up as I went back to work.

The rest of my night was easy as half of our kids were gone when I got back. When all of our kids were gone and we cleaned up, I clocked out and went to get Brookelynne, and then Braxton. When I picked up Brax, they said he had eaten well and not fussed since then, which was nice to hear. We headed home, and so began the fussing... Brookelynne fell asleep halfway home and Brax cried on and off the whole way home. I spent most of drive on the phone, one of the ways that I drown out the fussing.

And it must have been a night for discussing how people feel about my children and how that makes me feel, because that's basically what I ended up talking about with my mom, even though it was relating to a totally different subject. We were discussing plans that we each have going on in the next couple of months and there are a few days/weekends/events that contradict each other, and we have to decide to go to one or the other. We were discussing the fact that I had just assumed that certain people loved me as much as I loved them, and that they would love my kids and want to see and be around my babies just because of how much they loved me. What has become obvious though, is that they must not have loved me as much I thought, because they don't seem to have any desire to see my kids or even me anymore, and that completely breaks my heart. And unfortunately, it makes me want to avoid events that they will be at because of how hurt I am. And I can tell you, as much as it hurts that I'm not important enough for them to make an effort to see, I am 10 times madder that they don't feel that my children are worth that, because believe me, they are so worth it.

Long story short is that tonight I feel like a lioness who's baby is being picked on and I am ready to fight for them. It may sound stupid, and some of it completely unnecessary, but I just want to make everyone see that they are wonderful, and I don't want to see anyone who doesn't think that they are. I am in a place right now that I just want to cut people and places out of my life because of the defensiveness I feel. I'm going to give it to the Lord and wait for him to give me direction. Praying that tomorrow I will wake up feeling more at peace, knowing that I don't have to fight for them, because as their creator, He knows their worth and fights for them in ways I never could.

Braxton's Dedication.

2011-03-14T11:59:00.000-04:00

Last night we dedicated our sweet little boy at church. It was a very sweet time where we commit ourselves as parents to do everything we can to raise him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is a big commitment that we do not take lightly. Our prayer for Braxton is that he will come to a saving knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ at an early age so that he can live a full life of honoring and glorifying our Lord.

Here are his name's meaning and verse...

Braxton is Old English

and means "Faithful"

James is Hebrew

and means"following after the Lord"

His verse is Psalm 36:5

"Your lovingkindness, O Lord, extends to the heavens,

Your faithfulness reaches to the skies"

Doesn't he look like a little man? Love him!

Date night!

2011-03-13T06:37:00.000-04:00

Last night, Mitch and I had our first date night since Brax was born! We had a great time and really enjoyed getting to spend a few hours hanging out with each other. My mom came up to the house around 5:30 and we scurried around the house getting ready to go and sneaking out. We headed out and got to Dave and Busters around 6. The wait for the restaurant was an hour and a half, which would normally be ridiculous, and something we would never do just to eat dinner, but D&B's is not every other restaurant. They have MORE than enough to do while you wait! lol. So we checked the balances on all our cards (while we haven't been in more than 3 yrs, we used to go every few months when we were dating) and started to play. We learned some important things right up front! The first of which is that I have officially lost my ability to play basketball! haha. We used to play one particular game, and I was pretty good, but now, not so much! Mitch still had the touch though! Then we played the coin drop game, which we are pretty good at! Before they called us for dinner, we had won over 1600 tickets! For dinner, Mitch had the chicken and shrimp alfredo, and I had the steak salad (which was fabulous, btw). Then we went and played a few more games before heading home. It was such a great night and something that I really needed, so I'm so grateful that we got to do it! :)

Shower for Annaline!

2011-03-07T21:26:00.000-05:00

The drink table, complete with my new tea dispenser! I was so excited to use it!

The food table...

(Chocolate covered Strawberries, chocolate cake, white cupcakes,

Southwestern eggrolls, meatballs, fruit salad, veggie plate/dip

chocolate tray, plates and sandwich rolls!)

This weekend I got to throw a shower for my sister Tricia and soon to be niece Annaline! Annaline is the third child, coming almost 5 years after her older sister, and 7 years after her older brother. Needless to say, they have been out of 'baby mode' for a while! I was so excited to get to throw her a shower so that they could prepare for their sweet baby girl, and we had a wonderful turnout and a wonderful time!

We had a running game throughout the shower, that you couldn't say 3 words. If you said any of them, then someone could take your beads, and viceversa. The three words I picked were "Baby", "Due Date" and "Daddy". I told Taylor and Abbi that they needed to pay attention because I bet they could win if they did. Needless to say, they were paying very close attention and trying very hard not to say any of those words!

We started out the shower with prayer and digging in to the food! :) Once everyone got settled with some food and a drink, we started our other game. Its a fun version of "Never have I ever" where everyone has a handful of change and we start with the mom, who tries to think of something that most people have done, but she hasn't. Then we pass Annaline's piggy bank around the room and if you have done whatever the person hasn't done, then you put money in. :) We had a really good time learning things about each other that might not otherwise come up and raising a little money for Anna!

One of the girls at the shower, when it was her turn, said "Never have I ever been married". So we went around the room and most everyone else had to put in money. Taylor was sitting on her mom's lap and Carrie asked her to put the money in for her. So as she put the money in, I said "Who is your mom married too?" and just as innocently as she is, said "my Daddy". :) She immediately threw her hand over her mouth and we all got a good laugh as she gave me one of her necklaces. Later on in the shower, my brother in law came in with my nephew and I asked Abbi "Who is that?" and she did the same thing Taylor did and answered "My Daddy". We all laughed again, except Abigail who seriously looked like she was going to cry! I told her she could keep her necklace and gave Taylor back her necklace as well, which made them both happy! It was just so cute!

Diaper cake I made for them!

Anyway, after the game, Tricia started opening presents. Abigail helped open all of the presents and did a fantastic Vana impression with each item, showing off shirts and dresses as well as stuffed animals and toys.

Abbi and Taylor

Abbi with all of the beads that she won!

The big brother and big sister!

Davis and Abbi

They got a ton of stuff for Anna, including a swing, stroller, car seat, diaperbag, clothes, sheets, blankets, diapers and wipes! I made her a bow holder for her room, and since she'll be moving into Abbi's room in a year or so, went ahead and made a matching one for Abigail as well! (I unfortunately forgot to get a picture of either of them, but Tricia is going to take one of them when they get up on the walls!). Hopefully they'll get everything washed, sorted and put away before Anna makes her appearance! Just a few more weeks to go! (And then my baby boy won't be the baby anymore!!! That part's not fair! lol) :)

Tricia with the cake!

Tricia, Abbi and Me!

One month already!

2011-02-21T15:08:00.001-05:00

I canNOT believe that a month has already flown by! We are having so much fun with these two and Braxton is growing like a weed. I don't know how coherently I could write a synopsis of this month, so I'll do bullet points instead!

* He is gaining weight wonderfully! He was 7 lbs 8 oz at his 2 week appt (10 days old) and we had him weighed just a few days ago and he was up to 9 lbs 2 oz! That's a full 2 lbs above his birth weight!

* He was in newborn diapers for almost 3 weeks. For those weeks he barely seemed to even grow, but in the last 10 days or so he as seemed to grow by the hour! Now he's actually filling out those size 1s!
*He's wearing 0-3 month clothes now, after about 20 days in newborn clothes. His legs were so skinny that they even looked small in the newborn sized clothes!

* He has gone to church a few times already, and even got to hear Dr Vines on his first visit! :)
* He has begun to be awake more often is starting to look at things. He's still not doing it consistantly, but every once and a while you can put your face in front of him, catch his eye, and he'll follow you when you move!

* We put him on a schedule, and it has been working great! At about 2 weeks, his eating/sleeping schedule was just about to drive me nuts because it was completely inconsistent and irregular. Sometimes he would want to eat every 4 hours, sometimes every hour. Sometimes he would take 4 oz, and sometimes he would take 1. We borrowed the book "Baby Wise" from our friend Summer, because her son had been on a very tight schedule, and it worked great for him. After a day or so of working on the schedule, it was like second nature to him. We're not doing a super strict schedule with him, mainly because I'm still trying to work out a time schedule that works best for him (we're at 3.5 hours right now, but sometimes he wants to go 4, but not consistently).

* He wakes up once a night, usually at 3 am on the dot, to eat. We're doing well with that, because then he sleeps until 8ish. :)
* He likes bouncing and vibration more than swinging. (But every once and a while he will only want the swing).
*He's still sleeping in our room. :( We're just waiting to get another baby monitor. We bought a video monitor for Brookelynne's room a month or so ago, and had been planning on just using her old monitor for Brax until he starts moving, but when I went to plug it in, it won't turn on. Hopefully we'll have him in his bed soon. I'm searching craigslist for another video monitor that we can use.

* He's already in the big bottles! This seems so crazy to me because I know that Brooke used the smaller ones for longer than this, but the liners for the smaller ones are just a little too small to hold what he's drinking.
* He's eating about 850 ml each day. :)
* I'm pumping about 1700 ml each day. :) :) and we already have 2 diaper boxes full of frozen milk!
* He usually could not care less if you sing. LOL Brookelynne would (and usually still will) quiet immediately if you started to sing to her, especially if it was one of 'her songs', but except for once or twice, you could sing your heart out and it doesn't mean a thing to him!

* He does take a paci. He takes it when he's going to sleep and often when he's fussy, but doesn't always have to have it or anything. I'm hoping that this continues and that he doesn't get attached to it. Believe me, it will be gone by a year old whether he likes it or not!
* He's started smiling at me! :) When he hears my voice as he's waking up and on a few other occasions, he has obviously reacted to a specific thing with a smile. And his little grin is SO precious!

* Mitchell seems to think that he prefers me, but I think it has more to do with the fact that Brookelynne prefers Daddy and therefore, Daddy hasn't had as much practice at calming Braxton down.
* His circumcision has healed easily and Dr Kim said that it was one of the best ones she's ever seen, and that Mike got pretty much every bit of the foreskin off, meaning that there isn't anything that can re-adhere or anything like that.
* His umbilical stump/scab took almost 22 days to fall off. It seemed like an eternity and was driving me crazy that I couldn't bath him. We finally had to start using cotton balls full of alcohol and saturating it with the alcohol instead of using the wipes, but it is gone and he has a very cute little belly! Button and all!

That is all I can think of right now, but what an adventure this has been. We are so looking forward to the next few months of him being able to have more and more interaction with us!

Braxton's First Photoshoot!

2011-02-18T06:46:00.000-05:00

Last week we had Braxton's baby pictures done! Just like with Braxton, our sweet friend Sarah came up to the house to do them for us! She's so sweet and does such a great job, and we are so thankful to call her 'our photographer'! :) She got several pictures of Brax by himself, as well as some of the whole family!

The challenges and rewards of having two!

2011-01-30T19:24:00.004-05:00

There are so many things that are new and different now that we have two little ones at home! Most of them were easily anticipated but there have been a few that I didn't expect.

Challenge: Time is cut in half, work is doubled!!

                While easily anticipated, I never could have realized just how true this was! It makes me even more grateful that Mitchell has been off of work and such a huge help. Trying to get back into the 'swing of things' has proven much more difficult than expected. Brookelynne has been totally off schedule and trying to get her back on her schedule is not easy. She woke up in the middle of the night the first 4 nights we were back home, and since I was still not able to lift her, Mitch had to be the one to try and put her back to sleep. The problem is that Daddy is 'fun', so as soon as she saw him, she wanted to play, play, play instead of sleep! I, of course, was still getting up in the middle of the night anyway, pumping and feeding Braxton, but the lack of sleep for hubby, meant two tired parents each morning instead of one. Then of course there is the laundry and dishes of having 2 little ones!

Reward: The quiet moments alone with them are perfect...

               One thing that I had totally forgotten was the serious amount of time that babies spend sleeping. I had this picture of him being awake for at least 6 or 8 hours each day and me having to work really hard to get time with Brookelynne, but that has not been the case! Each day I've had time to set aside for me and Brookelynne to do something together. Whether it's just singing her songs (while she does the motions) or if it is sitting with her and playing or reading, it has been a sweet joy to get alone time with her so that she knows how important she still is to me! It has also been great to set aside the time that Braxton is awake for Mitch and I to look him in the face and talk to him just like we did with Brookelynne. I know he can't really see us yet, but I want him to know that we love him and recognize us as soon as possible. He's so precious and the one on one time that I spend with him, whether it's while he's eating or in the rare times he is awake without reason, are such a joy! One of my biggest fears had been that as the second child he would miss out on so much of the one on one interaction and the individual attention that Brookelynne got, but so far, that hasn't been the case.... What a blessing!

Challenge: Every baby is different...but how?

              Everyone who has ever had children will tell you that their kids were each distinctly different from each other and from the parents. This has been something that has been on my mind since we found out we were pregnant (if I were to be totally honest, I would have to say even before that) and while I wouldn't say I 'worried' about it, I have given it more than enough thought. Mainly because of how much we love Brookelynne and everything about her, it scared me to think that the 'differences' would be things that were 'not desirable' (ie- that he would be super fussy or never sleep, always upset or easily bothered) or that I would see them that way if they weren't. And while there is very little of his personality that we can already 'know', the things we've seen that are different, aren't bad. They're just different, but it's definitely a challenge each day to recognize that he is his own person, and not another 'Brookelynne'. I've found myself assuming that he's going to do/like/want something 'just like she did', when he doesn't. (Thankfully, this has happened less than I expected). I pray that the Lord will continue to let me always see my children as He does, as separate, unique, precious individuals that He created perfect and special in their own way (not sinless, but perfect creations)!

Reward: The differences can be so sweet!

              Like I said, there's only so much of Brax's personality that we know so far, but the things we've seen are precious. He's quiet and reserved, giving us 'warning sounds' before getting upset. (Unlike his sister, who only cried when she was hungry, but when she was hungry she went from 0 to 60 in no time and stayed that way until we fed her!) He doesn't push away from you, and likes being snuggled, something Brookelynne never took to. She was pushing away from your body, and wanting to look out from day one. His sweet smile isn't yet something that I can get him to do, but when he smiles, its a sly one, like his Daddy's, not a big cheesy one like mine and Brooke's. Oh, and he can already do the 'Mitchell look', for those of you who know what that means, and it's soooo funny!

Challenges: Schedule. Or should I say "What Schedule?"

              Call me silly, call me crazy, maybe its a little bit of both, but I REALLY thought that with Mitchell having 10 days off, we would *easily* have Braxton on a schedule that worked well with Brooke's before he headed back to work. But that has not been the case! lol I can honestly say that part of that is simply because I've been waiting on Braxton to set his own schedule that we can 'adapt' Brooke's too. But unlike his sister, he is not like that. She had herself on a schedule by 5 or 6 days old, and she ate every 5 hours, and slept 7 or 8 hours at night. Braxton has been a great baby, but he's not as content as she was. If he's awake, but not really hungry, he'll still fuss and take part of a bottle, which only encourages his not-consistent eating habits. I am planning on getting a book from a friend of mine on putting them on a schedule and hopefully will have him on one soon!

Rewards: Unplanned fun and excitement...

              Brookelynne was already off of her schedule when we came home from the hosptial. After 6 days of 'playing' and 'fun' with friends and family, she was less than excited about going back to her 2 naps a day and sleeping through the night routine! :) She has been waking up in the middle of the night, but it's been quite a sweet thing for me. Mitch has been handling her in the night, since I have to pump and feed Braxton anyway, and his way of getting her to go back to sleep is bringing her to the bed with us. This has never happened before, because I always rock her back to sleep and put her in her bed, but she won't calm back down once she sees Mitch, so he just brings her to bed with us. It was so sweet the first morning that I woke up with her in the bed. Even though she had kicked me in the face a time or two in the night, she had also snuggled up to me. I woke up to her leaning over my face with her big cheesy grin, and she started laughing as soon as I opened my eyes. :) lol. We also had a morning where we got Braxton in the bed with us too, and we laughed as Brookelynne played on the pillows and kissed on her brother. Those are things I would have never planned, or would have ever happened on 'my schedule'. :)

All in all we have been thrilled to have this time with our two little bundles of joy and are looking forward to the coming weeks and years of raising them, challenges and all! Mitch goes back to work on Wednesday, so we'll see what happens!

Our Hospital Stay..,

2011-01-30T19:23:00.005-05:00

Well, our hospital stay this time around has been less than ideal, and quite honestly, very upsetting for me.

But I will get to all of that later, first let me tell you about the 'milestones' of our first couple days! After meeting Brookelynne, Braxton had to go back to the nursery for some tests, and my family all went down the the cafe to get food. While they were gone, I laid down and tried to get some rest, even though I wasn't sleepy at all, so it was kind of pointless, lol. While I was resting, Misti, Garrison and Maele came up to see me. They were so sweet and I felt horrible that Braxton wasn't there for them to meet! Braxton got back a few minutes before my family did, and was able to see everyone one more time before they headed home. Mom and Dad were the only one who stayed after everyone else left, but Dad was in the waiting room "racing" Brookelynne back and forth. :) Then Mr Don and Mrs Diane came in to see us. (They are 'our' deacon and his wife. :) They've sat at the other end of the pew from us for as long as we can remember and we just love them and Allison, their daughter!) They were so sweet and brought Braxton a little blue puppy dog! They sat and visited with us for a little while, and were getting up to leave, just as Dr Kim came in. Kim is our pediatrician, and used to go to our church, so she actually knew Mr Don and Mrs Diane, so it was like a mini reunion! lol. Kim did Braxton's exam (most of which I missed because my nurses came in to check my vitals at the same time) while my Mom and Mitch looked on. She said he looked great and that she was the doctor on call for the whole weekend, so she would be back to see us both days. :) Shortly after that, Whitney and Brad came by. They came in one at a time, because they didn't want to bring Max into a small room where he would have to be calm, so Whitney came in for several minutes and held Brax while Brad entertained Maxwell in the waiting room, and then they switched. It was very sweet to get to see them both! We're so grateful for good friends! (Whitney also brought us cookies, which were very good!)

That night Mitch stayed at the hospital with me and the next morning went by slowly. Braxton was wonderful, barely making a peep, and we both got a decent amount of sleep. My parents brought Brookelynne up to the hospital around 10, and she sat with me and held Braxton some more. She really liked the halls and the waiting room more than being with me, but that's okay because she was having fun. The nurse came in around 11:15 to do Brax's hearing test. This was something different for me, because when we had Brookelynne they did all the tests and pediatrician exams in the nursery, and then told you the results. Now they do them in the rooms with the parents, so I got to see it. He passed on his right ear, but then his left ear failed, so they said they would come back the next morning. They have 3 chances to pass the test before leaving the hospital and it's totally okay if they fail, because most of the time its something as simple as the fluid not being out of their ears yet. Around noon, everyone left! lol. Brookelynne and my dad went to St Augustine for my nephew's birthday party, my mom went to work, and Mitch went to run some errands. So Braxton and I just hung out! Kim came by and did his exam again, and said he looked great still. She did feel some popping in his hip, like they did with Brookelynne, but neither of us is really concerned about it, because we are pretty sure that its not dislocated, just soft. (by soft, I mean that the hip bone hasn't hardened yet, because I produce so much of the pregnancy hormone released in the third trimester, meant to soften the mother's hips for delivery that he and Brooke's hips are soft too) They'll of course keep checking for it, and he'll get an ultrasound too, if it keeps up. :) Kelly, Jeff and Malachi came by around 1 and kept us company for a couple of hours. It was nice to just have someone to talk to, and of course they both held Braxton and Malachi had a good time "exploring" the room!

After they headed out, Mom, Mitch, Dad and Brookelynne all returned, followed shortly by my sister's family. Tricia, Chris, Davis and Abbi all came to see little Braxton and Davis and Abbi were both super excited to meet and hold their new little cousin! They were so cute with him! It was Davis's birthday (which is why Brookelynne had been at his party) so he was having a great day anyway, but he said seeing Brax made it even better. Abigale definitely wasted no time in asking to hold him either! She even sang to him a time or two! When they headed out, so did everyone else. Mitch took Brookelynne home with him, so that she would be in her routine and once again it was just me and my little man!

We went home Sunday morning, even though it had only been two days since Brax had been born. Our first priority was making sure that he passed his hearing test, which he did on the first try that morning, and then getting everything ready for discharge. I watched Chest of Joash while getting ready to leave, and we headed home around 1.

As promised, here are the reasons that my stay at St Vincents was horrible this time around.

After I got out of recovery and taken to my room, I asked for a pump and bottles/formula for Brax, which didn't happen for hours. Braxton was literally like 5 hours old before he got to eat anything, or before I had the chance to pump. On top of which, even though my doctor told me and put in my file that I could have solid food as soon as I wanted too, the nurses refused to give me any. (And by refused, I mean that she said "While I'm aware that you THINK you're ready to eat, and that Dr Phelan has approved it, I don't think it's a good idea. How about I bring you some water and maybe a jello".) And that's what she did. I didn't get any food from midnight the night before until almost 6, when my family went to dinner and brought me something back. I was, needless to say, VERY FRUSTRATED. On top of this, since my doctor left me multiple prescriptions for pain (ie 4 different ones, in case one didn't work as well as the another), instead of asking me out right which ones I wanted to take, they waited until I was in pain before giving me anything. And no, I'm not kidding. This was even more frustrating because I have a pretty high tolerance for pain (ie- I'm not crying or really even upset until the pain is a 8, 9, or 10) So by the time I ask for pain medicine, they go and get it, and it starts working, at least an hour has passed and I'm pretty close to tears. This was the biggest problem on Saturday night. Mitchell and I decided that he would take Brookelynne home and they would stay there (so she would have a little routine) and I would stay by myself at the hospital. I woke up at 1:30 am, got up to go to the bathroom, and when I got into the bathroom, realized that I was in serious pain. I couldn't find the nurse call (as it was directly behind me), so I stood up and tried to walk back to the bed. Halfway there, my entire body froze, and I was literally scream/crying in pain, as I held onto the door to keep from falling. I made it to the bed and called for the nurse. When she came in, and I told her that I was in serious pain, she said "Well, that's not surprising, your pain medicines should have run out about an hour ago, but you didn't ask for more, so I didn't give them to you." (NOTE: "an hour ago" was 12:30 in the morning and I was asleep!) I was crying, pretty hysterically when she left the room, and I called Mitchell. I didn't ask him to come, mainly because it was such an inconvenience to have him wake Brooke, take her to my moms and wake them, and then come to the hospital, but I was terrified. All I could think was that the nurses weren't taking care of me, and since no one was there who could make sure that they were, that I had to stay awake and make sure nothing happened to me. I don't think I've ever been so scared (for myself) in my life, as I was that night. Mitch texted me about an hour later saying that he was leaving our house. It didn't really matter, because even if he hadn't been coming, I wasn't going back to sleep. I couldn't even put Braxton down, I couldn't help but think that something might happen to the both of us, and I sat there, sitting up, holding him for hours. Mitchell got to my room about 4 and I was still crying, still holding Braxton. At that point I tried to get some sleep, but it didn't come easily. Even though I didn't feel strong enough/well enough to go home that day (it had only been 2 days), I was too scared to stay any longer. Ironically the nurse I had on the last 5 hours I was there, was better than any of the others.

There were a few other things, like the rudeness of the anesthesiologist and nursing assistants, but I get too upset while talking/typing about it to do so anymore. Next time, things will definitely be different, and if they aren't, I'll be speaking to a hospital administrator before leaving. In fact, I may be making an appointment with one about this visit any day.

Brookelynne and Braxton meet eachother!

2011-01-25T20:49:00.000-05:00

Once I was settled into my postpartum suite, (where I am allowed visitors under 5 years old), my first priority was getting my sweet little girl to meet her sweet little brother. So I waited for a little while, and then called Mitch to see where he was at. He told me that they were on the way up, and the nursery (unfortunately) was pushing Braxton back to my room just as they came down the hall. (They were supposed to call me before bringing him). Anyway, someone noticed, and distracted Brookelynne while they turned Braxton's cart around and returned to the nursery. It was very important to me that Braxton be out of the room when Brookelynne came in and saw me. So they brought her in, and it took her a few minutes to get warmed up to the idea of me in the bed, with the gown and the fact that everyone else was looking at her. She definitely knew something was different/weird, but she wasn't so sure what that was, lol. When she would come to me, I sent Mitchell to get Braxton from the nursery, and I got her up on my lap and we started singing her songs (so she would stay on my lap w/o moving and be in a really good mood!) We were singing "The itsy bitsy spider" when Daddy got to the door with the cart.

Practicing her "itsy bitsy spider"

Daddy bringing over Braxton

Family of 4

Of course, at this point, everyone in the room got silent and pulled their cameras out, so Brookelynne froze and started looking around. :) lol. She was on my left leg, facing the door that Daddy had just come in, and as Mitch picked Braxton up, he looked at Brookelynne and said "Hey Brookelynne, where is Braxton?" [This is not a new question to Brooke, since we've been asking her this since she started registering what things are, and her answer has always been to pat my belly. It has only been in the past few weeks that Mitch has been telling her "Braxton is in mommy's belly, Braxton is a baby in mommy's belly", which I was pretty sure she had no comprehension of. And this morning, on our way to drop her off, with both car seats in the back, Mitchell asked her where Braxton is, she pointed to me, and he said "Yes, Braxton is in mommy's belly, but today he's going to come out and then he's going to sit in that seat." (pointing to Braxton's car seat). She nodded her head yes and really seemed to understand, which I found to be hilarious! ] So she looked over at me, back to Mitchell, at me once again and then pointed right to Braxton! :) We were so happy that she seemed to realized that he was a baby and he was the same Braxton that had been inside Mama's belly!

Giving Kisses

Then Mitchell brought him closer and asked her if she wanted to see him, which of course she did. So I held him in my right arm, and she pointed to his nose, and patted the blankets several times. I asked if she wanted to hold him, which of course she did. So I turned him around and held him in front of her, on her lap. She kept patting his blanket and we asked her if she wanted to give Braxton a kiss, and she did. :) She had to keep doing it over and over so that we could get a picture of it, and once she had kissed him several times, I could tell she was done, so I asked her if she wanted Mama to take him back. She shook her head yes and then tried to 'give him to me', which she did the same way she hands all of her dolls to me...by picking them up by the neck! Of course I stopped her and told her that Mama would just take him back, she didn't need to hand him to me, and she sat patiently as I did so. Mitch got a little freaked out though! lol

Smiling for a picture

The Pearsons!

Mitch picked Brookelynne up off my lap and she went back to playing with all of the people in the room. I was so thrilled that she seemed to understand that he was ours and that that was okay. She didn't get jealous and it was huge to me that she could leave me while I was still holding him. Thought out our hospital stay, she did really good with everything, from letting me hold him, to the way she interacted with him each time she saw him. The only time she really got 'concerned' about what was going on is when my dad picked up Braxton, and then she all of a sudden wanted to be sitting right there too! Of course Paw Paw put her on his other knee and they talked to Braxton together, so it was okay, but she definitely wasn't going to leave him alone with her Paw Paw!

Braxton's Birth!

2011-01-21T22:57:00.001-05:00

Today is the day that we have been waiting for and we finally got to meet our new little man! After having had a c-section with Brookelynne, Braxton's delivery was scheduled in advance at 39 weeks. Originally he was scheduled to come around 7:30 am, but after some hospital issues, they tried to cancel our section all-together and make us wait until sometime next week. Thankfully, my amazing OB (Mike Phelan) went to bat for us and told the hospital that if they wouldn't put me back on the schedule for today (Friday) that he would just come in first thing Saturday (when we officially hit 39 weeks) and do it then. (They REALLY didn't like that idea! lol) So they put me back on for noon.

Mitch and I got up around 6:30, dressed Brookelynne and packed up the car for the eventful day ahead. We dropped off Brooke at Mrs Lindsey's house (our sweet friend who teaches Brooke at church, and lives a few miles from the hospital) for a morning of fun with her friend Chandler. Then we stopped to by dvds for the camcorder and made our way to the hospital. At 9am, we checked into the surgery center and began our waiting experience. Half an hour later, they came and told us that Labor and Delivery was going to transfer us up there early because they were very slow, and would take care of our intake paperwork up stairs. So my friend Susan (who threw us a sweet shower for Braxton and works as a surgical tech in L&D) showed up at our curtain to take us upstairs and told us that someone had had to cancel their hysterectomy because they were sick, so Mike was planning on taking us early. This was quite a surprise, so we immediately started making phone calls to our parents and siblings who were planning on being there around 11 (the new surgery time) to tell them to hurry up! My mom was the first to arrive, about 15 minutes later, followed by my sister who made very good time coming from her son's school. About 10:50, Mitchell's parents and my dad came in as well. They sent everyone out to the waiting room (just as Josh and Amy arrived) at 11.

A minute or so later I walked over to the OR (yes, I walked), and Mitchell had to sit outside while they prepped me for surgery (a part of our previous experience that I had no idea had happened). They took me into the room (which was freezing) and gave me my spinal anesthesia. For the record, this hurt worse than the spinal epidural that I got with Brookelynne, and kept shooting these pains down my left leg-seriously scary, because I couldn't stop myself from 'jumping' and every time I did, I pictured the doctor jerking and paralyzing me. (On a side note- I probably wouldn't have been so jumpy if I hadn't already come to the conclusion that he was the rudest doctor that I had ever dealt with and had lost my respect after the way he had talked to me in pre-op) Once the spinal started 'warming' my feet, I was told to 'quickly' lay down. Things started happening pretty quickly at this point, as people started swarming, putting in my catheter, tying my legs together and down, putting up the sheets and scrubbing my skin to prep. Once all of that was complete, Mitchell and Mike made their way in as well. (Apparently the dads get to watch the doctors scrub up in the hallway while waiting). When they came in, they began checking to make sure I was numb enough, from my legs up, and waited for the medicine to work completely before getting started. Mitch sat down next to my head and held my hand, telling me he loved me as they began the procedure.

I listened and tried to pay attention to everything they were doing, mentally associating the 'pulls' and 'tugs' I felt with the general order of the surgery as I understand it. It took a little bit longer to get inside of me, because Mike wanted to get rid of my previous incision site. So instead of cutting in along the line they used last time, they cut just above and below the scar I had and removed all the scar tissue, so that when they came back out, and sewed me up, I wouldn't have scar tissue developing on top of scar tissue. About the time that they began to start pulling things out, the anesthesiologist assistant, Veronica, had encouraged Mitchell to watch, so he stood up and watched as they manipulated my organs, pulled up my uterus and took out our baby boy. I had told him to get the camera ready so that he could take pictures once they pulled him out, and Veronica was like "Yeah, Dad, get some shots of his birth" and he looked at her like she was a little crazy and said "You mean I can take a picture of that?" and she told him 'yes'. He looked at me for confirmation, like she might have been pulling his leg and when I told him that he was allowed to photograph all of that, he started taking pictures as they pulled him out of my uterus.

The whole thing seemed extremely slow and long to me, because I only remember 'clips' of my c section with Brookelynne, so every time we would get to a point that I remembered from before, I would tell Mitchell, "I had no idea that they did all this _______ before they did _______. That's crazy" :) And while I really hadn't been nervous or scared going into the surgery, in those final few seconds before Mike started cutting, I got very anxious for a moment, but once Mitch had grabbed my hand and told me he loved me, it seemed to melt away as quickly as it had come.

The doctor took him over for the cleaning/weighing/testing/etc that had to be done and Mitch went with them. As I laid there it was interesting the things that happened while Mitch and Braxton were across the room. My little man cried the whole time, and it was interesting, because I know how big the room was, but it seemed like he was 100 yards away, not 20 ft. That seemed really weird to me. I also started getting light headed even though I hadn't moved. (The doctors said that that was normal, but I still don't know! haha). Thirdly, I have a place in my shoulders/neck (that I've had problems with in the past) that has spazmed and frozen in this contracted position for hours or days before, and while they were finishing up, it started hurting really bad. This was a slight problem because my husband was across the room, my hands were still tied down to their places on the table, and the only way to help the pain is to pinch the spot really hard. So I looked up at Veronica, asked her to pinch my shoulder/neck and then told her why I needed that. Do you want to know why it was hurting in the first place? Because (while I couldn't feel this at all) Mike (my doctor) was yanking on my ab muscles so that he could get them all stitched back up, and this causes a chain reaction of muscle reactions that I couldn't feel until they got above my breasts (which is where the spinal stopped). How weird is that?

Then they brought Braxton back over to me, all cleaned up and told me that I could even go ahead an hold him if I wanted! I was so thrilled and it was so sweet to feel him on my chest and touch his little face and talk to him! This was also something else I didn't get to do with Brookelynne, which makes it even more special. (I love that since there will always be plenty of things that I was able to do with Brooke that I won't be able to do with our other children, that there are some things that are new with Braxton that I didn't do with Brooke.) At that point, Mitchell left with Braxton and went to the waiting room first (to show everyone) and then to the nursery for his testing/cleaning, and I got transferred back to my bed, and then to the recovery room.

When we pulled into the recovery room, the first thing they did was check my vitals. At check in my blood pressure, heart rate, and pulse had been good and my temp had been 96.5, a little low, but fine. When we got back from surgery, my temp was 95.1 which kind of freaked me out a little bit. Not because I was worried that I was sick or something, but because they didn't tell me why they were acting weird until they had already come in and out of the room a couple times, put me under an incubator, gotten me 4 more blankets, and were in the process of hooking me up to a 'hot air blanket'. I thought the incubator was weird, but really just assumed that Braxton had been a little jaundice and that they were putting it in place so that I could hold him when they brought him back.

I asked them what the risks were for having a low temp after surgery, and what temp I had to be at to get to see my son and/or leave recovery. They ignored my first question and refused to answer it, and then told me that they just needed me to warm up because they couldn't let me leave recovery until my temp reached 97. (This really bothered me since it hadn't even been that high at check in.) After 25 or 30 minutes and 3 temp checks, I was still only up to 96.1. This really bugged me, but there was nothing else that I could do but lay there. The two nurses came back in and one nurse asked the other how high my temp had to be and instead of the answer she gave me, she said "As I understand the policy, she just has to be within a degree of her intake temp." WHAT???? I was so angry it wasn't even funny, because that is a very simple and easily understandable answer that would have been much more helpful to me than her earlier comment. At this point I just told her that I was already there, and that I was sending my husband to get my son and bring him to me. She didn't argue, and that's what they did.

Mama, Daddy and Braxton!

A couple of minutes later, Mitch pushed Braxton and his cart down the hall to my room, and handed him to me. He was still so sweet and cleaned and wrapped up, he was just perfect! My mom was practically shaking she wanted to hold him so badly, so I handed him to her. :)

She held him for a couple of minutes and then passed him to Jeanna (Mitch's mom) who held him for a couple of minutes and was going to pass him to my dad, but my dad said to let Wayne hold him first. Once Wayne had held him for a couple of minutes, my dad did and then Aunt Tricia. :) She was just a little excited about it! lol. Then Uncle Josh got him followed by Aunt Amy. They were all so happy to hold him. By this time, I was to the point that I was getting anxious about when I would get to see Brookelynne and let them meet, so I got Mitchell's attention (he was very involved in following Braxton around the room and making sure that whoever was holding him was doing it right and safely, lol. He did the same thing with Brooke and it cracks me up everytime!) As soon as I mentioned going to get Brookelynne, my dad offered to do it himself, but I told him that I wanted Mitchell to be the one to get her and bring her to the hospital, not just Paw Paw, so they went together to Lindsey's house while Mom, Josh, Amy and Tricia stayed in the room with me and Brax. About the time that Mitch left, Jeanna and Wayne headed home too. The nurses were talking to me at the time, so I honestly don't remember exactly when they left, just that when we went to go to my other room, Mrs Carmen had just walked in, and they weren't there anymore. It was only 20 minutes or so after Mitch left, that they wheeled me and Braxton down to my normal room (about 1:45 or so) and hooked me up in there.

Nay Nay and her first Grandson

Uncle Josh, Grandma and Braxton

Braxton and Aunt Tricia

Paw Paw, Daddy, Braxton, Poppy, and Uncle Josh

Overall, the csection process, was just different this time. I wouldn't say that I liked it better, because while I thought I knew what to expect this time, having done it before, there was so much of it that I hadn't realized I had missed the first time around, that I spent most of the morning being surprised by what was going on or how long it took. I didn't like that they didn't/wouldn't/couldn't give me my spinal in my room or even with Mitchell in the room. It would have made a huge difference in how comfortable and relaxed I was if I had been holding his hand or even just able to see that he was there. I did like that I was really awake and aware of what was going on, and didn't miss anything. I liked that I was competent enough to talk to the different doctors there, get any questions asked and be a contributing member of the birth process (ie, not asleep for it! and able to respond to them). I didn't like the lack of answers I got from the nursing staff or the way that the anesthesiologist spoke to me or him in general. His assistant was very nice and helpful but he was just a jerk. In fact if I had been the caretaker, instead of the patient (ie- if it was my mom having surgery instead of me) I would have been talking to the nurse supervisor and in the faces of the OR nurse and the anesthesiologist on multiple occasions demanding that they treat me with respect and make sure their responses to me are honest and not flippant, but I really didn't want them to cancel the surgery after all the other issues we had already had trying to get it on the schedule. I have a strong feeling that I'll like the 'scheduled c section' process a whole lot more when it is 'first thing' and not the 4th or 5th procedure of the day.

That was the whole process from beginning to end and we are so grateful for our new little miracle! He's just precious and I can't wait to get to know him even more! I'll post about the hospital stay and of course, the first meeting of brother and sister, asap!

Braxton's Room!

2011-01-19T21:52:00.001-05:00

As the past few months have flown by, we have had distraction above distraction with birthdays and holidays, long work days and short weekends, and because of that, the focus has not been the easiest ones to plan and prepare for our new arrival. So, while I had some ideas here and there, and been working toward a general goal for his room and clothes, I have not been nearly as 'together' as I was when I had 3 holiday/birthday free months before Brookelynne's arrival. But I can honestly say that it has all come together! Little things were getting done, bit by bit, but the 'big stuff' finally got done in the past two weeks!

We bought the bedding back in September, and shortly after that, got Brookelynne's new furniture and moved the baby furniture into Brax's room.

I decided on the basic design of the walls and we painted his room in October on Mitch's last vacation. But since then, not much has happened. We've been doing small projects here and there, like organizing the clothes and putting them away, or organizing the closets, but no real obvious progress. Once the holidays were threw, and we had a free weekend day, we buckled down and knocked it out. My Mom and Dad came up early and between the four of us, we had 3 working and one playing with Brooke for the whole morning. I got up and went straight to cutting all of the molding, and then Mitch and I put it all up. Mom washed, dried and put away all of the bottles and pump stuff as well as cleaned the kitchen and then when Brookelynne went down for her nap, my dad went outside and started cleaning the siding and porch. (Which he did a fantastic job on, btw).

By the end of the day I felt a lot better. A few days later the wood letters came in the mail, so I painted those that night. The next day I finally finished the plaque for his room. (I worked on it all week, and it was tedious, to say the least). Then it was time to hang them and we would be almost done. All that was left was getting and assembling the rocking chair, which we got a couple days later. Finally we can say we're done!

I'm so proud of his room and how great it turned out! I was so worried that we wouldn't be able to put together a room for Braxton that was as nice as Brookelynne's or as personal, but I really feel like it all came together perfectly. And for all of you who have been waiting so patiently, here are the pictures!

Our New Years Christmas-es....

2011-01-04T07:42:00.001-05:00

Well this year worked out quite unusually, with Christmas and New Years Days falling on Saturday, making the past two weekends very festive! Obviously you've been able to read about our many celebrations so far, but if you know us, you'll notice that there was obviously family missing! For one reason or another, we can't always see everyone on Christmas Eve, Day or the day after (most years because of Mitch's hectic work schedule, and this year partly due to other people's schedules) so we do our best to celebrate with them ASAP...That meant 2 jam packed holiday weekends in a row! Here is the rundown of our celebrations!

Saturday morning we got up and spent a few hours relaxing at the house. I double checked the presents and made sure we had all the presents for everyone we were going to see all weekend already in the car, and then we headed out. We wanted to go to the outlet mall in St Augustine to get some clothes for Braxton, and needed to run some more 'Braxton errands' before we did. So we went to Target and Babies R Us and used the gift cards we had left! I can honestly say that I don't think I've ever worked harder on a shopping list or on 'matching coupons' than I did for this trip. We had our "10% off everything left on your registry" coupon, as well as target and manufacturers coupons on most of our items! We walked out of there with $220 worth of baby things for $145. (which was a little less than we had in gift cards). These included 6 or 7 pks of diapers 15 pks of wipes, 8 50-count pks of breastmilk bags, 4 pks of bottle nipples, 2 baby ibprofin, 2 baby tylonal, 3 milocons, 2 pks of baby spoons, 2 pks of 8 oz bottles for my breast pump, 4 pks of bottle liners, and some diaper rash ointment! I was so proud of myself! :) We also got some clearance clothes for an additional 40% off at Babies R Us.

Then we headed out to the outlet mall and I hit up Carters, Gymboree, OshKoshB'gosh, and Toys R Us Express. (The last one wasn't on our list but when Mitch saw they had a 75% off clearance, we went in and spent 45 minutes picking out toys for next Christmas). Anyway, I had been very frustrated with the clothes that we have for Braxton (and the clothes that are even available to begin with) because it seemed like I couldn't find, much less buy anything that was less than size 6 months that looked more 'dressy' than a sweat suit. (Except for the $45 'suits' which is a ridiculous price that I would never pay for something he'll only wear for a few hours at a time, once or twice!) But knowing how 'dressy' Brookelynne gets for church, I could just hear people saying "You can see which one is her favorite!", as I walk around with Brookelynne in a princess dress with matching bow and fufu socks, and Braxton is the equivalent of a sweatsuit. But I digress.... when I went into Gymboree, I found a very cute little collared shirt to match some sweet little brown pants, an outfit and extra long sleeved collared shirt at Carters, and then several adorable polos/slacks at OshKosh! I came home feeling much better since Brax will at least look 'dressed up' for Sundays!

Then we finally made it to my sisters! (Every store seemed to take 10 or 15 minutes longer than planned with Brookelynne in tow, and we were running behind). She had all of the siblings over to her house for the kids to get their presents, and have nice New Years dinner! It was very sweet of her to have us over and the food was wonderful! Abbi and Davis were so glad to have Brookelynne get there so that they could play with her, and took her outside immediately to slide and swing with them! :) They guys had the games on in the house and the girls got to spend some time catching up in the kitchen before we all chowed down! The only one missing was my nephew Austin (as his Mom was getting remarried that day). The kids got some very cool presents and all of them were very excited! (Uncle Josh and Aunt Amy were the hit, as they got the 'cool toys' for Davis and Abbi!) Abbi loved her new baby doll, and Davis loved his new nerf gun! Uncle Josh and Uncle Fred were more than happy to help him learn how to use it!

Brookelynne didn't like the 'big girl swing'

But Abbi's a pro!

Aunt Amy and Uncle Fred playing topple with Davis and Abbi!

The kids opening presents!

Uncle Fred showing Davis how to use the his new nerf gun!

Notice Uncle Josh was playing with the other nerf gun!

Aunt Amy and Brookelynne playing with the cool piggy bank!

First it's Aunt Amy's turn, then Brookelynne's!

Abbi getting in on the shooting!

A Siblings Picture! :)

Josh, Tricia, Me and Fred

(Who would have ever guessed that me and my sister would be pregnant at the same time!??!)

Siblings with our Other Halves!

Mitch and Me, Josh and Amy, Chris and Tricia and Freddy!

Sunday morning we got up and went to church and had a great time! Then we headed over to Nay Nay and Poppy's house for lunch and presents with them! Jeanna had made a very good lunch and we really enjoyed it! Brookelynne finished most of Daddy's plate! Then we opened presents! Brookelynne did a great job and Nay Nay helped her whenever she got hung up on something!

She wanted to show Mama her presents for a change! After opening them, she would bring them for me to open up and let her play with them. I kept having to remind her that there were more presents to open before we played with the ones we had just gotten! When I finally started opening the boxes for her, she then wanted to open Nay Nay's presents!

Helping Nay Nay open her presents!

Brookelynne had a very good time with Nay Nay and Poppy and was very cute! Around 2:30 or 3 we headed home (because it was way past BoggaBoo's nap time! She fell asleep on the way home, so instead of waking her and shortening her nap, I just went inside and changed and then Brookelynne and I headed to my mom's for Christmas with the Avary's! (Mitch had to go to bed because he had to be at work by 3 am.) Brookelynne slept most of the way to the house and then was more than happy to go inside and play with Paw Paw until everyone else got there!

Josh and Amy, Nickie, Philip, Parke and Emma all arrived about the same time, and we enjoyed getting to see everyone. We spent a half hour or so just catching up and then let the kids open their presents!

Parker was a very helpful big brother and made sure that Emma got all the paper off of her presents! And Brookelynne got a baby doll that she loved!

Nickie had found some cute UGA and UF necklaces and got them for Mom and Amy respectively, but they accidentally switched the bags and opened the wrong ones! Of course they weren't keeping it that way! LOL. Brookelynne wanted a necklace too, so she got to pick between Grandma's and Aunt Amy's. She picked Grandmas!!!!! :) Such a smart girl!

Mom, Nickie and Amy

After that we went to dinner at Cross Creek and had a very nice time! Everyone got plenty of food and we even left with 2 full to-go boxes worth of left overs! When we got back to the house, we sat around catching up some more and just enjoying family time. PawPaw/Uncle Fred was a big hit with the girls (as usual!). This is a picture of him, Brookelynne and Emma working on a puzzle together!

Brookelynne and I didn't make it home until close to 10, but we both slept well that night! We had a great weekend and were so thankful to get to see and spend time with so many loved ones! We are so blessed!

New Years Day!

2011-01-01T07:41:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year Everyone! :) I hope that everyone had a wonderful Friday, and Saturday celebrating the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011. This is always one of my favorite holidays because I see it a such a sweet picture of Christ's redemption. Just like Christ redeems us and gives us a clean slate in our spiritual lives, if we so choose, we can take advantage of the same kind of 'clean slate' in other areas of our lives on January 1st. A new tax year, getting new deductions or credits (Like we'll be getting in a few weeks!). A new school year (in a sense) because even though school starts in August, you have a chance to do things totally different in the second half, and to prepare you for that, they give you several weeks off in between. Take advantage! And most noticeably, it can be a new beginning personally. Most people call these 'resolutions', but these little commitments, if entered into after careful thought and prayer can be lifestyle changes that last a lifetime! I love to think and be reminded that just like you stay up and watch a ball drop and all of a sudden it's a different year, the same kind of 'total change' is possible in Christ. What a gift to know that at the moment of salvation, there is complete change, with the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the cleansing from sin, and that just like you can't 'rewind' to last year, there is NO WAY to lose your salvation! Amen and Amen! :)

What a mighty God we serve!

Presents with Aunt Amy and Levi's Dedicaiton!

2010-12-26T22:20:00.064-05:00

Today was the day after Christmas and we had a great time! After getting to sleep in a little bit (and I do mean LITTLE), we go up with Brookelynne around 7:30 and started getting ready to leave the house. We had a much slower pace today because we didn't have Sunday School, so we didn't have to be at church until 10:15. We picked up papers on the way and pulled into the garage around 10. Mitchell took Brookelynne to her class again (with out me, something I've come to enjoy!) and then we went to the service. The auditorium was pretty sparse looking, but it was a nice service. Dr Brunson spoke on Luke 2:4-5 and pulled from those verses the many ways in which Christ's birth was God's way of coming closer to us on a personal level and the many ways He shows us that he cares for our individual problems/issues/concerns. It was very encouraging.

After church we went to lunch at Applebee's on Lane Ave, and while it took much longer than I would have liked, the food was good, and Brookelynne was pretty well behaved. It was really cute at one point when she was in her booster seat between Mitch and I, I pulled out one of her small balls, and she rolled it back and forth across the table to Aunt Amy, Uncle Josh and Paw Paw. She would get SOOO excited when they would 'catch' it or when she 'caught' it. :) She's gonna be such a good ball player! :)

Helping Aunt Amy with one of her presents!

Then we headed to my mom's to open presents. Since Amy had been sick on Christmas Eve, we decided to wait on her to open our presents from her and Josh and to give her her presents. :) So Josh and Mitch passed out the presents and we all started to open them! Amy had messaged me a while back, saying that she and Josh had seen this really cute 'little' ball pit and wondered if they could buy it for Brooke for Christmas. I told them that would be absolutely fine, but that I would prefer if it wasn't a pink one or super girly, since Braxton is right behind her and would probably be playing in it before too long. So as we're opening up Brookelynne's presents, Amy says "This was the only ball pit we could find in that was gender neutral, but it's a little bit bigger than the others" LOL. By 'little bit' she meant A LOT BIT! haha. Brookelynne had already opened the balls and wanted to play with them, so I said I would try to blow up the ball pit...thankfully Josh remembered that we had the air compressor outside, and instead of me giving myself a headache, we just used the compressor to blow up the pit.

She climbed up on Grandma's present and proceeded to 'bounce' on it!!!

She thought this was hilarious!

She couldn't wait for the ball pit, so she used Grandma's box for a few minutes!

Uncle Josh blowing up the ball pit!

It SOUNDED like a great idea at the time, until it started inflating and we all started looking at how big it was and how big the doors are and realizing that there is no way that it was going to fit through one of those doors while inflated! It is literally big enough for Mitchell to get in and sit down with his legs straight and not go across the whole thing! But Brookelynne really did like it a lot and enjoyed bouncing in/on it and playing in there. We're definitely going to need more balls though, lol.

"Look Mama! I have lots of balls!"

Mama helping her jump!

Daddy got in with her! Yes, It's that big!

Playing with Daddy!

Peeking out!

Climbing back in! (She had to go and get Grandma's new gloves before going back!)

Waving at me with Grandma's gloves on!

After playing for a while and cleaning up all the wrapping paper, Mitch, Brookelynne and I headed home because we had to get Brooke a good nap before we left the house again at 5:15 for Levi's dedication. She fell asleep on the way home, but I just moved her to her swing and she stayed asleep right until we left again! Such a blessing! While at home, I started taking the tree down, and promptly at 5:15 we headed out. I somehow managed to leave or lose Brookelynne's bow along the way so she wore her red ski hat the whole night! (But she was still pretty darn cute!) The dedication was really sweet, and Levi has gotten SO big! A lot of Kris's family had come down from Indiana (something that I know means a lot to him), and it was really nice to see all of them again!

The pastor spoke about how much they loved Kris and Marie and what great parents they were and how this was a dedication of themselves to raise Levi in a Christian home and then he prayed a prayer of dedication. Brookelynne was already getting antsy when they finished the dedication, so I took her to the nursery and stayed with her until the service ended, and then we all went back and took some pictures. It was so sweet and we just loved getting to share in it with them.

Marie, Kris and Levi, Mitch Brookelynne and Me

Who would have thought, less that 4 years ago when Mitch and I got married that now we'd all be married and have such adorable babies! God is So Good!

Happy Birthday Jesus....

2010-12-25T21:58:00.000-05:00

Christmas Morning was an exciting one for us here at the Pearson home! Brookelynne wore her 'Christmas Pajamas" to bed and was super cute in them. While she was sleeping Santa came! But since we try to teach patience around here, there was no running to the tree! lol. We all got up, got dressed and ate breakfast while we waited for Grandma, Paw Paw, Nay Nay and Gran to get here so that they could all watch Brookelynne open her presents! As everyone arrived, we got settled in, and then let Brooke open her presents.

We started with her presents from Mama and Daddy....

From present number one, she unwrapped them, and promptly took them to show Paw Paw!

Then we got to dig into our bag from Santa! :)

(On a side note, I saw these bags in the Lillian Vernon catalog for like $7, and thought they were a super cute idea. So we went ahead and got one for both Brookelynne and Braxton and have decided that each year they will each get a toy from Mama and a toy from Daddy, as well as 4 or 5 things from "Santa", which will be in their bag with their name on it (individually wrapped of course). I can't wait for a few years down the road when we'll have 3 or 4 of them, sitting in a row with their bag from Santa! :) It will be SO cute!)

Showing Nay Nay and Grandma her new Minnie Mouse

Pull the string, and then rip the paper!

Reading her new book with Mama

Putting her new letters on the fridge

Opening and reading her new book! :)

Looking inside her last one! :) By this time she knew that she didn't have to have all the paper off to find out what it was! :)

Brookelynne (of course) 'cleaned up' in this whole Christmas season, but we really wanted to make sure that she understands the true meaning of Christmas, so we told her about Christ's birthday as well. I've decided that in the years coming up that we're going to start a new tradition (once she and the others can understand it) of a birthday party for Jesus. This will include making a cake and singing "Happy Birthday" to Jesus every Christmas day and making THAT part of the day the biggest deal (instead of the presents). While we love the tradition of Santa and presents, we will also be telling them the story of 'St Nick" and how "Santa" started, so that they understand that even the things that "Santa brings" are a way of showing that on original Christmas, God gave us the greatest gift of all by sending Jesus. This year was much more mismanaged (on my part) than any year previous (or future, Lord willing) and if we have anything to say about it, I will never be this pregnant during Christmas again, because all I know is that I was not focused on anything and did very little well! lol.

Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday to my Savior!

Christmas Eve Play by Play :)

2010-12-24T22:10:00.025-05:00

Well today is Christmas Eve and for the past several years, we've had a tradition of cooking/cleaning all day, going to the Candlelight Service with our family and then coming back to the house for dinner and some presents. In the past, some of my cousins come for the evening with their kids and we all have a great time watching the kids open presents and celebrating the holiday. This year though, they weren't able to make it, and even Amy (my brother's girlfriend) was sick, so instead of 12 or 14 people, we were just cooking for 6.

Mom's Christmas Tree

Brookelynne Starr....She's wearing her new necklace from Mrs Carmen!

Cheesing it up!

We headed out to the candle light service at 4:15 and not long after getting onto I-10, we were rear ended. :( It was Mom, Brookelynne and I and the impact didn't feel that bad at all. The car held up really well, but theirs was pretty smashed up. It looks like the frame of our car is bent, but the insurance adjuster is coming up this week, so we'll have to see. Needless to say, after waiting for the FHP and getting a report filed, we missed the candlelight service, so we just headed back to the house to wait for Mitch to get there so we could start eating and open presents. We had decided to move Christmas with my family to Christmas Eve, since Brookelynne would be getting her 'Santa presents' at our house on Christmas morning and it makes for a REALLY long day for us to open presents here, then at my mom's and then at Mitch's moms. So after eating a delicious dinner (Thanks Mom!), we all gathered round and opened presents!

Opening her frog slippers! (Daddy thought they were gators at first and said "Gator slippers?" and Brookelynne promptly threw them on the ground! It was priceless! That's Daddy's girl!

Reading her new Pooh book with Daddy

Grandma got silverware for Christmas!

Brookelynne and Uncle Josh (She was in the process of climbing off the couch!)

Paw Paw, Uncle Josh and BoogaBoo!

Brookelynne got a adorable outfit, several pairs of socks, new slippers, a pop up toy and a four wheeler! (Don't worry, the four wheeler has a maximum speed of 1 mph! lol) She also helped others open their presents. By the end of the night she had definitely figured out what this opening presents thing was all about! haha. She was also playing with ALL of the presents, even Mama's!

Trying on Mama's new boots! Such a stinker!

Visiting Santa and...the Flower Shop?

2010-12-18T18:15:00.000-05:00

Today we went to visit Santa! I called around to tons of places to find out prices and such and everything was so expensive. So I got a hold of the KMart on Beach and they said they had a Santa that you could take pictures with on your own camera! SO, that's what we did. She really wasn't too keen on the idea of going to see him or taking a picture with him, but when Mama sat with her, she didn't cry, so we at least got a picture or two!

Then we drove down the road to the Kuhn's flower shop, knowing they had such great Christmas decor, to take some family pictures. While they aren't perfect (because Brookelynne pretty much refuses to smile and look at the camera unless I'm the one taking the picture, lol), we did get a few really cute ones. Here they are!

Those are my stinkers!