Christmas pictures!!

Is it seriously time to start thinking about these?! UGH! Football hasn't even started yet!! But it makes me so happy! Buh-bye, summer, hated the visit, love to see you go!
My friend Lindsey does an amazing job. You should seriously see the "birth" session she just did for my old buddies Sharla and Scott, incredible! And such a good idea, Daddy didn't have to worry about getting all the pictures he was supposed to!
Check out her work!
www.lindseyjostphotography.com

Brynna

My baby is now 20 months. It's almost time to quit counting her age in months. She is ornery and sweet and beautiful and so smart. She's in to everything, speaking sentences, and is very affectionate with her momma, daddy, and LeeLee, always hugging and kissing us.
Brynna's vocabulary has just exploded over the last couple of months. She uses countless words by themselves, and she's begun speaking in sentences. It'll be no time at all that she'll only be speaking in sentences.
Some of her new sayings:
Sure luff you, Momma! my favorite ;)
Share (with) Brynna! when she wants something that her sister has.
My turn!
Don't like it. She usually says this when she's almost finished eating whatever is in her hand, but she wants more.
Ta-La!!! (ta-da)
Hello, is (it's) Brynna. She says this into any phone.
What, Momma? whenever I call her name. or when she's pretending she doesn't understand me.
And my absolute least favorite of all.... WHY???? Honestly, what kind of a kid starts that at 20 months?! Actually, she's been doing it for several weeks now, so it really started at around 18 months. She's not just saying a new word because she likes the way it sounds or hears Sister saying it. She knows exactly what it means and how to use it. She cocks her head to the side, burrows her brows over those massive lashes, and says Why? I've tried combating it by actually answering her. Every time she asks why, I'll say something silly, which leads to another why, something sillier, and so on. It gets boring to her and she walks off, and I feel proud to have outsmarted a toddler. Then I feel silly for feeling proud that I outsmarted a toddler.
She loves to sing. I really hope she inherited Cameron's musical abilities. She got everything else from him! During church, she has begun holding a song book and singing along. She's also picked up some of the words to the songs we listen to a lot. I have several Disney songs on my iPod, as well as some of my fave songs, that we just shuffle and repeat whenever we're in the car. She loves them, and she'll sing along and hit several of the actual words.
Brynna's favorite song, though, by a long shot, is the ABCs. And she knows them! She can go straight through A-G, pick it back up at L-P, and finishes with Y and Z. She can sign about 8-10 of the letters as well. She's trying to learn to count, and knows all the numbers to 10, but gets the order wrong. She can pick out colors when you ask, but will only say PINK! She can sign all of the colors.
Brynna's looks are changing a little, too. She still looks just like Cameron, but she's definitely looking more feminine. Her body is stretching out and thinning, making her look like a little girl and less like my chunky monkey baby. Her eyes are still crystal blue under thick, long eyelashes, and her hair has actually gotten more blonde after a summer in the sun. It's very straight and getting really long in the back, and I think I'm going to have to cut it. The rest is catching up much faster than D'Laney's did, she rocked a mullet for at least 2 years, and I think it'll all get one length pretty soon.
Now that I'm on the road to recovery and things are slowing down, we're going to tackle potty training head on. She's been ready for months, I've just been putting it off. Wish me luck!
My sweet big girl.

D'Laney

Sunday, my Laney-bug will be four. It's almost impossible to wrap my brain around. She has grown into the sweetest little girl. She is very curious about everything, and can be a little bossy and a bit of a know-it-all, I can't imagine where she gets that from! She is certainly a mother hen with her sister, and I have to remind her that it isn't her job to discipline OR grant permission to Brynna. She tends to do both.
D'Laney is maturing by the minute, it seems. She is so smart, and has a memory like I've never seen. She remembers things from months ago, or longer even, in perfect detail. It's crazy.
We're starting to have to really crack down on arguing and talking back from her. It's nothing malicious at all, and just something that she has to work through, but it is exhausting for us! It seems like I spend half the day getting on to her. I sure hope that it's a short phase. Fortunately, there is no attitude to go along with it. Yet. She doesn't roll her eyes, or speak hatefully, or stomp off.
However, when she's not arguing with us, she is so sweet, uses perfect manners, and is so affectionate, to a point that it's a little weird. She'll randomly thank me for things that happened days ago. An example: Momma, thanks for taking me to the water park today (2 weeks ago) I loved it. You're so the best! And then she'll give me a run by hug and kiss whatever she can reach, usually my arm or my hand or something. It's strange. But I love it. And she tells me she loves me constantly. She does have near perfect manners. She never forgets to say please, thank you, you're welcome, no thank you, excuse me (either when she burps or to get by someone,) and yes/no, ma'am/sir. We're working on not interrupting and perfecting table manners. That is both mine and Cameron's number one pet peeve, and our kids might be total hoodlums, but if they have good table manners, we'll be pleased :)
She had another head injury last week, but this one wasn't near as bad as the last. She was running through church and fell into a pew, splitting open her forehead above her right eye. She thought it was much worse, though, because she could actually see all the blood this time, it was running down into her eye. Cameron got her cleaned up and put a butterfly band aid on it. You should have seen the two of them, it looked like they had been to war! D'Laney had blood in her hair and smeared on her forehead, and spots all down her dress. Cameron had a big spot on his t-shirt and a couple of spots on his cheek. We went ahead and took her to the doc the next afternoon, just to be sure she didn't need stitches. She didn't, and he put 3 steri-strips on it to hold it together. The doc didn't seem to think it would scar, and I sure hope he's right.
D'Laney will once again have two birthday parties this year. My post op appt in Angelo is the 26th, which is also my dad's first game at LV, so we're having a party with my side of the family that weekend. We always go to Iraan for Labor Day weekend for football and dominoes, so we'll have a party with Cameron's side that weekend. I certainly don't plan on making a habit of having two parties a piece, but that's the way it worked out this time.
My almost 4 year old. She's never, ever, ever still, and almost always happy, so this pic sums her up better than any other. Her exact words were, take a picture of meeeeeee!!!!! as she was sliding towards me, on her belly, on the coffee table. I have no idea why she keeps busting her head open ;-)

Take the factory out...

When I opened blogger, my computer froze. What, you want to blog?!?!?! hehe no joke!

When Brynna was about 9 months old, my cycle started back up, with a vengeance. I'll spare you the gory details, but I was practically bed ridden for several days a month. In June, I had enough and called the doc. After an ultrasound, she found that I had a lot of fairly large fibroids in my uterus. While they are rarely fatal, they sure do make life miserable, and since we had already decided not to have any more kids and I had a tubal when I had Brynna, we made the decision to have a hysterectomy.
Surgery was on friday, July 29th. It went really well, even though she had to do some unexpected work on my bladder. It was stuck to something, but that conversation is still a little hazy. My ovaries looked great, so she left them, which means no hormone replacements or early menopause. I was in a lot of pain when I woke up, but they got the morphine into me pretty quick, and it wasn't so bad after that.
I was able to get up and walk a little later that day, but I had trouble eating for a couple of days. I never got sick and never really felt nauseated until I smelled whatever it was that I was about to take a bite of. My stomach would flip once, I'd put the food down, and a few minutes later I would be fine. I was able to eat a little sometime Saturday, although I really didn't get my full appetite back until the middle of the next week. They were a little concerned about my bladder since they had to work on it, but as soon as they took the cath out, I was able to use the restroom, so no problems there.
I have really breezed right through recovery. The nurses told Cameron that they haven't seen a patient handle a hysterectomy so well, and to make sure that I take it easy. Since I am feeling so well, they really warned me about overdoing things and having a set back. And they're right. There have been a couple of times when I've done too much too soon, a haircut the day after I got home or a funeral in Angelo saturday, where I've really paid for it the next day. But even those days haven't been too bad. I haven't taken any pain medication in several days, just Motrin, and unless I try to use my stomach muscles for anything, I can't even tell anything happened.
The real test will be tomorrow when my girls get home. They've been in Iraan with Cameron's folks since the day of the surgery. I'm not supposed to pick them up for at least the rest of this week, and probably next week as well. My mom is going to come back and stay a couple of days with us until the girls get used to the idea. I guess now's as good a time as any for them to learn a little self-reliance! Missing them hurts almost as much as the surgery. While I've never minding them spending time with family, and they've never really minded either, 12 days is WAY too long for this momma. Think they'll get freaked out when I cry tomorrow?
I know many of you have been thinking about me and praying for me through all this, so I just wanted to say thank you. Oh, and the title? When Cameron's cousin had the same thing done a few months ago, someone told her they were taking the factory out... Cameron thought this was hilarious and has told everyone he knows.

Brynna is a big girl!

Brynna has been trying to climb out of her crib for a few weeks now, so saturday, we took the crib down to the toddler bed. She's pretty young still, just 17 months, but I didn't think she would have a problem with it. And we certainly didn't want her to succeed in crawling out of the full crib and hurting herself. We just put her in bed, close the door and leave her. We did put the baby gate up outside her closed door, just in case she was able to open it. She hasn't quite mastered going down the stairs yet, especially in the dark.
At night, she has done perfectly. She'll sit in bed and talk to herself for a little while, and she might get out and roam her room for a few minutes, but she'll crawl back in and go to sleep pretty quickly. The first morning she was up at 6:30 (yikes!) but the next morning she slept to her normal 8:30, 9ish. Naptime, though, has been more of a challenge. Sunday and monday, it has taken a couple of hours for her to finally fall asleep. She's not sitting in there crying, she just plays. Today, though, she went right to sleep. I figured it wouldn't take longer than 3 days for her to figure things out, looks like I was right. It's a good thing we put the baby gate up, too, because that little stinker figured out her door knob first thing! She opened the door and was yelling, not crying or upset, just yelling for her Daddy. I don't know why my girls always think Daddy will help them out in situations like that, he never does!
It took D'Laney a little bit longer to get to where she'd stay in bed. I'd find her asleep in the middle of the floor or right in front of the baby gate. This only lasted about two weeks, but I thought Brynna would catch on much sooner.


My big girl!


She doesn't sleep with that pillow. D'Laney just thought she needed one.

Bow holders

I've been meaning to make these for a while. Like since D'Laney was born. Yep, I'm on top of things!
I bought some cheap wooden frames from the dollar store, took out the glass and backing, and spray painted them the same blue that's in the flower painting on the wall in D'Laney's room (previous post.) Then I just hot-glued ribbon inside them.
Now why did that take me almost 4 years to get done?! Well, if you know me at all, that question answers itself. I had the paint, ribbon, and glue. I just had to drive 2 blocks to the dollar store on a day where I needed out of the house for a few minutes.
I'm chock full of ideas for all sorts of things. Execution is my problem. But I'm getting better, and the finished products are so fun, it's certainly motivation.

D'Laney's bedroom

When we moved in to this house, the room that we put D'Laney in had a really cute purple swirl paint job. That is, it was cute if you like purple. I don't. I don't know why, but for some reason I have always despised the color, absolutely hate it. Since D'Laney's bedding was black and red and ladybugs, I had intended to paint the room to match her bedding, but I never got around to it. When we were expecting Brynna and moved D'Laney out of the nursery furniture, I bought yet another Ladybug bedding set, this time for a full size bed. Both sets of bedding clashed horribly with the purple swirls. So a few weeks ago, I decided to forgo painting the room and embrace the purple, and bought bedding that complimented it, instead of matching it. I just don't think I could have handled that much purple.

Right next to the door, these little flowers had been painted on the wall. I took cues from it when it came to the bedding.

I happened to already have blue sheets the same color as the flower pots. I pulled yellow from the faces, pink from the petals, and threw in some green.


I decided to go with solids, because I like simple, but also so that each of the pieces could be used separately with different schemes. I got the down blanket, shams, skirt, and accent pillows from Target.


The letters for her name were already green, matching some trim in her Ladybug bedding. They fit in with the new stuff pretty well.


We still have lots of Laney-bug's through out her room.


I absolutely love this little ceramic ladybug night light. I hope that it is something D'Laney always has in her room.


This little nook is where the girls read. I'd love to say that all the books are always neatly lined up on the book shelf and the large stuffed animals line up neatly as well, but I don't like to lie.