July 9, 2013: Shine Bright Like a Diamond

Sometimes I forgot that this little girl...

 is now this big girl...who's still pretty little but THINKS she's pretty big :)  She might have daddy's curls, but look who got mommy's green eyes...

Bryn is so fun at 2.5 years old.  She loves pink and purple and is still OBSESSED with all songs by Rihanna.  She knows at least 3 of her most popular songs by heart...def not my choice of role models, but I think Bryn does "shine bright like a diamond" just like her favorite song, so what can I say? :)  She is eating us out of house and home...every morning I make 4 servings (cups) of oatmeal for the kids and myself.  I eat one, Liam eats one...and Bryn eats 2.  And she will ask to see the pot I made it in to make sure that there is none left because she will ask for it :)  Her favorite foods lately (other than oatmeal) are eggs, red peppers, peanut butter, and squeezable applesauce packets which she calls "appletizers".  She's our garbage disposal who cleans her plate at mealtime...not sure where she puts it all since she still hasn't even broken 30 lbs!  She loves her princess stories before bed and playing her Minnie Mouse dominoes and Hello Kitty bingo.  She still plays anything Liam plays including Sorry or Scrabble, and I'm amazed how well she keeps up.  Bryn has to wind up her music box (which was mine as a child, made by my Grannie before I was born) every night before bed and still sleeps with Oliver, her bear (who wears a butterfly shirt :) She loves "lip gloss" and stocks multiple tubes of chap stick all over the house (in her dress-up center, junk drawer in kitchen, diaper bag).  Unfortunately, I don't think Bryn will follow my footsteps with a medical career.  She freaks out when anyone has a boo-boo or even seeing a band-aid.  She doesn't want anyone to wear a band-aid and when she saw one on Nora's heel, she wouldn't come near her till we removed it.  Oh well.  I've always said Bryn is fiesty and now she's got the mouth to back it up.  I wouldn't say she's disrespectful...but she does get us with some good comebacks.  When she spilt her cup of water while trying to put it in the sink, Nick came up to say "That's okay Bryn, you tried to put your cup in the sink". Bryn looked at him and said, "That's okay Dad, you tried to do my hair"  He had tried (and failed) to put her hair in a ponytail.  I would have yelled "zing!" if I hadn't been trying to stifle my laugh.  She also has lots of new phrases when you ask her something like "probably not" or "not at all".  Lately she wants to do even more by herself.  She goes upstairs with Liam after breakfast and they each get themselves dressed and brush their teeth...and she does it all while I wait downstairs.  She's already better at matching her outfits than Liam, but I maybe it's a gender thing :)  I feel like I let her do a lot more than I let him do at 2 years old, but then she's trying hard to keep up with her big brother so I get it.  She's still Daddy's girl, but we've had lots of bonding this summer together and she tells us all the time that she dreams about Daddy and Mommy at night :)  Bryn is so sweet and so sassy...and I wouldn't have it any other way!

July 8, 2013: I'm tired just typing this...

I hope the kids have had as much fun as I have had with them this summer...because we have been BUSY!  (Hence all the pics are from my phone cam)

We finished up our 2 weeks of swim lessons...

 Bryn still has ballet at the rec center...

 And while she dances Liam runs around the indoor track with his ipod :)

 Bowling...

 9 pounds=9 pounds :)  (Nora at 6 weeks old)

 Hope Park...

 Storytime and feeding the ducks...

 Bryn getting ready for the 4th...

 Ice cream at Double Dip...

 Rough Riders game (Nora's 1st game)...

 Swimming and grilling on the 4th at Mal/Dal's...

 Bounce house over the weekend...

 Making Despicable Me 2 cars at Home Depot after they saw the movie with Daddy and Dallie...

 "Puzzle Marathon" as Liam called it :) with Linds...

Between Nora and me, we've also had a lot of doctor visits lately :(  Nora's reflux is getting worse so we started on her an acid reducer so we'll see if it helps.  She is still eating well and def gained weight....her 9 lbs brought her to 44%!

 It's just so pitiful when the pain wakes her out of her sleep...below is probably her preferred sleeping position...I keep saying we need to hire a professional baby holder to just hold her upright from 11p-6am :)  For now, Nick and I pretty much split the time as she feeds about every 3 hours, but then we have to hold her upright for about an hour and she's usually pretty fussy during that time until finally falling asleep.  Hopefully now the medicine we can get our happy little girl back....

Nora also had to have her hip ultrasound because of the possibility of hip dysplasia...hopefully she'll be cleared like Liam and Bryn were though...she loved the part were she got to lay on her tummy during it 

 We finally figured out what was causing all my problems during my last trimester...it only took a CT scan, urogram, xray and cystoscopy (blegh!) to find out I have a 7 mm kidney stone.  Well I should say 'had' because I had the lithotripsy procedure done over the holiday weekend to break it up.  It actually was not as bad as I probably built it up to be and the recovery is going smoothly.  I am grateful that so far this stone has been relatively painless (from what I hear) and I'm just hoping this is all done for good!  The only good thing to come out of this was that when my doc described how the lithotripsy worked she said that the machine will send sound waves to break up the stone.  Liam is really into transformers right now and one of the main bad guys (a decepticon) is named Soundwave.  When I told him Soundwave would be helping the doctors get the rock out of mommy's belly he was so worried that I would turn in to a decepticon that he wanted to go to the hospital with me.  So I brought him home Soundwave after the procedure telling him the doctors said they didn't need him anymore and to reassure him Soundwave was NOT inside me :)

 Lastly two funny pics about Liam.  He really has been helpful lately and I will take all the help I can get these days.  One day when I was feeding Nora, Bryn was having a meltdown, and Liam kept asking me when I could fix him lunch.  Finally realizing I was going to be a while he went into the fridge and pantry and made this lunch for himself...I LOVE the lone mushroom :)  I was very proud and gladly welcome him to chip in at mealtime...although Bryn did not want him to make her lunch :)

 And although he's been dressing himself for years, we are still working on mixing patterns.  But as he said, he wanted to wear a 'handsome shirt' with his 'handsome shorts'.  What can I say, he did look handsome :)