Brooklyn 12 and a half Month Update

This is super late! My baby is 12 months old!!!!!!!! This little girl is at such a FUN stage!
At 12 months Brooklyn...
- comes up to us and wiggle her fingers and say "ticko-ticko-ticko" and laughs.
- walks with assistance and goes FAST!
- is very consistant about naps 9am and 1pm everyday pretty much on the dot.
- sleeps from about 6:30pm-6am (the early wake up call for me is brutal).
- will sign "water" with no prompting when she wants a drink.  Her sign for water isn't exactly the sign but we know what she means.  The real sign is making a "W" with your fingers and tapping it to your lips.  She takes her fingers and flicks her bottom lip up and down with them.  So cute.
- Gets really excited to brush her teeth when I tell her it's time and will do the sign for it while she is waiting for me to get her toothbrush ready.
- babbles A LOT!!! And she'll do hand motions too.  It's totally like she is trying to tell us a loooooooooonnnnnngggggggg detailed story.
- prefers men to women (except for mommy, she's still a mommy's girl).
- enjoys playing in water including the bath, her inflatable pool, and the splash pad.
- LOVES pens and if she sees one will point to it til you give it to her, then she will want a piece of paper and will pretend to write.  If she's upset in the car we just hand her a pen and paper and she is happy.
- her 4th tooth on the bottom just popped through and her two upper teeth look awfully close to coming through.
-snuggles stuffed animals when you give her one.
- still doesn't like sleeping with a blanket.
- loves I-phones, she seriously prefers it over any other phone.  She knows the difference.  I saved my old phone so she could play with it when I got my Iphone but she doesn't want it, she knows what's good. At church she'll hone in on anyone with their I-phone out and try to take it from them.
- size three diapers
- 12 month clothes
- weighs 18lbs - 16th percentile
- 29 inches long - 35th percentile
- weight for height - 16th percentile
Love her forever and ever.

Brooklyn's First Birthday- Teddy Bear Picnic

We planned our vacation to Texas so that we would be there for Brooklyn's first birthday since all of my family is down there.
I think I started planning the big first birthday party a few months in advance by creating a Pinterest board and looking for things on Etsy.  Since one of Brooklyn's nicknames is Brooky Bear I decided to make it a teddy bear picnic birthday party.
My sister in law Angie had given us a bunch of adorable outfits at Brooklyn's baby shower so I didn't have to spend any money on her outfit.  I love how girly it was.
The best part about the party was having so much family there! All of my siblings were there with their kids, my aunt and her kids, Thomas' sister and Aunt, and my parents.  Everyone knew each other and all the kids seemed to have someone their age to play with so as the hostess I didn't have to worry at all about people feeling akward. (I just realized I don't have any pictures of my sister Bea! She was the one who took all of the pictures which was SO nice of her! And I don't have any of my Aunt and Uncle, Doug and Maragaret!!)

My mom went to a lot of trouble to make one big cake for everybody that was a 3D teddy bear with a bow that matched the bow Brooklyn was wearing.  She also made a miniature 3D bear for Brooklyn's smash cake that was soy, gluten, dairy, and egg free!! And Brooklyn loved it! She was a little bit traumatized at first when we were singing happy birthday and she went to touch the candle and burnt her little finger.  I felt so bad! Hopefully it's something we can laugh at down the road.  I think she learned an important lesson that day: Chocolate heals everything :). And her boy cousins were so sweet and sang and danced for her to make her feel better and laugh it off.

This picture breaks my heart!

Originally we were going to have party outside since it was a picnic theme, but it was Texas tornado season so we had it indoors.  We set up blankets to sit on in the living room and had balloons tied to little teddy bears in the middle. Along the fireplace pictures of Brooklyn from each month of life were hung from birth to 12 months.

As guests came in they got some teddy bear ears and there was a quote from the book and an invite.

We had a couple activities planned for the kids at the party.  Each of the kids made their own build-a-bear and filled out a birth certificate. Later my mom did a read-a-loud of the book "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" by Jimmy Kennedy and Alexandra Day.

Brooklyn was intent listening to Nana read the story.

Nana is a great at reading stories!

Brooklyn loved all the books and stuffed animals she got! Great Grandpa Clement got her a Leap Frog teddy bear that says her name and plays her favorite songs and talks about other favorite things of hers and she loves that.  Another gift she seems to really like is a book that plays different nursery rhyme songs.

She LOVES interactive books.

Her new thing is to hug stuffed animals (which I learned at her 12 month appointment is a developmental milestone).

LeapFrog sure knew what they were doing with this thing, she loves it.

For the picnic food we had Bear Burgers (hamburgers), "bearies", Teddy's Taters (sweet potato fries Brooklyn's fave), and Teddy's Treats (a combo of Teddy Grahams and Honeycomb cereal). And to drink was "StrawBEARY lemonade".

I had a bunch of leftover scrapbook cardstock from the "Happy Birthday" banner I had made.  While looking up burger baskets online I found a layout for making them.  That saved some dinero and tied in the decor.  Win-win.
Loved celebrating our little Brooky Bear with family! Now to start planning next year's birthday bash ;).

Dallas Zoo

My parents gave all of our families zoo passes for Christmas this last year. In my sisters annual pass is a +1 so they can bring a guest for free! This worked out nicely while we were visiting.
Briana's family, our family, and my parents all headed to the zoo one day of our visit.  We LOVED the Dallas Zoo! It puts Boise's zoo to shame! There are misters all over to cool off in when walking around, the enclosures for the animals are big and look like their natural environments, and it's HUGE! We were there for a few hours and probably made it through 1/4 of the zoo.

My nephew, Alex, looked so cool with his sunglasses and plastic safari hat.  He was also chewing gum and it just cracked me up.

He is so cool.

Penguins

Gorilla

Crocodile

My cuties

Emmet giving the chimp a kiss

Leopard

We fed the giraffes crackers and you can pet them! I screamed when it's long tongue came out and that scared Brooklyn.

Sister Bea and nephew Alex feeding the giraffe.

Brooklyn missed her afternoon nap but was a CHAMP! We can't wait to go back and explore the zoo some more on our next visit!

Trip to Texas

Since all of my sisters and now my parents are living in the Dallas area now we decided to make a vacation and visit around Brooklyn's birthday. We were in Texas for 10 days and loved every minute of it! It is the best to be around all of my sisters and their hubbies and kids! And watching the cousins play together just melted all of our hearts. I felt like I hardly saw Brooklyn during those ten days because she was always occupied playing with her cousins.

Brooklyn has the sweetest girl cousins! I love their personalities.  They will all start kindergarten at the same time!

These two are just a month apart.

Alex knew just what to do to make Brooklyn laugh

Coloring with the big boys.

Bathtime.  Doesn't Brooklyn look like she could be their sister?

We decided to only do carry-ons to save on money and to not have to worry about losing luggage. Haha that became kind of ironic because we ended up leaving one of our bags in the boarding area in the Boise airport. We got to Salt Lake and realized we were missing one of our bags! Luckily we had an hour and a half layover (originally it was only going to be like 45 minutes) and I was able to contact the Boise airport security. A super nice officer had my bag and went to the Delta service desk and got them to put it on the next flight that day to Dallas! I was so worried because this was our bag with all of mine and Brooklyn's clothes, including her clothes for her one year photo shoot, and some birthday decorations that we needed the next day! Luckily they got it to us that same evening. Such a relief!
Brooklyn did so well on the flights, much better than either Thomas or I expected. We had gotten her little headphones and she liked listening to some of her favorite songs and watching Baby Einstein on the laptop. I hadn't reserved a specific seat and next time I will for sure request a window seat because that would have been helpful in occupying Brooklyn. I had also bought a few toys from the dollar store that were new to her. Our little lady who never falls asleep in our arms even slept on the flights!
Our visit was full of fun every day.  We had a couples Bunko night, went to a minor league baseball game, the Dallas zoo, had Brooklyn's first birthday party, went on a date night with my sister and brother in law to the movies, took the kids to the splash pad, went swimming and had bbq,  attended my cousins violin recital and Thomas' nephews seminary graduation, and had family pictures taken. Whew!!

Not sure how she feels about the cold water.

Loves from Dada

Showing off her walking skills

These two!!!!! So yummy.

It was great to have spend time with both Thomas and my families.  Thomas has a sister and aunt that live in the same area and we were able to do quite a few activities with them as well. We discovered that Brooklyn won't let any woman hold her except for her mama but she is fine with men.  Uh-oh are we in trouble already? Her poor nana just wanted to snuggle her and she would have nothing to do with it.

Gazing adoringly at Uncle Russ

In addition to all the running around and activities, I loved that we all could sit out on the porch in the evening and chat.

Nice summer night, relaxing on the back porch.

Enjoying her families company.

The Chatwin kids, myself, and my mom.

My sister in law and her family met us at the Rough riders stadium to watch a game. The stadium is AWESOME! We sat in the grassy area in left field and it was perfect for people with kids because they can run around and play the whole time. The stadium even has a swimming pool you can rent out to watch the game from. Brooklyn loved playing with her cousin Adam. I'm telling you, this girl loves her some older boys.
 Love my family so, so, so  much and am looking forward to being able to see them again hopefully in the not too distant future.