Fever update.

Sigh.

It's been a very long, hot day in our house. Long because Brooke has had a fever all day. Hot because Brooke has had blazing hot skin all day. It hovered around 101.5 most of the day, until about 5:30. I woke her from her 2nd 2.5 hour nap of the day when I felt her and realized her skin was on fire. Her temperature hit 104.8 degrees. Slightly terrifying. I had a minor 10-second panic attack before reaching for my phone. I called the after-hours nurses' line, unsure what the "take the baby to the hospital" fever threshold was. Evidently, it's 105 degrees. No hospital for us, thank goodness, but we did have a very hot baby to take care of. Some Tylenol, a strip-down, a popsicle, and a cool bath later, her temp was down to about 100.6 by bedtime. I plan to check on her every few hours throughout the night to ensure she's okay. Keep those fingers crossed that she's all better by morning!!

(Luckily, we have our 9-month check-up tomorrow at 1:30, so either way she'll be seen by our pediatrician! I will be sure to update everyone after.)

Fever city.

I know you're expecting a big post today with our letter to Miss Brooke and her 9-month picture (9 months! Holy guacamole!) But you're going to have to wait until at least tomorrow. The Big Lady is under the weather. Her fever is down to 101.5 (yes, that's down....we started at 102.7 last night) and I just can't bring myself to put her through a photo shoot. Today, this PJ-clad, juice-chugging, Elmo-watching babe and I are just hanging out, on an around-the-clock Tylenol regimen. Hopefully she'll be back to her perky, smiley self for you tomorrow.

...hello Fall!

YES! It's here! Fall!

It's been a pleasant 70ish degrees out for the last few days and I am in love. Hooray for jeans and sweatshirts. Bring on the earlier evenings and frosty mornings. Time to trade dinner on the grill for a big bowl of chili and ice cream for hot chocolate (okay, that's just crazy-talk... maybe we'll just have ice cream AND hot chocolate.) Can you guys tell I'm just a tad excited for fall? (Beatin' a dead horse, eh?)

We celebrated a GORGEOUS fall weekend with a family trip to the park (after heading to a local nursery to get some mums for the front porch! So very Autumn-ish of us!) Now that the Big Lady is so mobile, the park is so much more than just the swings. She climbs, crawls, and slides all over the place. She especially enjoyed the tunnel, crawling through it several times. I can't wait until she starts walking so she can really go to town!

"I see you, Daddy, I see you!"

Practicing her driving. We'll have to work on the hand positioning - rather than 10 & 2, she's at about 4 &...minute hand?

First water fountain experience = success!

Lovin' that tunnel!

"I can climb these stairs all by myself, Mommy."

Cute & lovable, indeed.

So long, summer...

It's been one heck of a summer. We've had a blast with the Big Lady this summer! It was one of the hottest ones I remember in a long time, so we didn't spend too much time outside (not to mention I'm not exactly BFF's with nature,) but we did catch a few rays here and there. This past Friday was the last really hot, summery day, so Brooke and I hung out in the shade of the trees in our front yard. She had fun playing in the grass & dirt, while I spent most of my time making sure she didn't eat any of it.

Goodbye, summer! Thanks for the memories. See you next June :)

Tidbits.

There's really going to be no rhyme or reason to this post. Just random little snippets in the life of Brooke Mary.

- The Big Lady is now the proud owner of a 3rd tooth! She got it last weekend at the wedding (perfect timing...) It's on the bottom, next to the other two. Keep your fingers crossed that she eventually gets some top teeth to go with them.
- I told her Wednesday night that the next day was the first day of Fall and explained all about the loveliness that is Autumn. She woke up yesterday, looked outside and then at me with a "You are a big fat liar" look in her eyes. 95 degrees is not fall. It better cool down quick, because the number of summer outfits that still fit her is dwindling quickly! That, and it's hard to crawl in dresses!!

- Because Mother Nature hasn't figured out that it's Fall yet, I can still say that I am looking forward to it. I've never been a Fall girl; give me the blossoming trees and later evenings of spring! But this year is different; I am so excited for this coming season. This is our last first season with Brooke. (Take a minute to figure that one out.) We've never experienced Autumn with a baby. I can't tell you how excited I am to play in the leaves with her and pick out pumpkins (a Mommy, a Daddy, and a baby pumpkin...just because we can!) And oh how pumped I am for Halloween!! I feel a ton of pressure to make her first costume a really good one, so I've been thinking about something for weeks. I have narrowed it down to about 4 ideas, all super cute. More on that later... So yeah, hooray fall!

- She loves spaghetti, my friends. Like loves. She played and ate and played and ate for a while, making a big ol' mess. Now that she's feeding herself roughly half of her solid foods, she is messier than ever. I even resorted to taking off her PJ's before breakfast this morning; it's easier to wash mashed-up (by her, not me) banana off of a Nudie Judy than clothes!

- Brooke's cold has finally gone away. She's been quarantined from all her cousins this week (3 of the 4 suffering from the same yucky cold) which I think has helped tremendously. She's back to her old self!

- In case you thought I was kidding or that it was only a one-time thing, it wasn't. She still carries her turtle around in her mouth. Weirdo. Evidently she needed his moral support while putting together puzzles.

- Her hair is growing in so thick! We're getting closer and closer to being able to nix the headbands and move on to bows and clips. Yipee!!!

That's all for now. More randomness to come, I am sure!

**No need to sound the alarms or incite a riot. My blog has not been hijacked. Yes, the font has changed. You can thank Blogger for that. They've made blogging even more difficult, so now I have yet another excuse for crappy blogging in the future. But yeah, can't use the same one as before, so instead you get this one (a personal fave of mine anyway) so deal with it.

Wedding bells.

This was a very big weekend for us. We added a new member to my ever-growing side of the family. My little brother got married in Cleveland to his perfect match. Brooke is so excited to have another aunt and I couldn't be happier that one of my great friends is now one of my sisters!

The weekend was perfect, filled with wedding fun. Brooke handled yet another road trip like a champ. She & I are becoming pros at car rides and hotel stays. She really did well the whole trip, despite delayed/missed naps and a crazy schedule. Because I was a bridesmaid and spent the wedding day with the Bride, Brooke was with Daddy all day. They survived....barely (much thanks to Aunt Sus!!) She had a massive explosion on the way to the church (still thanking my lucky stars that I had him wait to change her into her dress until they got to church!) She was very good during the ceremony, although I hear she played a very amusing game of 52-Pacifier Pick-up (pacifiers act as silencers in church, but she kept spitting it out.) She had tons of fun at the reception, dancing the night away with Mommy. She skipped her afternoon nap but still managed to last until almost 11. Around then, she fell asleep taking her bottle in the middle of ABBA's Dancing Queen. She slept soundly in her stroller the rest of the night while we continued celebrating!

Here are a few more pictures from the weekend. The funny thing is that I don't have many of Brooke. I took 400+ pictures in 48 hours, yet very few were of my Big Lady! And the ones I did get were just okay. So here are the best ones! (Her yellow dress and silver shoes were TO DIE FOR. And that bow - heaven! She looked so, so cute!)

Brooke & Grandpa at the Rehearsal

The husband and I at Rehearsal Dinner. I heart this picture.

Wedding Day!

A family photo. Just okay, in my opinion, but the best one of the bunch.

Someone liked the ice sculpture. If he had let her, she would have tried to eat it.

Dancing queens! These girls didn't leave the dance floor all night :)

And she's out...

(p.s. A few more words about Cleveland, the Mistake on the Lake. I had anything but nice things to say about the city going into the weekend, a city I had admittedly never even been to. Well, let me tell ya - it surprised the hell out of me. I seriously enjoyed this city! I loved being near the water, pretty blue water instead of the murky brown river we have here. We stayed downtown in a great hotel with gorgeous views. I honestly wouldn't mind going back - if it didn't take almost 4 hours to get there...)

Brooke's post.

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(I let Brooke type. This is what she had to say. Let me translate for you, since I now speak Baby. "Mommy, I'm uber tired and ready for 8 oz of formulated bliss. Hook me up then put me down, will ya? Thanks. Best Mom Ever." I promise that last part was her words, not mine. That's what TU IOIPaZX means. Duh.)

Hi.

Oh, hi. Remember me? My Mommy hasn't been a very good blogger lately. She says she's been too busy to blog. She hasn't told you that I have my first cold, and I'm miserable. (Nasal aspirators are the devil!) She hasn't told you that I climbed 8 stairs the other day. She was behind me the whole time, don't worry. She hasn't told you that sometimes I say "Hi" (or something that resembles it) when people say it to me. She hasn't shown you a picture of my adorable gym shoes and told you that they are a size 5 (!!!) which is just ridiculous for a girl my age. She also hasn't told you that my new favorite snack is cucumbers. I promise I'll convince her to be a better blogger soon so y'all can keep up with me! But not this weekend. We're off to Cleveland to watch my Uncle Kyle get married. I've got my yellow party dress all ready for the occasion. You can expect some super cute pics next week! Peace out, friends.

Redlegs love.

We finally got back to another Reds game! We went almost the whole season without getting the Big Lady back to a game. We even had a new hat all ready to go since the last game, but it just now got a chance to be used. And she looked so freakin' cute in it with her little ears tucked in! The Pirates catcher thought so, too, and threw her a ball very early on. Surprisingly, she didn't try to eat it. She also got to meet Rosie Red, and that meeting went about as well as the last character meeting we had - horribly. She better get over this fear before we take her to Disney, because scared or not, she will take the obligatory Mickey Mouse picture! (And no, we don't have this trip planned. Scratch that - it's planned in my head, just not booked.) We had so much fun at the game, even if it resulted in a very late night for Brooke. Our resilient little trooper was so good the whole game - love my night owl! Enjoy the pics :)

Snack time!

Brooke and I love snack time! She has a bottle around 2:00 and doesn't eat dinner until after 6, so a snack is in order in the middle somewhere. She loves it and I enjoy the time-filler (because I typically run out of ideas for entertainment by this point in the day.) Snack time has become even easier now that Brooke has mastered the pincher grasp, i.e. picking up small bites with her thumb and index finger. She can now help herself to puffs, fruit, etc. While she eats, we typically have chats and play peek-a-boo and all that jazz (or Mommy starts dinner, but, if I'm being honest, this is a rarity.) Love, love snack time!

This video also shows how much Brooke adores her Daddy. His arrival after work often coincides with snack time, so it's seriously her favorite time of day. Right around the 1:08 mark, you'll hear the door open and see the complete elation on my daughter's face when she sees her Daddy. She just goes crazy every time he comes home - such a beautiful thing. Enjoy!

Little goofball.

My daughter is a nut. Seriously. A weirdo. A hilarious little ball of crazy. She is one of the goofiest kids I've ever met. (From whom could she have gotten this silly & sassy personality? It's a mystery.) She makes me laugh a bazillion times a day. She's a certifiable loon. I give you the evidence:

Exhibit A - She crawls around the house with a turtle bath toy in her mouth. Oh, you couldn't tell it was a turtle? Maybe that's because his ENTIRE HEAD is in her mouth. She literally crawls around like this like it's no big thing.

Exhibit B - She loves to stand on the A/C vent and let the air blow up her dress.

Exhibit C - She will wedge herself in between the fireplace and her house to play with the empty toy basket, rather than the hundreds of toys she has spewed all around our family room. It looks like Geoffrey the Giraffe threw up in this place, I swear. Yet she goes straight for the non-toys. I'm going to get her an empty wipes container and some plastic hangers for Christmas.

Exhibit D - She shoves a third of a banana in her mouth, whole. And then proceeds to chew the whole thing up for the next 3 minutes. (This is either evidence that she's a goofball or that she has a big mouth/likes to eat. I think her thigh rolls are proof enough of the latter.)

I need a nap.

It has been a ROUGH 36 hours up in this joint. It all started with a craptacular night for the Big Lady. Well, really, it was hell for all of us. Brooke's body has decided to rebel against her transition from breastmilk to formula. Not sure if it's formula in general or the type of formula I'm giving her, but she is one gassy gal! On top of that, the husband and I are a mess. Our allergies have started a "Say No to Fall" campaign and, as a result, we are both a big, fat, coughing, snotty mess. (Add snot to the ever-growing list of bodily fluids I'm not afraid to blog about.) So when Brooke decided she wanted to wake up at 1:45 and then stay up until 3:45, we all suffered.

Now when I say she was "up", I don't really mean she was awake that whole time. I was, she wasn't. She didn't, like, cry for 2 hours straight. Trust me, if she had, the husband would be blogging about this right now because I would have checked myself into a padded room at the hospital. (And that would be tragic, because the husband isn't nearly as witty as I am.) She's not one of those kids that cries endlessly- thank GOD. Here's how it goes with her: she cries out, I go in and give her the pacifier & rub her back until she falls back asleep, I tiptoe out, climb into bed, and 5 seconds after I get comfortable she cries out again. Repeat. For hours. Sometimes she gets so worked up that she stands up and reaches those chubby arms up for me to pick her up. And, sometimes, I do. Because I'm a sucker for those big now-brown eyes. When that happens, I sit and rock her back to sleep, then stealthily transfer her back to bed (as stealthily as one can when one has to literally drop her into bed because it's so low to the ground.) This has about a 25% success rate; most of the time she pops back up and we start all over.

I promise this is as painful as it sounds. And sometimes it goes on forever, as it did then. So as I'm up and down messing with her, getting no sleep in between, I'm also hacking up a lung and trying to figure out how to breathe. Hot mess, folks.

Somehow - I'm still not sure how - we survived the night. I knew that the day was going to be just plain awesome. And it was. I spilled formula all over the kitchen floor. Brooke peed on the carpet mid-diaper change. (This was actually hilarious. She wiggled away from me while I dealt with her smelly diaper. Before I could pull her back to get a new diaper on, I noticed she was sitting in a puddle. I was laughing so hard, I didn't have the strength to lift her pee-soaked body. So as the husband begrudgingly picked her up, shouting "This is why we don't have pets!", I was racing up the stairs in a fit of giggles to get the bath started.) Basically, I was in a fog all day. The lovely, whine-filled day was capped off by craptacular night number 2 last night. Same 2+ hour fight to get her back to sleep. Same groggy, foggy Mommy today. And poor Daddy's not doing much better.

Needless to say, we could all use a nap.

Shadow.

Brooke went to the doctor on Monday (to have her hoarse voice issue checked out - we're going to reevaluate at her 9 month appt.) She weighed in at 26 lbs 10 oz., the 50th percentile for - wait for it - a 2 year old. A toddler. Not surprisingly, my 8-month-old now officially outweighs her 2 year old cousin.

Take a moment to let that sink in.

OK, let's proceed. So Brooke heard "size of a 2 year old" and decided that gave her permission to act like one. That's right, we have entered the Terrible Two's in this house. Or at least it feels that way. The Big Lady now has a temper. Sigh. Trust me when I say I'm working feverishly to quell this behavior before it gets out of hand. Meltdowns are not well-received. Because she's so mobile now (more on that in a minute,) we're constantly chasing her around and pulling her away from things she's not allowed to be into. She does not appreciate this. At this age, she doesn't yet understand boundaries, so I think consistency is key. If we're consistent in what we allow her to play with, she'll eventually learn...or at least that's what I keep telling myself. It's just going to be a battle of wills.

Our day has become one giant game of shadow. Either she's following me around, hoping to get ahold of whatever I have or whining for me to pick her up, or I'm tailing her, making sure she's not getting into trouble. Because if I don't tail her, I end up having to say things like "Brooke, let's not use the toilet to stand ourselves up" or "Brooke, the trash can is not a toy." Or I'll find her climbing up the stairs or trying to eat the curtains. I try really hard to strike a balance between hovering and letting her be independent. If what she wants to play with is harmless, it's all hers; I don't want to stifle her curiosity. But I do draw the line when situations could be potentially harmful. (That being said, I do let her climb up on the brick fireplace. The hearth is low to the ground, the corners are covered, and I'm always right there. She loves to climb. She's a little daredevil, after all!)

The following are examples of the craziness we live with. Now if you'll excuse me, I must go chase down my heavy baby.

This last one is Mommy's leg barrier, my attempt at keeping her away from the computer while I'm on it. And yes, I used it multiple times while I typed this post.