Heavy Cream.

I'm an avid 19 Kids & Counting watcher. What's that, you may be asking? Well, first of all, shame on you for not knowing. It happens to be one of the greatest shows on TV. It's the TLC show about the Duggar Family. You know, the woman with all the kids who prematurely delivered #19 at 25 weeks back in December (yet another woman who had her baby before me even though she was due after me, but I digress...) They're all over the Today Show and People Magazine these days, as the baby is still in the NICU 16 weeks later (her original due date was last week.) Big controversy because people think having that many kids is the reason this last one was delivered so early, like it was God's way of telling them enough is enough. While I agree with people to an extent (c'mon, it's not a contest, Michelle Duggar, and if it is I promise you're winning...), that's just not the case; the preterm labor was due to pre-eclampsia and had nothing to do with her decision to birth a large baseball team.

Woah, went off on a major tangent there. Back to the point.

So I'm watching this week and Mama Duggar is talking about how she's always had tiny breastfed babies. Evidently, her milk has a low fat content, so she essentially produces skim milk. I've never heard of this before, but it got me thinking. What in the world are my Girls producing? Whole milk? Heavy cream, perhaps? The husband thinks Brooke might be getting straight butter. Like my Girls have some kind of magical churning powers and are providing the Big Lady with some good ol' Country Crock. There's a visual for you. (Oh, should I have warned you this post would quickly become TMI? Whoops, my bad.)

I mean, seriously, this is the only explanation for how rapidly my 17 pounder is growing. Yep, 17 lbs. (And that's just an estimate, it may be a few ounces more.) She has rolls in places you wouldn't expect. We constantly find stuff lodged in them, too. The girl has Rubberband Wrists - it always looks like she has rubberbands around her wrists (see photo to the right). My sister gave me a hand-me-down 9 month sleeper that she was going to get rid of back when I was only about 4 mos. pregnant. I thought to myself "Oh, my baby will be 9 months old in the fall, so this long-sleeved sleeper will be perfect for September." Never in my wildest dreams did I think we'd need it now, still under 3 months old. People hardly believe she's as young as she is, thanks to both her size and her alertness. It's incredible.

So yeah, heavy cream. I do come from a dairy family, after all.

Easter Bunny.

Brooke met the Easter Bunny for the first time on Sunday, and it was a good meeting! We all went to the Egg Hunt at the Rec this weekend. Brooke got to hunt for eggs, meet The Bunny himself, and look super cute in her bunny ears (thanks, Aunt Nicole!) She was about as enthused with the whole thing as an almost 3-month-old could be. As I said in a previous post, it was a photo op. So, here they are:

Saying hello to the Easter Bunny. Clearly, she liked him :)

All ready to go. Let's get hunting!

"There are silly ears on my head, aren't there? Oh, Mommy..."

Exploring her eggs. She found lots of Smarties, a few stickers, and some (slightly creepy) little stuffed bunnies in her eggs.

Just looking precious at the party.

Big Sleepin' Girl.

Brooke deserves a present. Seriously. A big fat one. We are not only sleeping through the night every night, we're sleeping 7-9 hour stretches every night. And some mornings, she goes right back to sleep after a quick feed to sleep even longer. Like today, for example. She was down at 10 pm, up at 6:30 am to eat, back in bed by 7am, and still sleeping now :)

I love that she's a bit of a night owl, too. I've heard so many people say that they put their little ones to bed at, like, 7 pm for the night. I'm not even remotely tired this early, so how do these people get caught up on that whole "sleep while the baby sleeps" thing? My munchkin was having a deep convo with her Daddy at 9:00 last night; she's got too much to do and say to be going to bed that early! Plus, it makes for later mornings for Mommy, too (like today.) Bonus!

This is the face that greets me in the mornings. LOVE IT! I always say "Good morning, my Big Sleepin' Girl!" and she's all "Mommy, you came for me! Hooray! I'm ready for the day!" and it's accompanied by ridiculously awesome toothless grins and crazy arm & leg jerking. Again, love it!

It's official.

My child wears more Polo than not. My almost 3 month old is signed up for the Rec's Easter Egg Hunt on Saturday ("Hunting" for Brooke will involve looking around and flailing her arms about. It's really just a photo op with the Easter bunny, let's be honest.) I live in skirts, flip flops, and big white sunglasses in the summer. I have the SUV. I have the house and the successful husband. It's official - I have achieved MOE status. I'm blue & green car antennae ribbons and a Starbucks skinny vanilla latte away from being in it full-blown.

For those unfamiliar with the term, MOE = Mother of Evendale. It's a phrase coined by our group of Evendale friends, a status many of us aspire to. The MOE stereotype is incredibly fitting for so many women in the Village. It's a Soccer Mom to the extreme. Supermom with a Vera Bradley purse, if you will. And yes, Kenny's now a FOE (he'll be full-blown when he starts coaching Brooke's Eager Beavers t-ball team.) So yeah, together we're a MoeFoe (...I crack myself up.)

I realized it yesterday as I was making chocolate chip cookies with a baby on my hip, the 5th load of laundry for the day was tumbling in the dryer, and my kitchen table was adorned with St. Patrick's Day placemats. I looked around and thought, "Wow, I've made it. I'm a MOE." And I love it! (Oh and why chocolate chip cookies? Because I survived my 3rd day of having twins. I'm now babysitting a little boy 3 days a week who is 10 days older than Brooke. I'm crazy, you say? I agree.)

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Ten Weeks +2.

I missed the "Brooke is X weeks old this week, she's sleeping X hours at night and eating every X hours and doing these cute things" post on Thursday. My bad. It's been a trying week. The Big Lady is getting bigger - it's been a growth spurt week. Since we had the 2-month growth spurt several weeks ago, I'd imagine this is the 3- or 4-monther for our little overachiever.

So, to be consistent....

Brooke's 10 weeks old this week! She's sleeping like a CHAMPION. It's no big thing for her to go 8 hours or so. While this is awesome when it happens, it's not every night. It's usually more like 6-7 hrs of sleep, a 20-minute dream feed (i.e. she wakes up hungry, pretty much sleeps while eating, sleeps through a quick diaper change, and then we're both back in bed after a mere 20 total mins), and then another 3-4 hours of sleep. It's beautiful. Don't get me wrong, we have our frequent rough nights where it's not so clockwork. This week we dealt with waking up multiple times to eat in the night (this was Monday) and refusing to be put back in her bed starting around 2 am (this was Wednesday). Do you know how easy and fun it is to sleep on the couch with 16 lbs of congested baby sleeping dead-weight on a chest that grows by the minute as it fills up for the next feeding? I'll tell you how - not.

She still eats every 3-4 hours during the day, but is ridiculously proficient. She gets anything she needs in a matter of a few minutes, then moves on to bigger and better things. Like pooping (I couldn't have a blog post with mentioning my baby girl's bodily functions!) I'm happy to report that the size 3's have drastically reduced the # of blowout situations. Hallelujah, sister!

And cute things she's done this week? What hasn't been cute? She is the funniest person I know. Laughs about everything now. She found her tongue - jackpot! It's her new BFF. She plays with it all the time now. Adorable, however tongue shenanigans = drool city! She goes through, like, 5 bibs a day. She's not just partial to her own tongue; nothing delights her more than when someone else sticks their tongue out at her. She's become somewhat of a mimic, too. She tries to shape her mouth to make the same sound that you make. "Ooooh" is her favorite word, I think because of the O-shaped mouth associated with it. She's also discovered that she has hands and a face and oh-how-much-fun-it-is-to-touch-said-face-with-said-hands. She actually rubs her eyes when she's tired (insert Awwwwww here.) Precious, my friends, so very precious.

That's all for now. Apologies again for the poor blogging this week. Hoping for better bloggage (new word?) next week.

Just chattin' it up with Mr. Penguin.

"Mom, buzz off. Penguin and I would like some privacy."

Almost Spring!

Oh spring, how I love thee. I've missed you. Even though it hasn't officially started, this weather sure does remind me of spring. When last spring began, my most important role was wife. Having a baby was definitely at the forefront of my mind, but it wasn't yet a reality. Fast-forward 365 days and I'm a mom, Brooke's mom. Crazy, eh?

Thanks to this delicious weather, Brooke and I have been able to get out of this house and get some fresh air this week. It's so refreshing; I heart sunshine. I can't wait until the weather is consistently warm enough to get her outside daily. Brooke got to experience her first walk (and second and third) and her first trip to the park. I have a feeling walks to the park will be frequent. She went down the slide and spent some time on the swings. The pics may not really show it, but she had a blast :)

Happy Sunday!

If this doesn't make you smile on this beautiful Sunday morning, nothing will.

p.s. Guess who slept 8.5 hours Friday night!! You read that right, eight and a half, and then we even had to wake her!! (I reeeally didn't want to wake her - wanted to see how long she'd go - but I needed to feed her before we left. Also, I was in pain. 10 hours between feedings = yikes!)