Brigham

Brigham is such a fun, silly, loving, cuddly, serious boy. He worries about Aubree- Rose when he doesn't know where she is. He loves making her laugh and making her cry. She gets aggravated when he touches her hands, feet, legs, and head. Ha ha. He loves laying on her, pushing on her, and pulling her arms and hands. Brigham is a pretty good eater. He willingly tries new foods. He loves artichokes, chicken, chicken nuggets, cheese, butter, homemade macaroni and cheese, waffles, milk, protein shakes, and anything sweet. These are things he consistently loves. Other foods may be hit or miss depending on the day.
Brigham's favorite movie is Rise of the Guardians. Almost every day he says he "wants to watch it 2 times and then we can turn the tv off." He also asks if we can watch daddy's scary show. Ha ha. I think this is referring to Once Upon a Time and/or Grimm. Brigham loves playing with his cars more than anything else (except maybe the iPad). He loves Iron Man and the avengers. He has some guitar pajamas that he wants to wear constantly. He has even worn them to the store And to the gym. I never thought I would let my kid wear pajamas in public but you have to pick your battles and if he wants to wear his pajamas 24 hours a day then so be it. I won't let him wear them to school though. I'm not that crazy. Ha ha
Brigham is currently enrolled in swim lessons. He has 5 weeks to go. He loves going but he doesn't really love the lesson. Last week they made them go under water. I thought that would for sure be the end of liking swim lessons. He wouldn't go under by himself but he didn't cry when they put him under and he let them do it 2 or 3 times. Afterward he said he loves swim lessons. He still hates taking a bath or shower if he has to wash his hair. He HATES water on his face. It can be a huge ordeal at bath time. I am hoping he grows out of this.
We love this funny sweet boy so much and we are so grateful he chose us!

Gangnam Star House

On December 27th we closed on our new house! We went under contract before Thanksgiving and we had to wait a long 6 weeks before it was ours. This was due in part to not wanting to close on a house right before we went on our cruise the week before Christmas.
I felt like we had almost everything packed before we went on vacation and we did have a majority of our boxes packed but the things that we hadn't packed took forever to get packed up! We signed the papers at about 10:30 Thursday morning and we were almost completely moved in by Friday night. We put our bed together late that night and spent our first night here. It was so surreal.
Mark and Nate brought a car and truck load of stuff over Saturday and then got our new refrigerator. We are totally in love with it! I spent the majority of Saturday unpacking the kitchen. Considering how small our kitchen was; I never would have guessed that it would take the longest to pack and unpack.
Sunday we went to church and then straight to home depot to get blinds for our windows. Mark just couldn't take one more night of being on display to the world. Ha he hung them in all the front windows and in our bathroom that night. It was a great having some privacy!
On Monday I cleaned up the old house and crammed everything left into my car. It was a great feeling to know that we were finished with everything there.
I didn't get home until around 8 that night which meant we were spending New Years at home. I was a-ok with that. It had been an exhausting 5 days. Tuesday or Wednesday I finished unpacking. Friday I bought paint for the door and shutters and began painting them. I thought I would be finished by the time Mark got home from work. Nope. It took me until Monday and I still have 3 shutters that need a second coat of paint.
On Saturday Mark began dismantling the mantel. That took all day and made a HUGE red dusty mess. It took hours to clean up. He spent every free moment for the next week building our new fireplace area/built ins.
For the last 2 weeks I have been scouring Craigslist multiple times a day looking for the perfect furniture pieces. So far I have found a dining room table for $25 that is currently in the process of being painted white during nap time and a side chair that was also $25 and it will eventually be painted and most likely reupholstered once I find our other family room furniture pieces.
I was really worried about Brigham for this move. He was getting a new house, new church, moving from nursery to Sunbeams at church, and going to a new school. It has been a flawless transition. He loves his new school. It isn't play based like his old school and it seems like he prefers the more structured environment. He loves going. That was not the case the last couple of weeks at his old school. I love that his new school is 5 minutes away, starts at 9, and is only 2 days a week. Brigham LOVES our new house. I'm not sure why but he has called this house the Gangnam Star house from the first time we came to see it. He has never asked to go to the old house and when I say we are going home he always confirms that we are going to the Gangnam Star house. Church had also been a seamless transition. The first day he said he wanted to see Oliver at church. Luckily I didn't have to feel bad since Oliver's family moved the same weekend we did. Ha. Brigham had been super awesome at sleeping in his own bed every night! He has come in our room 3 or 4 nights. The first night I walked him back to his bed and he cried until he laid down and he seemed to just go right to sleep. He has also come in our room the last 2 nights. I let him get in our bed the first night (without lion). After sleeping for a while he decided to get back in his bed. Last night I walked him back to his bed and some time later he came back to our room and I let him get in bed.
Aubree has had a seamless transition. She sleeps the same and she loves the play room!
We are so happy here and we love our new house and neighborhood.

9 Months

At 8 months Aubree can hold her bottle, she pulls her self up in her crib occasionally, she has mastered crawling, she still loves food more than anything else, she is a total mommy's girl, and she spent an entire week away from us while we were on a cruise.
She drinks three 5oz bottles a day and eats 3 meals day. She is still takes 2 naps a day. Aubree wakes up between 7 and 8 every morning and goes to bed between 8 and 9 each night. She is all smiles unless you aren't sharing your food with her. Ha
We have a ton of fun with her and we just love her to pieces!

8 Months

These pictures were taken 2 days before Aubree turned 8 months.  I love them.  I really need to use Krystin's photography skills more often.  Brigham was a total hand full and nearly impossible to work with but Krystin managed to get a couple of shots with him not being a total grouch.  We left right after we finished these and he was asleep before we even got off of her street.  It was a Wednesday and he normally skips his nap on most Mondays and Wednesdays.  I was relived to see his grouchy-ness was at least mostly due to being tired and not because he is turning into an honory, hard to deal with kid. ha ha

At 8 months Aubree still has just 2 bottom teeth and a 1000 watt smile.  She began crawling on her 8 month birthday.  Mark's mom and Albert were visiting us before they went back to Ohio the next monring and they were able to see her first time crawling.  They have been on their mission her whole life so they miss a lot of things.  We were so excited that they were there for the momentous occasion.  Even though Aubree figured out the whole crawling thing, it took her about a week to realize the usefulness of her new skill.  Now she crawls all over the place and we are all much happier since she doesn't need us to move her to a new toy or activity every few minutes.  

In the last month she has gone from eating anything I give her to wanting nothing but puffs, applesauce, yogurt, and sweet potatoes.  I also noticed that she will eat almost anything I am eating.  This made me wonder if she would eat green beans if they weren't pureed.  We have a couple of cans in our food storage so I opened one and cut the beans into bite sized pieces.  She LOVED them.  I am not exactly ready to move to just table food with her.  Pulling pureed veggies from the freezer is so much easier.  Oh well.  I will have to figure it out. ha

Aubree is still super smiley and sweet.  She LOVES Brigham more than anything in the world and he feels the same about her.  As soon as he hears her awake in her crib (and sometimes when she isn't awake at all) he runs in and gets in the crib with her and plays.  They both smile and laugh at each other all day long.  My favorite is when she just starts cracking up laughing in the car just because he is smiling at her.  

Halloween

Brigham loves the idea of getting lots of candy but getting him to wear a costume for more than 30 seconds is nearly impossible so I knew I had to find a costume that was mostly just normal clothes.  At about the time I was starting to brainstorm costume ideas, he began to really like all things pirate.  How perfect! I looked online for some inexpensive pirate costumes but nothing had the look I wanted for the price I wanted.  My favorite costume was $50!  There was no way I was paying that.  I wanted to be under $10 including shipping.  A week or two before Halloween I went to my favorite thrift store, Value Village.  They almost always have whatever I am looking for and it is only 2 minutes from our house.  I went in with a vision of what I wanted in head.  I had no luck finding what I was looking for (except for the black sweatpants that I cut to make pirate pants/shorts.  As I was walking to pay for the pants, I saw a woman's stripped jacket hanging at the end of an aisle.  I immediately had a new vision for this prate costume and went back to the children's section to look for a red shirt.  I didn't find a red shirt but I found some girls stripped leggings that I missed my first time over there.  Next I found a red scarf and a red belt.  I got his whole costume for $8.  We got home and I cut the sweatpants to make them pirate-y.  Next I cut the zipper and hood off the stripped jacket and then I cut the sleeves off.  I bought a red thermal shirt at Wal-Mart and we had our costume.  He loved it and so did I. Since I got a red shirt for him to wear, I ended up leaving the belt off.  He got a lot of use out of this costume.  He had a preschool fall festival, a preschool class party, the ward trunk or treat, and then Halloween.  We stuck with tradition and went trick or treating with our friends, the Woods.  Kaitlyn was a super cute princess, Brayden was an adorable chicken, and Aubree was a bumble bee.  It was another cold Halloween but lots of fun!

7 Months

This picture is actually from election day.  I have gotten really bad about taking pictures on the 23rd of each month. Our sweet Aubree-Rose is just that.  She is so sweet and smiles all the time.  We are amazed at how much she smiles.  Brigham was not a smiler.  He wasn't a crier either.  Aubree cries more than Briggs did but  she only cries when she is tired or hungry.  She also has to cry herself to sleep.  Most of the time she just wines for a few seconds but as she was getting close to 8 months old, she would cry pretty hard and sometimes even cling to my clothes once we got beside her crib even though she was obviously tired.  She is just a busy body and wants to be where the party is at.  She is still an awesome sleeper at night.  She goes to sleep for the night between 7:30 and 8:30 (depending on how early she decides to wake up from her afternoon nap) and wakes up between 7 and 8 the next morning. Occasionally she will wake up in the middle of the night or early in the morning and she will play or talk to herself and then go back to sleep after 20-30 minutes.  Nap time is a whole different story.  She will sleep anywhere from 30 minutes to 3 hours.  Most of the time her naps are between 1 and 2 hours.  Luckily she will play in her crib until when her wake up time is supposed to be.  Morning nap is supposed to be 10-12 and afternoon nap is supposed to be 2:30-5:30.  I will take a bad napper but a great night time sleeper any day over a bad nighttime sleeper.