Visitors from the distant land of Brookfield, WI

Alec and I were so excited to have our first visitors from the Milwaukee area!  Brad and Jessie came out for 5 days!  It worked out perfect that Brad at to work out of some near-by cities Wednesday/Thursday, so they could come for a long time!  We loved having them here and being able to spend tons of time with them.  We tried to give them a great Michigan experience, we had been talking to them about Michigan for the almost 5yrs that we lived in WI after all!

With Brad and Alec working, Jessie and I were mostly on baby duty.  It was fun to watch Brie try and 'play' with Bennett.  For some reason she just HAD to go for the eyes!  But Jessie and I were able to sneak away for a bit one of the days for a pedicure and farmers market visit.....much needed!

Some of the other highlights during our time together included:

• Playing Ticket to Ride (a favorite game that Brad and Jessie introduced us to!).  There were a few tense moments: the first was Alec tried to make up rules and get away with it!  And the second was, I hate losing every single time so I was pouting...  Good thing we are such good friends with them they still like us despite our struggles with games :)

• We had a non-city size fire, which of course was Alec's best memory of them here!  Always looking for an excuse to burn stuff....

• We visited Calvin's campus.  We kept trying to tell Bennett this was his future school, his mom and dad weren't so sure though....  I have Brie and Bennett's future allllllll planned out!

• Fulton Farmer's Market is always a favorite place of mine to go.  I go almost every week and stock up on produce.  If you live in the area and haven't gone, you need to change that!  So many great vendors and great prices.  Brie even loves going, so much to look at and she usually gets plenty of attention while she sits in the stroller!

Ate dinner at Rose's restaurant in East Grand Rapids, really good food!  Every time Alec and I have been there we can't decide what to order because there are so many good choices.  Unfortunately this time we did not have great service, I thought Jessie was going to punch the waiter, which he kind of deserved.  We did fill out a professionally worded comment card regarding said waiter though.   I think in the future we will be trying out another Gilmore collection restaurant.  

(While we were waiting to eat at Rose's, Alec fell asleep on the lawn!  He was even snoring!)

On their last full day in town we went out to Muskegon where my parents were camping to spend some time at the lake.  We had fun playing games, checking out the beach, and eating tons of food!

Bennett LOVED the whole day, he took two 2hr naps (pretty good for the 30min nap King!) and was just happy as a clam! Such a little stud!

Jessie and I are both still nursing, and ended up both having to feed the babies at the beach! Thank goodness for blankets and non-picky babies.  It was pretty funny though, still way easier than making and packing a bottle and having to worry about that!  Thankfully my mom was down at the beach too and was able to help tuck the blankets in a little since it was so windy.  

We had such a great time with them and were so happy to be able to show them where we live now! Can't wait to see them again soon!

10 Months Old

We have entered the double digits!  Every month that flies by I am still amazed at all the changes she makes in just one month.  Brie is a very busy little girl, she crawls around very quickly and usually crawls from one thing she isn't supposed to have to the next.  I am constantly chasing her around and taking stuff away from her.  Forget toys, who would want to play with those?!  They are so safe and boring, she would much prefer to play with dog food and water, papers, cords, shoes, and anything else that isn't 'hers'.  She is a cautious girl though, it took her a long time to pull herself up.  Not because she didn't figure it out, but because she was too nervous too.  She does pull herself up now though on everything! We have a baby gate on the steps, but she has showed zero interest in trying out the steps.

Getting a decent picture of her was almost impossible!  First, she had a huge scratch on her face (thankfully my mother in law was able to edit it off!).  And secondly, she would NOT sit still for anything!  So these pictures are good enough!  After about 50 shots I said forget it!

At 10 months old Brie is still nursing 4-5x/day.  She still gets up once in the night (around 5am), I feed her and then she goes back down until about 7am.  Just last night (8/5) for the first time I let her cry for 15 min instead of going down and feeding her, and what do you know she went back to sleep!  So that is the new plan I think, we will see how it goes!  She eats 3 meals a day, and we are starting to do less pureed foods and more chunks of food.  She prefers pureed food, and struggles with pieces, but we are getting better and better.  Her favorites are anything in the carb family (duh, who doesn't love carbs!), but is pretty good with most veggies and fruits. We are putting more food on her highchair tray and letting her feed herself, although if it isn't something she absolutely loves she chucks it on the floor for Josie to eat.  She does the same thing with her sippy cup, after she is finished getting a drink it goes flying!

She takes two naps a day, and they are usually pretty good ones.  About 2hrs each is what they have been, which is sooooo nice for me!  Sometimes though they are shorter, closer to an hour/hour and a half.  She goes to bed around 7:30pm at night, which is sometimes challenging since we don't always want to be home at that time.  But we make it work, and it is nice when we are home that Alec and I can have a good part of the evening free!

Brie does a lot of 'talking' and even more yelling!  She loves the sound of her voice and all the different noises she can make.  She uses her hand to do an 'indian call' (sorry....not very politically correct, didn't know how else to describe it!), and she does it loud!  She says the basics, mama, dada, baba; but not directed at the appropriate people.  She points a lot, which is super cute.  We just love her pointy finger, her favorite thing to point at is her farm book.

She has 4.5 teeth (one has just broken through), and she chews on everything.  In the first 48hrs of being able to pull up she completely chewed up one of the rails of her crib!  I have since put something on it to protect the crib....such a stinker!  We have had a few rough days/nights with teething.  Thank goodness for Tylenol and cold wash clothes!

She just had a doctors appointment a couple days ago (technically her 9mon appointment, but we got in late due to seeing a new doctor).  He still heard her heart murmur a little, so not totally closed yet.  She weighs 18lbs 9oz (50th percentile) and is 28in long (60th percentile).  Otherwise she checked out ok!

Brie is a happy baby and we just love watching her keep getting older.  I can hardly believe her birthday is in two months!  We love our little Breezy!

And here are the bloopers from our photo shoot this morning:

Milwaukee Visit (Part 2)

Geez I am getting behind!!!  We have been so busy, so I will try and do some catch up!

After our great day at the zoo we had a fun get together at Brad and Jessie's house.  This was supposed to be the weekend that we went camping with all the adults, but due to a few changes that happened throughout the year we decided to do a stay-cation and just all hang out.  We had a fun evening of cooking out, chatting, playing bags, and having a fire.  It was so good to see everyone again.  Felt a little strange, we haven't been gone long enough to make it seem so strange to hang out with all these people, but then at the same time knowing we were heading back to Michigan and wouldn't see everyone for a while......it was just a weird feeling.

Erin and Brie are exactly a year apart, and Erin wanted to 'hold' the baby.  It was soooo cute, they kissed each other on they mouth....haha, and just kept looking at each other and laughing:

So fun hanging out with everyone!

Brie also had fun playing with Haddie and Connor!  Connor is 2 and a half, and Haddie is just 6wks younger than Brie.  

As part of our visit we were able to get together with our high school small group.  So good to see them all again.  We went to Kopps and had a fun time hanging out and catching up.  We miss them!

Monday night Alec was able to play softball with the Brookfield CRC team he was apart of last year. Brad is also on this team, so Jessie and I had fun bringing the babies to the game and watching our men play :) They didn't do so well, they lost big time......oh well though, they still had fun!  And Brie enjoyed watching them play.

After softball Monday night we brought the babies home and put them to bed and got a babysitter!  Then we went to one of our favorite Milwaukee restaurants, Parkside 23.  It was a fun night out with no kids!

We had Brie 'hold' Bennett, she just kept laughing and laughing!  We had to make sure she kept her hands to home though because she kept grabbing for his face!

Brie spent a lot of time in the car during the trip, and she did pretty good.  The ride down was not so great, she cried a lot and needed me to sit next to her the entire time (which did not help my tendency to get carsick...).

 It was a great visit to Milwaukee and we look forward to many more visits!