6 Months

I think I blinked and time just fast forwarded 6 months. Honestly, I barely remember ever being pregnant with Maddie. Is this the 2nd child syndrome? I can't stop time but I sure as heck am going to try to capture every moment that I can on camera.

Maddie turned 6 months old yesterday and she had her 6 month appointment today. She weighed in at 18 lbs. 3 oz. (88%) and 27 inches (90%). (Interestingly, a woman at the ball fields last weekend in Houston said Maddie looked "small" for 6 months. Seriously? I think this woman had her baby facts confused.) The Doctor was very pleased with Maddie's growth and progress, especially how well she handled having RSV a couple of months ago. She said that most babies have lingering effects for months. Maddie's lasted a couple of weeks and she's been fine ever since! Thank Goodness!! Even though Maddie has been drooling more than a teenage boy in a Girls Gone Wild Video, there are no signs of teeth. This shocks me because I seriously can't figure out where all this saliva is coming from. I also can't figure out how she is still spitting up what seems like gallons after every feeding. Doc also said this can happen up until 12 months so I might as well get used to the countless wardrobe changes (for Maddie and myself) and chalk it up to her being a "happy spitter." Doc also said that Maddie should be sleeping through her 3/4 am feeding now and not getting up at all in the night. I question this still (although I never, ever thought I'd be one of those moms getting up in the middle of the night after 6 months) but Maddie really seems to need that feeding. She said to try and bump up the solids intake (we're only doing once a day right now), especially before bedtime and see if this helps. My fingers are crossed but I'm not counting on it!

Maddie still isn't rolling from her tummy to her back but she rolls from her back to her tummy, both ways, just fine. I was concerned about this, but the Doctor reassured me that she's just fine, especially since she's rolling the other way. She's also almost mastered sitting up. I can sit her down for 5/10 minutes at a time and she'll play happily with a toy in front of her. She's still only napping 30 minutes at a time, but usually once in the afternoon, you can go in and rock her back to sleep, put her back down and get another hour out of her.

Maddie really is such an amazing little creature. It takes absolutely nothing more than a sweet smile her way to make her face beam and light up with a smile in return. Most people can't resist that cheeky grin and end up stopping in their tracks to comment on 1) her hair 2) her big blue eyes or 3) her big cheeks (in that order). And this is Texas folks, so I hear a lot of comments like "her Daddy is gonna have to clean out his shotgun when she gets older." Honestly. It's scary how many times I've heard it. And it's even scarier that those exact words came out of my extremely hip, beautiful, young pediatrician today. Not joking.

I took Maddie in for her 6 month pictures yesterday. Here's to our 6 month old baby girl.

More of our little people

As promised, here are some more pictures from the last couple of weeks. These were taken yesterday when we got home from Houston. Maddie is getting really good at sitting up on her own, and I think this is how she prefers to be! She's not such a big fan of lying on her back or belly anymore. She wants to be sitting up and watching all the action around her.

This smile just kills me!













On St. Patty's Day, I was trying to get good pictures of the kids together and it was so not working out for me. I think my constant attempts of getting a good picture of them together are going to start haunting me. I may have to leave it up to the professionals.

Doesn't it look like they are looking at each other saying "Why is she doing this to us again?"





I love this one b/c it only takes one look from Jacob to light up Maddie's face



And for fun, Daddy is still great at making Maddie laugh any time of day

So much to say...

...and so little time to write! So I will write in captions, once again.

First of all, please take a look at this picture. If you don't laugh out loud then without a doubt, you are not human.



This was taken today while it was super windy outside. Every time there was a big gust of wind, Maddie made this face and then would break out into a huge smile. Her personality is so incredibly cute. It doesn't take much to light up her face.

On a whim, we went to Houston this past weekend to see Duke play in the NCAA tournament. Grandpa managed to get 4 tickets (Thanks Dad!) so myself, Mark, Frank and John all got to go. Outside of the fact that they did not serve any sort of alcohol at the Reliant Stadium (what are they thinking?!), we had an awesome time. Take a look:





Thank goodness we won because I really didn't want to go home with a grumpy husband!

The weekend before was my girls weekend in Galveston. I had been looking forward to that trip for months and it did not disappoint! I think my favorite part of the whole weekend was just hanging out at the house drinking wine and watching "The Hangover" with my favorite ladies (minus Rach, sniff, sniff). Would you believe I only took 1 stinking picture the whole time we were there? And it was a forced one on our last day at breakfast.



Ahhh, I miss the girls already. Can't wait to start planning the next trip!

When I got back from Galveston, Mark and I jumped in the car and headed down to Dallas for a night's stay at Turtle Mansion. This was given to us by his team members for Christmas and I can't tell you what a wonderful gift it was. We celebrated our 4 year anniversary that night. I always tease him and tell him that the last 4 years have felt like 20 (which isn't necessarily untrue -- ha) but they've been the best years ever. Considering the fact that we've moved 3 times and had 2 kids, and we still like each other, I think that says a lot. :) Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that night, but it was a great one!

I've got lots more pics to post of the kids, but will do so when I'm not falling asleep at the computer. Stay tuned!!

There is nothing better than...

...watching someone else clean your house. Seriously. This is the first time we've ever had someone in to clean (other than a deep cleaning when we are trying to sell a house) and I am amazed at what they are doing. They cleaned the top of the family room fan 30 feet up in the air! They are batting at our artificial trees and ridding them of dust. They are scrubbing our microwave! These are things I always think about doing, but honestly, never, ever do (well, I do clean the microwave, but not like this. They are getting every tiny bit of splatter out of there.) After having Maddie and gaining a 4,000 square foot house, the cleaning has overwhelmed me. I think we might have them come once a month and in my opinion, it is worth every. single. penny!!

Yay for much needed HELP!

On a different note, I finally figured out what Jacob was saying in the video I posted a while back! Of course, I had to have Jacob say it for Mark and Mark figured it out right away. Jacob was saying "Spanish". He wanted to me to say the colors in Spanish! He can say most of them as well and I'm not sure if he's learning this from school or Dora. Either way, I'll take it. I love that he wants to learn words in Spanish.

His eagerness to read lately is really starting to show. When we're reading books, he follows along with the words as you read them and he'll point out the letters. I love that he knows what sounds all the letters make and if you say a word and ask what it starts with, he'll tell you by just recognizing what the first letter says! For example, if you say "What letter does the word 'ball' start with." He'll think about it and say "B"! Or vice versa, if you say "What word starts with the letter 'P'?" He'll think about it and try to come up with a word that starts with that letter. This is a bit more difficult for him, but he's getting better at it everyday! I really love watching the way he thinks...and his love of learning. It's the best!

Project Wall Letters - Done!

My Mom's League has a craft club that meets every month and at each meeting, they learn to make something super nifty. Unfortunately, I haven't made it to one of these meetings yet because a) they are always filled up before I have a chance to RSVP and b) I feel too guilty leaving Mark alone to put the kids to bed! For those of us who can't make it, the Mom's League publishes how to make that month's craft in the monthly newsletter. When I read about how to make your own wall letters, I was psyched because we had yet to put Maddie's name on her wall in her room and we had been meaning to do so since she was born.

Well, as goes any crafty project I undertake, it was laborious. Not because it was a difficult project, but somehow I managed to make it difficult...me and my non-crafty self. After 4 trips to Hobby Lobby and JoAnns Fabrics (yes I said four), I finally completed Maddie's letters. It didn't come out as spectacular as I had wished, but considering the blood, sweat and tears that went into it, those darn letters were going up on that wall no matter how ridiculous they looked.

Weekend Fun

I don't know when it happened, but it did. Maybe it was January 30, 2007, the day Jacob was born. All of a sudden, our lives weren't our lives anymore. Case in point: Our entire weekend has revolved around toddler activities. And here's the best part...this is the most excitement we've had in a long time and I love it!

On Friday, my playgroup went to the Children's Museum in Fort Worth. Jacob and I used to go to the San Jose Children's Museum back in California and this one was very similar, except for one thing. At this one, there was a huge area where you could build wooden train tracks and run the trains along them. Jacob was in train heaven.

How cool are these train tables? They have holes in the middle so you can crawl underneath and pop up in a hole and play with the trains all around you. We need one of these at home! Jacob's friend Hudson is in the other hole (and coincidentally, Hudson gave Jacob that very cute polo sweater he's wearing for his birthday)





Look at the big dinosaur!



This totally cracked me up. We were in the "hospital" with the "babies" and Jacob immediately picked up the bulb syringe and proceeded to suck the mucus out of the baby's nose. We must do this a lot to Maddie.



The grocery store was a hit. Here he is ringing up the other little boy's groceries.



Maddie fell asleep in the Bjorn while we were playing grocery store.



On Saturday, Mark took Jacob down to Blue Sky, a sports center in Keller so that he could register him for "First Kicks", a soccer league for 3-4 year olds! I can't tell you how excited we are for this. Jacob will be on a real team with a coach and will play every Saturday morning. It starts in May and runs for about 8 weeks. I think he is going to love, love, love it!

Saturday afternoon was our friend Kyle's 3rd birthday party at ASI Gymnastics in Keller. We've been there once before and by far Jacob's favorite part is swinging from the rope and landing in the foam block pit. Seriously, I wanted to swing from the rope and land in the foam block pit. This place is super fun! They also have individual trampolines that you can jump on which is always a big hit with the little ones.







Today (Sunday) was an event we've been anticipating for a long, long time: A Day Out With Thomas! Believe it or not, last year I was bummed when we moved here and found out that we had just missed Thomas. I was certainly NOT going to miss it this year. Thomas comes to Grapevine and takes the kids on a train ride along with tons of other activities including a Thomas jumpy house, petting zoo, and lots and lots of wooden trains to play with. Good thing we got oodles of practice at the Children's Museum!

My new hobby

A couple of weeks ago I announced to Mark that I was buying myself an anniversary gift -- a new lens for our Nikon! Unfortunately he wasn't as enthusiastic about it as I was, but hopefully he comes around and likes it as much as I do. I am obsessed with taking pictures of the kids lately and read that this particular lens was great for portrait purposes, especially in low light. It came in the mail yesterday and while I need to play around with it some more to really learn about its potential, I'm liking what I see already. Hopefully you will too. :)

Everyday, I am amazed at how beautiful this little girl's eyes are. They just blow me away.





We've been going on lots of walks lately while Jacob rides his bike. Of course he has to be silly for the camera.





These are full of crazy shadows, but I still love them







This last picture is very grainy because I was playing with the aperture setting, but I still love it because it captures so much of Jacob's personality. He was cracking up in this picture and I'm thrilled I got him smack dab in the middle of the throw-your-head back laughing pose.

The Perfect End to a Perfect Day

So, I was writing yesterday about how great our Tuesday morning had gone. Both kids slept for over 2 hours at the same time which is just absolutely unheard of. That 2 hour break energized me and once they both woke up, we loaded up the sand toys and headed straight for the park. It was 65 degrees without a cloud in the sky so it was the most picture perfect day we've had since we moved here. I was excited to get Maddie on the baby swing because I just knew she would love it. Jacob and I had a long conversation about his sand toys before we went into the park. He really wanted to bring them in but I made it very clear that if we brought them in, we were going to have to share them with all the other kids in the sandbox. This has been a major issue for us in the past so I had completely stopped bringing toys to the park at all. But, it was a new year -- and a beautiful day and I thought "we have to try again someday".

It's a good thing Jacob loves to swing. He always has. There were 2 baby swings right next to each other so Jacob hopped in one (although I think his baby swing days are limited. He looked ridiculous in that thing!) and I put Maddie in the other. The smile that broke out on Maddie's face was absolutely priceless. That baby girl literally grinned from ear to ear for the entire 45 minutes she was in there. She was giggling and screeching with joy. It makes me want to get a baby swing for our backyard!

The sandbox was next to the baby swings so when Jacob had had enough swinging, he said he wanted to play in the sand. I reminded him once more that the toys were for everyone to share. The next thing that happened was unbelievable. He went over to the plastic bag where the toys were, carried them in to the sandbox, dumped them all out in the sand and yelled "Hi everybody! Do you want to play with my sand toys?!" I nearly fell to the ground. I'm not joking. I think I may have cried tears of joy and shouted excitedly to the heavens. You really don't understand what a huge step this was. We've left countless parks in the past because he would throw fits in the sandbox when he couldn't have the toy he wanted because someone else was playing with it. Even if it wasn't a toy that we brought, he'd still be upset. The fact that they were our toys AND he was giving them freely to other kids was one of my prouder moments. I showered him with "good job" and "I am so proud of you" over and over again. So, I stood by and swung my grinning, giggling baby girl in the swing while watching Jacob play happily with his toys and the other kids in the most beautiful weather spring weather we've seen yet.

To end a perfect day, we met Daddy at "Fat Daddy's" for some yummy dinner on his way home from work. Man, I wish everyday could be like yesterday.

Do you think Maddie liked the swing? See pics and videos below!

Tuesday Mornings

Tuesday mornings are becoming busy days for Jake, Maddie and myself. Jacob has his swim lesson at 9 am so we all have to be out of the house by 8:30. Then, we usually head over to the Southlake library for toddler story time at 10:45, but not until we make a Starbucks run (a "pick me up" for the sole purpose of getting Mommy through the rest of the day). After that, we are all starving, so we like to stop at Subway for lunch. Jacob is a huge fan of Subway. Then it's time for much needed naps at home after all the excitement.

Jacob had his 2nd swim lesson today and did great. He's a bit hesitant to put his whole head in the water but I'll know he'll get more adventurous with each class. We also just found out that our friend Kyle is in our class and we are super excited about that. Today, they got to slide down a little toddler slide into the water. He loved it! Unfortunately, I didn't have my camera out when he went down the slide, but I did get him jumping into the water to his teacher.




One of the most frustrating things in the whole world is when Jacob is trying so hard to tell me something and I can't understand what it is. This rarely happens these days because his vocabulary and pronunciation have vastly improved, but every once in a while, he says something that I cannot comprehend! Here we are at Subway and he's saying a word that I just cannot get for the life of me. I STILL haven't figured it out!




Finally, we started giving Maddie "real" food yesterday. We tried rice cereal when she turned 4 months old and she had zero interest. Closer to her 5 month birthday, I tried the cereal that is blended with oats and barley and mixed it with pear juice. Man, she was a fan of that! Lately, she's been tracking everything we eat with a very curious eye and even grabs at our food! I thought it was time to try some peas. She loved them!! I sure hope she's as good of an eater as Jacob. I really don't want to have to learn how to feed a picky eater. That's one thing I'd rather not have to deal with!






It has been such a gorgeous day today, we had to end the morning with a visit to our favorite fountain in Southlake Town Square. My penny wish was for the kids to take good naps today. And voila, they've both been sleeping for 2 hours. At the same time! That NEVER happens! Hallelujah.

Cuter than cute

As exhausting as parenting a 3 year old and 5 month old can be, I find myself amazed at these 2 amazing creatures we made. Daddy was out of town this weekend and the kids and I were upstairs tonight getting ready for baths. Jacob was running around naked finding all of the toys he could possibly drag into his bath. Maddie was lying in her baby bathtub watching him run back and forth like a crazy person, smiling every time he came by. This is becoming one of my favorite things in the world to watch lately. If Jacob is in the room, Maddie is usually bent over backwards trying to locate him and as soon as she does, she breaks out into this enormous smile. She never minds it when he tackles her with a hug and kiss and she certainly doesn't mind it when he's running around screaming like a lunatic. In fact, I think she prefers it. So anyway, there they were, in all their nakedness, and I was just in shock at how big my little boy had become how little Maddie looked compared to him and insanely, how similar they looked at the same time. My heart kind of skipped a beat thinking about the fact that they will grow up as brother and sister and people will certainly always say "they are definitely both Broxtermans because they look so much alike!" Jacob loves her so much and I can see already how much she adores him. I know they will fight. I am surely not naive to this point. But, I hope they love each other without limits at the same time.

Phew. Had to get those emotions off my chest! Now that I've made it clear that I am the stereotypical dopey, emotional mom, I've got some updating to do! Jacob started swim lessons last week and ironically, the only other boy in his class is also Jacob and is turning 3 next week. It was pretty amusing watching the teachers saying "Jacob, come this way" and "Jacob do that". Both boys were quite confused. They were also both quite comfortable in the water and had a blast at their first lesson. When the teacher said to us (the other parents and myself) "these boys are fearless", I had to turn around and make sure they were talking to me too! If you know Jacob at all, you would not describe him as fearless. He won't go up a climbing structure or down the slide at the playground by himself and he is the last one to try any daredevil stunts (which I appreciate), so hearing that he was fearless kind of caught me off guard. He does love the water though and my hope is that he gets more and more comfortable with each passing lesson so that we can have some fun water adventures in Hawaii in June!

Jacob also moved up to the "big boy class" in school a couple of weeks ago. The week before he started his new class, I asked them to take him to visit his new class a few times before he had to start for real. On the Friday before he was going to start (the following Monday), Miss Kelly pulled Jacob from his current class to take him to the new class to check it out and he refused to go with her. He told her, "My Mommy said I don't have to go to the new class until Monday." Miss Kelly had no idea what to do. "What do I say to that?" she said. I died laughing when I picked him up. I did tell him that he didn't have to start his new class until Monday, but I guess I didn't make it clear that they were going to take him to visit before then! You need to watch what you say around this kid because he doesn't forget a word!

We have also seen a resurgence of dancing Jacob. When he was about a year old, he was a dancing fool. Then, suddenly to our dismay, he stopped dancing for no apparent reason. He has started dancing again which just warms my heart. I love watching him when a good song comes on because he just can't resist shaking his "bootie". A couple of weeks ago, I took him to the dentist for a check up. Since he's 3 now, he goes to the back by himself. I was a bit worried about this, but they assured me he'd be fine. When they called me back, I knew why. There were movies playing, every video game you could possibly imagine, and sugar free lollipops galore! The assistant who walked me back said "Jacob is live entertainment!" That made me super proud. There is never a dull moment with this one.

Maddie is quite the alert and curious baby these days. She grabs at anything and everything (including your face) and will seriously twist her body around in all directions to find you in the room. She is also the most smiley baby I've ever seen. I can't tell you how many times random strangers have said to us "What a happy baby she is!" I don't ever tire from hearing that either. You can say that to me a million times and it will never get old. She only naps for 30 minutes at a time, but when she wakes, she's smiling from ear to ear so I'm not sure I should complain. She's constantly chewing on something so if a tooth doesn't appear sometime in the near future, I will be shocked! My new favorite thing to do during our quiet days at home is grab my camera and start snapping away at her cuteness.

Now that I've written a novel, I'll share some of their cuteness with you.









Jacob "shaking his tail":



Jacob singing "Itsy Bitsy Spider":