Piper & Briggs

Here's a few details on these two sweeties!  The most common comment I get from strangers are "How old is she?  Three?  She is a tall three year old!  And, smart!"  "How old is he?  (Laughter after my answer) He's going to be your little football player!"  Funny!

Briggs loves the bath!  We've never had a fear issue with him!

Her face is so funny!  She was trying to ignore me but couldn't stop herself from somewhat posing!

Briggs LOVES books!  He can just sit and look through the pages and he gurgles and gabs his entire way through the book as if he is reading!  It is so fun to listen to him 'read.'  This is what entertains him most on car rides!

Piper LOVES dressing up and dancing!  And you might even be able to add a third 'd' to that list...DRAMA!

Sweetness!  Briggs weighs 27 lbs currently.  He is a little lover and quite a talker!  Briggs is always vocal and noisy!  He is starting to get a little whiny at times, wanting me to hold him more now.  It's so hard carrying him around and actually accomplishing anything because he is so heavy!  He is saying 'nigh-nigh' before bed each night.  Last night he said, "Nigh-nigh dada" to Michael.  So cute!  He can also say 'mama', 'dada', 'Pipuh' or sis-sis for Sissy sometimes, 'Duguh' is thank-you, and he can say 'hi'.  I haven't been as good about teaching him sign language.  He knows 'more' and 'all-down' but doesn't use them much. I sure don't keep track of it as much as I did for Piper at this age!

This is Piper dancing!  She has been so sweet, lovey, and mannerly this past week.  I can see her maturing so much.  She continues to puzzle us and to make us laugh a lot!  She weighs 32 pounds.  We went to her last ENT appointment this month and her tubes are both out and her hearing is great and there was no sign of fluid or infection so she does not need tubes again!  Yay!!!  She has been asking to invite friends over a lot and we just don't have any her age to call up and say, "hey can you come over today!"  It makes me sad but I know this is just a season and friends will come soon.  She is in a stage where she still needs naps but maybe not everyday.  She loves doing 'activities' (crafts)!

This is Piper being dramatic!  Haha!  She was at the table and whining about something and so Michael started making these faces at her and she stopped!  He's so good about deferring the behavior and I'm so bad about getting worked up about the behavior!

This is Briggs making his cheesy face!

Christmas Activities!

We have been busy this month!  I tried putting together an Advent Calendar of activities but was not so good about staying on top of that!  Shocking!  We still were able to do many fun activities at home and around the community!  I didn't take pictures of everything we did but here is a sampling!  

We went to see Anna sing with her school choir at the mall one day and we got to eat lunch with her!

I made a wall felt tree and ornaments for a new activity to play with. Briggs loved it the most!  I've found lots of fun new activities on Pinterest!  It's addicting!

Our cousins were over for a few hours and I had run out of graham crackers so we made saltine cracker houses!  And, I read on a blog the night before to hot glue your crackers together to make it quicker and easier!  I will not be scared of gingerbread houses ever again! We also decorated a big gingerbread house at Lilly's and Piper loved it!

With the help and persistence of Chandra, I painted my front door black!  It was tan before!

We went to see Lilly perform in the Nutcracker ballet in Weatherford!  She was a little mouse and a gingerbread cookie.  Piper really had fun but the King Rat character and all the mice that fought the toy soldiers confused and scared her.  I've answered many questions about 'the mice.'

We started back on learning our letters again.  I decided to start at the beginning.  Her Piper is 'decorating' something for the letter D!

And, here she is making a Christmas wreath!

Thanksgiving 2011

Briggs with his cheesy grin! He knows how to make a person laugh and will do it over and over to get a reaction!
We went to Clinton for Thanksgiving this year. It was a little different for us this year. Michael only had the day of Thanksgiving off and since we live so close now, we just drove in for the day and drove back home. We have never not spent the night on a holiday.

Briggs was not fond of the delicious meal! He's been a weird eater lately, especially not wanting to eat meat!??! He still maintains his football player figure though!!

My sister and I loaded up our six kids and went to visit my parents for one night the week of Thanksgiving. This is Briggs after he fell asleep with his pretzel!! My parents and my brother came to my sister's house the Saturday following Thanksgiving to celebrate together.

And, shortly after celebrating Thanksgiving I started getting out all the Christmas decor. Look who is having a hard time with 'no touch!' He's done really well with all the Christmas decorations surprisingly!

Just saying hello!

We have been super busy. My camera is broken. I still haven't figured out the entire downloading process of my new phone's camera and loaner camera. Hence, the lack of pictures and updates!!! I know, I know...excuses, excuses! I feel like I've been spinning my wheels lately and my brain is all scattered. Like, super scattered. For example, I did got to a pediatrician appointment on Friday, when, in fact, the appointment was scheduled for Thursday! That was a first! Fabulous, huh? Now do you believe me! The last time I felt like this was shortly after we moved to Ardmore and about to celebrate Thanksgiving & Christmas with Piper for the first time. She was 7 months old. Isn't that crazy! Same time frame! Only it's Briggs' second Christmas and he is 13 months. The moving process is not good for my mind! ha!These kiddos, though, are still my cutie pies...don't you think? Briggs is walking with his walker more and with our help. He's stood up all by himself a few times. We may have a walking boy by January! That would be 15 months. Same time frame as his big sister! Fine with me! Piper has been trying really hard to put her clothing on all by herself. She's getting better with it each day! She's also working on staying in her bedroom until 7 am in the morning thanks to the fabulous light up alarm clock that Grammy gifted to us last year! We're still working on it! The time change wasn't so kind on Piper but Briggs handled it like any other day. Piper has been kind of a like a war head candy lately. Sweet, reeeeally sour, and sweet again! She can be so much like me sometimes! Deep breaths...
Piper received these funny vampire teeth in the Halloween care package Grandma & Grandpa sent to her. Both kids love them! It is an accurate portrayal of how they have been lately...sucking the blood, I mean, life out of me! haha!
I'm trying really hard to get Christmas shopping done so that I can sit down and relax through December and really enjoy my time with these two munchkins because they are growing so fast. This will be Piper's last December at home all day...I'm a little torn in my emotions thinking about that one!

Halloween 2011

Well, we had a few cowpokes blow in from the ranch on Halloween...
Meet Deputy Piper and Sheriff Briggs. They are one rough and tough team...at least it feels like that on some days!! Ha!
Since we had a cowboy birthday party this year, I thought why not kill two birds with one stone! So they were cute little cowboys for Halloween too!



Piper was EXCITED!!! Until, the crazy neighbor down the street opened the door and had a weirdo, scary costume on and a mechanical voice. After that, it pretty much went down hill because she was scared! Even Michael said it scared him! She got about a half of a bucket and declared that she was done and wanted to go home.
Meet Mr. Pyro...he was burning stuff in the pumpkin!
We sat on the front porch passing out candy which was the absolute best to Piper! She loved it! See all the candy in her hands. She was loading the kids up! She was even running out to the sidewalk saying, "Come here! Come get some candy!! I've got candy!"
We sat outside until 8:30 I think. It was fun! Our neighborhood is great for trick-or-treating. Lots of families and kids. And, we even managed to meet a few new OSU families!!
It was, however, our first year not to spend Halloween with the Roush family. Piper and Lilly have been together since their first Halloween. Piper and Briggs had a cough and runny nose which would not have been a good thing for baby Evelyn since she is so young! We were definitely sad to not be with them! Even, Piper said, "Are we going to go with Rusty, Chandra, Lilly, Sophia, and baby Evelyn??" She was bummed! Next year!!!

Pumpkin Carving

We got together with our cousins to carve and paint pumpkins the night before Halloween. This was our pumpkin, Packy...short for pac man! Piper was a little scared of Packy at first and she was unsure of his name. He was called Polly a few times. But, by the end of Halloween night, they were buds! And, Michael was up to his pyromaniac antics as well!Trebor is serious about carving pumpkins. I think if I purchased a pumpkin carving kit as a gift for him, he'd be over-the-moon excited! Ha!Briggs enjoyed playing with Seth. Any chance to pull someones hair is always a fun time to him!
Seth and Sheryl
Piper is proud of her painting abilities. She was really into it...for about 5 minutes!

Sheryl was cooking biscuit pizzas for us.
And, Olivia was the only child who got into the gross part of it, pulling the seeds out! She would have even carved the pumpkin, if we could trust her with a knife! It is fun to live nearby our cousins!

Briggs in Review

Day 1 - October 15, 20101 Month
2 Months
3 Months
4 Months
5 Months
6 Months
7 Months
8 Months
9 Months
10 Months
11 Months

12 Months

I realized last week that I forgot I to post Briggs' monthly pictures after he turned one. I think it is fun to look back and see how a baby changes so much over the course of a year!!