Our little girl

Time flies.  I say it all the time and with every child. 

I'm trying to keep up with documenting moments in our kids lives so that years down the road when they read our blog books, they will know what they were interested in at this time in their lives and what they were like!  So here's the last few months of Brooklyn's life!  

At 10 months she was taking 4 bottles a day, taking 2 naps a day, eating any and all baby food we gave her (except for Mangoes, nectarines, and peaches-- she has reactions to all these foods).  We've even started feeding her some table foods and she's enjoying tasting new foods.  She's crawling everywhere and has even mastered crawling up and down stairs.  She unwillingly will walk around in a walker, but only lasts a few minutes at a time. She is standing up in her crib and pulling up on things.  She walks around from one place to the next holding onto furniture.   She's battled several ear infections and colds this month, which is probably due to the back and forth traveling we've done.  She learned to wave bye bye, stand up by herself without holding onto things, and learned to stand up from sitting down.   She even started drinking water from a sippy cup. 

 

Days after we flew back to Saudi, B turned 11 months and grew up on us.  On Christmas day, she began taking steps to walk by herself, but only makes it 2 or 3 steps before falling!  She's trying though!  She started taking less bottles and eating more table foods. She'd prefer picking up food to feed herself, rather then be fed with a spoon.  That's been fun!  Brooklyn has become extremely playful!!!  She laughs and goofs off and loves when we chase her around.  A huge milestone this month is that B got her first tooth.  It seems like it's taken forever to happen and it took about 4 days for it to fully break through, and she struggled through it with every possible side affect to teething.  She toughed through it though. B also learned how to clap!  Now, she claps every time we stand her up to get her to practice walking.  I guess she's use to us clapping for her when she walks, she just does it right away.  

99% of the time, if Brooklyn isn't sitting on her knees, she is sitting in a hurkey type position.  It's really funny to watch and think that's comfortable to her, but she doesn't mind.  

Brooklyn has been a busy girl lately as we prepare for her turning 1.  She's moving around more and more around the house and is into everything.  We now have to keep the bathroom doors closed because she enjoys pulling down toilet paper and playing with the toilet water.  She loves climbing into the dishwasher and fridge, and sneaks up the stairs anytime she finds the gate opened!  A few days ago, I found her outside in the front yard where Miles left the door opened and she snuck out.  She went to her first all girls party and had a blast.  She even came home with a painting of her handprints turned into lollipops.



Brooklyn is right there with her brothers and is into EVERYTHING.  She's not affected one bit by getting dirty and playing with the boys!  She has fun splashing around and making messes in one minute and the next she's nurturing and mothering all her baby dolls with kisses.  

Bouncing Balls Party

We celebrated Miles 2nd Birthday with a Bouncing Balls party.  Miles is obsessed with balls.  All balls.  Any kind of balls!  He loves them and usually is always carrying a ball around.  I threw around ideas for his party for months before finally going this route since I really wanted the theme to be something he was into.  I could have done Elmo or Airplanes, but he never showed THAT much of an interest in either one of those things when I was ordering party supplies back in October in order to take back with me from the USA.  It all ended up working out and I was able to decorate for the party going with the theme.  

I designed the idea of his cake hoping it would be whimsical and fun looking.  My friend Rhonda made some cake balls for me to use around the cake since she was making some for another child's party the same day.  The top 'ball' is actually a styrofoam ball that I covered in fondant.  I'm not real big on making cake just to make cake and since the bottom 2 layers were going to be plenty of cake for everyone at the party, I played it safe.  Miles loved the cake and his favorite part besides the 'bouncing' balls was all the sprinkles.  To cover the cake in sprinkles, I used the technique I found here.  

I found ideas on Pinterest for decorating our place with balloons and Miles was mesmerized with all the balloons we had everywhere.  We lined our sidewalk with balloons by tying the strings to the plants and when Miles woke up from his nap he ran and ran and ran between them.  It was precious to watch!  He also stood outside waiting for his friends to come and he did such a good job being patient.
 
 

To say Miles was excited about his party would be an understatement.  He knows now that cake usually means party and he was bouncing around in anticipation.  Once Miles friends arrived they all went out and jumped in the bounce house set up in the backyard.  The kids played and jumped and played some more.  

 

 

 

After playtime, we let Miles open presents and he was pumped to get new toys, water guns, balls, books, and more!  It was fun watching his reaction to his gifts 

 

 

Our little boy had a fun birthday and was beyond excited to celebrate with all his friends.

Miles Lee we love you so much and we love how much you love life!  Happy Birthday sweet boy! 

Working Hard for Your Money

Since Gavin turned 4, we've been slowly giving him responsibilities around the house and trying to teach him to work hard at everything he does.  We've also been practicing doing things with a cheerful and willing heart.  For the most part, Gavin generally has a great attitude about things and likes the feeling of doing good and accomplishing something so when we sat down with him a month ago to establish a weekly chore list he was more then thrilled.  The best part about it for him, was when he found out he was going to get paid for doing his jobs.  Brooks and I have gone back and forth about whether or not we wanted to pay Gavin for jobs that essentially should be things he does just because he lives in our house, but we decided money could/would be an incentive to use while teaching him about responsibilities, chores, jobs, and expectations.  Then, as time goes on, we will slowly weed out the jobs that are just expectations and allow him to work for money in other ways.

My friend, Che, sent me a chart she found where you fill in the list of jobs and there is a spot for every day of the week next to that job.  We print a new one up every Sunday night and sit down with Gavin to discuss what jobs he wants to do that week.  We've been doing this for a month now and he's pretty good at making his own choices.  We tend to persuade him in certain directions if there is a chore we want him to start practicing doing and he usually goes for it.  Each week, he chooses different chores and we've noticed from one week to the next, even if that job isn't on his chore list, he sometimes still does it!  For instance, one week, he picked to load the dishwasher, but the next he didn't.  However, when it came time to clean up the kitchen, he stayed with me and loaded the dishwasher.  It was all his doing, his own choosing, and I didn't have to "fight" him.   He has even started noticing when a trash can is full and will dump the trash into our outside trash can all by himself!  It's awesome!  

This really, really has been a great experience for him and us.  We don't force him to do any of these jobs.  We simply remind him that he can let us know when he's finished a job and we'll mark it off.  He has already learned that if he doesn't do them, he doesn't get paid for it.   We are loving watching him bask in his new responsibilities and how excited he gets to be helping us and taking care of stuff.  I'm glad we decided to do this and really can see the benefits from it.  A huge perk is that now Miles wants to be doing jobs so we have double the help when it comes to taking out the trash, clearing off the kitchen table, or picking up the bath toys.  

Payday comes once a week and for each completed job Gavin gets .25 SAR= $.07 (I totally just did the conversion and geez, that seems pathetic) BUT if Gavin did every job on his list at 1 SAR a piece, he could make up to 35 SAR a week which = $10 (that's $40 a week for a 4 year old- no thanks!).  He already has 16 SAR = $5 and he's pumped about it.  We're going to give him a few more weeks to load up on some more money, then we're going to teach him the importance of saving some money, sharing some money, and spending some money.  We're hoping over time he understands the magnitude of working to earn money, how having money can be beneficial, and being a good steward of your money is important.  

Happy New Year

And just like that 2012 is over.  We rang in the New Year hanging out and having dinner with our friends who are here in the Kingdom.  Don't let the first photo fool you-- that was the extent of our fun! We were home and in bed by 9pm.  Woo hoo.  

Hope this next year brings you all love, peace, joy, and happiness!!!  

Miles turned 2

December 30th, we celebrated Miles 2nd Birthday.  It was such a fun day all about him!  We started the day with his birthday breakfast-- a chocolate croissant.  I decided to sing Happy Birthday to him and let him blow a candle out at every meal.  He LOVED it!!!  Gavin wanted to make Miles a cake for his birthday so we spent the morning in the kitchen.  The boys had so much fun mixing and baking and decorating.   Brooks called Miles around lunch time to wish him a Happy Birthday and Miles was thrilled.  We've been trying to teach him how to show the #2 with his hands and he's getting better and better at it everyday.  He even thinks he can show Brooks through the phone.  The boys got some play dough sets for Christmas so we spent the afternoon making creations and shapes.  It was fun!!  Miles had a blast making snakes and bears and apples (random, I know).   I decided since everyone was still dealing with jetlag that Miles birthday was the perfect day and excuse to not make the boys take naps.  We literally played all day!!   

For dinner, I made one of his favorite meals, but since he didn't get to nap he was struggling to stay awake by 6pm.  Poor kid sat in his chair and within minutes was out.  We tried waking him up a few times and getting him to eat something, but he wouldn't budge.  The only idea we came up with was to put his cake in front of him and "force" him to wake up.  It worked!  A lit candle on his cake did the trick!  He was all about the cake.  Since it was his birthday I figured who cares about eating actual dinner and we just let him eat cake.  We wanted him to be awake and alert for presents, too.  He got so excited to have us singing Happy Birthday to him, he asked for us to sing several times!

Miles got to open lots of presents from us and from family.  He was excited to open all the gifts!  Art supplies, Mickey Mouse fire truck, clothes, cars & trucks, and a new backpack for school!  He was ecstatic.  My parents got Miles a BBQ pit for Christmas and mailed it to us months ago.  In all the hustle for Christmas, we forgot to take it out and set it up for Christmas morning.  We decided to let him open it for his birthday.  The pictures below will show how excited Miles was to see the big BBQ box come out of the mailed box, but he was more interested in those styrofoam peanuts.  He was certain there was something else in there.  He was so persistent he even got Brooklyn and Gavin interested in finding goods in there.  To their dismay, the box was empty so we got them all involved in putting the BBQ pit together!  It was a fun family project and Miles loved his BBQ pit!!!!

 

I can't believe it's been 2 years since we welcomed Miles into this world.  It's been amazing to watch how much he's changed over the last 2 years and how he's growing into his personalty.  Last year, I remember thinking how Miles was a calm, easy going, laid back child and now he's a fun, wild, outgoing, spunky kid who keeps us on our toes and always guessing.  We're loving watching him come into his own and figuring things out in life.  He makes us laugh everyday and always has a smile on his face.  He looks up to his big brother and wants to do everything Gavin does.  He adores Brooklyn and has just recently started wanting to take care of her and tending to her!  It's cute!  

**On a side note, we moved Miles into a big boy bed back in August when we needed the crib for Brooklyn and he's done great in the bed.  We've had a rail on his bed since then and Brooks thought it'd be a good idea to take the rail down now that Miles was 2.   I was sooooo not ready for this, but he's loving having a bed JUST like Gavin's!  You can almost tell he's proud of the rail being gone!  It's cute.  

*** We also took away his pacifier right before we left Saudi in November.  It was a quick moment decision and Miles did AWESOME with it.  We cut the tip of it just like we did for Gavin and let Miles throw it in the trash.  He did it then let Brooks put him to bed and that was the end of it-- literally!  Our little boy really is growing up.  Next up for Miles-- potty training!  

Christmas in Saudi, Again

We spent our third year waking up Christmas morning in Saudi Arabia and had a very fun and special morning all together as a family!  We all struggled with jet lag through the night so we got a late start on our morning.  We made Christmas pancakes for breakfast before opening presents.  The kids were so excited to see gifts under the tree and couldn't believe that Santa made it to Saudi in time.   After celebrating Christmas for a month, while in the USA, the kids were just as eager to see what new toy and gifts they got.  We tried getting them to open their gifts slowly, to watch one another and attempt to play with their toys, but that wasn't happening, the kids tore in to each present one after another.  Brooks and I loved watching our kids being so excited and enjoying every moment of their morning.  They were laughing, checking out one another's gifts, and squealing with excitement!  

Gavin got lots of cars, hot wheels tracks, some new DVD's, along with his Spiderman watch that he was so consistent on wanting from Switzerland.  He was BEYOND words, over the moon when he opened the watch!  

Miles opened his own race car track that he played with non stop for days after Christmas.  He got his own cash register, monster truck motorcycle, frisbee, and new books.

Brooklyn got her first baby doll, a play vanity mirror, some floor toys, and girl books.  To our surprise, she was very into opening gifts and watching what  was going on.  

Brooks and I exchanged gifts while the kids opened up their stockings.  Brooks got new work out clothes and a traveling backpack.  I was surprised with a sewing machine!  It was a great Christmas morning for us!

Regardless of where we spent Christmas morning, we were together as a family and made some sweet, sweet memories!  It was a fun day together and one we'll remember forever.

After playing with all the new toys and taking naps, we welcomed all our friends over for our annual Christmas Gumbo Dinner.  It was a great night celebrating with friends and being together away from family.

All the kids!  (without Jake)  Two years ago, there were 2 kids, now we have 8!

This is what we all looked like trying to get the kids to sit and smile for the above pic

The girls!  Steph, we missed you! 

Our family away from family