Month Eight

What can I say that hasn't been said before in recent months? Life is busy, and I'm late...again. Brooke is turning into a little person with a severe case of ADHD so most of my day is something like: run, run, run, run, clean sweet potato off of every surface in the house, run, run...30 minute nap. We repeat this three times and then she goes to bed and I'm left wandering around the house with Corey trying to figure out why our living room looks like Chernobyl and when the last time I ate something that wasn't pureed was.

In all seriousness, Brooke is really turning into a person. She crawls, she pulls herself up onto every surface in the house, she says "Dada" over and over again, and she eats EVERYTHING. She's tried pears, peaches, peas, broccoli, mango, squash, cantaloupe, apples, pluots, nectarines, blueberries, green beans, chicken, turkey, and plums. She likes all of it, but really prefers just to have a huge mound of cheerios (organic, and fruit juice sweetened, thank you) sitting in front of her while she watches "Baby Signing Time".

We discovered around month seven that although she is rather outgoing at home, once in public she clams up like a mute, so I have been making it a priority to take her to storytime whenever I can. Unfortunately, the local baby times are all inconvenient to her nap schedule so we don't always make it, but I am happy to say that she seems to be understanding that there are other people in the universe other than Mommy and Daddy and Sprocket (who Brooke is still completely in love with (and it remains unrequited)).

We visited another doctor this month, the geneticist that it took four months to get an appointment with. We are so blessed that every doctor we've taken Brooke to has been kind and patient, especially those at Phoenix Children's Hospital. We will be having several genetic tests run on Brooke soon, some for general hearing loss, and some because she shows a few signs of a genetic syndrome called Waardenburg. If you're related to us and you're reading this, rest assured that we will let you know if she tests positive for this syndrome because it could possibly be in either gene pool and could affect future generations, but I'm not stirring up drama without knowing.

Brooke's sleeping has run the gamut from terrible to much improved, and we think that teething is particularly difficult for this one because although she still just has her bottom two teeth, she has been grabbing her ears and jaw and drooling like a mad woman. We are hopeful that when the top ones come in she will have a very short reprieve and we can get an idea of her baseline sleep patterns.

We spent her eighth month birthday celebrating in Pinetop with Grandma and Grandpa, and Brooke will be blessed to spend her ninth month birthday with her other four grandparents in Tennessee, three of which she hasn't met yet.

If I say that we are looking forward to all the headaches that come with traveling with a pint-sized demon I would be lying, but we are excited to be taking a vacation together, see some new parts of the country, and introduce Brooke to more of her family. Also, we will be going to the top rated aquarium in the country, a candy factory (hello, heaven) and playing something called "Hillbilly Golf" which may or may not involve noodling a catfish and taking shots of moonshine. I will update you post-activity.

If you have some extra time on the 2nd and 8th, please say a little prayer for the passengers on our flights. If Brooke gets too rowdy we may not be able to afford the drink tab for all of them, so I may be bringing my gallon sized ziploc to security full of pureed apples, hand sanitizer, and Patron silver.

Again, apologies for the lateness. If any of you would like to volunteer your babysitting services while I type up next months blog please feel free to show up at any time. I would be misguided if I didn't suggest bringing galoshes, a duck call, and two changes of clothes. You never know when terror will strike!