The Claggetts

So last weekend was lots of fun! My brother was able to fly in for the weekend to celebrate his 30th Birthday, which just also happens to be on Halloween!  We ended up, last minute I might add, ditching our trick or treat plans on Saturday and headed up to spend the weekend at my parents house. Unfortunately, our trick or treat was actually on Halloween so we missed it, but with all the Pig flu and everything else going around I was ok with just skipping it this year. We were able to get Brookie in her costume and take some pictures though!  She was the cutest little caterpillar that 30 bucks could buy. The only issue, as you will see in the pictures, was that she was waaaay faster than a normal caterpillar. I’m looking forward to actually participating in trick or treat next year when she is two.  Hopefully by then she will be able to understand whats going on a little bit more.

Speaking of the hippopotamus  flu, pig flu, swine flu, whatever the heck you want to call it flu.  I was able to get my H1N1 shot because I work with infants, but it takes two weeks to build up full immunity.  Since I just got it last week I guess that means I could still get that darn old cow flu! That being said  it probably was a good idea not to do trick or treat this year  since Brookelyn is still is pretty little.  If I had an older child then for sure we would have went, but we don’t so why risk it right?  I know you think I’m crazy, but I would rather hibernate for the winter than be sick.   After being sick for now… ummmmm… lets see…. 11 months out of the last 2yrs I think I’ve had my fill of that nonsense for awhile!   Wade and I don’t even take her to the stores unless absolutely necessary.  One or the other stays at home with her so we don’t get her sick with all the crazy people who think it’s ok to take there germs and sneeze all over people in public places.  Come on people if your sick STAY HOME and keep your crazy germs to yourself.  I know, I know I along with all my coworkers are all boring paranoid nurses/mommies!   Why did I add this to my post, well that’s because I can’t stress how important it is to stay at home when you are sick, wash your hands often, and sneeze into your elbow or tissue so you don’t expose the rest of the world to your germs.  Though you maybe  able to fight off the hippo flu, pregnant, immuno compromised, and babies  are not so fortunate and are ending up on life support.   Soooo PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STAY AT HOME IF YOU ARE SICK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No words can express how funny this was in person!  Hayley absolutely loved being pushed around in Brookie’s walker!  She would have stayed in there all day if we would have let her!

Holy Cow she left a bow in her hair…..enough said! Go Bucks!

Ummm how is it that in this grand old state it goes from hot to freezing in one giant foul swoop!  Well, regardless of our crazy weather, Brookie has still managed to keep up with the latest fashion trends for fall  She was photographed not only in her Birthday suit with a diaper and bib as her accessory items, but also in her new fuzzy warm PJ’s, per our stinking cold weather, and two very fashion forward fall dresses.  Baby leggings were included in her dress ensemble.  And no bows were sported by our little monster because she thinks they are edible and if she’s not chewing on them she throwing them in places never to been seen again.  Where you might ask?  How about the swirly whirly monster known as the toilet bowl.   It’s kinda like the dryer that eats one of your socks, except she throws them in there and doesn’t flush Hence they are thrown away immediately because lets face it that’s just gross.

Anyways, there is not much going on here on the home front.  I’ve had some vacation time over the past few weeks and have been enjoying doing absolutely nothing.  I had some playdates during the day, but other than that I just hung out at home for some much needed Mommy and Brookie one on one time.  It’s so nice not to be sick anymore.  I’ll tell ya, being sick for 6 weeks all for nothing is very trying.  But what can you do.  Sometime life stinks, and you just gotta roll with it otherwise you will make yourself crazy.  Anyways, I know you are all waiting for her crazy pictures so with out further ado.

I’ll keep this short and sweet.  Brookie officially loves tumbling all over the place, she loves dancing when the fight-song comes on the TV, and she can almost say “Go Bucks!”.  But her hands-in-the-air touchdown sign needs work.  (They actually go backwards, not up )

HOLY MOLY does Brookie ever look like grandpa Pauley.  And,”Hello” it’s not like I look like my dad! I look identical to my mom!  Where in the world did all the crazy German Pauley genes pop up from.  Now granted, I act and am built like my dad, but still.  The Holy Blonde Hair Batman, and Crazy Blue Eyes, it just goes to show you how recessive genes can pop up.  And now she getting these crazy ringlets on the back of her head, it’s just so darn cute.  I feel like her looks have changed so much, but yet stayed relatively similar.

Anyways, our little ham has been up to no good lately.  She has a giant bruise on her cheek, which I have yet to figure out how she got.   She literally is a walking, talking, play in the toilet bowl water, accident waiting to happen.  Oh, did I mention she can almost do a forward summersault all by herself?  Ummmm I wanted a swimmer not a gymnast, but little did we know she would watch me do it once and know how to do it herself.  Wade keeps saying, “Stefanie stop teaching her that!  Aren’t you worried she’s going to break her neck?”  Which I reply, “Ok, Wade, that is something my grandma would have said, but besides that, if you watch her she actually does it correct!”  Not to mention she’s only a year old.  Now mind you, I myself came home from the babysitters one day doing perfect cartwheels at 3 yrs old. And my mom had nothing to do with teaching me that.  I guess we’ll just try a bunch of things, sports wise and non-sport wise and let her choose what she likes the best.  I have a gymnastics facility 5 miles away, considering my mom drove me six days a week 45 min away for 3 to 4 hours at a time I’m feeling very fortunate and want to at least try it out with her.  I think we are going to definitely try the toddler classes because I know it teaches little ones how to follow directions and also structure.    So I guess as soon as she’s a little older we’re going to give it a shot and see what happens…..I’m still holding out for her to be a swimmer, and Wade wants a figure skater, if she’s into sports that is!

On another note,Wade accidentally left our stand up freezer door open over night and I lost over 10,000 oz of frozen breast milk.  Now you think I may be exaggerating about that number, but in all actuality I stopped counting once we hit 10,000 oz.  I wasn’t kidding when I said I was a human dairy cow.  We had two garbage bags full of nothing but empty breast milk bags and it took Wade hrs to empty out the milk into the sink and that isn’t even all of it.  There is still at least a couple thousand, yes thousand, oz left in the freezer.  But since it’s a year old it’s now no good to use.  So all that being said, no I was not mad, because honestly for one I was tired of thawing milk, 2 a lot of it was getting really old and no good anyways, 3 I was ready to have my freezer back, and 4 with everything else that has happened this month this seems awfully minor in the grand scheme of things considering Brookie is a year old and can have whole milk.  Too bad she hated whole milk for the first three days.  But now since she has no choice she has been more willing to take it as long as it’s not ice-cold.   Oh the joys of parenthood!  All that hard work down the drain….literally.  Wade was trying to calculate how many hours of my life we were throwing down the drain, but I swiftly put an end to that calculation.  I don’t need to know and really it makes no difference.  What mattered to me was that we didn’t have to buy formula and the fact that I never wanted to breast feed in the first place makes me very proud of myself for sticking with it, even if some of it was for nothing.  Next time if I produce what I did this time I will stop much earlier.  Again for the second time this month, lesson learned!

Ok, well I have a bunch of pictures so I hope you enjoy!

I don’t really have an update for you all, just pictures!

Ok, so I know we need some good news on the blog, but to be honest it’s been a rough week.  My OB GYN put me on an antibiotic for 10 days that has aloud me to keep down ummmmm just about nothing.  I was already down 12lbs from where I started before I got pregnant with Brookie and now i’m down another 8lbs.  20lbs lighter….can you say, “Wow!” Normally this would be a good thing, but since we want to have more kiddos I was hoping to get my nutritional status back up to par since breast feeding depleted body from every essential vitamin and nutrient. That’s what happens when you can’t keep anything down for 2 months, breast feed for 10 months, and throw up for the 10 previous months.  Let me tell ya this is SOOOOO frustrating! All my clothes that were already too big are now waaaaaaaaaaaay too big, but I guess such is life, right?

Anyways, enough about me and on to Brookelyn’s trip to the Zoo.  Despite throwing up, and everything else that is going on with my body right now, I decided to spend the day at the zoo with all my NICU girls and there babies.  We had such a wonderful time.  There were even moments that I actually felt ok, surprisingly enough.  Brookie had a wonderful time as did I.  All the girls have been so supportive throughout this whole process that Wade and I have been going through.  I couldn’t have a more understanding group of girls.  Brookie mostly enjoyed the grizzly bears and her and Isabella kept yelling back and forth that they were dogs.  We would try to say ba ba ba bears and the would say, “Ba Ba Ba Dog!” How cute!  We also got to see some otters swimming in tanks and Brookie just giggled at them.  All and all it was just nice to get out the house. I know you all want to see some pictures so here they are!

Well, as most of you already know Wade and I had another ultrasound on Sept 3rd which also  just happened to be scheduled on Brookie’s 1st Birthday!  Now I’m kicking myself in the butt for not saying no to that date, but that was all they had, and me not wanting to be a difficult patient agreed to it.  Anyways at the appointment we found out that I was carrying twins, though a shock to some, was not a shock to me at all.  Wade and I both had a feeling that that it was twins, and as most of you know there are twins on my side of the family.  They were conceived naturally, no fertility drugs this time, but  neither one of them had heart beats.  You may be thinking, “well this is why you shouldn’t have told people so early.”  And I think the complete opposite ,I have such a wonderful support system between family, freinds, and my friends in the NICU, that it was nice when I was working all this weekend to be able to tell them what was going on.  Until this morning I was still very very nauseous and none of my pregnancy syptoms had went away, which was becoming increasingly harder for me to deal with considering it was for no reason at this point.  Again it was also hard because Brookie’s birthday will always be a constant reminder of this.  Lesson learned   I also had not, until this morning ,officially started misscarrying, which again work had to know because if it happened there I would have to go home immediately.  Well, surprisingly enough we can clock in at work at 6:54am and that is exactly when this all started, what timing right?  So I was able to give report and leave right away with out them having to scramble to find another nurse to take my spot.  Wade and I are doing ok now.  I think something like this will forever change us, but in good way.  We are now just waiting for all of this to be officially done so we can move forward and hopefully sometime in the future try again.  And who knows maybe the next one will be twins again.  Either way we still feel very blessed to have our baby Brookie in our lives and we know that everything happens for a reason.  Hope you all are having a wonderful holiday weekend!

So Brookelyn’s officially 1yr old as of Sept 3rd! My, my how the year has flown by!  She is now 29.5in tall which is 75% and 20.6lb which is 40%! SO BIG! She is a walking talking little monster!  When the pediatrician asked what she says, we would say it and then she would repeat it.  Now it’s not totally understandable, but she at least is attempting, right? She says, nuh-night, allllll pronouced Al for alligator, she says dog, mommy, daddy, and nana for grandma.  She also says shhhhhhhh to anybody being loud, but that doesn’t include herself which is usually the loudest one in the room.  She is such a little gibber gabber.  She has something to say about everything, I can’t imagine where she picked that up from  She also loves to dance.  If she intently playing with her toys and a song comes on TV she immediately waves her arms and bounces up and down.  The girls at work call it the booty dance and if I’m having a bad day all I have to do is put some music on and watch her dance and it always puts a smile on your face.  Of course she also throws her hands up in the air if you yell touch down. Wade and I are definitely thinking we have a little ham on our hands.

Well not to make this post too long we just wanted to thank everyone again for all the wonderful gifts Brookie recieved.  They were so thoughtful! Hope everyone has a wonderful labor day weekend! On to the pictures