Brooklyn Turns One!

I can't believe my baby is already one.  Time has been flying by.  The poor little girl was so sick on the day of her party that I didn't get a single cute picture.  Since we didn't really know many people in town we just had a bbq with a few friends for her birthday but Brooklyn had a 103 degree fever and just wanted to be held by her mama all day.  I had put a lot of effort into making a special cake for her because we are having a hard time figure out foods that don't upset her stomach.  So I made a gluten free, sugar free, milk free chocolate cake and she didn't even want to look at it.  It took her almost 2 weeks after her birthday before she ate a piece from the freezer.  She did end up loving it so all the effort wasn't in vain.

Here she is when she finally agreed to try her birthday cake.  She was pretty skeptical (as was I) until she put it in her mouth.

Brooklyn is so darn independent and strong-willed just like everyone else in the family.  She doesn't want help doing anything and thinks she should be able to do just what the big kids do.  She isn't much of a talker like the other kids were.  Around her first birthday she probably only said mom, dad, shoes, and Elsa (from Frozen) on a regular basis.  But she understands everything that is going on around her and is learning some signs to help her communicate.  She knows how to say "please", "thank you", "milk", "more", "eat", "drink", and "book".  I love to see how enthusiastically she does them when she wants something really bad.  "More food please" is just a panic of flailing arms.

Brooklyn has a love-hate relationship with the dog, Zoey.  She wants to be her best friend but then gets so frustrated when she knocks her down or steals her toys.  But they have moments when they are great together.

Brooklyn is quite the fashionista, which should be apparent from one of her first words being "shoes".  She loves all the accessories at Target, but who can blame her.

I love the fact that my little baby is a book "reading" machine.  She has an amazing attention span for books and will sit to be read to for a long time and flip through board books constantly.  I love this sweet, fiesty, opinionated baby more than words can describe.

Its Getting Better Here

I have fallen so far behind on blogging with everything we have going on.  So just ignore me as I catch up on the past 6 months here.  The weather finally started to be reasonable, which means around 100, and we have been able to get out of the house a little more in the evenings.  We had a nice walk down the bank of the Colorado River one evening. 

The sun is still so bright that it is blinding.

Brooklyn is an outside girl through and through.  Even when it is too hot for clothes she loves to play in the rocks in the backyard and sit in the little house.  She will open and shut the door a million times and is so proud of herself every time.

We love the flat streets of our neighborhood for bike rides.  And now Taylor has also learned to ride without training wheels!

We even managed to find some real grass at the park. And shade!

Taylor and Brooklyn have a lot of fun together.  Taylor is definitely "motherly" and always wants to tell Brooklyn what to do.  Some times it works and some times it doesn't.

Taylor stayed home from school one day and the girls played so great together.  Taylor can't wait to have someone to play babies with.

We love picnics in the park on the warm fall days.

Poor Brooklyn has had so many run-ins with the tile floor.  Her little forehead may never heal.

Brooklyn loves to help her dad.  She is a total mama's girl unless there is a project and she has to get right in her dad's space to "help".  She is an all around amazing helper for a one year old.  She can pick up clothes and put them in the basket better than all the other children and loves to organize things.  It amazes me how they just come out with such little personalities.

In November we went to visit the new Phoenix temple for the open house and it was so wonderful to walk through it with the kids.  They were so great and we all felt such a wonderful spirit there.  It is sad to move to a place where the temple is 3 hours away when it was in the same town in San Antonio but it is neat that we have 4 temples that are all about 3 hours away.  And now we have seen all of them, Phoenix, Gilbert, Mesa, and San Diego.

The kids participated in the school's "stackers" competition.  Who knew that stacking cups was a sport but I guess it is something to do when it's too hot to go outside.  Taylor has such a serious look of concentration.  She approaches everything with that same level of intensity.  I love it.  Ethan's team won a prize for their grade level so he was pretty darn excited.

First Day of School

It seems like such a long time ago that school started but I'm posting this anyway.  It was already hot and sunny on the day we took these pictures even though it was 7:30 in the morning so I couldn't get a single picture of Taylor not squinting at the sun.  We decided to put the kids in a charter school here in Yuma and so far it has been great for both of them. It's a small school so everyone knows everyone and the teachers seem good.  The kids have made lots of friends and seem to be fitting in great.  

I have to brag about Taylor for a minute.  She was so prepared for kindergarten, thanks for an amazing preschool teacher, that we were worried she would be bored in kindergarten.  We were happy that this charter school was willing to test her at the beginning of kindergarten and she aced the test.  The principal warned us that it might be hard for her to skip a grade since she won't be at the top of the class any more but Taylor couldn't wait to get out of kindergarten so we put her into first grade.  Although she was pretty nervous about a new class and new friends and new rules she has done great.  She still sees her kindergarten friends in the morning and at recess so she came home the first week and said that all her kindergarten friends missed her reading to them during center time.  She is an amazing reader so she was sorely missed.  Her first grade teacher said she is already being an example of good behavior to her new classmates and is rocking first grade as well!  She came home very excited a few weeks ago that her new classmates were starting to ask her for help in class and she LOVES being a helper.  After enthusiastically telling me about helping her classmates she said quietly "But I learned that you shouldn't help them on a test...yep I learned that one the hard way." It didn't occur to me that she didn't have any test in kindergarten so it was a little bit of a new concept.

I am so proud of these cute kids.  They are just amazing!

And we have a new member of the Fish family

I am so far behind on the blog because of the craziness of life.  But here goes on some catching up...

Abe has been wanted a dog for a long time so we decided it was a good time to get one (it wasn't a good time but its too late now.)  So now we have Zoey, an adorable German Shepherd puppy.  It has been a big adjustment adding her into our normal craziness but she is doing pretty good for being a puppy.

Both the kids thought it would be fun to sleep with the little puppy.  Boy she has grown.



She has figured out how to ring a bell on the outside door to let us know when she needs to go outside and lately she has done it consistently.  She still thinks the kids are playmates and likes to nip more than they would like but she is good at being gentle with Brooklyn, even though Brooklyn doesn't always repay the favor.

She is now about 5 months old and isn't nearly as little as she used to be. She is a handful but hopefully the obedience classes she just started will help her to be a little less crazy.  But according to everyone at the class she is just a typical puppy that has more excitement than we would like and gets a little jealous of the attention the other puppies (i.e. children) in the house get.  She will be chilling and the minute I get on the floor to play with Brooklyn she wants my full attention and isn't happy until she has it.

All the kids love playing in her kennel, even if Ethan pretends not to.

Brooklyn wants to be best friends with Zoey.  But Zoey is getting a lot bigger and is right at eye level with Brooklyn.  It makes me have to run interference often.

Reading is always more fun with a friend.

Enjoying the cool floor on a hot day.

They both love the astroturf and the rocks.

Neither one is good at sharing the big rocks with each other.

Someone is getting so much bigger!