Baby Houdini

Ever since Brooklyn was born, I have set her down in her car seat in the bathroom when I want to take a shower. That way I can keep an eye on her. She has always seemed to enjoy being in there. It must be the sound of the water or the steam or something. Well, today, I brought her in there as usual, just sitting in her car seat. Lately I've been giving her a toy or something to play with so she doesn't get bored. Her favorite toy these days is a burp cloth. I think because she can hold on to it so well. She likes to scrunch her hands up in it or suck on it or rub it against her face. Anyway, she was happily in her seat with her rag and I'd only been in the shower for five minutes or so when I hear a dull thud. Having watched too many Lifetime movies in my teenage years, I instantly thought that somebody must have broken into the house. I peeked out of the shower to make sure the bathroom door was locked and what did I see? Little Miss Houdini lying on the floor with her car seat behind her. The thud was her car seat rocking back against the door after she had scooted all the way out. Brooklyn was kind of whining a little bit - not because she was hurt, but I think it just surprised her! I laughed at her and put her back in her seat (strapped in this time!) so I could finish my shower. Here's the little culprit herself:

Let's see her try to get out of her seat now!

Showing Off

Brooklyn has acquired a new skill. She can now feed herself! She's been grabbing the bottle while I feed her for a while now, but tonight I decided to let her try doing it herself. She was a pro! She even knew to tip it up more when the milk was getting low.

Sometimes she would take the bottle out of her mouth to look at us or smile, but she would just put it right back in when she wanted more milk.

Of course, she got a little messier than usual feeding herself... but who doesn't love a cute little milk-faced baby?! Congratulations, Brooklyn!

Here's a picture of Brooklyn "walking." Even though it's still a long way off, I think she might be one of those children who walks before she crawls. She HATES lying or sitting down. When I try to sit her in her swing or car seat, she refuses to bend her legs. She won't even sit on my lap during church. I have to hold her up standing on my knees the whole time. You would think she'd get tired, but she just looks around and flirts with everyone who smiles at her. And she screams bloody murder if you lay her on the ground. Sometimes she'll settle down after a little while and kick her legs, but she really prefers to be up where the action is.

By the way, isn't this such a cute outfit?! I love the little jeans. They even have a zip-up fly and a button like real big-girl pants! Her shirt says "If you think I'm cute, you should see my daddy!"

With her bottle-wielding skills, walking talent, trendy clothes, and a cute face like her daddy's, it's no wonder our little girl isn't suffering in the self-esteem department.

In fact, here she is smiling at herself in the mirror! What a little show-off! =)

For Sale!

Meet the Prizm. We love this little car. It used to be my dad's, but he gave it to me after I got home from my mission. (Thanks, Daddy!) It it compact, easy to drive and park, has never broken down or overheated, and gets the best gas mileage ever! The only problem we have ever had with it is last summer, the air conditioner stopped working. It still blows air, it's just not cold. The mechanic looked for a leak in the system for almost an hour and never really found anything definitive. He said that he thinks the leak might be in the compressor, but if there is one, it is a very slow leak. He sent us away with a working air conditioner (he just put new freon in it), but it leaked out again after about 10 days or so. So, we just left the windows rolled down and made it through the summer!
With a baby on the way, however, we decided that we needed a car with a working a/c. Plus that, the Prizm can barely fit her stroller in the trunk, let alone groceries. So we bought a 2000 Toyota Camry with a working a/c, bigger trunk, and a lot less miles. The Prizm is also a 2000 and has 119,600 miles.
We knew we needed to sell our precious Prizm, but couldn't really bring ourselves to do it. However, after me being on maternity leave for 3 months and living off of only Jason's part-time income, it finally needs to go. We put it up on Craigslist for $4,200 (it blue books for $4,400) but didn't get any takers. We lowered it to $3,800 and have gotten several people to come by and look at it.
Of course, with our luck, we noticed a week or so after we started trying to sell it that there was a crack in the windshield! It was down by the windshield wipers and didn't interfere with visibility at all so we didn't think it was that big of a deal. However, everyone who came to look at it was concerned about it passing inspection. Plus that, the inside driver's door handle had been cracked for years and required a little bit of talent to get it open. Nobody wanted to buy our car.
So, we gave it a makeover! The above picture is of the door handle today. Would you ever know it was broken? We got the part from a Chevy dealer for $30 and Jason installed it himself in about 20 minutes. (What a handyman!) I don't know why we didn't do that YEARS ago! Also, we replaced the windshield, got the oil changed, and it just passed Safety and Emissions yesterday! Our Chevy Prizm is all ready for the prom!! We have a guy coming to see it at 1:00 today, so wish us luck!

Oh, and if you know anybody who is looking for a good commuter car for under $4,000, send them our way. It's got new tires (we put them on in December), a Toyota engine, and is all scrubbed and vacuumed inside. (I don't know why it looks kind of dirty in the pictures, I think it's the lighting.) Plus that, the upholstery is in almost new condition. It had seat covers on it for a long time and there have never been any kids in it so there are no Cheerios, crayons, or car seat rubs. =) The Chevy Prizm has an EXCELLENT consumer rating and often runs well past 200,000 miles (see it's reviews at kbb.com). We need to find our baby a good home!

Ebay Woes

Jason and I wanted to get Brooklyn a baby gym. She always gets so bored just lying on the ground and we wanted her to have something to look at so maybe she would be okay by herself for a while sometimes. I did a little looking around and a lot of them just seemed so dinky with one or two toys hanging from them. Then I found this Fisher Price Rainforest one. It was perfect! Lots of toys and lights, music, crinkly leaves, a mirror, etc. The best part of all was that it had a little toy monkey hanging down. I LOVE monkeys! So we decided to get it for her, but it retailed at $60 (plus tax!). We didn't want to spend that much, so we turned to good old trusty ebay. We won the auction for it at $36, including shipping. Still a lot of money, I know, but we honestly haven't really spent much money on her so far because people (especially my sister)have been so generous with clothes, toys, bottles, etc. So we figured our little girl was worth it.

So the gym got here yesterday in the mail. I was so excited! I set it all up for Brooklyn. It was, indeed, in excellent condition as the listing described. Then I looked at it and thought, "Wasn't there supposed to be a monkey?" There was no monkey! I looked up the ebay listing again. Sure enough, the "happy monkey" and "jingly toucan" described were blatantly absent! I was so sad. I contacted the ebay seller but haven't heard back yet. I honestly don't think she will do anything. Something we didn't notice before was that she has 0 feedback. That means she has either never used ebay before, or, more likely, she had negative feedback in past transactions so she created a new user name for this sale. It was dumb of us to buy from her. If I leave her negative feedback this time, she will just create a new name for her next transaction. To top it all off, look at what was stuck to the baby gym when I pulled it out of the box:
Trash! A label from a product called 'Step Guard' with a Home Depot receipt, an old toy gun, and a ball of black fuzz stuck to it. GHETTO!!

My Sneaky Trick

I have mentioned before that Brooklyn doesn't sleep more than little cat naps during the day. Plus that, I have to hold her the whole time she is napping. No matter how careful I am, as soon as I lay her down, she starts screaming. Well, I came up with a little trick to get her to sleep on her own for a bit so I can get stuff done. I lie down with her in our bed and let her nurse until she falls asleep. Then, when she is totally relaxed, I roll off the bed and actually have about 30-40 minutes to get things done! I usually feel a little guilty as I am abandoning her. She doesn't seem to mind, though. A lot of times when I go to check on her after a while, she is lying there awake - playing with her feet and looking around. She never does that in her crib; she cries as soon as she wakes up. I guess she likes feeling like a big girl in a big bed. I had to take her picture yesterday because I thought she looked so beautiful.

And I guess Jason felt the same way about her last night as I was putting lotion on after her bath. He insisted on taking her picture. He took some video too, she was babbling like crazy and it was adorable. I'll have to see if I can figure out how to put it on here. Jason usually does it for me.

Raisin Toes!

Right now, however, I think I'm going to take her to bed with me and STAY! The little stink has gotten up at 5:30 the past two days. And that's after refusing to go to sleep until 1:30 this morning. Mom doesn't do well on 4 hours of sleep. Especially when I have to work from 6:30 to 12:30 tonight. I guess I'm lucky that this is the exception to the rule, but that doesn't make me any less tired! Good night!

The Mommy Survey!

For all of the bored mommy's with nothing better to do (HA! Make it for the mommy's who are holding barely-asleep babies that they don't want to wake up... or in this case, mommy's who are working at 12:15 am and have a short break between calls), repost your answers to this survey on your own blog! =)

1. Age(s)? 3 months & 1 week
2. Name(s)? Brooklyn Rose Maner
3. Birthdays? 10/12/07
4. Time of birth? 3:52 am
5. How long did labor last? 12 hours
6. Who was in the room when baby was born? Jason, the midwife, and a few nurses... oh, and me
7. How long did you push? almost an hour - Brooklyn's heart rate kept going down and not coming back up so they had me wait out a few contractions without pushing. For some reason it seemed really fast though.
8. Weight? 8 lbs 9 oz
9. Length? 20 inches
10. Any hair? a little fuzz
11. Who does baby look like? Her DAD!! (especially now that she's not so newborny)
12. Be honest...how much weight did you gain while pregnant? 32 lbs. and when I got home from the hospital I had only lost 5. How is that possible???
13. Was baby early or late? 11 days LATE!
14. Who drove you home from the hospital? Jason
15. How many baby showers did you have? 1
16. When did baby start sleeping through the night? 6 weeks (I know I'm lucky)
17. Did you breastfeed? still am
18. Who takes care of your baby the most? me, Jason's working AND going to school
19. When do you want to have another one? honestly? never. Although I'm sure that feeling will change once I've fully recovered from this one
20. How did you pick the name? We met in Brooklyn and my Grandma Rose wrote me the most letters out of anyone while I was there so I associate Brooklyn (the place) with her
21. How did you know when it was time to go to hospital? my mom told me to =)
22. Anyone spend the night with you first night home? Yep! Jason, my mom, and my dad
23.Did you cry the first time you held your baby? yes, I was surprised that I did, but I did
24. Where was the baby born? American Fork Hospital, poor thing (although it was very nice and sometimes I wish I could go back!)
25. Did you videotape the birth? ew... no.

Three months old

Our little girl is three months old today! And she's getting to be so fun. She responds a lot more and like to grab things - especially utensils while we're eating. In addition to rolling over, she likes to babble a lot and is almost laughing. Even though she doesn't sleep more than little cat naps during the day, she does sleep a good 11 hours at night, without waking up! When I lay her down on her back, she can scoot around a little bit by pushing her legs against the ground. I guess it's kind of an upside-down crawl. Here she is trying to crawl on her tummy:

And a few more shots of our pretty girl today, just for good measure.

SPAM!!

How do I delete somebody's comment from my blog once it has already been posted? Is there a way? I have gotten a couple of spam ones lately and want to take them off but I can't figure out how. I have never seen them on anybody else's blog, do you guys know something I don't know? For now, I enabled the word identification thing so you have to be an actual person to post a comment (can't be automated). Hopefully that will help, but I haven't seen that on anybody else's blog either. If you know how to delete a comment, teach me!

Toys!

Brooklyn got a few new toys for Christmas. This little rattle is her favorite because it's the perfect size for her little fist. She likes to shake it around for a while and then suck on it. She's really growing up! On Saturday she rolled over for the first time. I think she was pretty shocked by it but then she did it again and again and seemed to really have fun. She's turning into quite a serious little girl. She is friendly and has an easy smile, but she doesn't like silly stuff. Like when I try to tickle her or make silly faces and sounds - she looks at me like I'm from another planet. Or she just gets this expression like "Okay, I'm tolerating this but I don't enjoy it." At least it makes ME laugh. =) She also started sleeping in her crib in her own room on Friday night. She has been sleeping in a bassinet in our room this whole time. Since we got home from California, however, she had been insisting on sleeping in our BED with us. That is where we drew the line. Friday night was the big battle of wills. She screamed for about 2 1/2 hours when I put her in her crib. Of course, I periodically went in and calmed her down, but I wouldn't give in to her. She finally fell asleep exhausted and since then we haven't had any problems with her sleeping in her crib. She's a fast learner. =)

Speaking of toys, we have had quite the issues with our new toy! The camcorder we got for Christmas required us to purchase tapes, a firewire cable, a firewire port, etc. etc. We have recorded a few things but are still waiting for the cable to hook it up to the computer to arrive in the mail. When it does, we should finally be able to post videos. Unless there is some kind of software we need to convert the file. Isn't that the way it always goes? We've had fun with it anyway. Hopefully you'll get to see our little girl rolling around soon.

You're it!

I got tagged by Amy Dalton a couple of weeks ago and haven't had time to do it until now. I'm supposed to tell six things about myself and then tag six people to do the same thing on their blog. I think most of the people I know who have blogs have already been tagged recently, but I will try to think of a few. I guess it's okay if we hear from them twice. I will leave a comment letting them know they have been tagged.

1) I broke both of my arms at the same time in the 7th grade. It was definitely a character-building experience. It was also the best excuse out of homework I have ever had. I got to "write" a book report by talking onto a cassette. My math teacher sat with me and wrote as I dictated my responses to an Algebra test, and when I was not on the right track she would basically just do it for me. Another teacher told me that if I could just manage to chicken-scratch my name onto our test paper, he would give me an A on the test. For anyone looking for an easy quarter, I recommend duplicate fractures.

2) I spent four months in El Salvador the summer of 2001. There were large earthquakes there earlier in the year that devastated a lot of poor communities. We helped people rebuild their homes, worked with orphaned children, volunteered with a microcredit organization, etc. I fell in LOVE with the Salvadorian people and the Spanish language on that trip. Add to that the fact that I served a Spanish-speaking mission in NYC and you have one girl that is totally enamored of all things latino. I don't know exactly what my political stance is on immigration, but after seeing what life is like where these people are coming from, I admit that I would hop a border to feed my children too.

3) My goal in life is to have a lap pool. Okay, maybe it's just one of my goals in life. I have bad ankles and, therefore, most exercise is painful for me, but swimming is something I thoroughly enjoy! I was on the swim team in high school. I was never any good and I hate competing, but to this day even the smell of chlorine is therapeutic for me. Too bad I don't love being seen in a swimsuit. That's why I need a pool of my own.

4) I examine my child's head every day to see if her hair shows any sign of curling. Considering the fact that I cursed my own frizzy locks every day of my childhood, it may seem cruel that I wish the same fate upon my offspring. I just want her to look like me! Everyone who sees her says she looks just like her dad. That being said, I vow to never cut her bangs into fringy curlicues across her forehead, generate 12 kilowatts of electricity by brushing her hair after it dries, or make her wear a side ponytail. Some history just doesn't need to be repeated.

5) I have a secret crush on my husband. I know he knows that I love him, but what he doesn't know is that sometimes I have to turn my head away so he doesn't see me smile in the middle of an argument because I just think he's so darn cute. And when he's not home I get excited every time the freezer makes ice or the washing machine shifts cycles because I think it's the garage door opening and him coming home early. He's pretty much the love of my life. Shh... don't tell.

6) I love horseradish. And wasabi. Are they the same thing? I just love the way it flushes out your sinuses in such a painful, yet somehow satisfying, way. I put this on here just for Jason because he refers to the stuff as "poison." But he shares my love of jalapenos, hot sauce, banana peppers, curry, and all other spicy foods. So we're a good match.

Okay, I tag Katy, Linzy, Amanda, Lesly, Tawni, and Mandy.