13 months

and your mommy is in the doghouse for not keeping up with your monthly updates very well! With the holidays and our trip to Vegas I haven't even had a second to write a blog post lately!
At 13 months you are still as adorable as I could possibly imagine a baby being. You still have that smile all the time, love everyone and everything way about you that just makes your mommy as happy as can be! You teach me about joy and happiness everyday little guy. You are such an incredible gift to our family, I seriously do not know how we lived without you!
*LOVE to dance! You "get low" and shake your booty with your knees bent down whenever music comes on!
*Know where your nose, eyes, mouth, teeth, tongue, feet and toes are!
*Love "didi" and call her all the time. You will randomly go to the cupboard where we have her treats and get her one:)
*Are obsessed with your bath, if you hear the word bath you demand one, if you go into the bathroom you try and get in the bath. You ask us to take a "baa" often. You LOVE LOVE LOVE it!
*Love to wear clothes and shoes. If you see your shoes on the ground you bring them to me to put on you and lift your foot in the air to let me know it needs to happen. You put hats on all the time, and you want to wear your vest whenever you see it.
*Make lots of animals sounds, monkey, ape, pig, sheep, cow, dog, snake, lion, duck, and bear.
*Say "Mama, dadda, didi, boo (balloon), ba (ball), baa (bath), no, yea, bubbles, vroom"
*playing chase and hide n seek are 2 of your favorite games
*drink organic whole milk
*nurse on demand (usually before nap, before bed and then right when you wake up in the morning. alot of times you nurse during the night still too)
*eat and eat! you love food and so far the only thing you really don't like is grapefruit, you give me a very disgusted look when I offer it to you.
*love your brother! If he is in time out (usually for being mean to you!) you will go join him in his room and keep him company. You just love to follow him everywhere!
*bring me books to read to you all the time. you love stories and have to climb into my lap while I read them to you. I LOVE this.
*You are my snuggly little guy. You love mommy snuggles and being right up next to me is your favorite.

Love you baby boy! You are so fun at this stage right now and I just love watching you grow and change everyday. I soak you in all day long and snuggle up next to you all night. Love you to the moon and back a million times! XOXOXOXOXO

Vegas Baby!

Crepe at Jean Philippe Patisserie! YUM!

Kyle and I happy houring it:)

Kyle and I went to Vegas. All by ourselves. No littles along. He had a conference there from Monday Nov. 29th-Friday Dec. 3rd. When he found out that his boss was bringing his wife he asked me if I wanted to go....this was way back in September. I said sure, but I'm bringing the baby. That was fine....or so he said. As the trip got closer he started letting me know he didn't really think we should bring the baby. I started kind of agreeing, yet not wanting to leave him either, so that left me not knowing what to do. My heart was super confused and torn. I wanted to be the good wife and go and make my hubby happy, but had this super strong urge to stay with my 12 month old. After lots of talks and moments of confusion I decided to go and leave both little people behind.
It was good. They both survived and Kyle and I got a much needed week to ourselves, the first time in 3 and 1/2 years that we had more than one night kiddo free! We ate at fun places, went out for drinks until late in the night and actually had some conversations with eachother without breaks to feed kiddos or pick forks up off the floor!
During the day while Kyle was at his conference I spent my mornnings drinking Starbucks and my afternoons walking up and down the strip taking it all in and shopping! I do love to shop and it was so fun to get to do it for 3 days!!! One day I had a chocolate crepe for lunch and another day I decided a fancy cupcake would be a suitable meal:)
On Friday as we were flying home I was MORE than ready to see my kiddos. I ended up being very happy I didn't bring baby Breck b/c Vegas is one big ashtray and having all that smoke around him would have drove me BONKERS! So the break was great and fun. But if I had to do it over again I wouldn't have been gone a Monday-Friday, I think 2 nights is the most I would choose to do with how little our babies are but we all survived!

Pumpkin Pie Day! (or as other's say, turkey day!)

Kayden with his pilgrim hats he made!

Thanksgiving was great this year! We got to be in Nebraska for the first time in 6 years for Thanksgiving! It was a special treat to get to see BOTH families at Thanksgiving and eat turkey 2x:) We spent Thanksgiving day in Kearney with my side of the family, eating lots of yummy food (we had THREE turkeys!) and 8 pumpkin pies! After stuffing our bellies we of course played games all night long and then headed to bed to get ready for an early day of shopping! Mom and I were up at 3:45 and went to get Erica and Chelle and met Martha, Sarah and Amber (and Amber's bff and her mom) at Target. We shopped till we dropped at Target, Walmart, Herberger's, Gap, Old Navy, Penny's and every other little store in Kearney. I did miss big city shopping on black friday but having all my cousin's and aunts around made it worth ditching the big city for small town Kearney's version of black Friday (they still had lines AROUND buildings to get into stores!!
Saturday we had Thanksgiving with the Hingst side of the family and did the turkey thing all over again! I managed to have a pot explode while I was making stuffing, have to have some disaster to make it a memorable holiday:) Kayden and Gabe had tons of fun playing together. They even got to go ride a 4 wheeler at daddy's best buddy Mike's in-laws house. Gabe tipped it over! Luckily Kayden rode with Trevin and no tipping happened while he was on!

Tonight....

I walked out of the shower to my 3 boys dancing and singing "get low". It was adorable and comical all at once:) Kayden was pantless and Breck was totally nekki. I can't believe Breck is good enough at walking now to "get low"! He was scrunching his little legs down to "get low" and raising his arms above his head to show us his moves. I got it on video, at least the end of it. Absolutely. Adorable.

Shared photo book from Kaisha

Click here to view this photo book larger

One Year Well Check.......

Breck had his one year well check today, he is 31 inches long and 23 pounds. His height puts him in the 90th percentile and his weight is only in the 50th percentile...I always call him why chunky baby but I guess he's just right. He has def slimmed down, he used to be in the 90th percentile for weight. Developmentally he is ahead of the game and a smart little cookie. He wasn't too happy to have his blood drawn for the iron, vitamin d and lead levels but he really didn't like getting the one vaccine we did this time. He cried for only a second though, he is a trooper for sure. So overall it was a great 1 year well baby check for our adorable, healthy baby boy!

I survived......

Parenthood is one of those things you love 99.99 percent of the time. And each and every day I am so super thankful to be a mommy and to have my littles snuggled up next to me when I wake up in the morning and giving me kisses before we fall asleep at night. But for 2 days I was at the edge of mommyhood! On Monday we flew to AZ to visit our friends. Kayden was SO excited about this trip. He had been asking to go visit Tula, Tatum, "Milla" and Audee since we moved 6 months ago. So timing finally worked out and we booked the trip. I of course wanted to go to see my friends but I was so excited for him to see his friends b/c he had told me so many times "turn this way and go to XX's house". So Monday, November 1st (2 days after Breck turned 1 and 1 day after Halloween!) my mom dropped us off at the airport. After getting thru security (taking shoes off of 2 kiddos, plus me, jackets off, ergo off, baby out of ergo, liquids in bag, purse, luggage, backpack in buckets, sippies litmus tested....after all of that we finally got thru security. really? would I really put a bomb in my 12 month old's shoe? does his soft robeez really need to come off?....anyway) we got thru. The flight was delayed about an hour. So our 1.5 hour wait after security, became a 2.5 hour wait after security. Fun times. It all started here. Kayden was not enjoying being stuffed in a small waiting room, full of people and luggage waiting to get on an airplane. We were flying out of Grand Island, it's a small town airport, so the waiting area is tiny and they stuff the planes to AZ so the waiting area was PACKED. So between knocking down our luggage over and over, pouring his food on the floor and terrorizing Breck I was ready to call it quits before we even got on the plane. Well, I should have listened to those cues and stayed home!!
During our trip Kayden decided he was not going to listen to mommy. Anything I said, he would argue with and time outs, rewards, talking to him, none of it worked. On top of not listening to mommy he also was having difficulty being nice to Tula and Mav. So Tuesday we went to bed and I was exhausted from dealing with him. Well, Breck decided this would be a good night to get the tummy flu. So tired mommy was up all night with a sick baby. A sick baby in someone else's home. Not fun. A sick baby is no fun. But a sick baby in someone else's home is even worse. So we woke up the next day, tired and not sure how the baby would do. Packed the kiddos up and headed to the zoo. Kayden continued with not listening to mommy routine and fed his entire lunch to the ducks, despite all of my attempts to get him to eat his darn food. That night I had Kyle book us flights home to KS. We flew out early the next morning. During the night Breck threw up again so I wasn't sure how the flight would go. The flight was not good. Breck was sick and crying the whole flight. Kayden was wired and ready for the day b/c it was a 7am flight (I usually fly during nap times!) and was not enjoying sitting in his seat. Thankfully Breck didn't puke ON the flight, but managed to hold it until Daddy picked us up and we were walking in to eat lunch and threw up all over the floor of our chosen lunch spot. Nice way to make everyone not hungry!
Well after a crappy trip and a crappy flight I was so excited to be home and clean my house and enjoy life at home. Surprise. Not in the cards! Friday evening Kyle came home sick. An hour later I was sick. 2 hours later Kayden was sick. We spent all night Friday up sick. Taking care of sick kids. And all day Saturday sick. By Sunday we were better but still tired. Poor Kayden though wasn't so lucky and was sick until Monday! So I got to spend the whole weekend sick and then the next few days doing laundry and cleaning up Kayden's sick spots.
I have decided I will never fly anywhere again with the boys by myself. Okay. Maybe at some point I will. But right now. I. Can't. Imagine. It. Not sure what would be so important that it would make me want to do it! Thank You God that we live a drive away from our family. If we didn't, we would never see them bc my days of flying every few months like Kayden and I did are OVER. God has a way of knowing what you need and he knew we needed to be close to our family. THANK THE LORD.