Tink and Tired

Tinkerbell.

Oh Tinkerbell. Bria LOVES Tinkerbell. She is over the moon in love with her. I swear we did not push this on her, in fact we have tried other movies and nothing compares to Tinkerbell.

I don't mind, I just wish Tinkerbell was a little more educational for toddlers :)

Aunt Amy got Bria the cutest Tinkerbell slippers.

The girl is crazy about her Tinkerbell slippers.

Here's a little video of Bria "reading" and then telling me about her shoes:

It's been a little exhausting the last couple weeks.

About 2 weeks ago Bria developed a rash in between her thighs and on her bum that we assumed was a diaper rash. That's weird in itself because Bria has only had 1 diaper rash and that was when she pooped in the middle of the night and didn't make a peep so we didn't know and didn't change her until the morning, poor girl.

Back to the rash. So we started applying more A&D ointment to help, but it was not helping. She was waking up 3 or 4 times in the night because she was so uncomfortable. We felt awful, so we got some Desitin applied it at every diaper change and let her run around without pants on most the day to air her bum out.

*This also led to her telling us she had to go potty! I think potty training might be coming.

This combination totally helped. She slept through the night and seemed to be more comfortable, although the rash still wasn't going away. Fortunately we had a doctor's appointment for her 2nd flu shot and check up on Monday. He looked at it and said it wasn't a diaper rash, it was from something that irritated her skin. We followed doctor's orders by applying hydrocortizone and tada! The rash is going away quite nicely, phew!

But it's not over. Sunday was like any other day, Bria was happy and in good spirits. We put her to bed, she went right out and all was well.

9:00 pm, Bria cries out. That's weird. Don't hear another peep so we assume all is well.

9:30 pm, Bria cries and is serious this time.

I'll leave out all the details but she was up every half hour until midnight. She slept until 3 am and then was up every hour. It was the most exhausting night. I think I got 4 hours of sleep total.

Why was she up? Apparently between 7:30 pm and 9 pm she developed a cold. I have no idea how, she just did.

The poor girl has a very stuff nose and it's hard for her to sleep at night. To avoid another horrible night we decided to do a steam shower and have her be in the bathroom for a good 10 minutes (not in the hot shower of course) to loosen up the snot. I could tell it was helping. We gave her Tylenol (the cheap version because I am sooo done with Tylenol and their freaking recalls), put vapor rub on her feet and chest, and turned her humidifier on.

Then we decided to take shifts. I took from bedtime until 3 am since I have a hard time going to sleep anyway.

She woke up at 1 am and I gave her more medicine, more vapor rub, attempted to booger suck her, and rocked her for 40 minutes to help the snot drain. She fell asleep on me and I rocked her some more. She was making this sweet purring noise that reminded me of her newborn days so I just listened to her for awhile. I put her back down and didn't hear from her until 8:45 am! Wow, I was not expecting that. I guess we found a good little remedy! I'm hoping it continues to work until this darn cold goes away. Since she is older she is really showing her frustration with her stuffy nose, she'll look at me and try to breath through her nose and then get annoyed and rub it.

So that's been us in a nutshell. I did get the Christmas decorations out this last weekend which was fun. We will hopefully be getting a Christmas tree this week and I'm looking forward to decorating that, I think Bria will really like it.

Good things

The morning time is usually a really fun time in the Holcomb house. We bring Bria in bed with us and play. We say good morning to each other about 10 times, pretend to go back to sleep, cuddle, and watch videos on our phones of Bria (at Bria's request: "See Bria!"). But one of my favorite parts is going to get her, she always greets me with a sweet: "Good mowning, sunshine," and then makes a request of what she wants to bring with her. She likes to bring her blanket usually to cuddle, oh I just love this time.

This particular morning she wanted her baby doll.

I love toddler jammies.

"Give me the camera!"

Eventually Bria wants to get out of bed and we begrudgingly do. We start breakfast and then Daddy heads off to work.

Giving bye-bye kisses to Daddy.

Trying to escape and go with Daddy to work.

"Oh I hope he doesn't miss us too much while he's at work."

I sure love our mornings together. It's one of the many reasons I am so thankful Brian got his job with Intel. It makes such a difference starting our days together and I am truly grateful for it. Brian's job is going really well and he is so happy, which means I am happy too. He's home more and even though he does work occasionally in the evening, at least he's home sitting on the couch beside me. It makes all the difference in the world.

Once he leaves I try and figure out what we are going to do during the day. It gets hard in the winter (it's not fall anymore in Oregon) because going outside is not always an option, but at least once a week I know exactly what we'll do. Go see Lanie and Bristol. I love living so close to them and it's really nice to have someone to hang out with during the day, especially since I haven't really made any close friends yet.

"Um, Bria? I don't think you need to hold on quite so tight, it's not a real horse."

Although Bria tends to push Bristol and they aren't always the best at sharing with each other, they are learning and get better each time. It's nice because Lanie and I are also learning how to handle it and the best way to deal with it. They are really cute together when they want to be and now when I tell Bria we are going to see Bristol and Lanie she says, "Be nice to Bristol." So she knows she is suppose to be nice, that's a positive.

Bye-bye kisses.

I am really enjoying living here and love having so much shopping close by. We have so many restaurants we want to try and date night is always so exciting because we get to dress up and go some place nice. But still, my favorite part of living here is having Brian home more. It just gives me warm fuzzy feelings :)

Giving Thanks

This year for Thanksgiving we spent it with Brian's family. It was a wonderful time and we enjoyed spending time with everyone (minus Sara & Jon in Kentucky, but we chatted with them!). It was at Heather's this year which meant we only drove 10 minutes, that was a definite bonus.

Bria took a cat nap there because apparently she was too excited to sleep. She had fun being a ham for everyone and also showing how she is opinionated now (read: screaming).

The food was to die for delicious. The company was fantastic. The wine was divine. The egg nog was fabulous.

Overall, I am thankful for a wonderful thanksgiving.

I'm thankful for my brother and all those soldiers fighting for our country who spent yesterday without their families. I really can't wait for Lance to come home, we miss him so much.

I'm thankful for our families who are so loving and supportive. I'm very thankful for our health and I never want to take that for granted.

And of course, I am thankful for my 2 favorite people in the whole wide world: Brian and Bria.

I sure have a lot to be thankful for, I am very blessed.

SNOW

Now that Brian isn't working at UPS, we are so excited when snow is in the forecast. I mean, we were before, but snow also meant Brian working long hours which wasn't fun.

It started snowing last night and we woke up to maybe an inch of white powder. I put on a snow suit and boots over Bria's pj's and we walked outside. There wasn't enough to make a snowman but Bria still thought it was pretty cool.

"Where'd the grass go?"

"I kind of want to eat it, Mom."

"It's cold out here."

"My hand is freezing, Mom!"

We didn't last too long because of how chilly it was, but it was still fun to go out this morning. I'm really hoping we get some good snow this year, if not we'll have to go searching in the mountains for some because I think Bria would have a blast sledding!

Eating and books (not eating books though)

Bria has been eating a little better lately and I am so grateful. We stopped giving her milk before meals (thanks for the tip Lanie!) and that has been such a huge change. She eats half a sandwich and some applesauce before guzzling her milk.

I was so happy that I gave her a few m&ms for the first time:

She was very thankful.

Being cooped up in the house makes you do weird things:

Like stick your belly on the heater vent.

Playing peek-a-boo

This girl loves her books. Since she was a newborn I've read to her because I heard that's what good moms do, and by golly I wanted to be a good mom! I also hear that good moms don't give their kids m&ms, oops. Anyway, back to me being a good mom, I have read to Bria her whole life and it's definitely paying off. She adores her books and more often than not you can find her reading.

Sometimes it's inside the lid to our coffee table cubes.

Other times it's in her room sitting in her brown rocking chair, or on her princess table, or in her Ikea chair, or on our bed, or just on the floor. She'll just sit there and go through every book she can find.

We are suppose to get snow this afternoon and I'm actually kind of excited. Snow in November is not very typical in Oregon so it would be kind of a fun change.

Cold but no rain...

...means Bria and I can go to the park. The rain is making quite a presence lately so when we got a break last week I bundled Bria up and we went to the park.

She absolutely LOVES her gloves and I'm so glad because her fingers stayed nice and warm.

She was in a long sleeve shirt, a jacket, and her puffy vest with the hood on but I still worried if she was warm enough, it was just freezing outside.

It did not affect Bria though, I had to drag her away after 45 minutes because I was afraid her nose would freeze off.

She reluctantly said bye-bye to the park and we went home for dinner.

After dinner and some time hanging out, we decided to go to Starbucks for hot chocolate.

We drove there but we still bundled her up because the walk to the car was frickin' freezing.

Adorable hat & gloves from Kohl's.

I wish I would've taken my camera to Starbucks because it was such a fun family outing. We live right by this place called Orenco Station and they have an adorable little area with condos, restaurants, cafe's, and Starbucks...of course. There is one little street going in and all the trees have white lights on them. It was a little foggy and just looked so pretty. We warmed up with some drinks in Starbucks while Bria charmed everyone and then we walked slowly back to the car so we could enjoy the Christmas-like atmosphere. I think we'll make that our Friday night treat from now on...if the rain doesn't try and ruin it.

Goin' to the lodge...

Great Wolf Lodge!

Saturday the Woods' headed up to stay at our house before we all headed up to Great Wolf Lodge on Sunday. Saturday was spent playing and getting ready for our fun vacation.

Bria thought it was so much fun to be in her crib with Gabe. Gabe looks unimpressed.

Enjoying bath time.

Sunday we got some breakfast and headed up. It was almost a 2 hour drive which isn't bad at all and Bria did wonderful. She didn't fall asleep, but she was happy and content the whole ride up, it was fabulous.

Bria didn't take a nap on Sunday since we went straight from our car, to the room quickly to change into our swim suits, and then into the water park. The water park was absolutely gigantic and there was so much to do. Bria was so entertained that she never got cranky and was just as pleasant as can be.

"Um Gabe, can you get out of my picture?"

This picture has bad lighting and is not very good but I wanted to remember how much Gabe and Bria loved running down the hallway. Our room was quite a treck to the elevators but the kids did not mind at all, it was one of the highlights for them.

I took hardly any pictures because we were just having so much fun. And water was coming from every direction so I didn't want to carry around my camera very much.

But trust me when I tell you that we had a ball. Not only did Bria enjoy it, but Brian and I had a blast. The adults took turns watching the kids while 2 of us would go down there humungous water slides.

I have to say our favorite part was just being together though. Bria had so much fun in the wave pool and loved swimming back and forth between us. She is still such a water baby and the huge waves didn't scare her at all, she wanted more.

We got some pizza for dinner and then went back out for a little more swimming. We put the kids down at 7:45 pm that night and then enjoyed socializing and just relaxing. We got a suite with 2 separate bedrooms which was essential with 2 babies. It worked out really nice too because it allowed us to hang out after we put the kids to bed.

Hanging out in the lobby.

Bria slept in until almost 8:30 am the next morning! Can't blame her since she skipped her nap and spent half the day swimming and playing. I was glad she caught up on some sleep. We enjoyed a buffet breakfast and then to the water we went! We played and played until around noon and then headed out. I was seriously so bummed to be leaving, we had such a great time and it just went by too fast. But we are definitely going again and next time we'll stay 2 nights. It was so worth it and I'm really glad we went.

Here is a video of Bria's infamous crab walking. This girl crab walked every time we were in the toddler pool, girl worked out her thighs!

And here's another video of her and Brian in the wave pool. She also liked to sit and have the wave crash over her, she thought that was so cool.

*Not sure why the quality is so bad on the videos :(

I can't wait to go again. My lower back is absolutely killing me, my guess is from bending over and holding Bria's hand in the water but who knows. Either way we have some wonderful memories.

It's funny how after a vacation (even a little mini one-nighter) it's hard to get back in the swing of things, but we're doing pretty good today. Bria and I have been coloring this morning, grocery shopping, and even went for a walk. While we are staying busy at home, Brian is playing catch up at work. Thank goodness Thanksgiving is next week, even more family time and lots of relaxing!