Playoff Journey Ends...in heartbreak!

It has been a sad weekend in our household. Needless to say, the Texas Rangers did not add a World Series Championship title to their list of accomplishments this weekend, but we had fun cheering them on the entire way.

 Bryan and his good friend, Wade, bought a set of tickets to every home game of the baseball playoffs.  Which meant, for the last 4 weeks or so we have had baseball fever.  Bryan and Wade were at every game, and his wife, Wendi, and I, were at about half of the games.  It was so good to enjoy these playoffs with some very best friends!

 Wade's parents live in Arlington and are also avid Ranger fans.  We enjoyed tailgating with the Holmes before many of the playoff games.

 These are those good friends, Wendi & Wade.  Their son, Jake, just like Brylee, enjoyed the games from home with a babysitter or in their bed!

 Bryan got to take his dad to one of the World Series games, which was special for the two of them.  Bryan and his dad have been watching Ranger baseball for 28 years!

 Bryan and I enjoying some pre-game fan-fair

 Such good memories with best friends!

 Even though the final result was not how we would have wanted it, there were definitely some high moments along the way! Wade & Bryan were at the game when the Ranger's won the ALCS. 

 And for old time sake, I found some pictures of last years playoff games.  I was 8 1/2 months pregnant, dilated to 4 cm, and walking up to the third deck in very hot October weather.  What was I thinking?!

 We spent most of our time with the same crazy Ranger friends, Wendi & Wade!

 So even though we chose NOT to take our squirmy 11 month old to any of these playoff games, technically, she can say she has been to the Ranger's World Series!

Until next year...

24 Hour Visit

So my parents came to visit for just a little over 24 hours this past weekend.  They had to make a trip from Atlanta to Houston with my grandmother & uncle, and decided Southwest was too good of a deal to pass up to not come see their only grandchild (not to mention, they did say it was nice to see me & Bryan as well!)

We spent a lot of time hanging out with this sweet girl, who is standing independently now!

 We went out to eat a lot...

 and took a bunch of pictures of this sweet face!

 It was nice to not have an agenda for the weekend, where we just got to hang out together.

 Saturday night, Bryan was at the World Series, so my parents and I took Brylee birthday shopping and out to dinner.

 A few months ago we went to the beach and Brylee was not the biggest fan.

 Now, she seemed to love the sand!

 There are some outdoor shops near our house that have a sand playground.  We stopped by after shopping and before dinner, and let Brylee get a little dirty.

 Everything was going great until I told her she couldn't eat the sand!

 Bath time seems to always make this girl happy.

 Here is a sneak peak of an entirely separate post I will share about our trip to the Arboretum while they were here.

 It was beautiful, with thousands of pumpkins everywhere!

We'll see my parents again next month for Brylee's birthday.  Although it was a quick trip, we sure had fun!

Dallas Arboretum

So this past weekend when my parents were in town we decided to go the the Dallas Arboretum.  I had never been, but I had heard how wonderful it is and have seen many pictures that had been taken there. We wanted to get some cute pictures of Brylee at a pumpkin patch. Boy, we weren't disappointed!  There were thousands of pumpkins! Brylee really seemed to love crawling around all the hay, dirt, pumpkins, and flowers. I'll let the pictures do the talking of our wonderful morning.

Brylee Oliva Brokaw - November 23, 2011

Eleven Months

This weekend marked the eleventh month our lives have been blessed by this cutie! Pictures are getting harder to capture, and I had to give her something to hold to distract her and keep her sitting still in the chair. We've been doing a lot of Texas Rangers Baseball celebrating lately, so our Texas shirt and baseball glove seemed appropriate! With eleven months comes a busier and more active little girl, who climbs in my Tupperware kitchen cabinet and pulls up on our master bath tub and loves turning the faucet on & off. She now loves being outside (which she was not so sure about at the beginning of the summer), and we've spent more time at the parks and in the swings. All in all, we're coming up with more and more things to do to keep this girl learning and growing.

 We still give her a bottle, but she loves most all table foods, especially chicken & eggs, cheese & Greek yogurt, and any type of cookie or cracker. Sometimes I don't know how she does it, because she finished off 3 chicken nuggets at Chick-fil-A today without any teeth! She has become a master at toothless chewing. But I'm not complaining...the longer without those teeth the more "baby" she looks, and I can hang on to those days for a little bit longer.

 She sleeps about 10-11 hours a night, and takes two 1-2 hour naps a day. She has learned to play in her crib before and after we put her to bed, so we leave two little stuffed animals with her to talk to. Bath time is so fun, because for some reason I find it so funny to watch a baby crawl around in 4 inches of water...she is literally all over the place during bath time!

Although I don't want eleven months to seem anti-climactic, she hit double digits last month and now all the focus seems to be on her 1st birthday next month! It is fun to think of how different our holidays will be this year. We look forward to creating some fun birthday and holiday traditions in the months to come!

Husband brag...

I am going to use this opportunity to brag about my husband.  I try not to make this blog a gallery to showcase how amazing my family is (although I do think they are amazing).  But I am going to shamelessly plug how hard my husband has been working lately and the reward we are getting for all of his hard work.

For the last six months, we have had this picture taped to our bathroom mirror. It is a page ripped out of a catalog that Edward Jones sends out to its employees at the beginning of each year. Bryan has worked for Edward Jones for a little over 6 years, 3 of which we have been here in Wylie at the branch he started in the summer of 2008. Ever since his first year of employment, he has been compensated with 100% commission.  To say the first few years were tough was an understatement, especially when I was not working and in grad school full time. But somehow he stuck with it when a lot of people couldn't and has made it work, both for his clients and for our family. And now we are finally starting to see some of the benefits other Edward Jones veterans have been telling us about for all these years.

 Not only does he not have a "boss," which has allowed his work schedule to be flexible (especially these last few weeks when he has needed to leave at 1 to make a Texas Ranger's playoff baseball game), but he won our first Diversification Trip. Edward Jones financial advisers have the opportunity to qualify for winning a trip every six months (which means up to two trips a yaer!), based on a certain level of commission they make during the qualifying six month period. We had the goal of going to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for an all inclusive week long vacation since the catalog came out. And last Tuesday, Bryan was able to officially book our vacation for this Spring.

To say I am excited is an understatement. We have not been on a vacation just the two of us since May of 2009. Brylee is going to stay with my parents for a week, and I am going to get a good book and relax by this amazing pool! But more than being excited about a week away, I am sure proud of how hard my husband works, and for not having a "Plan B" all those early years when it would have been easy to give up! Here's to Puerto Vallarta, and many more Diversification Trips in the years to come!

Turn Your Back for Two Seconds and...

Now that I have a mobile child, I'm sure I will be using that phrase a lot. But on Wednesday night, we had our first taste of Brylee getting into something she wasn't supposed to.

Bryan had a late meeting followed by a company dinner, so he was not home all night. I had worked that day, and the late afternoon and evening seemed to be a comedy of errors. Just one little thing after another kept happening to make my night very unproductive, the house a mess, the kitchen filthy, and Brylee all over the place when I only had one set of hands to keep everything under control.

The crazy evening was capped off after I had finished giving Brylee a bath. She is getting very squirmy, and would not let me get a diaper on her while we were putting PJs on in the living room. At night, I use some zinc oxide cream on her little hiney just as a protective barrier since she, well, sits in "it" all night. We have a tub of it, and while the lid was off and I was chasing her down to get her diaper on, I turned back around to find my dog had eaten a good amount of the cream and had it all over her face and ears. I gave Paisley a quick scolding, wiped her off, and back to trying to get this baby ready for bed. About 20 minutes later, the dog vomits a big pile of food she had just eaten. Great...

At first, no big deal.  I shoe the dog outside, clean up the mess, Brylee is still playing with some books about 20 feet away in the living room. The dog stays outside for about 15 minutes, and is now whining to come back in. I assume she has thrown up all she has in her, so I let her in. We had the windows open from the cool evenings prior, but after running around all evening, I was getting hot so decided to turn the AC back on and needed to close all the windows.  After doing so in the front and living room, I walked back to our bedroom to close a single window.  This took me all of 20 seconds...literally...

And when I walked back into the living room, the dog was looking at me like "I didn't do it," and Brylee was looking at me like "Look what I found!" as she held two big fist-fulls of dog vomit and had some smeared on her, ahem, mouth.  I was mortified!!

Apparently, the dog had thrown-up again, and Brylee had crawled over to it, in a matter of seconds when I left the room. I quickly grabbed the baby, kicked the dog back outside, left the pile on the floor for a later time, and headed to the sink to wash this kid off. After my original shock, I realized she didn't really have a mouth full, but I think she probably got a good taste. I calmed down, realized it was gross but wasn't going to freak out, until we were walking down the hallway to her bedroom to put her to bed when Brylee spits up! What it the world was going on! I had throw-up all over my house now!

I looked on the box of some other brand of diaper rash cream with zinc oxide, which said "If ingested, seek medical help or call your physician." So although I didn't think it was really that big of deal, I decided I would rather be safe than sorry and called Poison Control. Hopefully that is the first and last time I ever have to call that number! The man on the phone was very nice, laughed at me a bit, and asked if I was calling for my baby or the dog. Although I love my dog, I could care less about her at that moment and was just making sure my daughter had not ingested anything toxic.  He assured me the worst thing from ingesting zinc oxide is an upset stomach with nausea and vomiting, which my dog obviously had. He said the only thing he would be concerned about was the bacteria in the dog vomit, so wash her hands and face well, or give her a bath, and then give her something to drink.

I hung up and felt better.  Brylee was still in a great mood and getting sleepy.  I gave her a bottle and we read a few more books and I put her to bed.  When I walked back in the living room, I realized I still had a pile of dog vomit on the floor, which now had seeped into the carpet....great. Paisley came back inside and quickly went and laid down in her bed for the rest of the night with an upset stomach.  Luckily there was no more vomiting.

Now that it is all said and done, I wish I had a picture to capture the expression on Brylee's face when I walked back into the room as she was sitting in front of a pile of dog vomit, two big fist-fulls, with the biggest grin on her face. The joy of a child is so precious and innocent! I love her!