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Before Brooke's nap this afternoon, I was laying on the floor in her room while she played. She crawled over to me and gave me a zerbit (where you blow air to make a noise) on my belly. I do this a lot to Brooke and it always gets her giggling. It was funny to have her do it back to me. The best part was she was laughing and smiling the whole time. I guess she really is learning all the time. On the other hand, she did eat cat barf off the floor this morning!
Last weeked, Brooke and I headed down to Oregon. We spent Friday with our friends Neil and Bobbi who were just moving to the Portland area.
Brooke was instrumental with the unpacking effort.
Friday evening, we headed to Lincoln City. Brooke cried for two hours of the two and a half hour drive. And I thought skipping her afternoon nap would help her sleep in the car! We did have a great weekend at the beach, though. Brooke enjoyed spending time with her cousin and Auntie on the beach.
She loved playing in the sand. It found it's way to every part of her body. And don't you love her wind swept hair-do?
Brooke also enjoyed "playing" with Cousin Liam. The game was attack Liam before any adults reach us. She spent lots of time standing over him while he was in his bouncy chair (a good incentive to pull herself to standing) and crawling to him on the floor.
We also had lots of fun just sitting around the table, eating with the family.
Bryan has been gone for two weeks now. In that time, Brooke has learned to get herself in a sitting position, crawl, and pull herself to standing. What timing!
Lately, I have been thinking how smart Brooke is, and that maybe she'll follow in her parents' footsteps and become an engineer. She is so curious about everything. She loves to investigate straps and tags and figure out the source of all noises. The other day she was looking in a full-length mirror that I have turned on its side on the floor. She kept pulling it forward to look behind it. She has also traced the source of the water dripping out of the bathtub spout.
That being said, I have come to find out that Brooke has some other, much less intelligent hobbies. First, she likes to grab our cats tail and put it in her mouth. She also pulls fibers out of the carpet and eats them. She continuously crawls under the coffee table and then bangs her head on the side beams. And most notably, she enjoys eating grass. Really, she can't get enough of it!
PS - Did I mention how lady-like she is?
Today, Bryan left for his second deployment to Iraq. They are telling us to expect this to be a 15 month deployment. Knowing that Bryan will miss out on on so many of Brooke's developmental milestones made saying goodbye really difficult (as if it's not bad enough, anyway). We decided not to go to the hangar with Bryan and instead said good-bye at our house.
One last family picture before Bryan left....
My new approach to parenting:
Rather than sitting around the house counting down until Bryan leaves, yesterday we decided to head out to Astoria for the day. The drive was a bit longer than we expected, but we did achieve our goal of getting out of the house. Brooke was as good as could be expected in the car. But we do have a new family rule: No day trips more than two hours away!
We put Brooke in the backpack and climbed up the Astoria Column for some great views.
Then, we headed over to Fort Clatsop and walked around on some of the trails.
All in all, it was a nice day and a good way to get our mind off the impending deployment.