Webblog: Labor Day and beyond!

We spent the long weekend at the lake trying to get our fill of boating before the weather cools down too much! My dad, brother and his girlfriend joined us in hopes of surfing and 4 wheeling all weekend. What they didn't know was that Greg had lots of work planned for them! OK, again my family comes to visit and we end up working most of the time! This time we cleared a lot of the woods out and made several bonfires! So thanks again family for your help! We couldn't have down it without you! The lake was incredibly low, which left a perfect muddy area for 4 wheeling. We did get out on the boat a couple times. Brooklyn even got behind the boat on her 13 month birthday! Greg took her knee boarding while I drove the boat. Her life jacket interferes with her ability to sit up independently, so Greg had to help her sit up, hold on to the rope and try not to fall off the back of the board all while being dragged behind the boat at 5 mph! Brooklyn just took it all in. She didn't really seem excited or scared. Maybe next time we'll put her out there by herself! OK, probably not!

Before we left Brooklyn and I took pictures at the lake by our house. She was loving the weeping willow trees. And she was fascinated by the large flags lining the street. At 13 months she is learning new stuff each day. She's great at making towers of blocks and knocking them over. She usually waits until you say, "ready, set, go!" before knocking them over. She understands two step commands such as, "go to your room and lay down so I can change your diaper"! I'm sure it's too early for potty training, but she clearly knows when she needs to be changed because she will walk into her room and reach for a diaper in the drawer and then lay down on her changing pad. She is also impressively good at waiting for things. For instance, the bad storms a couple weeks ago left a crazy amount of leaves and flowers in the pool (along with a frog!) that took me 45 minutes to skim out. Brooklyn just hung out outside watching me, helping empty the skimmer into the trash and just walking around pointing at things. I may have had to tell her once or twice to not get so close to the pool, but that's all! And she also sits on the counter while I get food ready or cut up fruit!

I'm pretty sure she understands almost everything that I tell her. She's also been mimicking words lately. She has three variations of "ah, ah" for a dog barking, a bird chirping and monkey noises. Also, if you name something in a book she'll use the same number of syllables that you do. She can't pronounce all the different sounds yet, but she's figuring it out! Because she's forward facing in the car now she loves pointing at the stop lights and saying "op" and holding up her hand for "stop" when the light is red and "dooooo" and pointing forward for "goooo" when the light is green. She also has learned sign language for "please" and made up her own sign for "baby". It's frightening to me the speed at which she is learning!

Other things we've been up to...