These two

are now the same size. That's right...at Baylen's Dr. appt. a couple of days ago, he weighed in at a whopping 23 pounds, 11 oz. Yes, this kid is huge. It was funny because when the nurse first had me sit him on the scale, it showed he weighed 18 pounds, and that seemed odd b/c at his 6 mo. appt., he was 21. We knew he was sick, but we didn't think he had lost that much weight as a result. So, Dj asked the Dr. if we could weigh him again b/c it didn't sound right. Dr. D. said, "well, 18 pounds is pretty beefy for an 8 month old, but let's weigh again just to see..." and sure enough, 23 11 came up on the scale!!! The Dr. was like...."Wow, you are a big boy, aren't you!" haha. I replied, "Yes, he is quite beefy, but it's all muscle!" Dr. D. thought that was pretty funny.

What is crazy is that Baylen's hands are now bigger than Brynn's. He is stronger than her and when she tries to take a toy from him, he holds onto it so tight that she can't get it from him now. It drives Brynn crazy! Who would have thought that fighting has already started amongst these two? Indeed, it has. When Brynn wants something that Baylen is playing with, she'll just walk over to him and take it right from him if he's not paying attention. When she does that, Baylen gets so ticked and starts screaming and sometimes cries. So then I have to intervene and explain to Brynn that she can't just play with a toy when someone else is playing with it...even if the toy is hers. I know there are many more years of these two fighting...they didn't give me much time b/f they started right in, did they?!

Baylen acts like he's felling better and his meds are not giving him the bad reaction he had last time he was on them. THANKFULLY! He is back to crawling all over the place/pulling himself up on everything and getting into everything known to man. I have never seen a kid who gets into everything he's not supposed to AS OFTEN as this child. haha At least now he's starting to understand what "no" means. But now, when he hears me say "no no" and then stops and looks at me, grins, and then goes right back to trying to do what he's not supposed to.

Decorating the tree

Brynna really enjoyed helping decorate the Christmas tree this year. We put it up two days after Thanksgiving and she was so excited to help. I wish my pictures were better and it showed her at a better angle but this is the best I could get. I will have to try and do it again by "pretending" or recreating the moment b/c there has to be a better way to capture this. :) Anyway, her favorite ornaments to hang were the ones you gave us, Megs, from Red Envelope--the snowflake ones. :)

Every year, we buy a moose ornament from Hallmark. Hopefully they continue to make moose b/c I don't know what we would do without them each year. The other pic is a pic of my first ornament when I was a baby. It's almost 30 years old...YIKES!

Clappin' up a storm!

Even though Baylen has been sick, two nights ago, we finally taped him REALLY clapping. This was really the first time he did it for a long period of time. We've been working on it for about 2-3 weeks, so it was fun to see him really seeing himself do it and think it was pretty cool. He thinks he's a big smarty pants now and claps quite often. It's SOOOOO freaking cute!

Sicky Boy

Baylen is sicky. He stayed home today w/ Dj and slept on him all day long. Poor guy barely ate and just wasn't interested in playing. We took him to the Dr. this afternoon b/c it was the earliest we could get in. He ended up having a double ear infection. The nurse took his temp and he had a fever of 103.8!!! Little mister doesn't smile much right now and just doesn't feel good at all. :( I don't know if he'll make it to daycare tomorrow or not. We'll see if he has a fever in the a.m. and how his night goes tonight. He was up quite a bit two nights ago and last night too. The Dr. prescribed amoxicillin again despite my many attempts to get him to give him something different. Last time he was on these antibiotics, he threw up and had the runny bunnies for like 5 days straight. IT was awful. The Dr. told us that this was the best solution to help him get over this infection and this time prescribed a lower dosage. He said that if he prescribed the alternatives, that it would not necessarily take care of the ear infections and we could be back in again and getting more meds. So I guess we'll have to see how it goes this time around. His cough is terrible and he's all snotty and his eyes are goopy. I feel so bad for him. he did his best to smile for me today and I did manage to get a couple of smiles out of him and so did his sister. She was VERY concerned about him, especially when she didn't see his carseat or him in the car next to her this morning. Here's to hoping he will be okay to go to school tomorrow. FI not, then I'll stay home w/ him. The one thing that is hard about being a teacher and having an unplanned sick day is all the lesson plans I have to write...I have 4 different preps a day...so I have to be REALLY careful how I write plans for the kids. It is tough!!

One of my favorite pics

This was taken back when we had profess. pics taken in Oct./Nov. I just had the chance to steal it off of Dj's computer. :)

DIY Photoshop

If you want use original color in a photo of yours and keep most of it black and white, here's the directions:

Duplicate your image layer
Press Ctrl+J

2. Desaturate the top layer
a. Image > Adjustments > Desaturate
-OR-
b. Press Ctrl+U to make the "black&white" a uniform color

3. Use the eraser tool, remove the portion(s) of the picture that you would like to be in color.


It should start coloring your pic. My suggestion is to zoom in on the most detailed parts, and to do small, strokes using the eraser tool in case you mess up and you don't delete an entire portion you worked hard on. Also, you can mess with your eraser size up in top left corner of the screen on CS2.

Good luck!

I figured it out...

after numerous attempts to search for directions on how to do this on Google, I figured it out. BUT NOW I have ANOTHER dilemma. I want to make the background ALL black. Anyone know how to do this? Any directions or ideas would be most appreciated!

here's the pic!