A New Chapter

This will be the last post on Brooke's blog. We figured it is time for a new blog with our new family member coming soon! Brooke's blog will stay in cyberspace so feel free to visit it anytime you want to revisit her first 3 years, but her new stories and pictures will be on our new family blog:

www.nickellfamily.wordpress.com

We appreciate you sharing in Brooke's life over the past 3 years and can't wait for you to share in the adventures of Brooke and her new baby brother or sister!

Weekend Fun!

I am finished working Saturdays so we enjoyed a "normal" weekend. It was nice to get out as a family and do some fun things and not have to squeeze everything in around work!

Brooke did get a few gifts for her birthday that were not princess related! She enjoyed painting with her new paints and smock on my day off this week.
Saturday was a beautiful day out so we enjoyed a trip to the Manhattan Sunset Zoo.

Another birthday gift...a new microphone! Here she is jammin' in her Ariel costume!
We realized it had been a while since we had put pigtails in...they are a little more substantial than the first time we tried!

Oh...and she had an EXCELLENT potty weekend...peed in the potty all weekend! Still working on preschool and pooping, but we'll take what we can get!!!

What it means to be 3...

...peeing on the potty(!!!!!) and calling my parents, "mom" and "dad" instead of "mommy" and "daddy"

So, for a little background, we started trying to work with Brooke on potty training back around the holidays. Since then she has shown little to NO interest in it and really could care less about it. We had some pull ups around (which she calls and thinks of as "big girl pants") so she has been wearing them more but not really doing anything else to do with potty training. As of Sunday, she had NEVER peed in the potty. Jason and I were about ready just to drop it again until after the baby was born, but apparently "something" clicked on Sunday and she asked to sit on the potty and went! Then we had to go to a dinner and she asked to go potty at the restaurant. The second time she ever peed in the potty was in a public bathroom!!! She continued to do well Sunday night and Monday morning. Tuesday I was home with her and she used the potty all day!!!!

Our one question was how she was doing at preschool. I called her teacher today and she said nothing had changed (she wasn't using the potty at all). I tried to think of why this would be and Jason asked her tonight...my suspicion was right...she flat out told him, "because I don't get m&m's there!"

So...we will work on a reward for preschool but we are thrilled that she is doing so well at home. Now we just hope it doesn't all get erased when the baby is born!

For some reason, on Sunday, she also stopped calling us Mommy and Daddy, using Mom and Dad instead! I have no idea where this came from and it makes her sound way too grown up...we don't like it at all!!!

3 Year Check Up

Brooke had her 3 year check up today. She smiled through the entire exam and didn't have to get any shots which was even better!
Her new stats:
Height: 36.5 inches (38%)
Weight: 30.5 lbs (36%)

Happy 3rd Birthday Brooke!

Brooke has been looking forward to her birthday for months! She woke up Sunday very excited that the day was finally here. She started by exclaiming that she wanted cake for breakfast! She was very excited for her party and couldn't wait for everyone to get here. She had a wonderful princess party and had so much fun with all of her grandparents, great grandparent Nickell's and Aunt Arianne. She loved ALL of her presents but her favorite was probably her new princess dress-up clothes and shoes. She smiled and laughed the entire time we sang happy birthday to her. Everyone wore crowns instead of party hats and she thought that was pretty cool too! After cake she played dress up and with all her new toys (see next post). At about 2:45 she decided the party was over when she asked me, "Can I go to sleep now?" after which she promptly took her nap in her new princess and the frog nightgown!

Below is a collage of pics before the party...thanks Grandpa Stuart for taking all the wonderful pictures so I didn't have to!
Here is a slideshow of an overview of the party:

Princess Dress Up

One of Brooke's favorite gifts was her chest of dress up clothes. She had to try on all 4 princess outfits (Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty and Ariel). Her favorite were Cinderella and Snow White and she probably put at least each of these on 3 times!

The best part of playing dress up though, was that Brooke decided to re-enact scenes from Snow White and Cinderella. For Snow White, she had Grandma Nickell play the mean queen and bring her a poisonous apple. She would then eat it, fall over and wait for the prince (Jason) to come kiss her and wake her up! Below is her re-enactment of Cinderella:

"I lost my glass slipper on the stairs"

"Dose the slipper fit?"

"It fits!!!"

She came up with all of this on her own! It was great!!!!

Big A, little a, what begins with A.....

Brooke will get on these kicks of reading the same book EVERY day for weeks before nap and bedtime. You can tell she is memorizing them as we read them. The latest one is Dr. Seuss's ABC book. Tonight she wanted Jason to read it to her and he said, I bet you could read it to me. We weren't surprised that she knew it all, but it was too funny not to video! Its a little long, but its worth your 5 minutes! It may be kind of hard to understand because she is saying things like, "tuttle, tuttle tree" and "zizzer, zazzer, zuzz!"