Sadie and Ashlynn dancing

These two just crack me up. If you turn up the volume, you can hear that when the music stops, they are supposed to freeze. Ashlynn, however, just puts her hands out in front of her. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with how long Ashlynn spins before she finally falls down.

Brooke Elizabeth Proctor

Brooke Elizabeth Proctor joined our family on Tuesday, April 19, 2011. She was a healthy 8 lbs 4 ozs, our biggest child yet. The delivery went smoothly, and Brooke is a healthy and happy baby.

Unfortunately, she decided to come while her two older sisters were fighting a really nasty stomach virus. It started with Ashlynn on Saturday and hit Sadie Sunday night. Neither girl could keep anything more than a little bit of water down. After a couple of days of no food and barely any liquids, both girls were just shells of themselves. We were beginning to worry about them getting dehydrated. Fortunately, Ashlynn turned a corner on Wednesday, and Sadie started feeling better on Thursday.

Even though Brooke came home from the hospital Wednesday afternoon, we kept the girls away from her until Friday evening. Jill's mom, Ann, came over to our house about 2:00 a.m. on Tuesday morning and watched Sadie and Ashlynn until Friday evening. When we brought Brooke home from the hospital, she took the girls to her house for a couple of days until we were sure they were better. Sadie and Ashlynn are back to their old selves again, and they were finally able to meet Brooke on Friday.

For those of you who live near us, you know how much Jill and I rely on Ann. But she really went above-and-beyond this time. Sadie and Ashlynn were in bad shape when Jill started going into labor Monday night. If you gave them more than a couple of sips of water, they would throw it up in 5 minutes. Ann came to our house, nursed our girls back to health all week, probably got only about 8 hours of sleep for herself last week, and also had our house professionally cleaned so that we wouldn't have to bring Brooke home to a petri dish. Thank you, Ann. You are amazing.

Here are some pictures of Brooke and the rest of the family.

Right after she was born.

First time Brooke opened her eyes.

Proud papa.

Beautiful mama.

Ashlynn is excited about her new baby sister.

Sadie playing with the new gift that Brooke brought her.

Ashlynn playing with her new doll from Brooke.

ring around the rosie at the beach

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They've got the "all fall down" part down pat.

"so cute!"

Sadie really enjoyed organizing baby clothes with grammy.

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Ashlynn's First Steps

Even though this is six or seven months old, I still deem it worthy of the Blog. Enjoy.

Stalling...

Lately, Sadie has been coming up with some pretty creative ways of stalling when it's time to go to bed. Tonight, she said she needed to line up all of her trains on the track. Curious, I indulged her. She has quite a few trains. (They go all the way around the track.) This Thomas phase has been going strong for nearly a year. I wonder how long it will last.

My favorite video of Ashlynn

I love this video of Ashlynn. If you're wondering what kind of kid she is, this will give you a pretty good insight into her personality. She's got a great laugh, is fun, energetic, happy, a little pushy, maybe a bit of a bruiser, and a cuddler. She's also slightly obsessed with her tummy, probably because we are all slightly obsessed with that little pillsbury-dough girl tummy of hers.