Blog | 2009
We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We certainly did. We started the weekend before Christmas, when Jason’s folks and sister visited us. Jason and I enjoyed a date night (St. Jacques!)/Christmas party night on Saturday, and then we celebrated Christmas on Sunday. Brianna started the fun by helping to hand out all the presents – she was a great helper, and handed out more than half of the presents!
Then we opened presents and just had a great time with his family. Brianna got so many wonderful things, I can’t even begin to list or show photos of them all. She is a very lucky girl. And, we are very lucky that she deviated from the normal child-present-frenzy, and decided it was more fun to play extensively with just about every item! Interestingly, one of her favorite “presents” (at least until she exhausted its capability for fun) was the bubble wrap that surrounded one of her wooden puzzles! She had a great time stomping all of those bubbles and making all that popping noise!! Here she is opening a present, looking at the calendar of Brianna pictures with Tia, and playing with her fastener toy (Nana made her a board of fasteners, e.g., zippers, buttons, snaps, velcro, buckles, magnets, etc., for her to play with because she is just fascinated by fasteners!).
Brianna even had some fun with my presents – here she is wearing my new inline skating helmet to protect her precious head while she has a snack…
On Christmas Eve, we opened our presents to each other and our presents from my Dad’s side of the family. Apparently, I didn’t take any still shots of this and instead only shot Flip video. You can make snapshots with the Flip footage, but it is a little harder since I tend to do photos on the PC and video on the Mac, so you will have to settle for these shots. In the first, Brianna is playing with her new MP3 player, and in the second Brianna is wearing her new outfit from Grandma and Grandpa, and pushing her dolly around in her shopping cart from Aunt Sherry and Uncle Jim.
On Christmas Day, we headed to my Aunt Kathy’s house in Virginia and visited with my Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandmother. Since everyone was just arriving on Christmas day, we saved all stockings and presents for the day after Christmas. Here is Brianna opening her stocking with her daddy – Santa was very good to her!
After stockings, we moved straight on to presents. Here she is playing with her new tea set.
Unfortunately, one of the funniest presents she got does not translate to still shots very well – she got new patent leather “mary janes” that have places on the toes where you can fasten different color bows (she got orange and blue bows, red and white bows, and pink and black bows), and that squeak! Yes, with every step, my little angels shoes squeak, squeak, squeak. It is hysterical! While in a store just today, Jason was watching Brianna while I took care of a couple of things. The entire time, I knew exactly where they were because I could hear her shoes!
Brianna made out like a bandit and has been having a wonderful time playing with all of her new books, puzzles, and toys. I think she even likes the new clothes (I know I sure do!). We are home now, and re-establishing some semblance of a normal routine. At least as normal as you can get, when the little munchkin in the house “discovers” a new and wonderful something to play with every time she turns around!
Obviously, I am a tad late with her 20 month update. Would you believe that we were too traumatized by the beat-down Bama handed the Gators to speak coherently for a couple of weeks? Well, that is my story and I am sticking to it! Brianna assures us the Gators will rebound against Cincinnati!
We may have been greatly disappointed by the Gators, but that did not stop us from having lots of fun getting ready for Christmas! But first, let me tell you about some of her latest accomplishments. Her speech continues to improve by leaps and bounds everyday. Some new words are Christmas tree (mishmus tree), Santa Claus (tanta cus), turkey (gobble-gobble), diaper (generally in terms of “no diper!”), Merry Christmas (memmy mishmus). Some favorite things to talk about are daddy’s car, her babies, the gators, and her books. Jason’s folks are here (hence my ability to do this extended blog!) and she is even calling them by name.
She has also started basic counting. She often says one-two, and lately, she generally wants two of everything (two crackers, two lights, two blocks, etc.).
At first, I think she used two to generally refer to more than one. But in the last couple of days, I have noticed that she says “one” while stacking a block, and then says “two” when stacking the next block. Of course, she then starts over with “one” for the next block, but I am pretty impressed!
While she has not yet said one-two-three, I know she knows three…I often count to three when I am trying to get her to behave and before I get to two or three, she often says “no two!” or “no tee”!! It is pretty hard to keep a straight face after that…
She has also started singing songs – Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Rock-A-Bye Baby, Itsy-Bitsy Spider, and Jingle Bells are her current favorites. I haven’t yet caught it on film, but she has been known to sing row, row, row your boat to her babies…very precious. She really, really likes Jingle Bells – at first she would say jingle bells whenever she wanted to hear Christmas music. She still does that, but now there are times when she literally means she wants to hear the actual song, Jingle Bells – any version is acceptable!
She is becoming more interested in putting things together (leggos, stacking blocks, etc.) and is really starting to try to become more independent. While she can’t quite manage it yet, she often wants to try to put on her own shoes and socks, and she loves to wipe up messes – some of which she creates on purpose, just so she can then wipe them up.
She is also much, much more aware of the camera, and quite particular about when she will cooperate. She even knows what to do when someone says “say cheese,” with this being the result:
Last weekend, we had a great time making Christmas cookies. I made a batch of roll-out sugar cookies and Brianna and I went to town cutting out the cookies and eating the cookie dough (definitely a family tradition!). She had a great time and assured me she would love to help me make “coo-coos” anytime!
Learning what to do.
Hmmm….I think this is better
Mommy – do it like this!
Then, yesterday she had a cookie party with her friends. For these cookies their teacher gave them already baked cookies, and they were allowed to put frosting and/or sprinkles on top. You can see where all the frosting ended up…
Today we walked to the farm across the street from our neighborhood to get our Christmas tree. Ever since we moved into this house, we have walked across the street, picked out our tree, and carried it back to the house. Well, because we have a very active toddler, and because the street separating our neighborhood from the farm is pretty busy, we opted to walk there and have the tree delivered. 
She started out interested (as you can see by the above pictures ), but then, as we got closer to the playground, Brianna wasn’t too sure she wanted a Christmas tree. No Christmas tree (“mishmus me”) was practically the anthem as we walked to the farm, particularly once walked PAST the playground. She was NOT really interested in trading playground time for Christmas tree shopping. Hence the looks in these pictures…
But, once we got there, she wanted more Christmas tree (we got the one right behind Jenn)!
And Santa Claus was there! She was very interested in “sinta cus”, but only from a distance. It took quite a lot of convincing to get even this close.
Now the fake, painted wooden Santa…that one she loved!
While proclaiming over all of the wonders of this “preferred” Santa (complete with hugs and kisses), we met Sara. I believe she is the farmers’ daughter, and she had this wonderful toy puppy that fascinated Brianna. Sara was very sweet, and even let Brianna play with the puppy several times.
She may have been hesitant at first, but she spent the rest of the day talking about the Christmas tree, and the puppy, and of course, Santa Claus!
It was a lovely fall day so we headed out to get some pictures of our little darling in the Christmas dress Mimi got her last year. It is a tad big, but we made it work. I was a little worried she wouldn’t sit/stand still long enough to get a couple of good ones – she is only 19 months old after all! But she surprised us and we ended up with several good ones to choose from. Plus, she had a blast looking at all the Christmas decorations and running around. Win-win!
Apparently, she thinks Timmy scored another TD against the Noles…
Peek-a…
…Boo!
While we were out today (working off nervous energy before the big game!), Brianna spotted a rocking horse in a store. On, rock, off, repeat…
I admit, pink has never been my favorite color – mostly because the world seems to believe that all girls love and must have an excessive amount of pink! As a result of my aversion, I generally do not buy Brianna anything pink, even though she looks pretty good in that color (besides, I know everyone else will take care of that for me!). Further, leopard print is not really my style, and it definitely is not Jason’s. BUT, my friend Jean loaned me several adorable outfits for Brianna to wear, and she loves pink and just about any cat print. Plus, I must admit, my little angel looks pretty good in pink with leopard print trim!
Brianna has really started showing an interest in helping with everything lately…helping put her shoes on, helping put her toys away, helping dispose of her dirty diapers, etc. Well today, after a very nice lunch with Ms. Emmy (my friend Emily, who is pregnant with twins and due any second now!), we headed over to the playground hoping we could get in some playtime in between rain showers. As it has rained a lot lately, some parts of the playground were understandably wet. I brought a towel just for that possibility, but before I could actually wipe anything off, Brianna was exclaiming over the lello (water). I asked her if she wanted to wipe up the water, and she said YES! She then proceeded to wipe up pretty much every wet spot on every slide, tunnel, and seat in the entire playground, even the big tall scary part of the playground.
Parts of the playground that she would never go on before suddenly became part of her mission! She was very thorough – I don’t believe any of the children that frequent the playground need to worry at all about getting their clothes wet…or dirty…after wiping up the water, Brianna proceeded to “clean” the steps with her tummy and knees, and the slides with her bottom.
This past week, Brianna and I were soooo lucky to have Miss Marty and William come over to visit! It was a miserable, cold, and rainy day outside so we stayed inside and played, and played, and played.
William loved Brianna’s puzzle toy, and I think Brianna learned more watching him play with it than she does watching us. Go figure.
Marty is 9 months pregnant with her second child – I think she looks great! Right now, they call the baby Grulia (a combination of Graham and Julia) because they don’t know what the gender is. Jason and I hope she has a Julia. She already knows how fun boys are, and we want her to know how much fun girls are!
William is two and an adorable, outgoing, friendly little boy. I was so impressed with how good he is at following direction and sharing. It is amazing how big of a difference 5 little months can make, especially on the social front. Brianna is still not very good at sharing, and she would fuss when William would play with a toy she wanted to play with. I think part of it is because she doesn’t see William very often, and part of it is because she is just at that age. We are working on it. Even though I had hoped she would share a little better with William than she did, she did much better than she would have done even one month ago. Progress!
We had a wonderful time visiting and playing with William and Marty. Thank you guys so much for coming!
Like most kids, Brianna has favorite books that she wants us to read over and over again. One favorite is what we call “The Duck Book.” It has pull out sections that complete the sentence, e.g., “bunny likes to hide, but she also likes being…” (pull out) “found!” Today, while reading this book, I said “frog likes to jump, but he always makes a…” and Brianna said “mess!” plain as day, before I could even pull out the section! I think she also does it for the other pages, but “found” and “loud” and the other words aren’t quite as clear and/or sound very similar. She did it multiple times, so I am positive she knew exactly what she was saying; she was very proud of herself! We are very proud as well.
