Wooo! The Canes just finished off New Jersey in very exciting fashion. They like to make it interesting I guess – they tied Game 7 with 1:20 left in the game, and they scored the winning goal with 37.1 seconds left in regulation. Not quite as down to the wire as game 4 (where they scored the game winning goal with 0.2 seconds left in regulation), but I don’t know if my heart could have taken that. I give credit to Brianna…and Cam Ward, of course…
Brianna still does not walk by herself (although we think she can), but she does stand (briefly) by herself, and her favorite activity these days is motoring around behind her walker. With a little steering help, she goes and goes and goes — around the kitchen island, into the living room, left at the stairs, u-turn at the door, right past the stairs, into the kitchen, around the island…
She occasionally stops at the stairs to climb up and down the stairs a few times. She is getting very good (and quick!) at both, and even understands that she needs to orient herself at the top of the stairs so that she can go down butt first (no face first please…). Yesterday, she seemed to figure that out with the chairs, too. Anytime she wanted down from a chair (including the big “adult” chairs), she would roll over onto her belly, dangle her feet off the side, and push until her feet hit the floor. This was also a game for a while — up into the chair (or have me lift her into the chair), sit up, roll over, out of the chair, repeat…
While she still does not bother with the contents of any cabinet or drawer (although I think that will end very soon), she LOVES banging the cabinet doors. She will move back and forth between the locked and unlocked ones so that she can create different banging sounds. 
I know these pictures are from Brianna’s first birthday, but they are cute and I don’t have any from this week to post so…The picture above is with her new friend – dancing and signing bunny. She LOVES to push the button in his foot to make him dance and sing (sounds kind of like Elvis). Jason took a couple pictures like this and the colors are just beautiful!
The picture below is of our Easter centerpiece: tulips Tatie Kat gave Brianna and the Easter basket, candles, and bunny-sticks my friend’s mom gave Brianna for her birthday. The eggs in the basket are real egg shells (egg parts blown out) hand dyed with all those beautiful colors. Brianna also got some lovely baby roses from Grandma and Grandpa (going in a pot this weekend) and Nana helped me plant some sweet pea flowers in the backyard on her birthday. I hope to make that an annual tradition – sweet peas for my sweet pea!
Brianna has had and will have more than her fair share of doctor visits lately. Last week we took her because we did not like the way she was breathing. Her breathing turned out to be fine, but she had an ear infection. Today I took her for her 12-month wellness check and to see how her ear was doing. The bad news is that she now has an ear infection in both ears (the antibiotics were not working) and is going on a different antibiotic (which means another doctor appointment in two weeks…). The good news is that her development is great and other than not wanting to drink much, she does not act sick at all. According to the doctor’s measurements, Brianna weighs 19 lbs. 15.5 oz. (25%), is 28″ long (15%), and has a head circumference of 47.25 cm (95%). Once she is better, we will work on transitioning her to a sippy cup full time and using solid food as her primary source of nutrition instead of formula.
Brianna went on her first Easter egg hunt this morning. My neighborhood puts on one every year and we were very excited to get to participate this year. Brianna really seemed to enjoy it! All those brightly colored eggs were just fascinating to her (although she had NO interest in the candy inside – just the eggs, thank you very much!). Enjoy the photos!
Before the egg hunt began, we scoped out which eggs we wanted to get…
I am ready – can we go yet??
I’ll take that one…
…and that one…
Mommy! How could you forget my basket?? I am very good at hunting eggs and your pockets just are NOT big enough!
I love my eggs…
…so pretty!
As a continuation of my previous post, I thought you might like to know what all Brianna is up to these days. Brianna weighs 20 lbs. 1 oz, and is roughly 27″ tall. So, in her first year she gained roughly 1 lb and grew a little over 0.5″ each month. She also has 6 teeth – 4 on top and 2 on the bottom. While she can still fit into more than a few 6 month and 9 month clothes, she generally wears 12 month stuff now.
While her enunciation may not be quite clear to anyone but Jason and me, she says close to 20 different words, which include ball, bink, mama, daddy, cat, puff, milk, more, pup, nana, duck, hi, moo, bye-bye, night-night, up, and hat. Admittedly, ball, bink, and puffs, for example, sound remarkably alike, so we rely on context a lot. She also signs “all done” and “milk” and “more” and will clap her hands and stomp her feet on cue (when she feels like it). She crawls all over the place and loves to climb up and down the stairs, and in and out of her chair. She will walk either with our help or behind some thing stable, like her activity center. She has not yet tried to walk by herself and she only recently has begun to walk around things. She also plays quite well with us and by herself – she generally likes to play her xylophone, read her books, play with her musical toys, play with her activity center, swing on the swings, go for walks, gnaw on anything in her hand, and chase after the cats (he-he). When playing with her stuffed animals, she honestly seems to be telling herself stories about them – she just jabbers and jabbers away! One of her latest things is to hug/kiss her stuffed animals – it really is a combo move and it is the epitome of adorable!
She has gotten a little picky with eating lately (ever since she was sick a couple of weeks ago), but in addition to previously mentioned foods, she also eats eggs (loves them!), yogurt, cream cheese frosting (loved it!), cheerios, and toast, and we have added cinnamon, nutmeg, and dill to her food. Because she has been sick, we did not add quite as many foods this past month. Up next is milk, turkey, cantelope, and tomato sauce.
The first year passed so quickly, just like everyone said it would. Still, we enjoyed it all and feel very lucky to have such an adorable, sweet, and happy child!
Brianna turned 1 today! Here are a few pictures of her in her birthday dress.
Here she is with her birthday crown…
…and on her new tricycle…
…and on her new step stool/chair Poppa made her…
…is it time for cake yet?…
Yay – cake (or at least yay icing!)…
We had a wonderful time visiting family and friends. Brianna was just fascinated with watching Jack and Corinne play with her toys.
