We went to Virginia Beach this weekend to see Kathy. While there, we went to the Aquarium and the Zoo – Brianna loved it all! She was fascinated by the birds and the marine life at the Aquarium, and was amazed at all the animals at the zoo, especially the big ones (elephant, giraffe, rhino, etc.). She just stared and stared and stared. We even got to see the lion cubs, but unfortunately, those pictures did not turn out as well as I would have liked due to the limited lens on my camera. It never occurred to either Jason or me that he should bring his fancy camera until we were already there, so we had to make do. Here are a few photos from our trip.
I remember thinking eating lemons was great fun when I was a kid. Brianna is potentially following in my footsteps – the jury is still out. I had a slice of lemon on the counter and she asked for it, so I gave it to her. These pictures tell the rest of the story…
Brianna has always loved yogurt (gogur when she says it). We originally gave her the baby stuff, but lately we switched to plain yogurt mixed with homemade jam (currently Nana’s blueberry jam). She LOVES it, as you can plainly see.
Sunday morning Jason and I took Brianna for a walk around the lake in our neighborhood. Brianna loves watching the geese (and honking at them!). These are some pictures I captured when I wasn’t using my Flip.
She was fascinated by all the ducks and geese out on the water and waited for quite a while for them to come in. Unfortunately for her, I think they were waiting for her to clear out before coming in.
Today as Brianna and I were getting ready to go to the grocery store, she asked me to put her sunglasses on her. She left those things on until we got back from the store and I took them off so she could take a nap. She was so adorable, and brought a smile to numerous faces with her cuteness and her repeated declarations of “no bubby!!” (We have no idea what she is actually saying – no puppy? no poopy? Hard to say, but she says it a lot).
On the way to the store…
In the race car grocery cart…
On the way home from the store…
Brianna LOVES her Daddy’s homemade smoothies. Whenever she hears that blender start up, she drops everything and heads to the kitchen. She used to let us feed it to her, but now she would prefer to do it herself. Perhaps we should put some smoothie in one of her straw sippy cups…
SMOOTHIE!!
TA-DA!
As promised, Jason and I made a joint effort to get Brianna to stand by the giraffe so we could measure her height. No go. We spent more time playing peek-a-boo using her bedroom door…
and “where is…” (check out her “beer gut”!)
The rare couple of times she got close to the giraffe, her pig tails blocked the numbers. My best guess is that she is approaching 30″. As you can CLEARLY see by her expression, she knows exactly what we want her to do, and she is just messing with us! 
Brianna is already 16 months old and she is definitely a full-on toddler! Her speech is coming along great. She makes all kinds of animal sounds on request – sheep (aaahhh), duck (cack-cack), chicken (cuh-cuh), cow (moooooo), cat (neow), and goose (a very gutteral anh-anh). New words include bubbles, the animal sounds, peas, boo-boo (blueberries), coo-coo (cookie), and poppa, while already established words are getting clearer (e.g., book, bink, cat). I think she has started saying thank you when prompted, but I need a few more examples to be sure. She is definitely having entire conversations with herself (and occasionally us), but we really don’t know what all she is saying). Ball, mama (or mommy), daddy, and no are still her favorite words.
She loves going to the pool and is getting quite comfortable standing in the shallow end of the baby pool. She will even tip her head over and try to blow bubbles in the water if you prompt her. She is not very good at it yet, but she is getting there, and more importantly, she is comfortable doing it. If you hold her up, she will also kick her legs, and she loves to splash people. We opted to wait and do lessons later this year or maybe next year. For now, we are just getting her used to being near and in the water.
We have not really introduced many new foods recently, and plan to get moving on that again. So far, she is still a good eater. She loved the lemon pound cake her great-Grandma made during their visit, and she loves her cookies (some of which are actually sweetish breadsticks with veggie/fruit added to them). She loves canned peas and canned carrots, but still is not terribly interested in fresh or frozen versions of those same veggies (cooked, of course). Lima beans and broccoli continue to be among her least favorite foods.
While she is still an angel most of the time, she is really starting to exhibit some willful behavior, particularly when she is tired. We have seen a few fits recently, but nothing major, and she generally gives it up once she realizes she is not getting the attention (or item) she wanted. Most outbursts involve having to get her diaper changed, not getting to go down the stairs by herself, not getting to go outside, and/or not getting to play with bubbles. We did have one incident in school last week – she bit one of the other kids! Apparently, one kid was bugging her, but eventually left her alone. Then another kid came along and started bugging her, and she demonstrated her displeasure with her teeth. We were quite surprised – I would have thought she would have kicked or hit since that is what she does at home when she is frustrated. Thankfully, that is the only biting incident so far.
She is still shy, but she is thankfully getting over some of the separation anxiety she exhibited the past few months. Yay! I hope to get a picture of her standing in front of her height measuring giraffe soon. So far, she has not been terribly interested in standing still long enough for me to take the picture. In the mean time, here are a few pictures from the past week or so. In the first, she is saying goodbye to Ms. Susan, her Kindermusik teacher on the last day of class. The next picture illustrates her recent love of sunglasses. After that, I put in a couple of pictures from our last trip to the pool. She HAD to carry the beach ball herself. All the way there and all the way back!! Lastly, while Jason and I had a date night this past weekend, Nana, Poppa, and Tia stayed with Brianna (they came to visit this past weekend to celebrate the guys’ birthdays). As you can see, Brianna is telling Nanna a very funny story!
This weekend, Jason’s folks and sister are visiting. Yesterday we made another trip to the museum – Brianna just loves it there. She always has to say hi to the fish!
Since we went on a Saturday this time, the Discovery Center was open (only open on Saturdays from 11 to 5). It is a wonderful place for kids that has costumes, animal puppets, real animals (at this time reptiles) to see and touch, shells, and all kinds of things to see, touch, learn about, etc. Brianna loved it! Here are some pictures from her adventures. In the one with Tia, notice the piece of shell she is carrying around. She carried that around everywhere she went for at least 20 minutes until she finally relinquished it to a nice man so she could read a duck book she found.
