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.
Brianna is 19 months old! To celebrate, we went to watch some horses at a charity horse show held at the fairgrounds. I discovered it while surfing the web looking for something different to do on a beautiful fall day. How did parents find these sorts of fun, out of the way things before the internet? I fully intended to take pictures, but I did not let her walk around much because it was a wide open space where people and horses moved freely. I didn’t want her to spook a horse or get scared by a horse. So, you will just have to take my word for it, she had a great time! All the way home, she kept saying, “more neigh”!
She seems to add new words everyday, and will repeat (or try to anyway) most anything you say to her. Her latest words include bicycle (bitikle), sleepsack (seepsak), noodle (noo-no), chicken, upstairs and apple juice (both sound like apple juice), touchdown, pumpkin (punkin), cauliflower (caudifoder), crab (cra), and helicopter (hedicotter). She LOVES Nemo and stickers and bubbles, and she loves to watch the movies we make of her. Since I don’t want her spending too much time watching videos, I got her a Nemo book and some Nemo bath toys/cups. That pretty much distracts her.
Her latest thing seems to be dancing. She will shuffle her feet with the music and laugh and clap! She has yet to do it while the camera is running, but I am trying to film her “dancing” along to “Barnyard Dance” by Sandra Boynton. It is really fun to watch her. She has not started jumping yet, but she does run quite a bit. She will also make her body go up and down in an attempt to copy our jumping motions. I know I am biased, but she is just so darn cute and she makes us laugh every day!
She also seems to have developed a nurturing tendency. While I am holding her, she pats my back. And she regularly gets her sleep sack to cover her baby dolls so they can go night-night (while she pats, well somewhat beats, them on the back to sooth them)! That poor baby doll spends pretty much all day asleep, with an occasional awake period to eat (baby milk only, don’t you know).
She is still a good eater (as you can see by her “beer belly” in the pictures above and below), but seems to do a pretty good job of only eating until she is full. Her latest favorites seem to be applesauce, carrots, noodles (especially with tomato sauce), pizza, and the always popular puffs. We increasingly are feeding her what we are eating, and that seems to be working fairly well so far. She will still try broccoli, but won’t eat much (seems to like it with tomato sauce, though), and when I gave her some cauliflower the other day, she made an awful face…and then proceeded to eat more. Not sure what that means, but I’ll take it. We basically don’t make her eat anything and don’t make a big deal out of it if she won’t eat something. But, we also keep giving her “disliked” foods at future meals. I am also currently reading about how to hide veggies so we will see how that goes.
Today was such a beautiful day, we spent her long awake period outside playing in the leaves. She had to watch some other people go at it first before she would try it herself. She was a bit tentative at first, but we all had a great time in the beautiful weather!
