Blog | 2009
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!
Did we scare you? No? Well then, you must not be UGA fans! The Gators put a can of whoop-a$$ on them this afternoon, and that just about made our Halloween perfect! We started the festivities yesterday afternoon when Brianna participated in a Halloween parade with her friends. I am only including pics of Brianna – I did not think to ask the other parents if they would mind if I posted some pics of them online, and I don’t want to assume it would be o.k. Here she is in her Gator costume (with her Halloween pumpkin socks) during the parade. I am holding the pom-pom we made for her because she wasn’t interested in it while we were taking pictures.
Then today, she got dressed up in her costume again, this time with her Gator socks and pom-pom! I also had some Gator tattoos, but decided there was little to no chance she would sit still while I put them on. Maybe next time. Anyway, here she is getting ready for the game (did I mention that the Gators clobbered UGA??).
Inspecting the pom-pom…
Is this what I am supposed to do???
I get it now!! I look pretty cool in the mirror shaking my pom-pom!
Here she is playing with her pumpkin (one of several she picked out at the pumpkin patch). I tried to get her to sit by the jack-o-lantern for a picture (she has been fascinated with that thing for days), but no go. She apparently did not feel like posing!
She seemed interested in, and even a bit fascinated with the trick-or-treaters that came to the house, at least until a couple of skeletons came by (with masks). She did not like that at all — took about 20 minutes to completely calm her back down. So, Tatie Kat screened all future visitors and had to give the o.k. before we would bring Brianna to the door to see them. Eventually, she asked to go outside, so I took her to a couple of neighbors’ houses for a very brief trick-or-treating stint. She did say trick-or-treat and thank you once, but she would not let go of me to do anything further. She finished the evening trick-or-treating at our house with her buddies Jake (the monkey) and Stella (the princess), and then it was off to dream land (hopefully to NOT dream about skeletons…).
Brianna recently had her 18-month checkup. She is currently 30.75″ tall (25%), weighs 22 lbs. (25%), and has a head circumference of 48.5 cm (90-95%). She got her seasonal flu shot and her final DTaP. Everything checked out just fine!
It is October, and that means it is time for the fair and for Halloween and all kinds of good stuff! You can’t really tell in the picture above, but as you can see in the pictures below, Brianna is taking advantage of the Halloween “season” by wearing her jack-o-lantern hat! I just put the above picture first because she is smiling nice and does not have her bink her her mouth…
Here are a couple of pictures of Brianna in her 2009 festive Halloween outfit (not costume), complete with Halloween socks!
…playing with her toys…
…watching Nemo…
…chasing Mommy…
This past weekend, her Grandma and Grandpa came to visit. We went to a farm (took a hay ride and checked out all of the animals before eating some fabulous home made ice cream). We also went to the State Fair (people watched, ran all over the place, ate more ice cream, rode the merry-go-round…twice…). Strangely, she was fascinated by the grates on all the storm drains, which seriously looked big enough for her to get caught in. Needless to say, we did not let her play around them, but she kept us on our toes trying to sneak past our defenses!
Will try to post some merry-go-round pictures later. Until then, here are some pictures of her from today, where she is wearing her “scottie” dress and her patent leather shoes. Too cute!
…after filling her belly with yummy Zpizza…
…anybody know how to make this thing work?? Trying to put on Nemo…
With the Grandparents and Curly (try to ignore me in this picture. I am not supposed to be in there anyway!)
I mentioned to a friend of mine that Brianna has apparently been spending a lot of time with the baby dolls at school. So, my friend’s daughter graciously semi-indefinitely loaned Brianna her baby doll stroller and several baby dolls to play with. Brianna loves them! She just loves pushing around the dolls in the stroller. I have not given her all the dolls to play with – I figure I’ll bring them out over time. Who needs to have them all? She is having a blast with the two I have given her so far (along with a clown and a kitty or two)!
Our little munchkin is getting bigger and bigger – clearly all our attempts to slow her down are not working! I have no idea how big she actually is, but will find out in a couple of weeks when we go to her 18-month checkup. I’ll post that info then.
I took the above picture today when we ventured out to get a smoothie. We are all recovering from the flu (Brianna was the last to get it) so we haven’t been out hardly at all since we returned from vacation. So far, I would say Brianna got the lightest version of it out of the three of us, with Jason getting the worst. While she has had a high fever for a couple of days, she has still been her usual cheerful self, and she is eating well (as long as the food we give her consists of applesauce and/or smoothies). She has also eaten other things, but those are her favorite “sick” foods. It was a miserable flu (oink, oink), but all things considered, I think we fared o.k.
Brianna is a chatterbox! I can’t imagine where she gets that from… She is putting 3 and 4 word phrases together all the time. More milk please. More up Mommy please. No chocolate Mommy (I kid you not – she actually said that to me when I offered her my chocolate shake in place of her Daddy’s vanilla). She will attempt to repeat pretty much anything you ask her to repeat, and is really good at saying please and thank you (this last one is a fairly recent development). Some words are crystal clear – milk, mommy, daddy, apple, baby, nose, hat, night-night, etc. Other words require a translator – water (sounds like lellow), thank you (sounds like ga-gu), chocolate (sounds like chakit), gators (sounds like goo-goo), etc. We are also officially in the watch what you say phase. I dropped something the other day and said “crap,” which was cheerfully and clearly repeated by my darling daughter – smile and everything!
She is getting more adventurous as she becomes more comfortable with things around her. She loves the slides and swings and general playground equipment, but prefers the stuff at the playgrounds she is familiar with. She also has a few “space” issues – she does not like to be crowded and she does not like it when people (adults, kids, and anything in between) approach her too quickly. For the most part, however, she now just stands very still when this happens, instead of getting very fidgety and fussy. She loves her school buddies (bubbies) and can even say some of their names (Hawk, Max). Biting incidents aside (one where she was the bitee and one where she was the biter), they seem to really like her too. Jason has even heard Hawk try to say her name when she arrives (pretty impressive for an 18-month old if you ask me). So, while she is still very shy with playground kids, grandparents, and family friends, she loves her school “bubbies” and teachers.
We are beginning to transition her to a “real” food schedule. Meaning, we are beginning to feed her what we eat. I suspect this will take several months to fully put in place, but our goal is to teach her to try new things and that we will all be eating the same thing as a family (no member-specific menus).
She is entering the “help” phase as well – it is adorable to see. She wants to help load the dishwasher and put things away. I hope this phase lasts for, oh, 18+ years!!
I know, it has been a loooong time since I posted anything. I meant to do a quick post before we left for vacation, but you know how that goes…To make up for it, I posted the picture above first – isn’t she just adorable? As you will learn below, this picture is from the end of our trip at the Bla Bla store (where she acquired her new “baby” bla bla). Plus, the gobs of pictures below should also help pacify the grandparents. 
We had a WONDERFUL vacation. It was quite busy, and Jason is currently napping on the couch to recover from a cold he apparently caught, but we all had a great time. We started our trip last Saturday (the 19th) by driving down to Atlanta, partially to break up the trip and partially to take Brianna to the fabulous Georgia Aquarium. We arrived in downtown Atlanta just in time for the UF vs. Tennessee game (yay Gators!). After Brianna had a nap and after the game, we walked over to Ted’s Montana Grill and tried bison – it was yummy! Here is the view of downtown/Centennial Park from our hotel room.
We stayed at the Embassy Suites right down the street from the Aquarium so we could maximize our Aquarium time between Brianna’s naps. The hotel also happens to be right next to Centennial Park – Brianna loved walking around (despite the drizzle) and looking at the fountains (there was one in the park and one in the hotel).
After we checked out of our hotel and loaded up our car (amazing how much stuff she needed for this trip…) we headed over to the Aquarium. I don’t have many pictures as I mostly shot flip video (it may take a while to make the movies, but I promise I am working on it) and I haven’t looked at all the pics Jason took. But, here are a couple.
These pictures don’t even begin to do this place justice. It was FANTASTIC. Brianna loved the water tunnel the best. It is an underwater tunnel roughly 50 yards long with glass/plastic walls where you are surrounded by all kinds of fish, sharks, rays, etc., peacefully swimming next to you, over your head, etc. I think she would have stayed in there for days if we had let her. She also liked walking through the various other little tunnels (much to my back’s dismay) to peak up into various other fish tanks. To those who have never been, I highly recommend it!
Next we drove down to Havana to visit with Jason’s folks. Brianna loves dogs, but generally only from a distance. But Koda, Tia’s dog, seems to have cured her of this problem.
It took her a while, but eventually she became quite comfortable around this very animated puppy. Fortunately, she seemed to remember her positive experience during the rest of our trip, as she encountered other dogs on our trip, and seemed quite comfortable with them as well.
While in the Tally area, we took Brianna to the Jr. Museum, which is really a zoo.
She walked all over the place an looked at the animals. I think she liked the otters best, and maybe the panthers. Here are a few of the beautiful animals we saw that day (again, most of my stuff is on the Flip).
After leaving the Tally area, we headed to Seaside for a family beach day/night. Brianna was still a little skittish around the water (or lello as she calls it), like she was with the Atlantic, but it was better. She even let us hold her while we stood in the water, and she walked along the beach some herself. We stayed at a perfect little beach cottage, had a lovely dinner at Bud & Alley’s Pizza, spent some sunset/dusk time and some early morning time down at the beach, and strolled around Seaside. It was wonderful! I would not mind one bit if that became a family tradition. If it wasn’t so ridiculously expensive, I would buy myself a little Seaside beach cottage… Here are some photos of our time at Seaside.
Jason and Brianna have the same reaction to sand…
I think she looks a lot like Alivia in this picture.
After Seaside, we headed to my folk’s house in Fort Walton Beach. We had a wonderful time visiting with Mimi and Djadju, visiting with old friends at Jason’s reunion, and just generally enjoying being “home.” While there, Brianna got to meet her Djadju (grandpa in polish) and her Great-Grandmom.
She was fascinated by the family bird, Chico. While he wasn’t much interested in visiting with her, she just LOVED watching Chico!
Of course, we also went to the beach here as well…By the end of the trip she even let me dip her up and down in the water. Definite progress if you ask me!
One day we also went to the local mall and Brianna rode the merry-go-round (again on the Flip) and played on the indoor playground. But the best of all was the real life arcade! She loved it!! All those flashing lights and bright colors…she hardly knew where to start.
Sunday morning we met up with the Jowers for breakfast and then headed to Atlanta, partially to break up the trip and partially to visit the Sloans (my college roommate and her family). Unfortunately, I had a brain freeze and completely forgot to take any pictures of either the Jowers or the Sloans! 
Hopefully we will get to see them again soon.
Right before we headed home, we stopped at the Bla Bla store, which is conveniently located in Atlanta. Brianna was so excited to see all the Bla Blas, especially the giant Bla Bla.
It was hard to choose…
but, she ultimately picked out a small pink Bla Bla for herself (which she calls Bla Bla baby or baby Bla Bla, depending on her mood).
Jason also picked out a puppy Bla Bla, which is the green one in the picture below (we are still contemplating a name – any suggestions?). Then, finally we headed home. I think she likes her new Bla Blas, don’t you?
We had a wonderful trip! Jason even believes Brianna grew while we were gone. She is getting so big. She still won’t nap much in the car, but she is at least fairly calm during the ride. The portable DVD player we have was a lifesaver (she loves the Muppets – my favorite part was when she said “quack, quack” when she saw Big Bird!). Someday soon I am SURE she will realize that sleeping in the car is a fabulous thing!
Our little Sweet Pea celebrated her 17-month birthday in Florida Gator style! (And the Gators were kind enough to rout Charleston Southern as expected).
She is growing and changing so fast, it is getting hard to keep up (literally and figuratively)! She still likes to spend as little time as possible on the changing pad, so we generally take care of diapers quickly and then move her to the floor to get her dressed. This generally results in “the clothing escapades.” All this doesn’t take much time, and it is really quite fun – lots of giggles and hide-and-seek/peek-a-boo games. First, the pants, bottoms, or in this case, adorable UF panties go on.
Then, we generally move onto another part of the house to put on her top (at times, this includes the chase around the living room with her top half on and half off). And then to still another spot to put on socks and shoes (yes, this is another UF outfit – she wore it the day before the big opening day game).
Brianna’s vocabulary seemingly changes daily. In addition to new words (e.g., snacks (nax), yogurt (gogur), boo-boo (depending on context, either means boo-boo or blueberries), gator (goo-goo), soap (do), frittata (eetata), cookie (coo-coo), car, etc.), she also has some phrases (e.g., what’s that (ishat), this is (ishis), big pooh (for her big Pooh Bear), Mommy go, bye-bye meow, etc. She is also starting to move faster on her feet, which has resulted in many falls and a seemingly permanent scrape on one or both knees at any given time (look closely at her right knee in picture below).
She eats really well still and has three new teeth (working on a fourth, which will bring her total up to 16 teeth). We have started introducing more new foods and have started feeding her some of our “normal” food. She loves spaghetti (so far any variation will do), smoothies, and frittata in addition to the old favorites of peas, carrots, sweet potatoes, yogurt, yogurt puffs, crackers, and cheese. In general, though, her favorite thing is whatever I am eating. As you can see below, I took a smoothie to the park last week, and she drank (I kid you not) almost half, and refused to let go even to climb the stairs! So much for Mommy’s lunch…
She loves animals and loves making her animal sounds, but generally she wants all animals (except her kitties) to keep their distance. Meaning, she loves to say pup-pup, and point at the pup-pup, and clap at the pup-pup, but she does NOT want the pup-pup within 20 feet of her, even the tiny ones.
This last picture I included because I just loved her expression – don’t mess with her Bla Bla!
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…
