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Last Friday Brianna turned 22 months old, and to celebrate, the New Orleans Saints won the Superbowl for her – wasn’t that nice of them?? The picture above shows the big girl last Friday. I think she looks ridiculously grown up in this picture. sniff…sniff… She was having a good time pushing all her sleep buddies (these days that includes Baby Blabla, Big Blabla, Puppy Blabla, Classic Pooh (“cassic pooh”), and teddy) in her stroller. Yes, I do mean ALL, along with one small baby doll and her sippy cup. You would be amazed at what she can get in that stroller!

She seems to change every day – it is getting hard to keep up with her. She wants to do everything herself, and tells you by saying “baby! baby!” and pointing at whatever it she wants to do, e.g., turning the lights on or off, putting on her socks, shutting the door, turning on the faucet, putting on her pants, etc. She can’t quite DO all of those things, but she doesn’t let such minor details deter her.

She is all about the singing these days. If she is awake in her crib, she is often singing to herself and/or her sleep buddies. Current favorites include Frere Jacques, rock-a-by baby, twinkle, twinkle little star, and row, row, row your boat. She also got into Mama Paquita (she calls it mamamamama pizza) last night – very cute.

She still likes to count, but only when SHE says to count. We try to count everything – stairs, puffs, blueberries, toys, etc., and I have heard her count as high as sixteen a couple of times (there are sixteen steps on our stairs…). She also does portions of the ABCs, but generally only when someone else is singing it for her. She loves to talk (although she is shy when people are talking to her), and does a great job of saying “Hi ______” and “Bye _____” to whomever she is talking to on the phone. I wouldn’t say she forms complete sentences yet, but she definitely gets her point across. She also does not quite grasp the concept of a question, as she generally says yes to everything or no to everything depending on her mood (as opposed to whether she really means yes or no).

She is getting much better at recognizing shapes and putting the correct shape into the correct opening in whatever toy she is playing with, though she is not very good at actually naming the shapes. She is also very hit or miss (more miss than hit) on her colors – green is really the only consistent one I have noticed. But shapes and colors are the things they are working on at school now, so I suspect she will pick that up pretty quickly.

She is still our Buddha baby, but she is getting taller. And, her hair is getting so long! We can do pigtails now (just barely) and it is so cute! Here she is this past Saturday playing with her naked car seat in her mismatched clothes. Why naked car seat and mismatched clothes you ask? Because our little angel pulled the straw out of her cup and dumped the whole thing upside down while we were riding home from the mall. As I was not fond of the idea of a car that smelled like spoiled milk, we figured we had better clean it up, which we did while she took a nap and while we thought longingly of the nap we were missing. I don’t think she grasped the magnitude of our displeasure…

Last week we celebrated Christmas in February! My Aunt Sherry and Uncle Jim sent us our Christmas presents from that side of the family a little late so we had a lot of fun opening presents. She is MUCH better at it now, and I suspect she will be an old pro by her birthday. If I start a tear somewhere in the paper, she will have that whole thing unwrapped, lickety-split!

The plus side to Christmas in February? Fun new toys to play with! She is having a great time with the wooden puzzles in particular. It has enabled me to sneak some of her older toys away and hide them to “surprise” her with at some future date. The down side to Christmas in February? The revival of Jingle Bells, Christmas music and all things Christmas, at least in Brianna’s mind. We had convinced her that Santa Claus, Jingle Bells, etc. had gone night-night for a while but would be back. Much to her delight, they came back much sooner than we told her they would… The funniest part was watching Jason cave and put on Christmas music for her last weekend. For those of you that don’t know , Jason has always been adamant that Christmas music should only be played between Thanksgiving and New Years (at the most), and preferably only between 1 – 25 December. What a softie!

That is all I can think of at the moment. So, here is one last picture of her on her “22 month birthday.” I told her to smile without scrunching up her eyes, and she decided she preferred to smile while scrunching up her eyes (all while trying to put a newborn hat on classic pooh’s head)!