Blog | 2010
As Brianna keeps telling us almost every day: I growing so fast! It is amazing to look back at pictures that I would swear were taken just yesterday and see how she has changed. She is now 34.5″ tall and weighs 28-30 lbs (depends on the day and time of day – she likes to play with the scale lately). Her hair is so long now – it is definitely “relatively” longer than mine (meaning it goes farther down her back than mine does), and I think it just might actually be longer than mine. If it is not, it is sure getting close. As she will tell you, she mostly likes to keep it long, but will let us put a little braid or a hair bow in to keep it out of her eyes. We also try to make sure it is always back in a pony tail during meals to keep it as clean as possible. She talks up a storm these days and comes up with the strangest reasons for doing/not doing things. If she does not want to say hello, good bye, or night night, she will excuse it by saying “when I’m taller” – if you pick her up to make her taller, she will generally comply. If you ask her why she did/did not do something (e.g., why didn’t you eat your crackers? why don’t you want to dance?), her reason is generally “It’s not nice” (not really sure just yet how to explain what “it’s not nice” really means!). She still sleeps great at home, although we now generally have to snuggle with her in the rocking chair or rub her back for two minutes before we leave, and we now need to turn on her stars at night (she has a turtle that projects blue and/or green stars onto the ceiling). Her imagination is starting to affect her sleep a little bit – she has woken up a few times in the last couple of weeks (once shrieking for us in a panic). When we get there, she calms down pretty quickly, and tells us the dog in the window (apparently that means outside her crib) scared her. I think the harvest moon made some funny shadows in her room and she didn’t like it. We shall see how it goes at the next full moon. Potty training is going slowly – for the most part she is not interested. Although just today, she started marching off to the potty the minute I had her diaper off, before I could even ask her. Perhaps we have reached a turning point? I think if she hasn’t accomplished this on her own by then, we will use Thanksgiving weekend to lose the diapers (at least during the day). She is still fascinated by Cars, loves silly bands, and loves shoes that make noise and/or light up. All in all, she is a typical toddler!
Right now she is all about the pumpkins and FUN Halloween stuff, but you can keep the skeletons and other scary monsters. Here she is with her new battery-operated jack-o-lantern and her pumpkin sunglasses.
I bought the jack-o-lantern at Target last week, and she pretty much carried it with her everywhere for the next several days. The last couple of days she switched to my stuffed jack-o-lantern – probably because it is softer, easier to carry, and I will let her take it in her crib with her at night (the lit one seemed like a bad idea in light of recent night time awakenings!).
This past weekend we took her to a corn maze and let her participate in all the associated activities. She had a great time – I will need to take her back as we just did not allot enough time for her to feel like she got to do everything. We started with the corn maze.
Helping Daddy hold the maze flag:
Posing in the picture boards:
Ready to go (thinking intently about which way to go)!
Wrong turn…
The corn maze was fun, but she got bored with that pretty quickly. She much preferred the nearby playground, farm equipment, and bouncy house.
The big tractors were scary, but this one is just my size!
What does that do, Daddy?
We had a great day in the beautiful fall weather. Good thing too, since the evening was definitely ruined by the AWFUL game.
Well, it took me a while, but I finally got this set up the way I wanted. Her is our little fingerpainting maestro! fingerpaint-movie-web.mp4
I taught myself to french braid my hair when I was in high school, so I know how to do it. But while Brianna’s hair is certainly long enough now, it never occurred to me to try it on her because, quite frankly, I did not think she would sit still long enough. I mean, it is hard enough to put her hair up in a bow or pony tail while following her around the house! However, either her teacher is a much faster braider, or she caught Brianna in an unusually still moment. I think she looks adorable! Now if I can only repeat this…
We went to a local craft fair today and listed to the local band, ate some fun fair food, and saw some cool crafts. But the thing Brianna enjoyed more than ANYTHING else was the big, red firetruck! Brianna was very excited – we visited that firetruck three times! 
She did not like the axes, and she was only mildly interested in the hoses, but she loved getting a junior firefighter hat and sitting inside the truck. The last time she visited the firetruck I was finally able to take some pictures (though I only had my phone camera with me).
Sitting with Daddy inside the firetruck.
I tried and tried to get her to stand by the firetruck so I could get a picture of that, but she kept saying no. After I told her I was very sad to not be able to get a picture of her with the firetruck, she whipped around, gave me a big grin, and declared she would do it just so I would be happy. LOL!
She refused to let go of her lemonade, however…
Tia got Brianna some finger paints for her birthday. She has finally gotten to the age where I am fairly certain she won’t eat the paints if I look away for a moment or two, so this past Sunday we dragged out the finger paints and let her have at it. I don’t think the rest of these pictures really need any commentary – let’s just say she wasn’t much interested in using the paper as her canvas…
Given that she never really tried to apply any paint to the paper we gave her, I think the final “paper” version is pretty good, even if not as fun as the final “body” version!
I did get video of pretty much the whole event. As soon as I figure out how to create a high speed version of it, I’ll send it out. Needless to say, she has asked pretty much every day since when she can finger paint again!
During the third phase of our trip, we stayed at Mimi’s and Djadju’s house. The first night Brianna stayed with them while Jason and I headed to the main reunion event. There was a fantastic thunderstorm going on right before we left. Brianna learned to laugh at the thunder!
Very appropriately clad in her local Hogs Breath shirt while watching a thunderstorm and laughing at the thunder
The next day we headed off to the mall for some air conditioned fun. My girl loves the merry-go-round!
Almost Nemo…but not quite…
Chasing the other girls at the in door playground (yes, the in door part was very important – it was hot!)
On our way home we stopped to see my good friend Jeanette. She and her husband Jason are expecting her first child this fall and Brianna and I decided it was a girl! We will have to wait until fall to see if we are correct – we can’t wait! Jeanette made us a fabulous dinner of cornmeal dusted tilapia with dill cream sauce, herbed couscous, sauteed green beans, and for dessert: peach and blueberry crisp with ice cream. YUMMMMMMM! I only have one professional chef friend, so we were thrilled that we got to personally sample her cooking. Now I just need to figure out excuses to go back…
Before we left for home, we stopped at the B&B Jeanette works out. Here she is with Brianna on the famous flower couch (Jeanette swears her boss has a pair of jeans that look just like this couch!).
Jeanette and I were not fans, but Brianna was pretty fascinated!
Outside in the front garden – just lovely.
It was a quick trip, but we enjoyed every minute. Thanks to everyone who put us up, fed us, and/or provided free baby sitting. You are all the best!
Did I mention how many pictures I took? Well, Poppa took quite a lot too, and I completely forgot about all of his when I did the initial Phase II post. So here are some of the highlights.
Just adorable…
Riding along the lazy river!
Waving at Poppa while riding along the lazy river.
Shere, Olivia, and Miles helped show Brianna how much fun the lazy river could be – it helped get her past her fears A LOT!
And the best part is that all that lazy river fun seems to have erased her previous fear of the water. This weekend she has been all over the pool – jumping in, bouncing in the water, floating on her back and tummy. It is amazing how relaxed she now is. She even went under once and it didn’t even phase her. She just went right back to her bouncing. Yay!
We recently went to Florida for Jenn’s reunion. The trip was broken up into four phases – Alabama, Beach, Mom’s, and South Carolina. I took hundreds of pictures, and that does not even include those that everyone else took! So, I am breaking up the blog posts a bit just to make everything manageable.
We started our trip by making the long drive to Alabama to see Jason’s family. Brianna did FANTASTIC in the car – so much better than we ever dreamed of. The first leg of the trip she just read to herself and her babies, and listened to music. The second leg of the trip she napped and read some more, and the final leg of the trip she watched a movie. Like I said, she was fantastic!
We stopped at Jason’s cousin’s house for the night and met their two adorable children – Parker, who just turned two, and baby Adeline.
Typical two year olds…
The next day we moved onto Florida and the beach, where we rented a condo for a couple of nights. We had been telling Brianna we were going to the beach for a little over a week and she was so excited that she woke up around midnight the first night in the condo and declared “I’m awake! Go to the beach!” Luckily for us, Jason’s folks were staying at the condo with us, and Brianna was sleeping with them. We never heard a thing…
Brianna still has little to no interest in going in the Gulf, but she loved playing in the sand, and she had a great time at the condo’s pools, one of which included a lazy river.
Ready for Hollywood?
Hmmmm…not to sure about all that water…
The “giant puddle”!
We had a very relaxing weekend that mostly involved staying inside – the heat index was well over 100F during the days so it was just too hot! Of course we played with Play Doh – don’t you just love Brianna’s pink spider?
Saturday we went to the Natural Science Museum, one of Brianna’s favorite places. This time we went specifically to see the dinosaurs. She got a book from the library about dinosaur bones that talks about a Natural Science Museum, and so she wanted to go and see them for herself! Tea anyone?
After seeing the big ones, she went to the explore area and played with the smaller, more manageable ones and read some books (another favorite activity).
Woaaaa…that is a big ball!
We simultaneously stayed cool and had a great time! Is it fall yet?
Tia and Stephen came to visit this past weekend. We had a very nice and very relaxing weekend just hanging out and doing all those things Brianna likes to do right now – go to the swimming pool (to not in), play ball, read books, and apparently, make funny faces at Tia’s computer camera!
One of the highlights of the weekend was a trip to Monkey Joe’s! Brianna (of course) made a beeline straight to the back where the Cars bouncer is.
She loves to jump,
and run,
but seemingly has a bigger interest in falling!
She did venture up to the top of one of the tall slides, and even slid down the big slide with Tia without any tears.
But only once!
This last picture is from some outside play time – she was inspired by the World Cup…
We had a great weekend – we all very much enjoyed our visitors!
