Blog | Baby
Brianna and Daddy watching football (while Brianna also tries to put on her Cookie Monster slippers - no help Daddy!). 
We concluded our 2009/2010 holiday season with a visit from my Mom, Aunt, and Grandmother. Good food, good times, good visit! I guess it is now time to get back to our normal lives. Kind of sad really - never did like January much for that very reason. But at least we still have the NFL playoffs and the NCAA men’s basketball season! And, of course, our sweet baby girl always puts a smile on our face.
Brianna is 21 months old today!
I am not exactly sure how big she is, but she weighs somewhere in the 25 lb. range (which surely increases to at least 50 lbs every time I pick her up!), she still has a bit of a pot belly, and she is somewhere in the 32″ range in height. As you can see, her hair is getting quite long. In another month or so, I suspect I’ll be able to put it up in real pony tails.
She is still a very good eater, and really seems to like sauces (ketchup, pasta sauces, BBQ sauce, cheese sauce, whatever). So, in general, if we want her to eat some veggie, we can just put some sauce on it and voila! Her favorite foods are pizza, smoothies, french fries, noodles, applesauce, blueberries, and banana sauce. I suppose it would be nice if she begged for broccoli or green beans, but I am content with the fact that so far, she will at least eat these foods. She still shuns lima beans and avocado, but thankfully, the list of foods she won’t eat is currently very small.
Her vocabulary continues to grow by leaps and bounds every day, and she is working towards complete sentences. I think she has the capability, but not the desire to say a whole sentence - why say “I want more milk please” when you can just say “more milk please”? There are too many new words to keep up with now. Suffice it to say, she repeats EVERYTHING we say. She can count to 10, although I don’t think she fully comprehends what it all means, and she can sing portions of her ABCs (complete with “now I know my ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me). At school she is now starting to learn her colors and shapes…the learning continues!
She loves to sing and dance and listen to music. Right now, her favorite songs are Jingle Bells, some farm song on her MP3 player, We Wish You a Merry Christmas, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and Yellow Submarine (by the Beatles). She generally won’t sing or dance on cue (hence the difficulty capturing it on video), but she quite frequently spontaneously busts into song or starts dancing around the house (picture lots of foot stomping and head bobbing).
Her mobility, of course, is scary good. She is still really good about stopping when we say stop and sitting on her bottom at the top of the stairs. Still, I think we should put the child gates up soon. We also plan to convert her tricycle from a rocking tricycle to a riding tricycle this month (as soon as the temps get above freezing) so she can start riding around the street. It looks like she can finally reach the pedals, so I think she will love it! Here she is running around the corner - I caught the picture before she could turn her head (her new trick when I pull out the camera).
She still loves reading her books, playing with her blocks, playing night-night with us, playing with her puzzles, and running around like a crazy girl. What a treasure she is!
The three of us have had a very nice couple of days, just relaxing and hanging out and getting back into some semblance of a schedule. On New Year’s Eve we went to PF Chang’s for lunch (gonna have to reevaluate what we order since I think Brianna ate as much of the sea bass as we did, leaving us a little hungry when we were done…). Brianna had a great time playing with her chopsticks and coloring.
Before heading home, we stopped at Babys R Us to exchange her Christmas slippers since they did not fit. She selected some alligator slippers and some cookie monster slippers, and has had a hard time choosing between them ever since! We finished the day having “tea” with Daddy.
On New Year’s Day morning, Brianna was kind enough to sleep until 8:30 AM! What a delightful child… She then proceeded to ask immediately for a mootie (i.e., smoothie). Since we were out of bananas, I made a quick run to Starbucks and we were all set.
Then it was time for some shopping cart play time in her new jammies and new slippers.
After her morning nap we got her all decked out in her Gator finery, including her new squeaky shoes with Gator bows! We spent the rest of the day reading stories with Daddy, playing with her puzzles, and running all over the place with her shopping cart (which currently is carrying her tea pot, a baby doll, and some colored sprinkles from the kitchen…). For the evening festivities, she chose her cookie monster slippers over her gator bows and her gator slippers. I wasn’t too sure, but given the performance of the Gators later that evening, Brianna clearly knows best!
My sweet girl…
Happy New Year everyone!
We hope everyone had a Merry Christmas! We certainly did. We started the weekend before Christmas, when Jason’s folks and sister visited us. Jason and I enjoyed a date night (St. Jacques!)/Christmas party night on Saturday, and then we celebrated Christmas on Sunday. Brianna started the fun by helping to hand out all the presents - she was a great helper, and handed out more than half of the presents!
Then we opened presents and just had a great time with his family. Brianna got so many wonderful things, I can’t even begin to list or show photos of them all. She is a very lucky girl. And, we are very lucky that she deviated from the normal child-present-frenzy, and decided it was more fun to play extensively with just about every item! Interestingly, one of her favorite “presents” (at least until she exhausted its capability for fun) was the bubble wrap that surrounded one of her wooden puzzles! She had a great time stomping all of those bubbles and making all that popping noise!! Here she is opening a present, looking at the calendar of Brianna pictures with Tia, and playing with her fastener toy (Nana made her a board of fasteners, e.g., zippers, buttons, snaps, velcro, buckles, magnets, etc., for her to play with because she is just fascinated by fasteners!).
Brianna even had some fun with my presents - here she is wearing my new inline skating helmet to protect her precious head while she has a snack…
On Christmas Eve, we opened our presents to each other and our presents from my Dad’s side of the family. Apparently, I didn’t take any still shots of this and instead only shot Flip video. You can make snapshots with the Flip footage, but it is a little harder since I tend to do photos on the PC and video on the Mac, so you will have to settle for these shots. In the first, Brianna is playing with her new MP3 player, and in the second Brianna is wearing her new outfit from Grandma and Grandpa, and pushing her dolly around in her shopping cart from Aunt Sherry and Uncle Jim.
On Christmas Day, we headed to my Aunt Kathy’s house in Virginia and visited with my Mom, my Aunt, and my Grandmother. Since everyone was just arriving on Christmas day, we saved all stockings and presents for the day after Christmas. Here is Brianna opening her stocking with her daddy - Santa was very good to her!
After stockings, we moved straight on to presents. Here she is playing with her new tea set.
Unfortunately, one of the funniest presents she got does not translate to still shots very well - she got new patent leather “mary janes” that have places on the toes where you can fasten different color bows (she got orange and blue bows, red and white bows, and pink and black bows), and that squeak! Yes, with every step, my little angels shoes squeak, squeak, squeak. It is hysterical! While in a store just today, Jason was watching Brianna while I took care of a couple of things. The entire time, I knew exactly where they were because I could hear her shoes!
Brianna made out like a bandit and has been having a wonderful time playing with all of her new books, puzzles, and toys. I think she even likes the new clothes (I know I sure do!). We are home now, and re-establishing some semblance of a normal routine. At least as normal as you can get, when the little munchkin in the house “discovers” a new and wonderful something to play with every time she turns around!
Obviously, I am a tad late with her 20 month update. Would you believe that we were too traumatized by the beat-down Bama handed the Gators to speak coherently for a couple of weeks? Well, that is my story and I am sticking to it! Brianna assures us the Gators will rebound against Cincinnati!
We may have been greatly disappointed by the Gators, but that did not stop us from having lots of fun getting ready for Christmas! But first, let me tell you about some of her latest accomplishments. Her speech continues to improve by leaps and bounds everyday. Some new words are Christmas tree (mishmus tree), Santa Claus (tanta cus), turkey (gobble-gobble), diaper (generally in terms of “no diper!”), Merry Christmas (memmy mishmus). Some favorite things to talk about are daddy’s car, her babies, the gators, and her books. Jason’s folks are here (hence my ability to do this extended blog!) and she is even calling them by name.
She has also started basic counting. She often says one-two, and lately, she generally wants two of everything (two crackers, two lights, two blocks, etc.).
At first, I think she used two to generally refer to more than one. But in the last couple of days, I have noticed that she says “one” while stacking a block, and then says “two” when stacking the next block. Of course, she then starts over with “one” for the next block, but I am pretty impressed!
While she has not yet said one-two-three, I know she knows three…I often count to three when I am trying to get her to behave and before I get to two or three, she often says “no two!” or “no tee”!! It is pretty hard to keep a straight face after that…
She has also started singing songs - Row, Row, Row Your Boat, Rock-A-Bye Baby, Itsy-Bitsy Spider, and Jingle Bells are her current favorites. I haven’t yet caught it on film, but she has been known to sing row, row, row your boat to her babies…very precious. She really, really likes Jingle Bells - at first she would say jingle bells whenever she wanted to hear Christmas music. She still does that, but now there are times when she literally means she wants to hear the actual song, Jingle Bells - any version is acceptable!
She is becoming more interested in putting things together (leggos, stacking blocks, etc.) and is really starting to try to become more independent. While she can’t quite manage it yet, she often wants to try to put on her own shoes and socks, and she loves to wipe up messes - some of which she creates on purpose, just so she can then wipe them up.
She is also much, much more aware of the camera, and quite particular about when she will cooperate. She even knows what to do when someone says “say cheese,” with this being the result:
Last weekend, we had a great time making Christmas cookies. I made a batch of roll-out sugar cookies and Brianna and I went to town cutting out the cookies and eating the cookie dough (definitely a family tradition!). She had a great time and assured me she would love to help me make “coo-coos” anytime!
Learning what to do.
Hmmm….I think this is better
Mommy - do it like this!
Then, yesterday she had a cookie party with her friends. For these cookies their teacher gave them already baked cookies, and they were allowed to put frosting and/or sprinkles on top. You can see where all the frosting ended up…
Today we walked to the farm across the street from our neighborhood to get our Christmas tree. Ever since we moved into this house, we have walked across the street, picked out our tree, and carried it back to the house. Well, because we have a very active toddler, and because the street separating our neighborhood from the farm is pretty busy, we opted to walk there and have the tree delivered.
She started out interested (as you can see by the above pictures ), but then, as we got closer to the playground, Brianna wasn’t too sure she wanted a Christmas tree. No Christmas tree (”mishmus me”) was practically the anthem as we walked to the farm, particularly once walked PAST the playground. She was NOT really interested in trading playground time for Christmas tree shopping. Hence the looks in these pictures…
But, once we got there, she wanted more Christmas tree (we got the one right behind Jenn)!
And Santa Claus was there! She was very interested in “sinta cus”, but only from a distance. It took quite a lot of convincing to get even this close.
Now the fake, painted wooden Santa…that one she loved!
While proclaiming over all of the wonders of this “preferred” Santa (complete with hugs and kisses), we met Sara. I believe she is the farmers’ daughter, and she had this wonderful toy puppy that fascinated Brianna. Sara was very sweet, and even let Brianna play with the puppy several times.
She may have been hesitant at first, but she spent the rest of the day talking about the Christmas tree, and the puppy, and of course, Santa Claus!
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…
