Blog | Baby
Brianna is little Miss Personality these days. It seems like every time I turn around, she has a new expression or is shooting me a new look or is doing something I hadn’t seen her do before. While looking at some photos I took over the past few days, I noticed that I had somewhat captured some of these expressions.
Here is the one you are all most familiar with: little Miss Sweetness
And then there is Miss “You Have Got to be Kidding Me”
Miss Sassy!
Miss Innocent…
Miss “I Don’t Understand You People!”
and finally, Miss Crazy
It occurred to me the other day that while it is difficult to take Brianna to many live sporting events (game times are often too late or during her nap time), there are lots and lots practices during morning hours that we can go to. So, today we headed out to watch a hockey practice. It turned out to not be much of a practice – only three players were on the ice, but Brianna enjoyed watching the pucks fly all over the ice. This might have actually been better for her b/c it might have been a bit overwhelming for her if all the players had been on the ice. Anyway, as you can see, she scored TWO pucks. One flew over the glass and landed nearby (don’t worry, we were never in any danger), and the security guard gave it to Brianna. Then, at the end of the practice, one of the players skated over to the glass and made a point of giving her a puck (there were lots of older kids at this practice, so I think it was pretty cool that he singled out the cute little girl). If I am lucky, I will be able to get that player to autograph her puck for her. 
Our little “Hollywood” munchkin is 23 months old today – pretty shocking if you ask me! She is getting so big (and heavy), and every day she surprises us with something new. I am not sure about her weight and height, but I will find out this weekend and post it later. I do believe she has gone through a growth spurt lately – she used to try to hold the rail while walking down the stairs, but it was a little too high for her. Now she can mostly hang on. And gaging by my tired arms, she is definitely gaining weight…
Ever since we bought these sunglasses two weeks ago, Brianna is rarely without them (unless she can’t find them). She has taken them to school twice, and basically worn them the entire day. She LOVES her squeaky shoes and her “clunky” shoes (those that make nice stomping noises). Let’s just say she is not interested in creeping up on anyone… By the way, I am not at all responsible for the cat print hair band/pink polka dot sunglasses/red sweater ensemble she is donning in this picture…she is entering that very fun (and seemingly color blind) stage that all children seem to go through.
She is our little chatter box and seems to say something new everyday. Just this morning she said her first self-generated and completely clear sentence. Now, I believe she has been uttering complete sentences fairly regularly for the past month or two, but there is always a word or two that is not quite clear, so I don’t really give her credit for those. She also regularly repeats sentences she hears us say (e.g., shut the door, say good-bye, etc.). But this morning’s sentence is one we believe she created all by herself to express her thoughts at the time. While drinking her mango smoothie this morning (this is her first mango smoothie made specially for her by Jason), she said “It tastes good!” We must have looked a little surprised, because she then repeated the phrase over and over again while grinning from ear to ear. Also, she seemed to be telling me about her day this evening. I asked her what happened to Max (her teacher told me most of this story so I knew what to expect). Brianna told me “he hit his head.” When I asked why, she said “Jayson pushed him.” When I asked her what she did, she said “hug Max and pat his head.” She then told me “Max o.k.” As you can see, she is getting very good at expressing herself. Now, if we could just get her to say “yes” when she really means yes, and “no” when she really means no…
She seems to know her colors, but doesn’t consistently identify them on cue. I believe she knows them because she will spontaneously point to something (usually a car or truck) and correctly identify its color (especially if it is pink, white, green, yellow, or orange). But when I ask her what color something is, about 50% of the time she says green…stinker… She is also learning her shapes, and seems comfortable with circle, square, and rectangle. Triangle was the shape for this week, so she is still grasping that one. She is very, very good at correctly identifying animals (hippo, sheep, kitty, puppy, horse, duck, goose, pig, gator, monkey, cow, etc.), though she sometimes uses their sounds instead of their name.
She is still a really good eater, though she has gotten a little more particular about what veggies she will eat. Her current favorites are orange sauce (pureed carrots and sweet potatoes), pea sauce (pureed peas mixed with applesauce and apricots), and occasionally broccoli. She still loves most fruit, and is particularly fond of yogurt mixed with jam, cheese, and most any cracker. I discovered this evening that she really seems to like fish. Usually, I put a little chicken or turkey on her plate with dinner (or beans if we are not having meat). And she eats some, but rarely all. I have even given her some beef, but had the same results. Tonight I gave her Tilapia in a citrusy/limey coating (from Whole Foods) and she ate it all up and asked for more. I would say she ate at least one whole piece of fish by the time she was done. I’ll have to try that again!
As of tomorrow, all of her school buddies will officially be two. Only one more month to go before she catches up to them!
We had a FANTASTIC trip to Tahoe. We started our trip with a ridiculously early flight. Brianna was such a trooper.
She was soooo excited to fly on an airplane that she did not sleep the entire first leg of the trip (unfortunate since it was the longer leg and since she had an entire seat to herself). But she was so good – the people around us all complimented her on her excellent behavior. She had a brief problem with her ears, but thankfully she is old enough to say “ear hurts” and we told her how to fix it. No more problems after that!
We first flew into Denver and then on to Reno, where we picked up a gynormous car (a Yukon) so that we would have 4-wheel drive in Tahoe. While we were driving to Tahoe I saw what looked to me like practically vertical ski slopes in the distance – you could not pay me enough money to try to ski down those particular slopes!
My friend Tracy (known her since Jr. High) invited us out to her family home in Tahoe. This is the view from the windows in the back of their home – AMAZING!
We were not there long, so we generally tried to stay on Eastern time as much as possible, which meant we were up early enough for this gorgeous sunrise.
The first day, Jason hit the slopes while Brianna and I hung out with Tracy and her boys (Charlie and Geordie). We went to a local park to have some fun sledding down the snowy hill.
The second day, we all went to Northstar to show Brianna the skiers and snowboarders and the general skiing environment. You had to take a gondola up the mountain a bit to get to the ski lifts. Brianna LOVED the gondola. We must have ridden it 20 times – she talked non-stop about “more gondola” so she could see the “mountain far away.” Here are a few pics from our gondola and mountain experience.
Are we there yet??
First gondola ride.
Hanging out with Daddy.
Posing with Mommy with the half-pipe in the background.
Playing with Mommy in the snow.
She was having so much fun, she started clapping.
That afternoon, we went back with Tracy and the boys while Daddy skied. We had fun walking around the neighborhood – Brianna was especially fascinated with the icicles that formed on the snow banks. I would break them off and she would smash them on the pavement and then giggle.
The third day we let Daddy ski some more while we hung out with Tracy and the boys again. Since the afternoon was supposed to be rainy, we decided to head back to the park in the morning for more sledding on the fresh snow. Little did we know we would get to experience a mini “blizzard”!
We were only supposed to get a few inches overnight, but I think in total we got between 8 and 12 inches (and a “few” in the 30 minutes or so we were at the park). Still, Brianna and Charlie had fun – eating the snow, watching us sink knee and hip deep into the snow, and generally watching the spectacle.
Hmmm…not sure I really want to sled right now…
Mmmmm…snow…
This stuff is COLD!
After a while, enough was enough, so we headed back to the house to warm up and have a snack. Isn’t she adorable in her borrowed ski pants and my hat??
We left on Thursday. But before we left, we took a couple of pictures with our friends – Tracy is holding her two boys (Charlie is 30 months and Geordie is 6 months) and Bear is sitting next to Brianna. Bear is the sweetest most child-friendly dog I have ever met! As you might imagine, it took a few takes to get everyone to smile and look at the camera…
the “candid” shot…
yay – everyone is smiling!
My beautiful friend Tracy
Then we headed to the airport. On the way we saw Brianna’s “mountain far away” up close – this was the mountain she was so fascinated with while riding the gondola. I wasn’t able to get a picture while riding the gondola b/c I waited too long and the clouds obscured the view.
We gave Brianna’s new friend Anais a ride to the airport (she is Tracy’s au pair from Paris) – Brianna had lots of fun playing with Anais and learning a few words in French.
Then it was time to go – here is a picture of Brianna and Jason standing in front of the airplane we are about to board.
Bye-Bye Tahoe!
We had visitors over Valentine’s weekend – Mimi, Tatie Kat, and Uncle Mike! Uncle Mike had a stroke in early December, and so we did not get to see him over Christmas. We were all very excited to see him, and very pleased with how well he is doing recovering from his stroke!
While he goes through more physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy, he is staying with Tatie Kat. She will definitely whip him into shape!
Brianna was quite pleased with all of the attention. She is finally starting to move into the stage where she loves being with her visitors, which makes everyone very happy! Unfortunately, I didn’t do a very good job of capturing this on film. The few times I tried, Brianna wasn’t very cooperative. But I did get a couple of pictures. Here is one where she is enjoying the mini chocolate cupcakes we made and decorated with various Valentine candy.
And another with her playing with Uncle Mike.
Lastly, here are a few of her playing with and saying goodbye to Mimi at the airport. So sad to see Mimi go…
Playing with Mimi’s glasses…
Bye-bye Mimi – see you next time!
As you can tell from the above picture, Brianna is approximately 2′ 8″ tall. I would be able to tell you more definitively if I could have gotten her to stay put when I got closer to the giraffe. She was just having too much fun, as you can see from the picture below!
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)!
We have gotten quite a bit of snow/sleet/freezing rain today, so we decided it would be fun to get out and play in it. I got Brianna a pair of boots on a great sale last year – since they are still several sizes too big I stuffed some socks in the toes. After decking everyone out in our boots, coats, ski pants, hats, and gloves, we were off! At first Brianna was perfectly content to have Jason carry her, so we walked down to the “big hill” and watched all the kids sledding down the hill. She thought that looked pretty interesting! So we told her we had a sled too and asked her if she would like to check it out…yes!
Off we went back to the house to get the sled and attach a rope to it. This time, when we went outside she was definitely ready to get down and walk around a bit herself! She started by helping Jason pull the sled.
After a bit, she was done with that and ready to ride. Jason and I took turns pulling her around the cul-de-sac and down the street in the sled.
Then, she wanted to pull a little all by herself. She left her squeaky ball on the sled so it could ride along. It took her a bit to figure out how to hold onto the rope with her mittens on, but she got it!
She is now taking a nap – all worn out from the fun in the snow. But she reminded us several times that she is ready to go back out after her nap!
It was absolutely beautiful outside today with sunny skies and temps around 60° – in January!! I told Brianna that the next time it was nice outside, we would switch out her “rocking” tricycle and make it a “rolling” tricycle. As soon as I got it to the bottom of the driveway, she climbed right on. She is not using the pedals yet. Mostly she just scoots along using her feet Flintstones style.
She also figured out pretty quickly what that giant red handle was for…Mommy push!
She did try putting her feet on the pedals a couple of times, but she did not quite get that she needed to kind of hold her feet on the pedals as they moved, or that she could move the pedals herself. All in due time…
Yesterday Brianna went to a birthday party for her buddy Hawke (many of you have heard her talk about “Hawke and Max”). Hawke is turning two and invited his school buddies to a local play center with lots of large inflatable play areas (like Monkey Joe’s). Brianna was a little skittish at first – she would not climb up the steps to go down the slide, but she would go in the bouncy part and bounce around (she still has not quite gotten the hang of jumping, but she is a good “butt-bouncer”!). Her buddies were good sports and stopped every now and then to bounce with her before they moved onto the slide. Eventually, she got curious enough to check out the slide. Once she decided she could do it and wanted to do it, she was off!
After doing that for a while, she decided to check out the BIG slides. She even climbed part of the way up one of them all by herself (before deciding it would be easier if I carried her up). Here she is at the top of the batman slide!
After an hour or so of bouncing, running, and sliding, it was time to go to the party room for pizza and cake. Hawke, the birthday boy, is the one looking at the camera.
After refueling, all the kids started playing with their toy cars (Hawke’s birthday party theme was the Pixar movie Cars). Brianna had a great time zoom-zoom-zooming the cars around!
Before we left, Brianna gave Hawke a big happy birthday hug!
Despite the fact that she only got one nap yesterday (she still generally takes two), I thought she did a great job dealing with all the noise and lights and large number of strange people. I am sure having her “school buddies” there along with lots of fun bouncy areas to play on helped a lot.
