The happy couple. Congrats Susan and Jerald!

At Jerald and Susan's reception...Brianna and I (in the middle) with Aunt Missy (on the left) and Auntie Em (on the right).

Brianna's big day, her second birthday party! Here she is opening a Doodle Bear from Uncle Mike and Aunt Tammy.

Opening an Elmo Giggle Ball from Aunt Kathy and Uncle George and family. (Note the T-shirt in the back that says "I love my Mommy and Daddy but Grandma and Grandpa are the best! A gift from Grammy Dee-dee!)

Bree tasting her birthday cake.

Clapping her hands with glee after everyone sang the "Happy Birthday" song.

Boots and Dolly at the Park

OK so no surprise, Brianna and I ended up at the park again this afternoon. However, this time it was a little more interesting than usual because Bree insisted on bringing a few friends along. She refused to leave the house without her little yellow monkey named Boots and her baby doll. At first, I tried to make her choose just one. I told her they both couldn't come and who did she want to take. She said Boots so I said "Ok, can you put Dolly down then please?" So, she threw Dolly on the floor. Trying to help Bree with the seperation anxiety I said "Ok Baby, see you later," to the doll. At that point Brianna rushed back over to Dolly and said, "Dolly, sad, don't cry," then kissed her head. After that, I couldn't tell her no, call me a pushover if you want. So, off we went with both Boots and Dolly in tow. Of course, I wasn't allowed to help carry either one of them, Brianna struggled along valiantly to carry them both. When we got in sight of the park Bree looked at each one in the face, "Boots, park! Dolly, park!" At the park the three of them went down several slides, and they all swang..swung...swinged? Ok whatever, they were all swinging together, each on their own swing at Brianna's insistence. One time after Boots went down the slide, Bree came down after him, picked him up off the ground and said "Good one Boots!" (It was pretty hilarious!) Then later, when she was trying to get Dolly to ride one of those things, you know what are they called, the horses with big springs that go into the ground and they rock back and forth?? Anyways, she was trying to get Dolly to ride one but Dolly kept falling off. When the baby fell off the horse and onto the ground Brianna said "Dolly, what are you doing on my face on the ground?" After all that Boots and Dolly were all tired out so we came home and fed them a snack.

Wake Up! Good Night.

We never quite know how Brianna will wake up in the mornings. Sometimes she'll scream or cry, other times she'll play quietly for awhile, talking to her stuffed animals in bed. Today she woke up and yelled "Mom, where are you?" (Yeah, we don't use alarm clocks at our house.) So started our day.

Then around noon I was getting ready to make lunch when Bree marched into her room and declared "bed!" "Are you sure?" I asked her, "I'm making lunch right now, don't you want some lunch?" But she pointed to her crib and said again firmly, "bed!" I was shocked, she never just puts herself to bed! But, who was I to argue? I laid her down but as I was closing the door she couldn't find her little sippy cup of water. "Where's water?" she yelled. So, I came back into the room and showed her it was right there. She rolled over, gripping her cup and said "Thank you Mom. Night night," and promptly fell asleep. I left the room shaking my head.

We put Bree to bed early tonight since we are waking her up super early for a flight tomorrow. Of course, we still had to go through the same bedtime routine to get her to go down. Bath, PJ's, reading books, then prayer. Tonight when we prayed we made a special request for a safe trip and Brianna's additions included "Thank you for bubbles, bless the potty, bless Grammy, bless other Grammy..." After prayers we tucked her in and gave her kisses and started to leave the room. Usually at this point we have to just ignore the requests she's yelling out for one more kiss or another prayer or we'd be there all night. Tonight as we were backing towards the door she was saying "Daddy, kiss toes!" "Kiss your own toes," he told her "Go to sleep." But, he didn't get away with that one. Bree yelled "Daddy, get back here!" So, he went in and kissed the royal toes and after that the princess fell asleep without protestation.

Pictures

Okay, there's really no story here, just realized it's been awhile since I posted pictures of our baby. These are from the other day when we spent a quiet afternoon playing on the balcony. Bree helped us blow bubbles and smelled the flowers among other things...

Blowing bubbles on the balcony.

What a sweet little face!

Smelling the flowers.

Our little cutie pie!

Shoe Conversation and The Big Slide

The other day Brianna and I had our first whole conversation in complete sentences. She wanted to go to the park and said, "Mom, where are my brown shoes?" "I don't know, I think they're in your room," I told her. So, she ran in there and I heard her yell "I found them! There they are. Too high Mom!" (They were up at the top of her dresser.) (Ok, all right that last sentence wasn't really a whole sentence but give the kid a break, she's only 2!)

Well, once we got the shoes on we headed off to the park. We went to a new park this time and it had a really tall slide. Of course, Brianna wanted to go down that one first. She has no fear, but I do. It was really, really tall and I didn't want her to go down alone so I climbed up there with her..much to the dismay of the 6 year old in line behind me. Well, we got up there and went down, Bree with a big smile on her face. Once we were at the bottom Brianna immediately got back in line. I managed to convince her we should try the smaller slides though and we played for a while longer. When it was time to go Bree started waving and saying goodbye to the park and everything in sight. (A little ritual that helps her leave without throwing a fit.) So, one by one she named each park plaything "Goodbye park, bye swings, bye red slide, bye blue slide, bye kids, bye bikes..."

ABC's Say

I would like to think it's because of my diligent time and effort spent emphasizing education, but actually, largely due to TV shows like Sesame Street, Brianna has become aware of the alphabet and letters. Whenever she sees writing she points and says "ABC's, ABC's Mom!" Then we say "Yep, sure enough," or something of that nature. Well, today Bree noticed that there were "ABC's" on her tube of diaper cream. She pointed this out to her daddy and he told her that those ABC's said "diaper cream." (Although, actually they said more like A&D Diaper Ointment.) Then Bree noticed more ABC's on the shampoo bottle. Daddy told her they said "shampoo" (All right, it was actually conditioner and it didn't even say that on the front of the bottle either.) After the shampoo Brianna found ABC's on the toothpaste. Daddy said those ABC's say "toothpaste" (translation: Colgate). After that Bree handed me the tube of toothpaste, then pointed at it solemnly and told me, "ABC's say 'Brush your teeth!'"

Me Too!

Today Brianna's Daddy got her dressed, he put her into jeans and one of the new shirts I recently bought her. After her clothes were on she ran into the room to show me. I hadn't seen her wear that particular shirt before so I said, "Wow. That's a nice shirt, I sure like your outfit today!" Then she looked at me and said "Me too!" She's never said that before! So, of course, I was left there laughing while she ran off to do other things.

Socket To Me

Like most kids her age, Bree hates to have her hair washed. She loves the part where we add soap to her hair and get all foamy, right up until we have to wash it off that is. Then she fusses and cries and insists that her eyes hurt, even though we use a "no more tears" shampoo. So, the other day I tried something new. I rediscovered a bathtime hand puppet made of terry cloth. (Actually, I think someone gave it to us at the baby shower before she was born but it's been lost in the closet all this time.) At bath time I wore the hand puppet, (who's supposed to be a pink hippo I think), and had it soap up her hair and then pour water over her head. She thought it was pretty fun but she still fussed about washing the soap off. As usual, to help her recover from the trauma of having water on her head and running on her face, I used a wash cloth to wipe her eyes. Only, this time I used the hand puppet since it was made of wash cloth material. Brianna stopped her fussing, looked at the puppet and said "Thank you socket!" (Short for sock puppet, like on Blues Clues.)

Positive Vibes

Inevitably since she's a toddler, we end up telling Brianna "No," or some other version of it, quite often each day. So, in order to counter balance the negativity of saying "No," we also try to catch her being good and compliment her. To do this we often say "Good Job, Very Nice," or "Very good!" In her usual manner she's managed to turn the tables and use our own words on us. Now, when she sees Mommy or Daddy doing something she thinks is nice she'll tell us so. Take today when we were blowing bubbles on the patio. After I tried to blow a bubble and had it break right away she instructed me "too hard," implying I was blowing too hard. (I actually had just told her this when she had tried to blow bubbles a few minutes earlier..) I dipped the stick in the bubble solution and tried again and got a nice row of bubbles going. Bree smiled and said "Very good Mom!"

Pop A Back Please??

Brianna is small for her age. But even so, I get tired hauling her all around when she feels like being carried, it makes my back hurt some days if I end up holding her a lot. On these kinds of days if her daddy is with us, I'll say, "Can Daddy hold you?" to her and then to Travis, "Can you hold her, my back hurts!" Well, when we went for a walk today while Daddy was at work she wanted to be held. So, I picked her up and kept going. She was saying something to me that I couldn't quite make out but then on the third time she said it I realized she was saying "Mom, back hurt?" It actally made me feel kind of bad that I had said it enough she thinks I don't ever want to carry her...

When our backs hurt, Travis and I are in the habit of popping each other's backs. To do this, one of us lays face down on the floor while the other one uses the heels of their hands to push along either side of the spine. This activity, like everything else we do in front of her, did not go unnoticed by Brianna. Today after her daddy got home she was laying face down on the floor going "Pop a back please?" So, we each took turns "popping" her back. (We really just massaged it a little, but it made her happy anyways.)

Blue Grammy

Ok, this actually happened a little while ago but I forgot about it until today, when we saw an older woman in the apartment hallway...

Brianna has gotten to the stage where she calls anyone obviously not an adult a kid, then women she thinks are roughly my age are all called Mommy (unless she knows their name specifically), and any woman she thinks is older than that are all Grammy's to her. Well, the other day as we were leaving our apartment complex we saw an elderly lady out on her patio. As Trav was loading Bree into the car she pointed and said "Ud-doh (other) grammy." (As in, it's not my Grammy, but look, there's a grammy.) But, Travis misheard her and thought she said "eddo (yellow) grammy." (An easy mistake to make in baby babble.) So, trying to tease her he said, "No, that's not a yellow Grammy silly that's a blue grammy." So Brianna pointed again and said "blue grammy," and we laughed a little at her expense. (So terrible of us, I know.) We'd forgotten all about it by the time we came back from playing at the park. However, as we pulled back into our parking spot there was the same woman, still out on her patio. Bree pointed her out again and said "blue grammy," so proud of herself for remembering to say it "right," like Daddy had told her.