Brynnlee Update

Our little Brynnlee is growing up so fast. She is doing so many new things every day and I wanted to take a minute and write down all the new things she does. First she is starting to make noises and try to talk more and more. I was really worried that she wasn't talking but I know that it is in there and one day she will just explode with words. She already says mama and dada really well. She wakes up every morning and runs into our bedroom looking for her dada! She also loves to make noises. She roars like a lion, and makes monkey noises, and Jeff has taught her to hohoho like Santa. It is so cute. She even knows when to say it during the song Up on the Housetop. She is also running everywhere. She loves to explore and you can't let her down in a store or she will take off. She did that the other day when I was at See's Candy. She took off out the door and I practically shoplifted to run after her and drag her back in the store. She thinks it is so fun to run as fast as she can and have mommy and daddy chase after her. She is so smart with remembering things. She can tell you where her eyes, nose, mouth, and ears are... we have also just learned belly button and she loves to fold her arms when it is time for a prayer. She picked up on the last one after just one day of mommy showing her. She loves the movie Tangled and will watch it intently all day long if you let her. She doesn't show much interest in any other movie or show, but Tangled she'll watch over and over again. She loves to explore, loves to sit in big kid chairs, loves to give hugs and kisses, and absolutely loves spending time with her cousins. She plays pattycake, and head, shoulders knees and toes, and imitates her Grandpa Stephens. She also does the cutest thing now with tissues. Jeff taught her to blow her nose, so now when she can get ahold of a tissue, baby wipe, or even towel she will blow her nose in it and then throw it away. She actually loves to throw anything away we let her. She will throw her diapers in the trash, wrappers, and anything else we give her. Luckily right now she only throws away trash and not her toys. She also likes to brush her teeth (the few she has), and wipe her face off on a towel. I can't believe all the fun things she does every day. We are so lucky to have such a fun little sweetheart! I am so glad I get to be home with her so much!

Home from New York

While I was in New York with Jeff's mom and sisters, Jeff and his brother Drew decided to scare up our house for Halloween. Jeff has never really gotten into decorating so I even though I knew that he was going to add a few things I had no idea what I was going to see when I got home. They had make tombstones for our yard. Have spooky ghosts that fly, rats that run across the porch and this stuffed mask guy to put in the tree. Well the masked guy can't be in the tree until Halloween so for now it is in our kitchen and has make a new friend out of Brynnlee. She reads to it, gives it hugs, jumps on it's legs, and all around loves it!!! What kind of crazy girl do we have. We even took her to the Halloween shop when I got home and she loves the creepy things in there as well.

We have also discovered that we have a little closet drinker in our family. Brynnlee loves to get into our pantry, grab the sodas off the shelf and will just stand in the closet and pretend to drink them. She has never been allowed to have real soda, but she must have just picked up on what her daddy and mommy do. It's so funny. She does it every time we accidentally leave the pantry door open.

Brynnlee's Books

Brynnlee has recently really taken to her books. She has always liked books, but had the atttention span of about 3 minutes with reading them. Lately though books are her favorite toy. She pulls them out of her box and will spend tons of time just looking through them herself. At night she loves listening to mommy and daddy read, and even when she is getting her diaper changed will grab a book to look at while we change her. She is turning into her mommy! What a cutie.

She pulled all her books out of the box!

Then sat and read them all to herself!

Brynnlee's Birthday

I know I am super late on this post. I thought that by only working part time I would have so much more time to do things like this, but the beginning of the school year has been crazy and I find very little free time to do anything. Anyway last month was Brynnlee's 1st birthday. It was a great celebration filled with lots of presents, family, and cake!!! Brynnlee loved the attention until it was past her bedtime and then decided she had enough. So we put her to bed and continued with the party. It started out with just daddy, mommy and Brynn opening up her gifts from us. She wasn't much into it but played a little with the things we gave her. We ended up just putting most of the presents away and will probably give them to her again for Christmas. Then all the family arrived. Almost everyone was there and Brynnlee was loving the attention. She had fun cousins to help her open her presents and enjoyed watching them play with most of her toys. The big toy of the night was a car for her to ride in. She absolutely loved it, until she got a little too much attention and had a little meltdown. We decided at that time it was probably time for cake and bed. We stripped her down put the cake in front of her and let her go at it. As you can see in the pictures she was pretty hesitant at first, but once daddy pushed her hands both in she realized what was going on and started gobbling, pausing only to share a little with others. After that we cleaned up and sent Brynnlee to bed and the rest of us enjoyed a nice bonfire and some socializing. It was a pretty good night. I also wanted to post what Brynnlee can do now that she is 1 year old. We took her to the doctor a few days after her birthday and she has grown from the 6th percentile in weight to a whopping 7th weighing 18 pounds. She did grow though in height now measuring 30 inches and coming in the 80th percentile. She is developing in so many other ways as well. She mastered walking at 11 months and is now everywhere!!! She loves climbing up and down the stairs and putting her arms out like Frankenstein and running. She is also always talking-mostly sounds of course, but has mastered mama and dada! She loves waving bye-bye, playing patty cake, and showing how big she is. She also will blow kisses, point to mommy's nose, eyes, and mouth, and clapping all the time. I can't believe our little baby is sooooooooo grown up.

The pictures are a little out of order. Here she is playing with the cake

Daddy getting the ball rolling.

Sharing with family

Loving the big car!!!

Lots of presents

Cousins helping. Thank you!

We love Bracelets!

Celebrating with lots of family

The delicious cake

Mommy and Daddy's Presents

Family Pictures

A few weeks ago we had our pictures taken by Jeff's super talented sister Megan who has started her own business called Megan Hauze Photography. She did such a wonderful job for us that I had to post a whole bunch of the pictures she gave us. I would post even more since we have most of the pictures in black and white as well, and they are beautiful but I didn't want to repeat too many pictures. If you like these you should definitely go to her blog meganhauzephotography.blogspot.com to see the many other pictures she has. She is excellent with babies and has some really cute backdrops for any age. We just loved our pictures and are so happy to have gotten them done. I know this is a lot of pictures but they were all so good we had to post them.

10 Month Stats

I can't believe it! Our little cutie is 10 months already. She has been the most amazing little girl, and just grows and does new things every day. We went for her 9 month check-up last week (it was a little late - more like a 10 month check-up) and here were her stats:

Height: 28.82 inches - 74th percentile

Weight: 16.64 pounds - 6th percentile

I guess she is just going to be tall and skinny like her dad. She is also doing so many fun things now. She just today stood up all on her own without holding onto anything. My dad, sister, and I were all sitting around her and she just decided to stand up. It was so cute. She wouldn't do it again but later tonight she tried to take a little step. She kind of scooted and then fell, but I just know she is going to be walking all around really soon. She also talks all the time now. She isn't saying any real words except for DaDa which she is really good at, but she loves to make noise and try to make the same sounds as we do. She loves crawling up the stairs and wears her mama out chasing after her all day. It has been so fun spending so much time with her this summer. I just love seeing all the things Brynnlee does. Here are just some fun pictures we took around the house and at my father's birthday party.

Chillin' in the bag

Grandpa's Birthday

Being silly with mama

Loving her time with daddy