Annalyn's 15 Month Update

Little Annalyn sure is growing and her little personality is really starting to shine through. And boy does she have personality. She can understand almost everything I say and she is starting to communicate the things she wants. She is quite stubborn already and very persistent. It is hard to distract her from the things she wants. It is crazy to me how fast she figured out what she likes and what she wants. Here are a few more facts about little Annalyn.

Height: 29 3/4 in (22%) It looks like she isn't going to be tall.
Weight: 22 lbs 9 oz (68%) She gained several pounds in the last few months.
Head: 18 1/4 (69%)

Teeth: 8 - On the day she turned 15 months She had 6 on the top, including two molars that just barely broke through, and only two on the bottom. Since then she has gotten three more on the bottom and she is working on another bottom molar. That makes 11 teeth that have broken through so far.

Sleep: Annalyn still takes two naps a day and sleeps through the night. Her bedtime is at 7 and she wakes up around 6-7 on a typical morning. Then she takes a nap in the morning (usually 1-2 hours long) and one more in the afternoon that is about the same length. She falls asleep in her bed on her own and most of the time she goes to sleep without much crying, if any. This has been a huge blessing.

Eat: Annalyn is still a pretty good little eater. She especially loves sweet and I would have to say that her most recent favorite food would have to be popsicles. Every once in a while she will use her spoon or her fork but not very often. She loves to drink out of big people cup and she would much rather eat or drink whatever Brynlee has. As soon as I put food on the table, Annalyn crawls up there and helps herself to whatever she can find. She still likes to be held and cries most of the time while I am cooking so I would almost rather have her up on the table than crying at my feet.

Talking: Annalyn can say several word and do some signs. She will sign "please," "all-done," and she can sign and say "more."She says mama and dada and she has said all of these word a few time : "hot" "Te" - (teeth) "wawa" - (water) "ba" - (ball) "baba" -(bubble) and shoes. When I try to get her to say something she can usually say the first syllable. There are a few more words she has said once or twice but she would rather point and grunt until I get her what she wants. She can scream really loud so she is kind of hard to ignore. She will sign "please" if I don't get it for her right away and then I usually give in. She makes the funniest sounds. And she is really loud. She loves to hear herself. There have been many car rides where Annalyn "sings" or blow raspberries or babbles the whole way home. It is quite entertaining.  

Favorite Things: Annalyn likes to find her belly button and show it to people and she will show me her tongue. She runs away when I try to get her to identify any other body part. She loves to play "peek a boo" and she will try to walk around with blankets or buckets over her head so I will play it with her. She laughs so hard that I can't resist playing the game with her. She likes it when we sing to her and she likes to play "Ring-Around-the-Rosies." She loves balls, bubbles, balloons, babies, and stuffed animals.  She also loves real animals and she doesn't hesitate around them at all. She likes to chase our chickens and catch them. (she has caught them a few times but she doesn't really know what to do with them after that. It is pretty funny.) She gets really mad if the chickens run away from her. She really likes the little four wheeler Brynlee got for her birthday and she has already figured out how to make the thing go. She loves to play with Brynlee and do whatever her big sister is doing. She loves to put on Brynlee's necklaces and carry around her purses.

Things she can do: Whenever it is time for the prayer, Annalyn is quick to "fold" her little arms. She is a serious climber. She can climb to the top of our slide and slide down it all by herself. She loves to be on top of the table. Earlier today, she even climbed into her high chair while Joel was in the process of cleaning off the tray.

Annalyn really wanted some of the pictures on my fridge ( a picture of my sister Alesha and a picture of my cousin Jakobee.) so she kept whining at the door. I didn't want her to ruin my pictures and the alternative ones I tried to give her didn't cut it. The next thing I knew she had pushed a little chair over to the fridge and she was trying to reach up there to get those pictures. She was really mad when she still couldn't reach. I kept distracting her but as soon as she was in the kitchen, she would head right for the pictures. Eventually I gave in and she packed that picture of Jakobee around all afternoon. She also kept putting it in her mouth.

Annalyn loves stuffed animals. It is funny because she tends to pick one or two that are her favorite and she will pack it with her wherever she goes. Whenever we go to visit grandma Verna she searches through her bag of animals and finds the mom and the baby zebra and she will pack them with her everywhere she goes. She also likes to wrap up her babies and Brynlee's barbies with blankets and wash cloths. Today she kept wrapping her little bear up in napkins. It is the cutest little thing.

Annalyn goes to Relief Society with my mom every week now at church while I teach primary. A lot of the times she will sleep for my mom. I am just glad she goes to her and doesn't cry. It is a big improvement for her.

Annalyn still gets eczema on her cheek all of the time. It is mostly on her left cheek where it is the worst. It will go away for a few days after I put Vaseline on it and then it returns a few days later.

The day after Annalyn turned 15 months, her big sister gave her a haircut. Poor little girls now has several little bald spots on the top of her head. I guess it is a good thing she didn't have a lot of hair up there to begin with. We bought her several hats but she is not really liking them that much. She did keep one on all day at church so I am hoping she will get used to them. They look really cute on her.

Annalyn is so fun and we all love her so much. She really makes our world so much brighter. We are mighty grateful that this little girl joined our family.

Brynlee's Cinderella Birthday

Brynlee has been talking about how she was going to have a pink and blue Cinderella birthday party for months. Ever since she went to her friend's party in March she has been talking about her birthday that would be in June. Her enthusiasm really got me excited for the event and I had a lot of fun planning her little birthday party this year. I think everyone who came had a lot of fun. The hardest part for me was deciding who to invite. Joel didn't have big birthday parties when he was growing up so he thought the whole thing was a little bit too much. But you only turn three once per lifetime and I couldn't pass up an opportunity to celebrate and throw a party for my girl. We ended up inviting three girls from church and five of Brynlee's cousins. We gave all of them an invitation inviting them to attend a royal ball in honor of Brynlee's third birthday and it had this picture on it.

I started off Brylee's birthday party by having everyone come inside. There we found a sign from the Evil Stepmother with instructions of three different things everyone had to do before they could go to the ball. The first thing they had to do was to decorate a crown. I made them out of some foam and a poster board and I had the kids put their name on them and use watercolors to decorate the back.

Next everyone had to feed our chickens. Basically they just had to throw some chicken feed into the cage. The best part about this is that it kept all of the chickens in their cage and away from all the party guests.

Then we had to use some fairy princess sponges and fill up a big bucket of water. I had everyone work together to get water in the big bucket. As soon as it was full (well, at least it was almost half way full) the royal train came to take everyone to the ball.

Joel took everyone for a train ride for a while around our yard. Everyone loved that part. Eventually he brought everyone up to the Royal Castle. Joel ended up making this huge castle out of ply wood and setting it up in our front yard. I just wanted him to use the old reading castle that he made when I was teaching school but he insisted that we needed something bigger so he made this giant pink one. (And he told me I was going a little bit overboard for a three year olds birthday party. HaHa.) I had fun helping him to paint it one night while the girls were sleeping. I am hoping he can make it into a playhouse now because we are not really sure what to do with it. I wanted to have it hidden under some blankets so everyone would be surprised when we pulled up in the train; but it was way too big to hide.

As soon as everyone walked into the castle I had some Cinderella music playing. And what do you do at a ball? You dance of course. So we all danced and did the limbo. Then we danced to Brynlee's favorite song that we do at the library, We are the Dinosaurs.

After that we had to knock down our beloved castle pinata that we made. I hid a glass slipper in there that they had to find. Unfortunately the slipper got broken in the process of breaking the pinata open. Brynlee and I tried to make a pinata with paper mache and a balloon but we tried it two different times and both times our balloon popped. The first time it popped right as I was putting on the last piece of paper mache and the second time it popped when I was half way done with the second layer. It was a lot of work, not to mention it was really messy so we scrapped that idea and instead I made a pinata out of an old diaper box. It was really strong this time. I think each of the kids got like 20 hits and they barely made a dent in it. They did knock off all of decorations so then we had a plain old diaper box floating through the air that we were trying to knock down. I helped Annalyn hit it and we got a hole in it, but eventually we had to have my brother Josh come in and finish the job. It took him several hits to get some of the candy out and then we just dumped the box over and let everyone come get the candy.

After all of the excitement with the pinata, it was time for cake and ice cream. This was one of the parts Brynlee had been talking about the most. She really wanted a Cinderella birthday cake. My grandma helped me make one. In fact, I have to give her almost all of the credit because she did most of the work. I wish I had a better picture of the cake but it looked pretty good. At least, Brynlee was super impressed, and she was our main critic. We also made several little doll cakes and she got her own little doll cupcake. She loved that. In the end there was too much going on and she didn't really eat any of it. Annalyn ate all of her cake though. She even licked her bowl so she would be sure to get every last bit.

After cake and ice cream, Brynlee opened up all of her presents. She was really spoiled with all of the gifts. She got some dolls, nail polish, lots of dress up clothes, some bubble things, a game, and a little four wheeler from my dad.

As soon as all of the presents were unwrapped, everyone went on another train ride and then played in the front yard until it was time to go home. We had lots of fun. I sure am glad I got to share this day with so many great people. Especially with my two little princesses. My little fairy princess, and my Cinderella princess. Thanks to everyone who came.

Brynlee is THREE!

It is crazy to me how much my little girl has grown this last year. She has experienced so many new things and learned so much. She is constantly amazing me with the things she knows and the things she can do. She is such a blessing and a fun ray of sunshine in my life. What did I ever do without her? Here are a few pictures of just how much she has grown in the last three years. Here she is at 1 month, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months, 27 months, 30 months, 33 months, and 3 years.

 Here are some fun facts about Brynlee now that she is three. This time I asked her all of the questions so here is what she thinks.

Age: 3
Favorite Color: Blue
Favorite Movie: Strawberry Shortcake and My Little Pony
Best Friend: Cinderella
Favorite thing to do: Watch the computer
Favorite thing to do outside: Ride in the train
Favorite Food: French Fries
Favorite Song: I am a Child of God
Favorite toy to play with: a pink one
Favorite game: Hide and Go Seek
Favorite animal: Chickens
Favorite thing to do with your family: Jump on the trampoline
Height: 3 ft. 2(1/4) in (74%)
Weight: 33.4lbs (73%)

Here are some famous Brynlee quotes.

"I is in charge"
"You wanna go to a timeout mom?"
"I am going to count to 10, you had better listen."
"You is in big trouble dad. You better get in here right now mister."
This one is usually said while she is doing something she shouldn't be doing. "Shhhh, don't tell anyone."
"I is doing anything."
"I don't know about that."
"I am super Brynlee. I is going to save the day"
"Come out, come out, wherever you are."

Brynlee can't make the S sound and a lot of the words that start with S come out with an F sound instead. She says stuff like, fecial (special), foon (spoon), farkles (sparkles) fwimming (swimming), and frinkles (sprinkles) She can't make the Z sound either and substitutes it with an L sound. She says things like loo (zoo), lumba (zumba), Lady (my parent's dog Zadie), and lebra (zebra).  

Brynlee likes to have "teap" (tea) parties all the time. They usually start with a prayer and sometimes she makes everyone wear a bib while we eat and drink our "teap."

Every time Brynlee says the prayer she blesses the salt. We have no idea why but the salt around here has lots of blessings.

Brynlee thinks ketchup should always be pink. I made some fry sauce one day by mixing my ketchup with some Mayo so now Brynlee thinks we should do this all the time. She also discovered that ketchup mixed with ranch is also pink. Apparently is tastes good too. We had hotdogs for lunch a few days ago and as Brynlee was saying the prayer she blessed the hotdogs, the salt, the ketchup, and the ranch. Then she gasped and said "mom, we forgot the ranch." I didn't put ranch on the table and she was astounded. She ran to the fridge right then and got the ranch before she was even done with the prayer.

I was telling Brynlee the other day that we needed to go to the zoo. She got really excited about that idea and she started to list off all of the different animals she would see. "Yeah, I is going to see a lion, a tiger, a bear, a hippo, an elephant, a dinosaur, and a crocodile." She didn't believe me when I told her that dinosaurs are not alive anymore.

A few weeks ago I was changing my shirt. I had an undershirt on but I got the top shirt dirty. As I was changing Brynlee walked in, looked at me and said "I like your armpits mom."
This totally caught me off guard. She likes my armpits? "You Do?" I asked. 
"Yeah, they look beautiful," she responded. I couldn't think of a descent response to such a declaration. "Oh, well thank you," is all I could say. "You is welcome," Brynlee said as she walked off to go play. 
What a kid. I guess it is good to know that I have beautiful armpits. 


My sister Heather wrote this on her facebook page the other day about a conversation she had with Brynlee. "I'm wearing a pair of ripped skinnies today. At the library my little neice Brynlee counted up my holes and told me I had four owies on my legs and bragged that she didn't have any on her dress. Maybe next time I see her I'll wear a dress, sweats, glitter shoes, and a pair of butterfly wings so we can be twins. I'd bet she'd approve of my outfit then for sure!" Yeah, that sounds like a typical outfit Brynlee would wear. 

Brynlee loves all things pink and sparkly. She loves to play outside but she hates to get dirty. She loves to jump on the trampoline and play with her friends and family. She loves to give people hugs and kisses and she thinks everyone is her best friend. She would spend the whole day watching videos on YouTube if I would let her. She is good at helping me when I need help and playing with her sister Annalyn. Brynlee loves to read books and she has a great imagination. She likes to line up all of her toys and play with them. She is frequently carrying a pink baby hippo or a baby pink dinosaur in the palm of her hand. They are both really nice and she has me hold one of them all of the time. 


We sure do love this little girl and we love watching her grow up and learn new things. Happy Birthday Brynlee!