Turned 14 months on January 4th.

Brynlee is the Queen of weird noises with her mouth. She has some new noise she has come up with every week. It's pretty funny at home, but embarrassing in public (especially church). She has one noise that sounds like she is throwing up and we sure get a lot of looks in public.

I had been showing Brynlee the sign for "more" a few times. It wasn't much, then one day she just started doing it herself. It took a while for her to grasp what "more" actually meant though. But it is soo cute to watch her do sign language. I realized she is at the perfect stage to learn so we have been trying to teach her all the basic signs.

As of January, she can sign "more", "Daddy", & "milk". We are working on "all done", "thank you" & "eat".

Also working on blowing kisses.

Vocabulary:
Mom/Momma
Da/Dadda
Do (Dog)
No
Baby

Gives the best kisses and hugs

Refuses to drink milk from a sippy cup still. Loves milk and could drink it ALL DAY if we let her. But we took her off cows milk and is on soy milk now. It has helped significantly decrease the horrible diarrhea she was having off and on for weeks. It doesn't seem to affect her if she has tiny amounts of milk, which is nice to not have to worry about every morsel going into her mouth.

She has been going through a growth spurt (and now wears 18month pants) and its unbelievable how much she can eat at one time. She went from eating 1/4 of a banana to a full one and an adult sized portion of oatmeal. She is eating mostly table foods now, but still has some partially pureed baby food.

LOVES broccoli (cooked), peas, corn on the cob, oatmeal

LOVES books. Her favorite is a new one from Christmas that has an Elmo pop-up. But she is picky about what she likes. There were some cheap books at the library I picked up a little while ago and one is a Bob the Builder book about opposites. It has cute pictures and is colorful like all her other books, but if I try and read it to her she gets so mad. She doesn't want anything to do with it.

Still loves Elmo and everything having to do with it.

Is going through an awful hitting stage. She thinks its funny to hit and throw things at people. When we say "No" she just does it again. If we get more forceful in saying No, she starts to cry.

Pictures to come later

Christmas 2011

The festivities started Christmas Eve at the Miller's for a delicious dinner and fun games.

The next morning we woke up early to open presents before church.

After church and a nap, we went to my brothers house for lunch then my mom's house for dinner. There was lots of present opening in between. Brynlee was not really too excited to open the presents.

John's major presents were Muppet Christmas Carol on DVD and It's a Wonderful Life on Blu-Ray, cash, Perfect Brownie maker, & gift card to Seagull Boook.

Brynlee's major presents- clothes, learning turtle, and a plastic zoo

Krista's major present- new camera!

This was the loot after all was said and done.

Looks pretty good to me!

This was Brynlee's favorite toy of the day- a $5 Little Mermaid book

Cute video of Brynlee opening a present

Brynlee's 1 year old pictures

Can you believe how cute these pictures are?? I love every one!

Brynlee visits Santa and more

Santa was at the Washington City Rec Center. We stood in line forever to get Brynlee's picture. I really thought she would like him and not be scared as she loves strangers and lets them pick her up and she loves to sit on their lap. However, there must be something about the beard because she was terrified.

Brynlee just laughed at the Grinch when I showed him to her. But then I made him hold her (he is our neighbor) so I could get a picture and she freaked out. You can't tell from the picture, but she is not happy.

Brynlee has a few favorite books and this Sesame Street book with music is one of them. She loves to turn the pages and listen to the songs because she can do it herself. I can't remember why she is only wearing a diaper, but she sure looks cute on the bean bag reading her book.

Brynlee is such a girl and loves to play with shoes. She carries them all around the house.

I was wearing this pink vest and was too warm so I took it off. Brynlee pulled it off the banister and was trying to wear it. It was pretty funny.

Brynlee's first birthday party!

Brynlee hanging out with aunt Hollie

Cute birthday outfit with tutu. Shirt says "I'm the birthday girl"

Clubhouse decorated for the party

Opening presents

Brynlee was very spoiled by everyone!

Thanks to her current obsession with Elmo, Brynlee got a singing Elmo, Elmo sippy cups, & Elmo pajamas from Grandma and Grandpa Miller. Grandma Winslow gave her a mini Elmo with an Elmo book, Elmo video, & cute clothes.

Aunt Hollie gave her a cute pink and brown winter outfit

Uncle Michael, Aunt Hayley, Tyson, Anna, & Brayden gave Brynlee a xylophone toy

Aunt Suzanne gave her a cute outfit for next year

Anita, Melissa, & Michelle got a few outfits for next year also

Grandpa Winslow gave Brynlee $10- so we bought some very cute and much needed shoes

Mom & Dad gave Brynlee some blocks, an animal train, and a musical book

Guess what Brynlee's new favorite toy is? You guessed it, the mini Elmo book!

Thank you so much everyone for everything!

Brynlee loved the cake! She was picking off the sprinkles one at a time!

Picking off the sprinkles wasn't good enough, so she had to put her face in it.

The frosting ended up on her shirt, arms, hair, up her nose, and in her ear!

12 months!

At 12 months:

Weight- 19.5 lbs. (23rd percentile)

Height- 28.75 inches (38th percentile)

Head- 17.7 inches (47th percentile)

So this time is short and skinny. I'm surprised how little weight she gained, but she is gaining and growing taller. I'm sure the fact that she never even sits still to eat means she is practically burning off what she is eating what she is eating it.

Brynlee loves to play peek-a-boo and can't cover her own eyes. She waits for someone to say the magic words, they she just laughs. She started playing it in the bathtub (with the shower curtain) after I had only done it with her a few times. When I put her on the changing table I grab a diaper from the stack and she grabs one so she can play peek-a-boo. She also LOVES Wheels on the Bus and can make the motion for the wheels and the windshield wiper. This is often the only thing that will calm her down and make her stop crying.

Brynlee is so used to getting attention wherever we go (family, friends, check-out person, people in front and back in line at stores) that if she doesn't get the attention she just stares at them until the person looks at her. It is hilarious. Just shows how cute she is because we can't go anywhere without getting comments about how happy and cute she is. I know she makes a lot of people's day when she smiles at them with her big toothy grin. She really does light up a room. Hopefully she will always be like that :)

Brynlee just makes us laugh all day long. I just can't imagine life without her.

As long as Brynlee has her blankie, stuffed lamb, and white noise machine, she sleeps great and goes to sleep by herself (most of the time without crying). She tends to throw her lamb out of the crib and start crying. Sometimes she will play in her crib (in the dark) for a while before she finally goes to sleep. Other times she will be sound asleep and then start crying and when we go in the room her lamb is on the floor. I really try and figure out what she is doing- does she wake up and just instantly throw her lamb out or does she throw it out during her sleep and wake up and realize she doesn't have it???? Either way it's equally funny and annoying to us to have to retrieve the lamb several times a night.

She recently decided she was too old for a 2nd nap, so only takes one nap a day around 11 am. She still sleeps at least 12 hours at night. With only 1 nap she is ready for bed by 7pm, which used to be horrible for us because that meant we couldn't go anywhere or do anything at night, but we have so much homework and work to do at home that we can't go anywhere anyway.

Brynlee started to take her first steps at the beginning of October. A few weeks later (end of October) she was officially walking. She still crawls sometimes when its convenient and doesn't have the best balance so falls quite a bit, but otherwise she is doing great. After only a week of officially walking I have seen her run a few times.

Brynlee loves her whole milk, but throws a fit if it's in a sippy cup instead of the bottle. She knows how to drink from the sippy cups and will drink water from them, but not milk. I can only fight one battle at a time, so I guess that will have to wait until later. Some days Brynlee will only eat a tiny bit of food and just live on milk. She also loves yogurt and all things sweet. I'm really trying hard to instill in her good eating habits and eating only whole grains and lots of fruit and vegetables, but man is she making that difficult!

Cute angel for Halloween 2011

We didn't do anything on actual Halloween day. Brynlee wasn't feeling good so she went to bed early. There isn't much to do with a little kid anyway and our wards Trunk or Treat was the previous weekend. So mom and dad just handed out candy to the few trick or treaters that came to our door.

Last minute we decided to take Brynlee to breakfast on her birthday at IHOP. She enjoyed sharing mom's french toast. I had to work at 1 PM, so her birthday party had to wait until the next day.

There is a video below where you can watch this in action. She puts this basket on her head and think it's pretty funny. I think it's hilarious.

Her cute princess jammies. What is it about pajamas that are so cute??

Just some random cuteness!

More cute pj's. This time Halloween pjs from Grandma and Grandpa Miller

We went to Staheli Farm. It was pretty fun, but will be much more fun with older kids. We went on the hay ride to the pumpkin patch and corn maze.

Even though you can't tell by her face, Brynlee loved the petting zoo.

We had a hard time keeping her fingers out of the turkey's cage (and their mouth)