Brianne Turns 2!

I'm not sure how it happened, but time flew by and Brianne turned 2! For her first birthday, we did the big party with fun theme (remember the Elmo Pool Party?), 60 plus people, crazy decorations, and more. For her second birthday, we decided to keep it low key, and just have a family dinner. But we have a lot of family that live locally, so we still had a pretty decent size party.

If the first birthday was all about Elmo, the second birthday was all about Mickey Mouse. Brianne loves Mickey, so the decorations we did have were all Mickey. Brianne even had her own set of Minnie ears!


The party was a little out of order, and had us opening presents after dinner. Brianne got tons of great presents, but her favorite was probably her princess crown and jewelry set. Here is Brianne putting on her crown, which she wore the rest of the night.


Fun with party blowers. She couldn't quite figure it out, but had a blast trying!

After presents, it was time to sing Happy Birthday and have some cake. Here is Brianne enjoying a cupcake, while wearing her princess crown.

Marty was very excited to show Brianne her big birthday gift, which was a playground. We live in a town house, and have a postage stamp-size patio, so the playground was set up at Grandma Mimi and Grandpa Monroe's house. The playground came unassembled, and at first, Marty thought he could build it himself. But he thought better of it, and hired a professional company to set it up. It took a team of professionals with previous experience building playgrounds two full days to build this playground. Marty probably would have lost a limb if he had tried to do it himself.

This is a super cool playground with swings, a rock climbing wall, a club house and a slide. The playground is a little big for her, so Brianne is content to swing on the swings for now.

Brianne trying out the bottom story of the club house. It actually has a built in bar with stools, in case she wants to serve her friends some mock-tails.

Brianne's party actually happened on July 16 (Saturday night), as Grandma Mimi and Grandpa Monroe went on a cruise on July 17 (her real birthday). So here is a picture of Brianne on her actual birthday. I tried to get her to sit nicely in her chair to take a special picture, but she was having none of it. This was the best I could do. But she still looks adorable!

New Girl in Town

Our friends Scott and Barbra recently welcomed a new baby girl, Adyson Joy. We are so excited for them, and for their son Cayden, who is a very proud big brother! We recently went over to their house for dinner to meet little Addy. She is such a little sweetie, and loves to snuggle with her mommy and get big kisses from her bro. I don't think I heard her make a peep the whole time we were there - she was a perfect angel.

Marty is a sucker for baby girls, and wanted to hold her. I remember how scared of babies he was before Brianne, and now look at him. What a pro! Cayden was close by to make sure his little sister was alright -what a good brother :o)


Brianne didn't take a nap when she normally would have earlier in the day, and fell asleep in the car on the ride over. She continued sleeping when we got there, and crashed on the couch for a good hour. We finally had to bring in the big guns to wake her up, and turned on some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.


We had a very nice dinner, and then went out to the back yard to play for a bit. Brianne loved playing with Cayden's sand table. She had a blast picking up the sand and pouring it onto the grass. We had to put the sand table away after she got a little over zealous with the pouring, and poured a cup full of sand into her mouth.

After we hosed her down to get the sand off, Brianne and Cayden tossed the football around. They actually threw the ball to each other. Tthey didn't actually catch it, but this was one of the first times I saw Brianne playing a game with another kid, instead of taking the ball and running off with it.

Cleaning Sucks

One of the many things I have been trying to teach Brianne is cleaning up after herself. This is a skill she has yet to master, which is probably because her obsessive complusive mommy picks her toys up before she has a chance to put everything away herself. I have tried a few different tactics to get her actively participating in cleaning up. Right now, she is in a monkey-see, monkey-do phase, and wants to do everything I do. So I let her give vacuuming a try. Ok, so maybe this is a little advanced and we skipped a few of the more basic cleaning skills, but Brianne wasn't complaining.

At first, she thought the vacuum was a fun new toy for her to ride. Ride'em cow girl!


But she soon realized that vacuuming is not as much fun as it originally looked.


But she made the best of it! I would vacuum for hours if it got her to smile like that :o)


Putting in some elbow grease. After a few tries, she really got the hang of it! She'll be cleaning our house in no time. Two isn't too young for chores, right? And she still doesn't know what allowance is, so extra bonus for me!

Tickle Monster

One of the greatest things about Brianne getting older is her developing her sense of humor. She is just plain funny. She loves to laugh and doing things to make other people laugh, especially tickling. She makes the funniest faces, and when she babbles, sometimes, I swear she is trying to tell us a joke.

When Marty went to pick up Brianne from school recently, he walked into her classroom to find her standing up in front of 20 children and cracking them all up. From what her teacher told us, she was up there making funny faces and dancing around, and basically bringing the house down. She just turned two and already knows how to work a crowd.

Every minute we spend with Brianne is a new adventure, and we can't wait to see what she'll do next!

Sharing some tickles with mommy :o)


Practicing her Shrek roar!


Going in for a tickle sneak attack. Look at that devious little face.

Stopping to smell the stickers.

Contemplating her next punchline.

We captured Brianne's favorite tickle game on video. She tickles each of us one by one, then says "tickle Bree Bree!" I could just die from the cuteness of it all.

Swim Star

Being Florida residents, you would think that Brianne would be an expert swimmer by now. But unfortunately, life keeps getting in the way, and we have not buckled down and gotten swim lessons for Brianne. Considering we spend time in the pool every week, we probably need to get this done sooner rather than later.

Though she can't swim unassisted, Brianne still loves the water. And we have gotten her several pool toys to try and encourage swimming. The latest is a star-shaped inner tube. Brianne likes to wear this more like a necklace than she does a flotation device.



Kinda missing the point of the floaty, but she is enjoying playing with it.


We did try to pull the floaty down around her waist and bring her into the pool, but she cried. So back to floaty-as-necklace. Taking her floaty for a trip around the pool area.

Happy 4th of July!

This Fourth of July found us celebrating our country's independence in the city of Weston's parade. Marty was the only one of us actually in the parade. Brianne and I cheered him on from the side lines. Marty ended up walking in front of his parade car so he could meet and greet people along the parade route, so it worked out that we didn't plan on riding with him as I don't think Brianne (ok, I) would have made it in that heat.

Before the start of the parade, Marty showed Brianne the car he was going to ride in. Brianne enjoyed spelling the words on the sign.


After she was done spelling, she decided to run off with one of the magnets. She is getting pretty fast!


Practicing her wave from a (stationary) parade float.

We beat the heat in Weston's City Hall while waiting for the parade to start. Brianne was inspired by the governmental office, and wanted to practice her diplomatic conversational skills on the phone.

Once the parade was getting ready to start, we found a good place to catch all the action. While we waited, the DJ was playing great music and all the kids were dancing. I had a great time showing Brianne how to Cupid Shuffle.

Marty was toward the front of the parade, so we got to see him right away. I couldn't get my camera ready fast enough, so I only got the back of Marty (he's just to the left of the guy with the white hat and red shirt).

While we loved cheering Marty on, Brianne's favorite was the Disney float. Right as we were getting ready to leave, Mickey, Minnie and the whole Disney gang rolled by, and Brianne went tearing toward the street. I nearly had to tackle her to keep her from getting run over by a float.