No Monitor Required

We had a wonderful visitor on Tuesday and Wednesday. Aunt Heather stayed with us and Bria had a blast with her aunt. Plus, I was able to clean and take a nice long hot shower. It was pure heaven. I am currently trying to convince her and Amy to move in with us :)

How can you say no to this face?

The signature Bria look:

Being 10 months old has brought on some changes, Bria doesn't like me to put her down for bed or naps. Apparently she thinks I'm sitting her in a crib with tigers or something. I was worried it was separation anxiety setting in, but so far she still does really well with other people holding her. At least until she spots me and then looks at me like, "What are you doing woman? Hold me!"

I realize I've been posting a lot of bath pictures, but I can't help it. Babies are so cute in the bath!

Last night Bria had a pain of some sort and woke up screaming at midnight. Now, we have a baby monitor because with our fan going we can't hear a peep from Bria, even if she's crying really hard. Trust me, I've tested it. Anyway, I go in to see if a cuddle from mommy will help. I lay her down and then go back to the bedroom. Not only does it not work, but I can hear her screaming without the monitor on. Our fan is blaring, Brian is snoring (oh yeah, did I mention he's sick?) but I can hearing Bria crying as loud as she ever has. No monitor required to hear this scream.

Kudos Bria, you've got a good pair of lungs little one. I go back in to administer Tylenol, administer some cuddles, and then lay her back down. She cries for a second and then goes to sleep. Apparently she knew relief was on the way.

Then at about 3:45 am I awake to Brian moving every part of his body in an attempt to get comfortable. He's not feeling very well so I'm trying to be nice and ask him what I can do to help. I get him some medicine and water. 10 more minutes of him tossing and turning. I finally say what he always said to me during my pregnancy when I couldn't sleep, "Shouldn't one of us get a good nights rest?" I'm so mean. But he agreed and went to try and sleep on the couch. I'm going to the store to get him Nyquil today. Tonight is operation Get Brian to Pass Out. For both his sake and mine ;)

A Christmas Miracle

This year we spent Christmas Eve at Grandma Renshaw's house and Christmas day at Grandpa Armstrong's house. We had a wonderful, wonderful time. I will being saying that word a lot in this post because Christmas was wonderful.

Before Bria and I headed to Grandma Renshaw's house on Christmas Eve (Brian was working) we stopped by my mom's to drop off presents.

Grandma Brooks and Bria:

And they had a few presents for the little cutie so we opened those up. Isn't her headband adorable? My friend Erin gave it to her and I just LOVE it!

Her cute vest and baby legs are courtesy of Aunt Heather :)

She loved opening the presents and was particularly fond of the wrapping, what baby isn't?

Then we were on the road. We went to the 5 pm service at church and I was really nervous for how Bria was going to do because she decided to skip her afternoon nap. Fortunately she totally surprised me and did amazing, we even had some people come up and tell us how well she did.

As we were walking into church I was telling Brian's sisters that it would be a Christmas miracle if Brian made it to church. Obviously UPS works Christmas Eve and it's usually a late night for them, plus he has a long commute.

Towards the end of church Bria was getting a little squirmy so I took her in the back to let her "walk" and stretch her legs. So there we are just walking back and forth when all the sudden I see brown out of the corner of my eye. I look up and there is my Christmas Miracle in the flesh. He made it!! I couldn't stop smiling and hugging him, I was so excited. He said he was going to wait in the car since he was still in his brown uniform but really wanted to come in. I told him I couldn't believe he wasn't going to come in, nobody would care that he wasn't in a tie. In fact, I think they should've given him a standing ovation for making sure everyone's christmas presents made it, after all he is like Santa Claus ;)

So the rest of church I couldn't stop smiling, I was on cloud 9 and just so grateful that he made it to church. Brian's mom and family was also very thrilled to have him there. It was just wonderful.

We went back to Grandma's house and had Bria open her presents since she was fading fast, the poor girl was beyond exhausted. She got some adorable things from her aunts and grandma, she was so spoiled!

Family photo after church:

A noisy toy that Bria loved:

I put her to bed and then we ate a delicious dinner, talked, and opened presents. It was a wonderful Christmas Eve and it was nice that Brian and I didn't have to rush to go anywhere, we were able to relax and have fun.

My Christmas miracle:

We got home pretty late but decided to open our presents from each other so that Christmas morning could be all about Bria. I'm glad we did that because it was a lot of fun. We were EXHAUSTED and didn't get to bed until 1 am, but it was worth it.

Brian opening his presents from me (Blue Ray DVD player, boxers, and a movie):

Brian spoiled me this year. We normally don't do gifts but decided to go all out this year. And wow did he go all out. I got a beautiful top (pictured below), Joe jeans (awesome!!!), and a pair of Uggs! Like I said, he spoiled me good.

Christmas morning came and I couldn't wait for Bria to open some more of her presents. Her Santa Claus present was a walker/rider (we picked yours Heather) and Bria really liked it.

Saying hello:

She opened the rest of her presents and her favorite part was the tissue paper. I knew it would be so I put extra in her presents ;)

A picture with Bria and all her presents:

Her rocking horse from Grandma Renshaw:

She played and played and played and finally decided to take a nap so I put her down. She talked and talked for half an hour then finally went to sleep. I attempted to take a nap but 20 minutes later she was up and ready to go. Guess she knew we were going to Grandpa Armstrong's (my dad) for the day.

So excited to open presents!!!

The family sitting around while the girls passed out presents:

She got spoiled again at Grandpa and Grandma Armstrong's house and had fun watching her cousins. When she started getting cranky I went into the bedroom, nursed her, and she fell right asleep. She slept on my chest for about 45 minutes or so and it was really sweet. Then she was rested and ready to play again.

My Dad and Kailey:

Kayla and Lance:

She entertained everyone during dinner and was being such a ham. She had us all laughing, clapping, and putting our hands in the air (so big!). She was making silly faces and you could tell she was trying to think of things to do to make us laugh and clap for her. It was hilarious.

We played games and then Bria was ready to go to bed. She was beyond tired and so were we.

We did her whole bedtime routine but when I laid her in her crib she started screaming. I think she had forgotten how to put herself to sleep since she had fallen asleep nursing the last couple times. So we spent 45 minutes doing some sleep training and she finally fell asleep. We haven't heard her scream and cry that much in a long time, it was really sad. But she finally gave in to wonderful sleep and so did we.

We had such a wonderful Christmas with our family. It was hard not seeing all our parents and spending time with them, but it did work out well and next year we get to spend it with the other parents/grandparents.

Bria was beyond spoiled and we are so appreciative of all the incredibly generous gifts, she is truly loved. I got emotional more than once in the last 2 days because it was just such a wonderful time. I've dreamed of being a mom and having birthday and Christmas traditions and it was so amazing to see it all happening. We have the best family in the world and are just so blessed.

Merry Christmas to you and yours

Thank you, thank you very much

Bria's upside down Elvis impersonation:

All Bria wants to do these days is walk. Since she can't quite do this on her own, it requires my hands and inevitably my back since I have to bend over. We rarely sit down to play for long periods anymore because she'll crawl over, climb up to me and grab for my hands. If I don't offer her my hands then she'll just balance herself using my shoulders or arms.

Fortunately my sister gave us the little toy pusher that she likes to push around, but she's still learning it so it's not her favorite yet, she prefers hands.

"What do you want Mom? I'm kind of busy here."

Taking MJ for a walk:

I think Santa is bringing her something similar, but it also converts into a bike thing. I know it'll be a big hit.

Christmas Pictures

Jaime took some Christmas pictures for us and I was so glad to get them done. We did them 2 or 3 weeks ago and then I was able to send out our Christmas cards nice and early, or at least on time :)

These 2 are my favorite family ones:

And then we took a bunch of Bria being her spunky, cute, little self.

Bria waving to the birds:

"I think I saw Santa Claus!"

Jaime has a picture of her and all 3 of her kids in this chair when they were about Bria's age so we thought it would be cute to put Bria in there. She wasn't sitting very naturally:

So I attempted to make her smile and have fun. This resulted in her falling out of the chair and Jaime caught a mid-action shot:

I'll wait while you dry your tears from laughing so hard.

Bria was totally fine and didn't get hurt or even cry. You can see my hands going to help catch her. Jaime and I were laughing so hard and we loved that she captured it on camera.

Merry Christmas!

10 Months

My little baby Bria is 10 months old, not long before my baby is going to be a toddler. But I'm not going to think about that.

Bria has done a lot this month and I'm really enjoying this age:

• Crawls all over, loves crawling to MJ
• Pulls up on things
• Stands by herself for a few seconds
• Claps
• Touches her toes when asked
• Touches her ear when asked
• Raises her arms up when you tell her to or ask how big she is
• Waves hi and bye to people
• Has 4 teeth, 2 bottom and 2 top
• Says "mama" "dada" "tickle" (sounds like tooka) and makes all sorts of other noises
• Hates naps (I have resorted to googling this problem to find help)
• Started eating more real people food and loves it
• Doesn't like very many vegetables, only carrots and squash
• Scrunches her nose and breaths through it all funny like, it's adorable
• Wears size 3 diapers and 9-12 month clothes
• Is the light of her parents life

Bria is definitely a mama's girl right now. I think that may come with being a stay at home mom. She loves playing games with her Dad though, and I love the smile she gets when he comes home from work, no one else gets that smile. It warms my heart.

I was dancing like a mad woman to get her to smile, this was the best we could get:

"Ha, that's kind of funny mom."

Her napping is becoming quite an issue. I thought she was trying to go down to one nap a day but now I'm not so sure. It's a big fat guessing game and I suck at guessing games. She is only sleeping for an hour and a half a day at the most. I have tried everything I can think of, even when I googled it I had tried all the things the moms were talking about. Maybe she just requires less sleep then other babies.

"Pssh Thumper, what are you doing?"

She is such a cuddly baby and oh man I love it. Her hugs and kisses are what get me through the day sometimes, it's like she knows I need those. They build up my patience meter.

Happy 10 months baby girl!

Climbing

Bria has been pulling up on everything these last couple weeks and she is having a blast. I can only imagine how fun that would be to discover for the first time. Now that she's pulling up she's beginning to climb a little, testing out the waters. I have a flat tote that holds our christmas wrapping paper and she has a blast climbing on top of it.

And just yesterday she was finally able to crawl off of it for the first time.

Before she climbed she decided to help me wrap some presents:

Sitting on her throne:

I'm thinking we'll need to work on this before she does stairs, like maybe getting her to turn around instead of head first.

Awhile ago I posted about how I thought Bria was going down to one nap, yeah that didn't happen (thank goodness!). She's been doing 2 naps, although she fights the afternoon nap like crazy. Anyway, Sunday she did the 20 minute nap I talked about and Tuesday she did the same thing. I could not believe it, so I finally decided that maybe she was ready for one nap.

We have tried it the last 2 days and it's gone pretty well, she slept for an hour and a half. I keep hearing about these 2 hour naps that so many toddlers take so I'm in shock my little 10 month old (on Sunday!) thinks she only needs an hour and a half. But it's better than 20 minutes.

Why do babies find dangerous things fun?

Or maybe I should be asking, Why do moms grab the camera and take a picture of their baby playing with cords?

Bria is starting to eat more real food, meaning not the Gerber stuff. She loves bananas, she especially loves to squish them in her hands. I have been unbelievably lucky to have a clean eater, I rarely need a bib because she swallows everything I put in her mouth. I love it. So this whole eating with her hands is kind of hard for me, but I know it's important so I just remind myself of that a lot. I steamed some veggies for her and she enjoyed the carrots quite a bit, but the green beans and peas she wasn't a huge fan of, although she did eat a few of them.

I was sitting at the computer and I heard a little noise behind me, this is what I turned around to see:

Cutest. Face. Ever.

I can't believe Christmas is only a week away, I feel like a kid again because I am soooo excited. Bria loves playing with the presents under the tree so I can't wait until we sit them in front of her for her to open. I'm sure once we do she'll get bored and crawl away so I'm trying not to get my hopes up too high ;)

Brian has been working late all week and it sucks. But he's got a job so I'm not complaining (well ok sometimes I complain but then I remember that I shouldn't). Plus he has to work tomorrow. It's safe to say we are both completely worn out and ready for some shorter work hours.

Since I knew Brian would be working late this week I made plans to stay busy and it really helped. Brian's mom came over twice and watched Bria which was just wonderful, Bria agreed. I was able to make a trip to Target all alone and then last night I went to dinner with a high school friend, it was marvelous.

Now I need to try and plan things to do next week to keep us busy :)