Diapers? We don't need no stinkin' diapers!!!!

That's right people. Our little Bria is potty trained and done with diapers! She is on to bigger and better things like TinkerBell underwear and a cool TinkerBell toilet (It's just a normal little girl toilet that I put a TinkeBell sticker on).

Potty training is intense. And exhausting. And frustrating. But sooooo worth it! That is why I said last week was a time consuming week. We also didn't leave the house so both of us were going stir crazy. We did take a few walks outside to get fresh air but that was about it. Yesterday we drove all the way down to Albany which is an hour and a half and she did awesome. We were both curious to see how she would do in a different environment and she thoroughly impressed us. I am so proud of Bria, she did great and picked it up so fast, I'm a lucky mommy.

Little post

We are having a time consuming week over here so I am being bad about blogging, but I will get better I promise.

Although Brian has been back for almost a week he is still playing catch up at work so he leaves early in the morning and gets back later than usual. Still better than UPS at Christmas time so I shouldn't complain!

I love pigtails.

Bristol and Bria having lunch and wondering why their mother's insist on taking pictures of it.

I still have some Christmas presents to purchase and I have to wrap all of them so I need to get in gear. Maybe this weekend. Although, my mom and sisters and I are doing our Annual Bake Treats day on Saturday and we won't miss that for the world so I guess Christmas Eve I'll be rapidly wrapping lots of Christmas presents ;)

The one where I survived a week without Brian

Last week Brian went down to Arizona for work. Bria and I had been having a rough few weeks, we just weren't seeing eye to eye on things. I wanted to change her diaper. She didn't. She'd kick and scream and throw a fit. I did not want her to throw a fit. She didn't care. And so on.

So, when Brian left last Sunday I was really nervous.

I made sure I had something planned everyday. Both Heather and Lanie were amazing. Lanie came over one day, then had me over the next for dinner. Heather and Amy had us for dinner one night then we went out to eat another. Marna came up and watched Bria all morning long while I ran errands and sipped a hot pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. Another morning I took Bria to an indoor play park.

Staying busy totally helped and last week was a huge success. Bria through lots less tantrums and I was a lot more patient. We missed Brian like crazy, but survived through pictures and videos. Brian sent a video on his phone and Bria requested to see it no less than 958 times.

We are all so happy to be back together and I'm just darn proud to have survived. Which is funny considering I survived 2 weeks alone when he had to go to Arizona for training, but this stage of toddler-hood is just...well...different and more trying.

We are loving having Brian back and more than once Bria has told me "No," and wanted to me to leave so she could have one-on-one Daddy time. Brian pretends he feels bad but I know he is beaming with pride that his daughter is becoming a daddies girl. I have to say it's pretty cute.

Bria got over the cold she had over a week ago and has been sleeping great ever since. Until last night when she woke up at 2:15 am. I rocked her to sleep and put her back down. Half hour later she was up again. I went in and changed her diaper because it was very full, gave her Tylenol and went to sit in her rocker again. As I did she said, "Mommies bed, sleep in mommies bed." I don't know if she had a bad dream but she's never said that. So I caved and brought her in bed. We have not done this very often and when we have she usually doesn't sleep because our bed is a play place to her. But last night she fell asleep on my chest. After a few minutes of her snoring I rolled her next to me and we all slept in the bed together. This is huge, it has not happened since she was like 4 months old and we all took a nap together.

After about an hour (I think, I didn't look at the time) she stirred and then said, "Mommy cuddle." This means she wants to lay on my chest. She was pulling out all the stops! So she laid on me and then started squirming and sure enough she sat up. This is when I cuddled her and took her back to bed, where she remained until morning.

It was a random night, but kind of fun. I still prefer sleeping through the night, but every once and a while (a long while) those nights are sweet.

I was going through pictures to include in this long post and the ones I found reminded me of some I took a year ago when Brian was studying (SO HAPPY HE IS DONE WITH HIS MBA!):

Wow, what a difference a year makes!

I think I'm going to do a whole post about what a difference a year makes because it's crazy to look through pictures and see how much Bria has changed.

Daddies girl

Christmas time is here

My plan was to get a very, very small tree. We don't have a lot of room so I didn't want to overwhelm our small place with a large tree.
It still ended up being bigger than I had envisioned, but it works. We brought it in the house and decorated while Bria was sleeping so when she woke up the next morning we brought her out and showed it to her.

She thought it was absolutely amazing.

(Wish it wasn't blurry, especially because her cute pj's say: "What Santa doesn't bring me Grandma will.")

She has been pretty good about leaving it alone, although sometimes I see her wondering over there and pulling at things. She did break an ornament but fortunately it's one I can easily glue back together.

I think we are all done shopping for Bria's Christmas presents, although it's really hard to stop buying her stuff.

I've been meaning to post her stats from her 21 month appointment. I realize 21 months is not a usual check up, but due to our moving we got behind and her 18 month check up turned in to 21 months.

Weight: 25 lbs 15 oz 55%

Height: 34 inches (growth spurt!!) 76%

Head: 19 inches I think

She sure did grow in height!! No weight gain but that is to be expected at this age...and with a child who prefers to drink her meals :)

Although, I have to say her eating has gotten so much better. The doctor really helped by encouraging us to continue cutting back her milk. Have you heard of a child who drinks too much milk? Well it doesn't surprise me that Brian and I made a milk-obsessed child because we are both addicts ourselves. However, it is very hard to tell a toddler no to milk. She asks for it quite often and even learned how to open the fridge and get her sippy of milk off the top shelf. She will stop at nothing to get her precious milk.

But we are staying strong and making sure she eats before she gets milk. And when we do give her milk we pour less. All in all the eating is getting better and I'm very grateful for that. She still isn't sold on fruits but we won't give up.

It's okay that we lost

I figure if I keep repeating that I'll eventually believe it. We did not win Civil War this year, which means the Ducks are going to the National Championships. I should be happy that an Oregon team is going, but I'm a Beaver through and through so it's really hard for me.

But now that they are going, I might be able to route for them come game time...we'll see.

Despite a sad game, we actually had a great time. Especially since the rain decided to stay away.

Last tailgator of the season.

Mom and Randy

Cindie (Kyle's mom) and Brian posing

Jenny, Kayla, and me

I love the start of the game, it's so exciting.

I love our seats, we are nice and close.

I believe this was right after we scored a touchdown. Look at us, all happy and innocent, unaware that we would not win the game.

Next year Beavs, next year is our year!

Tantrums will be the death of me

I just know it. I am not going to survive these tantrums, they are just too hard to deal with. Everything these days results in a tantrum, or so it seems. Instead of saying, "Help, please," like she use to, Bria screams and cries when something isn't going her way. It drives me batty. Here's a good example: Yesterday we were in the car driving home from Lanie and Bristol's house. She was kind of cranky because it was nap time so I held her hand. But my arm was falling asleep and it's not really safe to drive with one arm reaching behind you so I decided to take her shoe off and rub her foot instead since she likes that. Well holy cow WW3 broke out in the back seat. Bria FLIPPED out. Apparently her shoe is extremely important to her and without it her world falls apart.

Seriously.

A shoe?! Oh my word child, chill out!

I am usually patient for the first couple of the day, but then my patience tank is empty and I want to throw a tantrum myself, which doesn't help matters.

But let's move on from my little vent (thanks for "listening" if you did) and focus on positive things.

These pictures are from 2 weeks ago, watching the Beavers. We lost, it was a sad day.

Amy and Bria reading by the fire

Having fun with Aunt Heather

"Oh heeeey, the Beavers are doing good!"

"Ewwww, nevermind."

"I must Facebook about this."

"That's it, I can't watch, it's too painful."

We went home this weekend to go to the last Beaver game of the season and to see my family. It feels like FOREVER since I've seen them and man it felt wonderful. Bria had so much fun and enjoyed spending time with them. (Pictures of this weekend to come) Christmas is going to be so fun!

Bria coloring pretty pictures

My little artist hard at work.

Taking advantage of a dry day

So we are back from our weekend away and settling in for an interesting week.

Tink and Tired

Tinkerbell.

Oh Tinkerbell. Bria LOVES Tinkerbell. She is over the moon in love with her. I swear we did not push this on her, in fact we have tried other movies and nothing compares to Tinkerbell.

I don't mind, I just wish Tinkerbell was a little more educational for toddlers :)

Aunt Amy got Bria the cutest Tinkerbell slippers.

The girl is crazy about her Tinkerbell slippers.

Here's a little video of Bria "reading" and then telling me about her shoes:

It's been a little exhausting the last couple weeks.

About 2 weeks ago Bria developed a rash in between her thighs and on her bum that we assumed was a diaper rash. That's weird in itself because Bria has only had 1 diaper rash and that was when she pooped in the middle of the night and didn't make a peep so we didn't know and didn't change her until the morning, poor girl.

Back to the rash. So we started applying more A&D ointment to help, but it was not helping. She was waking up 3 or 4 times in the night because she was so uncomfortable. We felt awful, so we got some Desitin applied it at every diaper change and let her run around without pants on most the day to air her bum out.

*This also led to her telling us she had to go potty! I think potty training might be coming.

This combination totally helped. She slept through the night and seemed to be more comfortable, although the rash still wasn't going away. Fortunately we had a doctor's appointment for her 2nd flu shot and check up on Monday. He looked at it and said it wasn't a diaper rash, it was from something that irritated her skin. We followed doctor's orders by applying hydrocortizone and tada! The rash is going away quite nicely, phew!

But it's not over. Sunday was like any other day, Bria was happy and in good spirits. We put her to bed, she went right out and all was well.

9:00 pm, Bria cries out. That's weird. Don't hear another peep so we assume all is well.

9:30 pm, Bria cries and is serious this time.

I'll leave out all the details but she was up every half hour until midnight. She slept until 3 am and then was up every hour. It was the most exhausting night. I think I got 4 hours of sleep total.

Why was she up? Apparently between 7:30 pm and 9 pm she developed a cold. I have no idea how, she just did.

The poor girl has a very stuff nose and it's hard for her to sleep at night. To avoid another horrible night we decided to do a steam shower and have her be in the bathroom for a good 10 minutes (not in the hot shower of course) to loosen up the snot. I could tell it was helping. We gave her Tylenol (the cheap version because I am sooo done with Tylenol and their freaking recalls), put vapor rub on her feet and chest, and turned her humidifier on.

Then we decided to take shifts. I took from bedtime until 3 am since I have a hard time going to sleep anyway.

She woke up at 1 am and I gave her more medicine, more vapor rub, attempted to booger suck her, and rocked her for 40 minutes to help the snot drain. She fell asleep on me and I rocked her some more. She was making this sweet purring noise that reminded me of her newborn days so I just listened to her for awhile. I put her back down and didn't hear from her until 8:45 am! Wow, I was not expecting that. I guess we found a good little remedy! I'm hoping it continues to work until this darn cold goes away. Since she is older she is really showing her frustration with her stuffy nose, she'll look at me and try to breath through her nose and then get annoyed and rub it.

So that's been us in a nutshell. I did get the Christmas decorations out this last weekend which was fun. We will hopefully be getting a Christmas tree this week and I'm looking forward to decorating that, I think Bria will really like it.