All Things Bryn

Here's Bryn patiently waiting for her birthday cake. This was taken on her actual birthday, the day after her big party. 

Now that Bryn is two years old and has been home with us for one full year (we got home from China a year ago yesterday) I thought it would be a good time for a newsy update. So here are some tidbits on her latest stats and what she's been up to for the past while, plus a few cute-to-me stories.

• She weighs 27 lbs. and is 33.25" tall. That's a gain of 11 lbs. and approx. 5" in one year. That puts her around the 50 percentile for both height and weight, definitely over the top by Asian standards! She has 17 teeth and is working on 3 new molars.
  

• She loves to sing and dance and does a great rendition of Head and Shoulders. Her favorite songs are Wheels on the Bus, Mama Loves and I Love You (Barney song).
  

• Her favorite TV show is The Backyardigans, the only show she'll watch from start to finish. She doesn't watch a lot of TV but I'm sure she'd sit through a Backyardigans marathon no problem.
  

• She's still a restless sleeper and very seldom sleeps through the night without fussing. Sigh. She's also become very good at stalling bedtime! She's always asking for one more song or one more cuddle. How can I say no to one more cuddle?
  

• She gives the best hugs and kisses and I've never laughed so much at so many silly things in my life.

• Bryn has never been very adventurous and is always wary of anything new but she's getting braver all the time. Her gym class has been a huge help. She plops down on her butt (a big accomplishment for her!), loves the balancing beam, and tries to jump up in the air (though at 27 lbs. that's not an easy thing to do). She also likes swimming but doesn't like to get her head wet and she loves playing outside in the snow and tobogganing.
  

• Bryn is definitely a follower and her blogging Xinyu sisters seem to be her greatest influences. She likes to "jump like Caia", pour "water on head like Tennedy" when she's in the tub (in Bryn's case it's just a few drops of water), have "two ponies like Affa", "wiggle toes like Culaire" and "go slide like Maefe". Bryn loves to see photos of the girls on their blogs and wants to watch their videos over and over again.

• She's already putting me in my place by correcting my grammar. If I say "hey?" or "huh?" she'll say "No hey, say pardon".  Little rotter.
  

• I always have a laugh when I'm getting her to try on new clothes because they're are either "too big, too small or too fits".
  

• She knows all of her basic shapes -- circle, square, rectangle, triangle, heart, star, etc. She sings "I know my shapes" from a Baby Einstein video.
  

• She can recite her numbers from 1 to 10. I can't say she counts to 10 because she doesn't really understand all the numbers as an amount, though she does know how many 1 and 2 are. She can pick all the numbers out when asked except for 6 which she always calls 9.
  

• She knows all the letters of the alphabet except V and S and has a word to go with each of them. One day we were going through her letters and when I asked what L is for (usually it's love you or llama), she said "Ella".  Hmmmm.
  

• Bryn's vocabulary continues to amaze us. Believe it or not, by the time she was 19 months old she knew over 200 words. I quit writing them down at that point but I know she's more than doubled that by now. I'm sure most people think I'm exaggerating with the numbers because she doesn't talk much when she's around other people but believe me, when it's just us around she talks non-stop. Maybe that's why I have a headache every day. :)
  

• She still carries her wet cloth around. Next to food it's her favorite thing.

• She loves talking on her play phone or anything that looks like a phone. The other day she picked up my calculator ("Looks like phone, mom!"), put it next to her ear and said "Hiyo. Whats you doin? I'm fine, and you?" Yep, that's what she said.
  

• The latest "OMG I can't believe she said that" moments:  We were looking at a book and I said look, there's a goose. She said, "Atch-ee-yee it's a duck." And just this weekend Girard and Bryn were looking out the front window at the rink across the street, and he said "Someday Bryn and dad can play hockey" and she said "That will be fun".

• She doesn't like having her picture taken and turns away from the camera as soon as I pull it out. If I follow her she turns the other way. Videos are even worse. She can be singing away or doing something really cute and I run to get the camera to take video and she stops whatever it was she was doing. Her highchair is the only place I manage to get half-decent videos. Yes, it's very frustrating!
  

• Her hair has grown a lot in the past year but she still hasn't had a haircut. We've trimmed the odd stray long hair from her bangs but that's about it. That's quite different from some of the other girls who have their hair cut every couple of months!

• She loves puzzles and is really getting into playing pretend with her toys. She likes to cook me yogurt and Special K and coffee with her play dishes. She loves to talk to Jessie and show her things like pictures in her books.

• Some of her favorite foods are yogurt, grilled cheese sammies, noodles and tuna.  She also loves chocolate and french fries though both of those are rare treats. I'm a meanie, I know.
  

• Bryn has turned into quite the ham. She likes to tease or do something silly and then giggle and giggle. To use one example, she'll say "mood" instead of "moo" for a cow, and if you repeat that it's the funniest thing, to her.
  

• She still loves books. She likes to cuddle and read. Her favorite book right now is Good Night Moon. For Christmas she got a book called The Christmas Star and she knows the people as "Baby Jesus, Jofef and Mary had a little lamb". Kids really do say the darndest things.
  

• The newest funny just happened five minutes ago. Girard was going to give Bryn a bath so I told her to make sure to tell dad to wash her bum. "Or buttots,", she said. Some days my sides ache from laughing at this kid!