It’s all about Bri

Since we haven’t been on a trip, or had a big adventure recently, all I have is a bunch of random shots of the little one.

Here’s the iconic silly hair in the tub picture that every parent does to their child.

Bri and Papa waiting for Steve and I to finish with our financial planner. They waited about 2 hours, and as you can see, it wore Brielle out!

Here’s a few videos/pictures of our adventurous child.

She loves the slide and the swing

 

 

Steve had the idea to take her into the bounce house with the other small kids at Believer’s Fellowship’s summer BBQ. I was a little nervous, but decided as long as he was with her it was okay. Turns out she had a blast. The first picture if more for the shot of the girl in mid air. I just thought that was cool. The next one shows how happy she was, and of the course the video doesn’t need to be explained.

 

And here is another standard picture of babies doing what they do best… messing things up. I like to call it cleaning her shelf off, but as you can see, the intention was to have all the items neatly on the shelf, so she wasn’t necessarily helping me when she “cleaned” her shelf off. But hey, it’s the thought that counts right? Right?!?

Ah yes, 11 months. Can you believe we are there already? She now has 5 teeth, can crawl and cruise with the best of them, climbs up on, and in everything her little legs can reach, claps and tickles me.

What, not Brielle? Yep, Steve and I had a little us time. His high school friend Ricky got married last weekend, and we went to the wedding sans child. Usually leaving her behind is no big deal, but turns out everyone brought their children to the wedding, so we ended up missing Brielle. So I guess it is still All About Brielle.

Camping Salmon la Sac

The fam joined Brett, Kate and Trevi camping in Salmon la Sac, right outside of Cle Elum a couple of weeks ago. We went for 2 nights, just to get a taste of camping with a baby. Turns out, it’s not that bad. She didn’t nap well at all, but she slept pretty well at night, so we had a relatively happy child throughout the trip.

First things first, get dirty:

Second, say hi to Trevi.

Or make Trevi cry. Sometimes Brielle’s a little too much for Trevi, and Trev gets a little upset. But usually after a bit, they become good friends again. See, here they are lounging in their Adirondack chairs; well Trevi’s lounging, Bri’s not too sure.

For all the grief Brielle puts Trevi through, sometimes Trevi gets her back. Here’s Bri not too sure about Trevi coming over to her chair. Get her Trevi!

Morning around the camp fire with Daddy. Steve loved the mornings because Brielle would just sit calmly with him for a long time. Not something she does much of these days, she’s usually all over the place. But I think like bees, the smoke had a soothing effect on her.

The dad’s got the job of carrying the kiddos for our afternoon hike up river. Brielle and Trevi enjoyed talking to each other while riding on their dad’s backs. Pretty cute.

Here’s the river we forded. You can see Steve and Bri, Brett and Trevi and Kate through the trees.

Notice I’m already on dry land. I found a quicker route. (Later I found a deeper route, where I fell face first in the water. No worries, by falling face first, the backpack and all the items inside stayed dry.)

Steve (and Bri) made it.

Turns out it hard to get a group picture with all six of us. Sorry Trevi and Bri.

Here’s a shot of the inside of our tent castle, and me changing Bri’s diaper.

Oh wait, what’s that in the foreground of the picture… oops. I believe the conversation between Steve and I went something like this:

Steve: (after I just took off her poopy diaper and cleaned her up) Why don’t you leave the diaper off for a bit and let her air out.

Val: Good idea, I mean she just pooped so we should be safe

(Brielle starts on her second poop of the day)

Steve: Val, Val, put the diaper on, put the diaper on!!!

Val: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Too late:

The tent is officially broken in.

Here’s Brielle playing on the rocks. Oh, and eating dinner, so again, we have a dirty mouth. It’s like we never clean this kid.

But our dishes are clean; thanks dads.

Man make fire

Man make woman cough

So our first camping trip was a success. We didn’t get eaten by any bears (considering there weren’t any around, it would have been impressive if we had). I don’t think any of us got bit by bugs (but with all that smoke from the campfire, did you really expect any bugs around?). Our three room tent castle and queen inflatable raised up air mattress with headboard worked really well. Bri taught us to always put a diaper on her no matter how clever her parents think they are, she is always more clever.

Close one and sleepy time

So sometimes, when Brielle gets excited while eating, she flails her arms and inadvertently hits the spoon I’m trying to feed her with. On this occasion, the spoon was quite full and flew out of my hand, one of those slow motion actions where I watched it rotate while flying through the air toward the carpet island in our dining room, while slowly yelling noooooooooo. Well, we were lucky on this one.

Here’s a close up so you can see how close the splat got to the carpet. You can also see the spoon is hanging over the edge, but luckily, no food was on the bottom of the spoon.

Crisis averted.

Now, here’s Brielle so tired one afternoon that she fell asleep while eating in her high chair.

I guess she gets that from her mother.

And here are some other cute sleeping pictures. This first one I snapped right after she woke up. As you can see, she was sleeping with her head rested against the side of the prison, I mean crib.

And this one’s just plain cute.

9 and 10 months

I can’t get the child to stay put for photos anymore. Here’s 9 months:

Oh, I got her in this one.

And she’s back down. :)

And 10 months:

Despite the goofy grin, this is the best I could get.

And here she comes

Attack!

Oh wait, this one’s kind of cute too.

Brielle is quite the crawler now, getting into everything and completely ignoring all her toys. It’s a lot of fun watching her explore, and a lot of work as well. She “cruises” around all the furniture, and stands for a couple of seconds before falling to her bum. She also has a new top tooth, and another one on it’s way on the bottom. So basically, her grin is a little lopsided at the moment, but still quite cute.