I am back! I took a little hiatus for awhile, not really intentionally, but I’m ready to post more and keep you all in the know about this little family! I’m not promising anything regular, but I am going to actually post! There’s so much that has happened and that we’ve done, so it’s difficult to know where exactly to start. I know my previous post said “to be continued”, and I do have a partial post written to continue what I was sharing. Hopefully, I will be finishing that soon and posting that for all of you. Today we’re just going to start in the here and now.

Brielle Madelyn is turning 10 months old tomorrow. It’s hard to believe that she’s nearly a year! She is still a baby, but when I think of Brielle as a 1 month old and Brielle as a 10 month old, I feel like she’s practically a toddler! She’s definitely her own little person at this point. She has continued to be a very happy and content child, to the happiness of her parents. We feel very spoiled with such an easy baby. This is what our days tend to look like:

8am – 9:30am: Brielle wakes up with a smile on her face and enjoys her first bottle. We look at books together, read some Winnie the Pooh and The Jesus Storybook Bible.

11am or so: Brielle goes down for her first nap. She tends to talk happily to herself for twenty minutes and then falls asleep.

1pm or so: Brielle gets up and eat some finger foods and then enjoys her second bottle.

Each afternoon tends to be different, in fact, this model is pretty loose, but it helps you all get the idea of what we’re doing each day. When we’re home, she will play on the bed while I fold laundry, or sit in her high chair and play while I work in the kitchen. Other days, we spend the afternoon with her Nana, Nanny (great grandma) and Auntie Amber. She also enjoys riding in the front of a cart at the store and taking in all the sights and smells wherever we are.

Late afternoon, Brielle has her second nap. When she wakes up, she generally sits with us at dinner and eats some sort of finger food, then Aaron gives her her bottle and plays with her until bedtime. Brielle absolutely loves her Daddy. Her face just lights up when he comes into the room, comes home, or interacts with her. Then between 7pm and 8pm Brielle goes to bed.

Some other things Brielle is doing: She loves to stand, but can’t yet stand up by herself. From the very beginning, she has loved to stand in our laps. Lately, I’ve been taking her and standing her up against the couch or the coffee table. She likes doing that, but can’t quite figure out how to maneuver around. She smiles nearly all the time and makes some pretty hilarious facial expressions. Her Nana gave her a dolly, and she loves to hug her and “kiss” her face (which is more like licking her face). She has a yellow giraffe and a pink giraffe and she loves both of them, but the pink one is her favourite. Aaron named it Raffy and she sleeps with it. It is so sweet when you bring Raffy to her because she will grin and reach her arms out to it.

Brielle loves to look at board books. She holds them exactly like she is reading it, and will stroke certain pictures. She likes the picture of the dog in the animal book, and will stroke the puppy and talk to it. We have two board books with pictures of babies in it, and she recognizes that they are babies and will just talk and talk to them.

Brielle also absolutely loves music. She has a little baby radio, with buttons that play different sounds and music, and when you hand that to her she laughs! When music is playing, she rocks her body back and forth like she’s dancing. She definitely has music in her soul! At the moment, her favourite music is Owl City and Beethoven. (Quite the combination eh?)

We love our sweetie so very much. I absolutely love, love, love being at home with Brielle all the time. She changes so much all the time, I wouldn’t want to miss any moment for the world. She is just so much fun to be with.

And now it’s time for the announcement part of this post. We are expecting another little one! We found out just before Christmas, which provided an opportune time to give the news to our respective families. This pregnancy has been smoother than the previous one, which is nice since I already have a baby to take care of! I had a little morning sickness during the first trimester, but it only popped up when I ate something unusual and my stomach was not a fan. Now, the only symptoms I really have would be backaches toward the end of the day. We’re also hoping that preeclampsia would not rear it’s ugly head this time. I am 19 weeks along right now, and we’re scheduled to have an ultrasound next week to find out baby’s gender. We’re pretty excited to find out if we’re going to have another daughter, or our first son. We would love either! Sometimes it seems strange that we’re going to be parents of TWO children!!

Now, this post has simply gotten long enough, so I shall sign off for now, but more to come soon!

~ Anna