My first baby is so grown up!

It’s hard to believe that August 2007 was so long ago.

P.S. more preschool details to come!

Gigi loves listening to a CD (that our friends the Michels gave her) that has a lady singing all the classic nursery rhymes. The funny thing about her is that she tends to mix them up when she sings them herself.

Here’s my favorite:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a tuffet eating his Christmas pie.

heehee! Hope that made you smile today.

We had a little photo shoot in the front yard.
{Cute outfit from Debbie, and handmade flower clips from Stephanie.}

I’d love to hear which one is your favorite. Just click over to see them all (only 20), and leave a comment!

It’s so hard to believe that it was three years ago that our spunky, little Gianna Brianne came into the world.

We’ve been having some difficult days with Gigi lately, with and emphatic “NO!” being her word of choice often. She’s very strong and independent these days, although still has her moments of shyness where she clings to Mommy’s leg. Despite the difficulties we’ve been having with her though, she still is such a sweet girl at heart. She loves her friends and her family, even the ones who live far away, talking and asking about them often.

Everyone loves her raspy little voice and is amazed at her vocabulary. Her artistic side has really been bourgeoning lately– she loves to paint, and do anything crafty, whether it’s stickers, crayons, “sewing” with mommy.

Gigi still loves macaroni and cheese as well as “peanut jelly & butter” (nope, that’s not a typo), but she will really try anything and is such a good eater.

She’s such a good big sister and loves to sing to baby Bro-Bro– usually it’s “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” the ABCs, or “Twinkle, Twinkle,” or “Awesome God,” often with her guitar around her neck. She’s even getting close to carrying a tune these days.

This year we aimed to celebrate her all week– since we’ve really tried to simplify things at Christmas we want to go all out for our kids’ birthdays. She still doesn’t quite understand all the special treatment and the meaning of birthdays but I think she enjoyed the week, which included a beach day, a trip to the San Diego Botanical Garden, and lunch with Yaya at her fabric store.

Then on Friday, we had a little party at one of our favorite beaches, Fletcher Cove, in Solana Beach, near David’s work. We played on the grass and playground, did a little craft and had some yummy snacks (including the cupcakes she helped make). Then we went to dinner at Pizza Port with Yaya & Papa. She had a great time!

Saturday we got up and headed out to the Wild Animal Park with all of Gigi’s grandparents. It was another beautiful day, and we finished it off with a little BBQ.

Gigi got her first real bike from Granny and Granpa!

Here are all the photos from Gigi’s two birthday parties!

We love you, Gigi Bri!

The other day Gigi lost her first balloon up to the heavens. We had just got home from grocery shopping and she was showing off her “Dodger blue” balloon to two of our neighbor when the ribbon slipped right through her fingers and up into the air. (I usually tie it to her wrist– oops!)

I wish I had a picture of the super-sad, pouty lip that emerged as she immediately began to cry big alligator tears as she watched it float away. I tried to console her but she was so sad!

Thankfully, our neighbors came to the rescue! Our next-door neighbor Marc ran in the house and brought out a pink balloon that he proceeded to blow up for her (and assure her that it couldn’t go up in the sky). Then, our neighbor KC squatted down and pointed it out way up there, all excited-like, and told her how the little birdies were going to find it.

She seemed okay, although still a little sad. That night we went to some friends’ house for dinner and a backyard concert (which was awesome). When we got home, we saw something mysterious taped to our fence next to our front door. Sure enough, there was a big, blue Cinderella balloon taped up with a note.

Dear Gigi,
Today I found your blue balloon that flew away from your home. So here is a special balloon for you that I just thought you might like.
From the little bird that found your balloon

What a sweet surprise! Thanks KC for making Gigi’s day! And she didn’t even know how much Gigi has been into Cinderella lately (without having ever seen the movie of course).

Admittedly, I was not in any big rush to get a cell phone once everyone and their mom (and their 5-year old kids) starting getting them.  However, I am coming around to the textual revolution and I even have a phone with one of those tiny keyboards that makes me feel very uncoordinated when I have 27 typos per sentence.  I tend to stick to full sentences and words when I text and I am convinced that today’s children might as well be illiterate because of the terrible habits they are developing while texting.

Wow, didn’t mean to go there but sometimes that’s the way it goes, LOL.  All that being said, I recently began shouting “O-M-Gigi” in our house when something fabulous or wacky happens.  This usually solicits quite a chuckle from Gigi which makes me and Nicole laugh harder at my hilarious, original joke.  Well the other day Gigi managed to outwit me and responded with a hearty, “O-M-Daddy!”  Since then she has also added ,”O-M-Mommy” to her arsenal.  Each time she busts out with an O-M-whoever, she is very amused with herself. That’s all.  It was very funny and I thought you all should know how funny and witty Gigi is.

I just read a cool post about doing a New Year’s Journal for your kids, and I love the idea. Since this blog is our family’s digital journal, I decided to do it here. Someday, I will print these out for Gigi and give them to her. I guess I’ll need to go back and add one for ’08 and ’07, too. Good thing she’s still young.

Gianna Brianne: 2009

Vitals

• Height: ~34 inches
• Weight: ~27 pounds

Places Visited {deep breath, this will be a long list!}

• Arizona (Spring Training) (March)
• Legoland, CA (March)
• Sacramento (Chase & Carly’s wedding) (March)
• Portland, OR (March/April)
• Bend, OR (April)
• Sebsastopol/Santa Rosa, CA (April)
• Camping in Carlsbad (April)
• Camping in Huntington Beach (April)
• Simi Valley, CA (Jordan & Jazmin’s wedding) (May)
• Ladoga, IN (the Leonards’ house) (May & June)
• Milwaukee, WI (May)
• Chicago, IL (May-June)
• Fair Oaks Farms, IN (June)
• Detroit, MI (June)
• Toronto, Canada (June)
• Niagara Falls (NY side) (June)
• Williamsport, Gettysburg, Philadelphia & Pittsburgh, PA (June)
• Washington, D.C (June)
• Alexandria, VA (June)
• New York & Poughkeepskie, NY (June)
• Cleveland & Cinncinatti, OH + a short drive to Kentuncky! (June)
• Camping in Carlsbad (November)
• + more baseball games at Petco Park, Dodger Stadium, and Angel stadium

Favorite Things

• Reading the Bible and “My Goodnight Book”
• Playing with friends
• Going to the beach or the playground
• “Swimming”
• Sydney and Lacy
• Cheering on sports teams
• color: Dodger Blue
• food: macaroni & cheese, “cuties” (oranges)

Things She’s Learned

• Numbers (she can count to 10)
• Colors (mostly, if you count her version of green being “it’s like philly ‘phanagit’ color“)
• A few Bible verses
• The letter A (recognition)
• Riding a scooter
• Pedaling a bike
• Singing the ABCs

Goals For 2010

• Potty Train
• Learn to swim
• Learn to recognize letters
• Learn more Bible verses
• Meet Manny

Other Special Memories:

• We started the adoption process, and Gigi can’t wait to get “our baby” as she says. She’s always asking questions about what “our baby” will be like.

In the last year, Gigi has matured a lot in her looks! Here’s a glance at how she has changed throughout the year.

Here’s to 2010!

It’s hard to get Gigi to perform on camera. She’s usually more concerned with “seeing it” than letting me record her. Today I was able to convince her (pretty easily, actually) to bring you some entertainment.

This week we have been potty training!! It’s been going pretty well. She’s been basically diaper free during her awake times since Tuesday afternoon. We’ve been using diapers still at naptime, nighttime and when we went to Bible study. But otherwise she has done awesome all week, errands and all, with only a handful of accidents. Because of that, we’ve been washing hands a lot this week. When we wash hands with Gigi, we always sing the ABCs (to ensure long-enough washing, and to teach her letters). This was the first week she actually started singing them all by herself! Probably due to repetition!

The way I convinced her to sing for the camera was to ask her if she wanted to show her cousins how she could sing her ABCs for them. She loved that idea. Note that she’s not actually much of a singer (yet) but hopefully she’ll develop an ability to carry a tune a little later with more practice.

As a bonus, she was gracious enough to “read” her favorite book to you all as well.

Gigi Performs For Her Cousins from Nicole Bennett on Vimeo.

Coming soon: The Outtakes!

On the way home from Granny & Granpa’s, after spending the night with them after the extended Bennett family Christmas party…

Gigi: “Look, that’s like Granpa’s truck!”*

Me: “And we saw the real “Granpa’s truck” this weekend, too.”

Gigi: “And we saw the real Granny, too!”

*She has an uncanny ability to correctly identify cars as looking like someone she know’s car (correct color, too). Popular ones she recognizes are : “Yaya’s car” (white Highlander), “Auntie Rena’s car” (gray Pilot), “Papa’s car/truck” (white Expedition/Chevy truck), “Grandpa’s truck” (white Ford truck), “Unc A’s car” (maroon Malibu), “Our car” (white Sequoia).

So here I am in our new place- we’ve been here almost a month now- and I just love it! It’s small and cozy and in a great location. We’ve got amazing neighbors with a daughter Gigi’s age and a friendly doggie, too! We’ve had a great month with lots of local fun, including Gigi’s first pony ride at the Greek Festival and really enjoying our new place.

This month I also started attending a Bible study with a group of ladies from my church. It’s called Community Bible Study and we meet at a church in Carlsbad. The neat thing is that the program (CBS) is not affiliated with any particular church and we have women from 44 local churches in attendance. CBS has an amazing children’s program– it’s basically like a preschool class for Gigi once a week. She’s loving learning Bible verses and playing with her friends.

This week there was a luncheon for the classes so Gigi had to have a packed lunch for the first time! She was pretty excited about it. I had to capture this milestone and I think she looks so grown up (and funny) in these photos.

See all the photos from September here {I even did captions this time!}.