Well, my babe anyway.
We had a wonderful Thanksgiving and I hope you all did too. Briana was her perky self per usual and we had a great day. We had dinner (around 1:30PM) at my parent's house so we were only able to watch little snippets of the Thanksgiving Day Parade on Thanksgiving. I decided to TiVo the parade to watch with Bri at a later time. I turned it on Saturday morning. Briana and I sat down and watched the whole parade portion (the last two hours of it). It was hilarious because she had commentary for almost every single part of it. She pointed and said, "WOW!" a whole lot. (She is a "WOW" girl anyway - says it all the time. Everything to her is a BIG deal.) As the balloons went by, she would shout out the names of the characters. She yelled "Shrek!" when Shrek came by and asked "Where's Donkey?" and "Where's Princess?". When Buzz Lightyear came by, she yelled "Buzz!" and asked "Where's Woody?" (I think we are starting to enter the question phase of her life.) She would say "March, march" and stomp her feet when the bands went by. Of course, she loved all the dancing and singing. Sometimes I can't believe how good the interaction is getting between me and my girl.
For the past couple of months, I have been a little worried about Briana's speech. She talks A WHOLE LOT and she says hundreds and hundreds of words clearly. She can put two words together and says lots of phrases. She is so smart and knows exactly what I am saying. I will ask her questions and she can respond. But there are times that I do not understand what she is saying. It mainly happens when she wants to speak in sentences. When she starts to speak in sentences, I sometimes think that she may be making words up to speak quickly or is just not pronunciating the words correctly. I have noticed that several of her friends that are her age or a little younger are speaking a little more clearly.
Good news though - in the last two weeks, I have noticed an improvement. I am understanding a lot more and she seems to be pronunciating better. I guess everything comes in time. The other day she pointed to pictures of herself on the wall and said, "Daddy look Briana pictures." That sounds like a sentence to me! Doug bought her a Christmas ornament with Buzz Lightyear on it. She started calling for him this morning, "Buzz, where are you?"
She is still stubborn though. If she cannot say a word, she won't even try to say it. She just looks at me or tries to divert my attention. Anything with a GR sound at the beginning - grandma, green, gravy - she just can't say it. Instead of trying to say "elephant", she gives me the elephant sound instead. And then there is her name. She calls herself "Nana" (Non-na) instead of Briana. I often correct her to say "Briana" and then she'll repeat, "Bee-nana". Close enough.
I try not to compare Briana to kids that have heard the English language from the day they were born, but it is hard sometimes. Briana never heard a lick of English until she was 12 months old, so I think she is probably on target under the circumstances. I am going to talk to her pediatrician this week and make sure she is on track.
Briana is really understanding the possessive thing now. She constantly says, "Mama's this" or "Daddy's that". She says "Nana's this" or "My that". We were in the car yesterday and she pointed to each chair stating who sat in what chair. Pure genius. ;)
And big news - my baby can count to five! She takes my hand and counts my fingers, "one, two, three, four, five". Yeah! I would say she can count to 10, but she usually skips six and seven and goes straight to eight and nine. So, I will say she can count to five. :)
At the bookstore yesterday, she picked up at Little Einsteins book that was about pirates. She looked at me and said "Aye Matey." Snort! Hmmm, I guess Captain Feathersword does say that.
I can say that my daughter wins the award for being "Little Miss Manners" though. She says "thank you" to me for everything. I hand her something, she says "tank you mama". I help her blow her nose, she says "tank you mama". When she drops something, she says, "sorry mama." When she coughs or burps, she covers her mouth and says "scuze me mama." I am constantly thanking her for doing things, so I think she is picking that up. It is really cute.
Somehow, Briana has a scrape on her chin. Not sure what she did. I put a band-aid on it yesterday and she never messed with it. I put a new one on after her bath and put her to bed. She started to cry about a half an hour later and Doug checked on her. She pulled her band-aid off and was so upset. I went into her room and Doug went to grab another one for me. She was crying so hard. He handed me the band-aid, I placed it on her chin and sat in the rocker in her room and cradled her. Doug left us alone. I wiped the tears from her face and told her everything was ok now. We rocked a few minutes quietly. She then squeezed me and quietly said, "Tank you mama."
I kissed her forehead and thought to myself, "No, thank you."
It is really amazing the difference a year makes. I honestly cannot get over how fast the kids are growing up. Kathy took the above pics at the potluck on Sunday - we managed to get all the kids on the steps for a group picture. Briana decided not to smile for it, but at least she sat there, so I'm (sort of) happy. ;) 
And here they are at the potluck on Sunday...
Kathy, Chani, Briana and I met for lunch today to catch up and do a little girl talk. You know, Kathy was the first person that reached out to me when I first started my adoption journey. We actually "met" on a yahoo group! Then we met in person for the first time at an Applebee's along with our good friend Randi. That was back in February 2006. We've certainly come a long way since then - haven't we, Kathy? :)
