Birthday Girl

My baby girl is one year old!  Brylee is an absolute joy, everyday with her is amazing.  She is so much fun, exhausting, but lots of fun.  She is now running everywhere and climbing on everything.  The climbing usually involves her jumping off of things which was a painful lesson for both mommy and Brylee.  She is little Miss Independent.  She refuses to ride in the stroller anymore, she also now hates the shopping cart.  She would much rather explore the world on her own two feet.  Bry can now say mama, dada, hi and has several signs.
She can also mimic words we say sometimes like baby.

                                             

Brylee is a very busy girl, she is never still.  Her cuddles last for about ten seconds. She loves giving hugs though.  Her personality is very much that of an extrovert, she loves to be surrounded by people.  When she sees another kid/baby she goes right up to them.  More often than not she grabs them and they end up falling to the ground.  I went to someone's house the other day who had a two girls one was three and the other just a week younger than Brylee.  The baby sat on her mom's lap, trying to avoid Brylee.  Bry had a blast with the three year old, they chased each other and she was laughing so hard.  I love play dates with older kids.  There are several babies her age but Brylee is a little too much in their faces.  She loves playing with them but they aren't so sure of her. Her best friend is a little boy named Owen he's about a month older than her.  They are so cute to watch, they make each other laugh so hard.

Being her mama is an absolute joy.  She is filled with so much happiness and love.  Anywhere we go Brylee makes somebody's day. She smiles and waves at everyone.  I don't think she has ever been scared of any person, she will go up to anyone.  If I could describe Brylee in three words they would be: independent, spunky, and joyful!

I never imagined how much having a baby would change me.  I absolutely adore my little girl, she is such a a joy to me.

 Brylee's birthday was a lot of fun. I'm kind of obsessed with owls.  Bry's room is decorated with owls, so naturally her birthday theme was owls.

I went really simple on cake decorating.  originally I wasn't going to decorate her cake because I was just going to top it with coconut cream.  Last minute I decided to decorate it like I did the cupcakes, and I think it turned out pretty cute.

I made her a gluten free sugar free cake.  The plan was to use coconut cream for the frosting. Unfortunately, the cream didn't separate so I resigned myself to using...gasp... actual frosting.  It was her first taste of processed/ junk food.  I'm usually pretty crazy when it comes to what Brylee eats.

Brylee wasn't too sure of her cake.  I thought she would dig right in.  Grandma tried to give her a taste of the frosting, which she immediately spit out.  Brylee definitely enjoyed the cake more than the frosting!  I guess my craziness in insisting she eat only healthy foods has paid off!

 I made Brylee a birthday ouotfit.  I spent hours making a cupcake onesie. The top part of the cupcake was 3D...and the second I put it on her she spit up all over! Oh well...she still looked dang cute!

Grandpa Les and Grandma Nan joined the party via Skype.

Brylee loves paper and ripping paper so I though she would just love to unwrap presents.  That was definitely not the case.  She just wanted to play with all of her guests, not open presents.

Brylee keeps us busy and we love every minute of it.  We especially love that she is now sleeping through the night, only took a year! Reflecting back I realized that first year went way too fast.  I just want to slow time down so she can stay my baby a little longer.

Halloween and Such

After our visit to the pumpkin patch we had to carve pumpkins.  Sam was busy with school and didn't feel like do anything elaborate, so I definitely won the pumpkin carving contest in the Shinkle home.  I carved the pumpkin Brylee picked out and tried to carve a minion for her (even though she's never seen Despicable Me).  In my mind it looked a lot better than it turned out!

On Halloween we didn't really do anything.  Sam had a basketball game, I wanted Brylee to have another chance to wear her costume so we dressed her up for that.

This is Kinzie her husband is in Sam's program and they play basketball together.  We've become good friends since moving out here.  Brylee just loves Kinzie and her husband Cody. And here is another video of Brylee walking.  I realized the last couple videos were just of her when she started to walk.  now you can see what a champ she is.  I apologize for my terrible videoing skills.

Brylee's birthday is coming up so I'm working on some birthday invitations.  I attempted to take some pictures of her.  I  couldn't get her to stand still, so I decided to use a chair as a prop.  Then I thought it would be really cute to tie balloons to the back of the chair.  Sam had the car so Bry and I walked a couple blocks to the party store to get balloons.  I ended paying eight dollars for five balloons, crazy!  Then when I got home two of them popped on my ceiling, grr!  The picture I ended up using didn't even have balloons in the background but oh well.  The pictures turned out pretty cute despite my lack of photography skills.

Brylee has such a big personality, and I love these picture because they sure capture it! We love our little princess so much!

Fall is in the air...

This is our last first with Brylee...ah kinda makes me want to cry a little.  Last year I bought Brylee's costume in January on clearance.  She was so tiny at the time I thought she would never fit in.  Not only did she fit in her costume, but she looked so darn cute! We got so many compliments, people couldn't get enough of her. We even had someone ask if they could take a picture of her because she was so cute.


While I'm not too sure about this fall weather Brylee loves it!  She has to go outside everyday and play, she loves the leaves. Her favorite is when the leaves are raked into piles, she is in heaven when I let her play. 

We celebrated Halloween this Saturday since the thirty first falls on a Thursday. I think we were both way more excited about Halloween than Brylee was.  During this past week I took Brylee to a pumpkin patch so she could pick out a pumpkin to carve.  They had a little farm zoo, so Brylee got to see a bunch of different farm animals.  We then picked out a pumpkin and enjoyed some ice cream straight from the farm...kinda.

There is a fun part of Philly called Manayunk we like to visit.  They had a Halloween festival this saturday that we took Brylee to.  Businesses were passing out candy.  Brylee has fun reaching in and grabbing candy.  We had fun eating the candy she got :).   She has gotten so independent, she didn't want to stay in the stroller or for mom and dad to carry her, she just wanted to walk!

 I just love watching that little tail wag behind her!

I think her favorite part of the day was when we went to the park and she got to swing.

Saturday night our ward had a Halloween party and we did some trunk or treating.  We ran out of candy way too soon so we took Brylee trunk or treating and then passed out her candy.  Looking back that was a terrible decision, I could really go for a Reeses right now!  She loved her pumpkin bucket, especially when there was candy inside she could shake around.  A couple times we had to pick up candy from the ground because Brylee had shaken it all out!

At trunk or treat Brylee just took off, we of course followed her.  She is so independent now, she will go wherever she wants and could care less if  follow her or not.  She just loves to be out and about and surrounded by people. 

Brylee, Brylee, and a little bit about Sam.

Oh my goodness is my baby girl really almost a toddler, tell me its isn't true.  My beautiful baby girl is 11 months old.  I love this age. She is so much fun, and always keeps us laughing.  Nan said she was going through Brylee video withdrawals.  Well I'm going to make up for that in this post.  Warning: there will be lots of insanely cute pictures and videos of Brylee in this post.

Brylee took a step a few times when she was nine months old.  It was just a single step and she usually fell down.  The first time it happen she actually ran two steps but it was kinda a fluke and she didn't realize she was no longer holding someone's hands.  Her momentum was the only reason she kept going.  It was kind of funny though because we always said she would run before she walked, and she did.  Then on her ten month birthday she took her first consecutive steps.  Within the next few days she was taking ten or twelve steps at a time.  It was adorable to watch.  Usually when I see babies learning to walk they are always cautious and it takes them a while to take a step, not our little Miss Independent! Its so funny because there was never a single time when she was cautious or carefel about walking.  She just took off with absolutely no fear.  The week after she started walking she went back to crawling.  I think she decided walking just wasn't fast enough.  the next week however, she started walking and completely stopped crawling.  I'm not going to lie it made just a little sad.  I was excited for this new stage and how much fun she is having, but walking is what toddlers do and I just wanted to hold on to my baby a little longer. Brylee was officially walking and running at ten months, earlier than both Sam and I.



Here is a little video I took when she was just starting to walk all of the time instead of crawling.  

This is one of her favorite things to do.  She gets upset if you put her in her entertainer, but she loves to play in it.  This video is really short, but she never would cooperate when I tried videoing her. 

Sam had his white coat ceremony this week.  They give the medical students their white coat which symbolizes their entry in the medical profession.  It was kind of funny they had a navy officer lined up to speak but he was unable to due to the government shut down.  It was almost two hours long.  Brylee has never really liked sitting still but now that she's walking she really doesn't like sitting still.  Luckily we were sitting in the back and there was a open spot for her to walk around.  When she gets excited she gives this really cute pterodactyl screech (not that we really know what they sound like but I'm sure they sound a lot like Brylee). She definitely did that a few times during the ceremony, and I'm sure everyone heard.  Afterwards Sam, who was sitting in the very front, ask did I hear Brylee give her little excited shriek a few times?  My camera took horrible pictures, or maybe I just had it on the wrong setting, but you get the gist of it.

Sam is so busy with school, so luckily I have some good friends to hang out with.

I'm so proud of Sam.  He is crazy busy in school, but he's doing great.

Sam and some of his friends from the program.

Brylee is so much fun at this age.  She loves clapping her hands, and we taught her to give high fives.  She also dies bing, which is where you stick out your pointer finger and she touches her pointer to yours and you say BING! She also can sign more now.  The other day I made her these kale, carrot, and quinoa bites. She had already eaten lunch and I just gave her one to try to see if she would like it.  She scarfed it down and kept signing more!  I love my healthy little girl!  She definitely didn't get her love of veggies from me!  One last cute picture for you!  Her hiar is finally long enough for me to pull it back.  I will say it is probably the hardest thing I have ever had to do.  Any good advice on getting your baby to sit still while you do her hair would be appreciated!

Jersey Shore and More

I've been quite the slacker at blogging.  I have so much to catch  up on.  Instead of having a mile long post I'm just going to write about our fun weekend, and maybe one day I'll catch up on everything else we've been up to. 

First I have to say that Sam and I are a little lonesome for Oklahoma.  The other day in the car we were talking about how we miss Oklahoma, and immediately we passed Oklahoma ave.  We went to an outlet mall today, but it just made us miss the mall in Oklahoma...it was way better!

We've been having fabulous weather here in PA, like 80 degrees while the west is freezing.  Sam and I decided to go to the beach.  Since its October and usually its not this warm we had to take advantage of the great weather. As soon as new got to New Jersey it started to be overcast and kind of chilly, which we definitely weren't prepared for.  Luckily there happened to be a blanket in the car for Brylee so we weren't completely neglectful parents. We took a little walk on the board walk and luckily the weather warmed up.  We ate lunch on the beach and let Miss Brylee play in the sand.  And oh my was she in heaven she LOVED it.  It made walking a little rough though so she mostly stuck to crawling.  She discovered the seagulls, and would chase after them.  It was the cutest thing she would crawl after one sea gull then noticed another one and chase after that one.  She recently started pointing at things, so she kept pointing out the birds to us. 

Look a Seagull

I will get it!

I'm comin'

I've been taking lots of videos of our sweet bay girl.  It makes me so sad that Brylee has hardly been around her family.  Since I have the cutest baby on earth I thought you might need to get your Brylee fix so here are a few videos to make you smile.  

Brylee is at such a fun age.  I love the little tiny newborn stage, minus the colic and up every two hours part.  But this is the funnest age.  She is too funny.  Wherever we go she always makes someone smile. She is walking now, but still crawls.  She also is signing.  Right now the only sign she knows it milk, but I was so proud of her when she started using it.  She says mama a lot, and sometimes when she's whining she reaches for me and says mama over and over.  Sam isn't too sure she's actually saying mama, but I'm convinced she is.  So her first word might just be mama! Miss Brylee loves dancing, during breakfast we listen to hymns or calm piano music but during the day she has to get her fill of dancing music!  She's got some killer moves.  If we really want to get her laughing we dance with her, pick her up and spin around with her. 


We took her on a hike the other day.  There is a huge park system in Philadelphia.  There's a large forest and hiking trails within this park not too far from us.  I love it because you're in the city but you are secluded enough that you feel like your in the mountains.  I was carrying Brylee and had the camelpack on.  I showed Brylee how to drink out of it.  Then she kept sticking it in my mouth and pulling it out.  She was laughing so hard, apparently it was a pretty funny thing to do to mama.  Sam would try to get a drink and she would pull it out of his mouth and give it to me.