Brie: Ballerina to Bag Lady

Oh, I have so much to say about Brie the Ballerina and Bag Lady! Where do I begin? Does every 2 year old come up with the craziest things to do and say? The girl is killing me . . . in more ways than one. Sometimes I burst out laughing at something she is dressed in, saying or doing. Sometimes I want to pull my hair out because she is absolutely making me nuts! Brielle makes every day so fun and oh, so interesting.

- Brie is such a girl! Her nails are painted red. She wants everything to be fancy (thanks to Fancy Nancy books). And mostly, she will ONLY wear dresses. Anytime I ask her to put on pants she tells me she doesn't want to be a prince, only a princess. Soooooooooo . . . I have had to do winter clothes shopping (for a real winter with snow and everything) and only buy dresses and tights. - AND although she does now have dresses and tights to wear, she still will only keep them on for a little while. I get her dressed and do her hair in the morning, but if we don't walk out the door immediately, within 10 minutes she has changed and taken out her hair. Brie changes what is on her body at least every 10 to 20 minutes. It's a whole day of dressing up. She is almost always in a swimsuit (if she has found where I hid it) and then layers on top of that.

What makes me crazy is when she has to go to the bathroom. She is doing a boogy dance and still has to take off a princess dress, a swimsuit, a ballerina outfit, another dress, tights, footy pajamas, another dress, etc. etc.

(This is this morning. It snowed SO MUCH! But Brie still wants to wear a swim suit all day. She asked to go play in the snow in her swim suit. I let her. It didn't last long.)
(Dressed up as a giraffe.)(Just a few of the ensembles she has put together.)
(She loves having Tawna's clothes to add to her dress up wardrobe.)
- Brie almost always joins me in my workouts. I set up a little play "house" downstairs for her so that she can play while I am on the treadmill. She usually tells me that she needs to do her exercises too and jumps on. It's the best to hear and watch her do her sit ups. She counts out each one and breathes really heavy and tells me how tired she is. - Yes, she is exercising in the ballerina outfit. She has worn that on and off every day since we bought it. She is desperate to be a real dancing ballerina. If music is on she sings with a very serious look on her face and dances around the best she can. This fascination with being a ballerina has come from the Angelina Ballerina books. She loves them. Here she is posing with Angelina Ballerina.- Brie is also a bag lady. She ALWAYS has a purse, bag, bucket, pail, or diaper bag to carry all of her things around. She collects a lot of things that are important to her and carries them with her in her bags. She always has a nightgown, her "special, pink, princess hand sanitizer", a baby, a few washclothes (baby blankets) and anything else that has caught her eye. Lately she has been very attached to "her little book" that is the pamphlet that came with my birth control.

My problem with all the baggage is that it MUST come with her wherever we go. So every time we head out to the car to go anywhere Brie brings a whole arm full of stuff with her. Our mini van is overflowing. Agggghhhh!
- Brie loves being in the kitchen and "helping" with whatever I am doing. She insists on always wearing an apron (even though she's never seen me where one, especially not how she does) and standing up on the stool to see everything.- Brie is often times (I'm not even going to say usually) a very nice big sister to Ava. She is thrilled that Ava can play with her now (which means run around the house screaming with her). She pretends that Ava is her "little lamb" and she is Mary. Yesterday she called Ava "Little Bo Peep" all day. One day Ava was her dog named "Rusty". I heard her yell, "Sit Rusty! Sit!" at least 100 times. Ava was clueless. This morning Brie called me the "Mommy Elephant". Nice.

(Here are Brie and Ava waiting at the door for daddy to come home.)
- We are trying to learn about being modest. Usually when Brielle appears with a new outfit put together (you should see her right now), she asks me, "Does I look beautiful?" or "Am I gorgeous?".Yesterday she walked around with her nightgown down to show her shoulders. I told her that wasn't modest and we want to be modest. She got very upset and said, "But, Mom, I REALLY don't want to be modest!". Yikes. It begins.