Braelynn Fiona || 7 1/2 Year Old Update

Every year, for the kid’s “half-birthdays”, I take them out & do some fun (typically “themed”) portraits of them. With Braelynn being born in January & Leander born in December, I knew that we would never be able to do “fun”, warm & glowy, outdoor “birthday” portraits – so I have simply compromised with “half-birthday” portraits every year. And it’s so much fun!

On Tuesday, I posted Leander’s half-birthday portraits, along with a little update on our little man. Today: it’s all about our sweet girl!

Here is a little “half-birthday” update on our sweet Braelynn Fiona:

• I feel like Braelynn has grown up in so many ways in the last year. She thinks and processes things differently now. Her wheels are constantly turning. She seems to always be dreaming, planning, or figuring out what will happen “next”.
• Braelynn’s passions continue to remain steady: art and stuffed animals. Like Jo from Little Women who’s fingers were constantly stained from her writing, Braelynn’s fingers are always stained by markers. She literally leaves a trail of drawings wherever she goes. In fact, I found her these mini spiral-bound sketch books (they’re about 3″x5″) that she can bring with us into amusement parks! So she now sketches the signage, rides, and everything she sees to her heart’s content while we wait in lines or she waits while Derrick and I are shooting content. Our walls, refrigerator, and dining room table are plastered with fresh Braelynn-art. She’s even started hanging her favorite drawings up in her bedroom. Braelynn lives to draw and create. I buy her the giant 500-page packs of copy paper and one of those lasts her about 6 months (she’s started cutting the pages in half so she has more paper). I bought her a really nice, bound sketchbook when we went to Florida in the spring and we came home with every page full. With all of this in mind, I bought an art-history book for us to use in school this year – it’s really cool! We study an artist – the time period when they lived, what their life was like – and then try to replicate their art-method. This, as you can imagine, has been a huge hit and we’ve had a lot of fun so far with it!
• Yes, we started school a few weeks ago. Braelynn is now in 2nd grade (how is that possible?) It’s incredible the difference I can see in her just from the start of school last year to this year. Her attention span is longer, she has more stamina, and she pays attention better. She still isn’t 100% on board with the idea that it’s time to go back to school, but the art-history book we’re doing, plus us simply easing back into things has helped. She isn’t a super strong reader, but she’s gaining confidence every day. She can sit and read easy-readers and particularly loves reading Dr. Seuss books (all the rhyming helps). I tried to nurture a love of reading this summer – I challenged her to read 5 books in return for a prize. Little did I realize how motivating that would be, when she went to bed having read 4 books in one day (and upset that she didn’t have time to read the 5th). We did several rounds of the “5 books to a prize” and that really helped with her confidence! We’ll continue learning about phonics and letter combinations in school this year, and I have the feeling that by this time next year, I am going to be writing a completely different blurb about how awesome Braelynn is at reading!
• Stuffed animals! The obsession continues STRONG. I’ve lost count of how many stuffed animals (affectionately called “stuffies”) that Braelynn has. She sets them all up for parties, sleeps with them, carries them around everywhere. They are her “security blanket”.
• Braelynn is now just a little over 50″ tall (meaning, she’s grown about 2″ in the last year!) and that means she can ride so many new roller coasters! Her tastes have changed a bit – she used to love “airtime” and “going upside down”, but after experiencing a few intense rides, she now prefers “smaller” and “less crazy” rides. She has ridden more roller coasters at 7 years old than most adults. She was even brave enough to take on Space Mountain at Disney and worked up the courage to ride Exterminator at Kennywood and Verboltn at Busch Gardens Williamsburg! (Indoor, in-the-dark roller coasters have always been a hard-stop for Braelynn.)
• She is still a talker – she will literally talk your ear right off. And that’s not a joke. Words are constantly pouring from her – questions, thoughts, ideas, plans (she’s a BIG planner). If there is silence in the car for more than 2 minutes, that usually means she has fallen asleep.
• Through all of our travels this year, Braelynn has fallen in love with swimming – and she’s getting better and better at it! We obviously don’t have a pool, but whenever we go somewhere that does – she throws off her floatie and wants to practice swimming. She’s becoming more and more proficient and I love seeing how excited she is to learn something new!

Like with Leander, I really struggled to come up with a “theme” for Braelynn’s photos this year. I feel like I peaked last year when I dressed her in white, put her hair up into a bun, and let her go to town with paints on a canvas. So ultimately, I just decided to keep it simple this year: she brought out all of her favorite stuffed animals and we went with that.
Braelynn is a bit more accommodating toward me in taking her pictures than her brother, but she still has other things she’d rather be doing. So keeping things simple seemed to be the best way to go.

If you’d like to compare & contrast this summer’s photos with the summers in the past, you can go back & check out her 18-Month Update, 2 1/2 Year Old Update, 3 1/2 Year Old Update, 4 1/2 Year Old Update, 5 1/2 Year Old Update & 6 1/2 Year Old Update (you just might want to brace yourself, she’s grown up so much)!