Braelynn Fiona | 8 1/2 Year Old Update

Half Birthday Backyard Fun Summer Portraits in Irwin PA

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 and Leander born in December, I knew that we would never be able to do “fun”, warm and 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” (or summer) update on our sweet Braelynn Fiona:

I feel like Braelynn has grown up so much this summer (cue all the emotions). She’s clearly gotten taller, more beautiful, and suddenly has a “fashion sense”. Her mind is growing as she processes and thinks of things differently this summer than she did last. She’s mastered new skills this summer (more on that in a minute). She’s growing up and I can hardly handle it.
Braelynn has become obsessed with telling jokes. She has a whole slew of jokes she can tell on-demand, and she loves to learn more! (Plus, she’s gotten the hang of jokes and can sometimes figure out the punch-line before you tell it – it’s hilarious!)
Braelynn learned how to ride a two-wheeler bike this summer! And she did it almost entirely on her own! Derrick and I gave her some pointers, but then she did it. It took her about 2 days of practicing before she finally got it on the 3rd day, but wow was she dedicated! She would go out onto our sidewalk for hours and practice balancing and moving, trying to get her feet up on the peddles – she was completely determined to do it – and she did! She’s now a biking PRO and loves to take her bike out! She bikes around our block almost daily, she loves going to the park and visiting my Grandma’s apartment where she can ride, and we ride together almost every day when we are down at the Lake! I’m so proud of her and her hard work and determination. Seeing her so fiercely determined to learn how to ride her bike has made me curious what else she can learn to do if she sets her mind to it!
She also learned to swim this summer! We spent a lot of time at the beginning of the summer traveling and swimming in hotel pools – and Derrick worked with her a lot to learn how to float, tread water, and swim. If we had a pool, I feel like the swimming would go the line of her bike riding and she’d work on it until she got it – but we don’t have a pool, so she’s limited in her practicing times. It’s impressive what she learned over a short time though!
When Braelynn hugs me, her head now sits right under my chin – how did she get so tall?!
Braelynn is going into 3rd grade (that seems so old!) She’s not super in love with the idea of going back to school, but once we get back into the swing of things, it’ll be fine!
Braelynn remains very social and makes friends everywhere she goes. She has become best friends with our neighbors (and older couple) – she chats with them over the fence (let’s be honest, she attempts to talk their ears off sometimes). She has a bunch of friends at church (including two “best friends”) and she adores her cousins. Cameron (her cousin in New York) remains her BFF though and they talk to each other via Facetime all the time (technology is amazing).
Brealynn’s love of art continues – she draws pictures for everyone and hands them out like candy. She’s recently gotten very creative with creating animals (meaning, she actually cuts out different layers of colored paper and then glues them all together to create different animals – it’s brilliant!) Thankfully, she’s gotten away from coloring everything with markers (we were keeping Crayola in business for a while with all the markers she was going through) and she’s become more obsessed with colored pencils. She’s always creating something.
And yes – she’s still very much obsessed with stuffed animals. However, over the last year though, a very clear “front-runner” has emerged. For her entire life, she never really had a favorite FAVORITE stuffie – she would carry around and love a different stuffed animal daily. But over the last year, that has slowly changed. “Fluff” has taken the permanent “first place” spot in her heart (and he’s starting to show the wear from all her love!) She still definitely loves (and plays with) her other stuffies, but Fluff is clearly her favorite. She sleeps with him every night and he goes with us on our adventures. (He even got a few special photos during our photoshoot!)
I know over in Leander’s update, I talked about how much he adores his sister. Well, the feeling is pretty mutual. Sure, there are moments when Braelynn gets a thought in her head and she just really wants to draw or create something by herself, but for the most part, she loves her little brother to pieces. She is constantly dreaming up new games for them to play and she (secretly) loves having someone follow her around to play with.
Braelynn his 52″ this summer, which opened up a whole new “level” of roller coasters for her to ride! She’s mostly fearless, but this summer she got a bit nervous at the idea of going upside down (something she did without thinking last summer). Like Leander, we’ve never wanted to force her to ride things she doesn’t want to ride – so we leave the decision on whether she wants to ride or not up to her. When she does want to ride though – it makes Derrick and I’s experience so much more fun, because that means we don’t have to ride alone! Her favorite coasters remain Phantom’s Revenge at Kennywood and Millennium Force Force at Cedar Point. (She rode Guardians of the Galaxy at Epcot earlier this summer and she hated it – she’s never seen those movies, so she didn’t connect to the characters, she saw the “monster” as being scary, and since the whole thing is in the dark, it freaked her out – oops!) There’s just one more “height marker” to hit – 54″ – and then she can ride everything. At the rate she’s growing, she’ll probably be there next summer!
Braelynn’s fashion sense has begun maturing and suddenly she’s become a bit more picky about what she wants to wear. And recently, it dawned on her that some shorts, skirts, and dresses have pockets. So, now she’s OBSESSED with all-the-pockets and I’ve been informed that I’m not allowed to buy her any new clothes that don’t have pockets in them.
She remains my early-riser (she rarely sleeps past 6:30am), she’ll eat just about anything (although her favorite foods are steak, pancakes, mashed potatoes, tacos, and white pizza), and she will literally talk your ear off if you let her.