Catching Up w/ Random Thoughts

It's been a long time since I sat down to write about what Bella is up to. I've been meaning to catch up. Especially after this blog was so helpful when catching up w/ Bella’s baby book. I did a good job documenting her first year and want to try to get as much of her second year down as I can. So below are random thoughts from the past few months. Things that I think I’ll want to remember in a somewhat stream of consciousness style..

Bella is talking away. Every day she seems to get more and more articulate. Up until Christmas it was sporadic words. Right around Christmas time is when it really picked up. She spoke her first ‘sentence’ on Jan 25 – “Dada read book” and since then she’s been stringing words together frequently. Recently she’s gotten a hang of ‘and’… What’d she have for dinner? “noodles AND applesauce” (not just “noodles. Applesauce”. She’s also starting to combine two concepts - what should we do? “get dressed and go to Mara’s house”. Sounds so simple, but they make her sound so grown up!

That’s also when she really started getting a hang of her ABCs. She quickly learned all the letters and the ABC song is now one of her favorites to sing while walking around or in the back of the car. For about a month now, she’s been able to tell you what letters stand for – thanks to all our awesome ABC books and Sesame Street. ‘M’ is for Mama, ‘C’ is for Cat, ‘I’ is for Ice Cream.
One super cute thing is that her answer to us being out of anything is to “go to Cub and buy more!”. She knows Cub is where to go get more food, so if we run out of string cheese “go to Cub and buy more cheese!”. The other day we went to Rainbow instead of Cub and she refused to acknowledge it and called it “Green Cub” instead (since the Rainbow sign is green and Cub’s is red).

She’s known all her colors for a long time, which was actually kind of a bummer come Christmas because so many of the ‘age appropriate’ toys seemed not appropriate for her. We worked on shapes and numbers and she also picked up on those quickly. By 21 months I’d say she was proficient in letters, numbers, colors and shapes.

She’s still a great eater – loves loves loves fruit. She’ll eat an apple or pear over anything else. She also loves ham, peas, carrots, goldfish, bread & jam, Krispies, macaroni and cheese, just cheese, (making) pizza and so much more!

The terrible twos have kicked in…or at least I hope this is it and it doesn’t get worse! We try to let her choose and make decisions whenever possible, which we can sometimes use to get her to do what we want (“do you want to go to Grandmas house or stay home? If you want to go to Grandma’s, we have to get dressed!”) but it can also backfire when she thinks she gets to decide if she gets to brush her teeth or not or if we clip her fingernails. The other day she threw a tantrum because I wanted to put her hair in ponytails. God forbid!

Today we went to the Auto Show and Bella had a blast looking at cars. She loved sitting in the front seat and pushing buttons and being free of a carseat. We let her run around and she was a very good listener when I would tell her to “stop!” or “go the other way”. I don’t know how thrilled everyone else was to have a toddler running in between the cars, but she was having a blast and actually was able to stay out of people’s way. She didn’t like it when we had to get out of a car to “share” with other people (“no share! No share!”) but got over it quickly when she saw the next shiny new car.

Bedtime routine is this – get jammies on (favorites are pink and white striped Minnie Mouse, pink Santa and Snowmen or blue monkeys) and play for a little bit longer. Then we get a pacifier and sit in her room to read 4 books. She gets to pick a blanket (her current favorite is Nana blanket which JT’s mom made for her) and 1-2 friends to sleep with. She doesn’t always sleep with the same stuffed animal or toy. Last night it was Ike, the monkey. Tonight it’s a snowman and an Elephant. Her baby, Barbra is common but so is Pikachu or a stuffed puppy that used to be bigger than her.

She gives lots of hugs and kisses and is starting to give cuddles away without having to ask for one. I love it when she is in a cuddly mood. Tonight we went to dinner at Space Aliens and were in a booth. Bella was on the side with me and every few minutes she’d reach over to me and say “hug” and give me a big hug around the neck or “kiss!” and “muah!”. I also got lots of butterfly kisses. Daddy was a bit jealous!

Without us provoking she started saying ‘hi’ and ‘byeeee!’ to Scrappy and Lyly. It started one morning when we were getting ready to go somewhere, I wasn’t quite ready yet and it made Bella upset. So she started fussing and YELLING “BYE SCRAPPY DOWNSTAIRS. BYE LYLY” like that would convince me to be ready faster. I got the hint she was ready to go but also couldn’t stop laughing. Especially since we don’t talk about scrappy too much, but now he’ll always get a ‘hiiii!’ in the morning and a nice goodbye.