Mama hold hand

Bella is really into holding hands lately. Mostly MY hand, which is totally fine. The sweetest is when we are eating and she’ll reach out towards me and say “Mama hold hand” and hold my hand while she eats. This past weekend we were attached at the hip – literally. Mama had to do everything and carry her everywhere. We were running errands yesterday and I was getting tired so I asked JT to buckle her in the car at one point and she freaked out because only Mama could do it. And she’ll only brush her teeth for me now. Brushing teeth used to be her and JT’s thing. I didn’t even have to be in the room. But now I have to be there and be the one who brushes. Again, it’s fine, but I kind of miss the little breaks I would get when JT would take over and do something. I’m sure it’s a phase and it’ll pass….and once it does I’ll miss it.

On that note, when we were eating dinner yesterday we were talking about her birthday (again) and what she was going to do at her party. She said the normal stuff about having cake and playing with toys…then she said “and get bigger, and bigger, and bigger!” as in SHE will keep getting bigger. Well that was it. I lost it. I don’t want her to get bigger!! I don’t want her to go off to college! What are we going to do when she leaves the house forever?? I had a minor panic attack that I party blame the pregnancy hormones for. But hearing her say how big she’ll get was just too much. I’m over it now (kind of) and am looking forward to everything that comes with having a kid grow up, but she needs to stop talking about getting bigger and pretend like she’ll stay 2 forever.

Playtime

On Thursday nights I’ve been taking Bella to Family Playtime though the Anoka Hennepin ECFE. It’s $2 per night and no formal registration required. The flexibility is nice for nights we can’t make it. However, I try to go as much as possible because Bella really enjoys it. She calls it going to “play with new friends”…even though we’ve been going for a year now. When she was really young I took her Monday nights to baby playtime (birth-2 years), but ended up enjoying the family playtime better (birth-6 yrs). Here’s the schedule for the night

6:30 – sign in, get name tags, wash hands, pay, say hello to the teachers Ann and Nancy
6:30-7:00 – playtime in the general playroom. The playroom includes some standards – a kitchen with play food, little people with houses and cars, random toys, a playbox that has something different in it each week to scoop/play with (sand, water, rice, chick peas, etc), art tables (painting, playdough, stamps, coloring, crafts, etc) and an easel for painting.
7:00 – move to the gym for parachute time. Bella’s favorite! She talks about this parachute all week. She loves to “pop” animals in the parachute and sit in the middle while the adults spin them around
7:05-7:30 – we usually stay in the gym to play for a bit. They have balls, riding toys, a slide, a tower to climb, swing, etc.
7:30-7:50 – back into the playroom for more general playing
7:50 – circle time to sing songs. Bella loves this part too, although she’ll often just sit and listen and not sign along/do the hand movements. For 1-2 songs she’ll participate, otherwise she is content with observing.
8:00- time to go home!

The amount of kids can really vary. In the winter there could be 10-15 kids (plus 1-2 parents for each) so it’d be really busy. But last night there were 4 kids total! So once the weather gets nicer I think it’s a smaller group. That’s fine with me as it gets me some one-on-one time with the teachers. Last night I was able to have a good conversation about how to handle Bella’s tantrums (thankfully they support my approach of ignoring her until she calms down and that time outs aren’t effective when they are this young. Also gave me some good tips to handle fussiness at meal times when she doesn’t want to eat what we’re eating).

It’s also nice to connect with some of the other moms, but it can be touch and go. There are a few that are friendly and a few that seem to have no interest in talking to anyone outside of the few people they already know. They usually have the most annoying kids too because mom isn’t watching them and they’ll do things like hit Bella and I’m the one that has to say something. Poor Bella doesn’t have any concept of hitting or pushing people around so she just gets confused when this particular bully of a girl is around …but I guess it’s a way to learn the realities of life!

A couple of the other moms are pregnant with #2 as well or have 2 young kids already, so it’s really nice to talk to them about that. My biggest concern right now is getting Bella used to the idea that she’ll have to share everything once baby comes, but I know that’ll be an adjustment no matter what we do to prepare her!

April Update

I’m so hot and cold with this blog! I tried using a different site (Shutterfly or maybe it was Snapfish?) because I could upload my photos to print right on the blog, but our internet is so slow at home that it takes me all day (literally 8 hours) to upload 100 photos. So I’ve given up on that for now. So here I am back to blogger because I really want to keep documenting the goings on of Bella Boo!

Before I begin, I’ll note that she still refers to herself as “You”. She doesn’t refer to anyone else as “you”. So anywhere in the below you see a Bella quote that contains “you” it really means her…

Tantrums
I’ve said before her terrible twos have begun but now they are in full swing. Last night’s drive home consisted of Bella freaking out/having a tantrum the entire way because I wouldn’t let her drive. I don’t know where this came from, but for the first time ever she didn’t want to get in her own seat. In her own words “No Bella’s seat. Mama’s Seat. You drive!!” when I tell her no, that only Mama gets to drive her car she freaks out “yeah, yeah! Bella driiiiiiive!!!”. Reasoning doesn’t even work with a 2 year old. She doesn’t care that she couldn’t reach the pedals.

These freak outs now turn into all night events. She’ll calm down and be fine then the littlest thing will set her off. Once we got home she was perfectly happy because I let her watch The Wiggles while I made dinner. Then JT got home and we got ready for dinner…god forbid JT push her chair the table so she can reach her food “No, too close!! Sit back!!”. Another tantrum because she wanted to be 2 feet away from the table. Finally we got her situated, had dinner and went upstairs to play more. Earlier in the night she found some short sleeved PJs with shorts. So I let her wear them while she watched TV and ate dinner (to avoid a freak out…I choose my battles) but told her she had to wear pants and socks to bed. Well the pants were fine but the socks were just too much for her and freak out #3 of the night occurred. Then she wanted to take her socks off but put her shoes on. What goes on in those little heads? So JT made a good parenting call and decided it was bed time.

The good news is that she always admits when she’s tired and will often tell us when it’s time to “Go sleep. ZZZZZZZ” (she makes the snoring noise with it). So once she calmed down enough to talk she agreed she was tired and we put her to bed. But I just can’t help but wonder what we are going to have to deal with down the line with this drama queen!

“Go Gramma’s House!”
While it doesn’t usually end up in a full out tantrum, at least 3 times a day I hear this “Go Gramma’s house! Yeah, yeah, OK…Gramma’s house”. As if HER saying “yes” and “OK” seals the deal. But seriously, this girl needs to go to Gramma’s house everyday! And this is my mom and dad’s house only. Not that she doesn’t like JT’s parents/Nana and Papa’s but she goes there 4 days a week for her ‘daycare’ so I think my parent’s house is more of a treat. Sometimes it’s the first thing she says when I wake her up in the morning “Ready to go to Gramma’s house!” but mostly it’s when I pick her up from Auntie MoMo’s (Jt’s sister, Mara) “No go home. Go Gramma’s house!!”. If she keeps this up or keeps increasing how often she says this I’ll be ready for her to move in w/ Gramma and Grandpa soon.

B-E-L-another L-A!
She can spell her name! She never ceases to amaze me and this is the latest “trick” she’ll do for me : ).

No more paci
She’s given up her pacifier at home! She is still using it for naps and Auntie Momo’s and my parent’s house, but she no longer uses it to go to bed or take naps at our house. We started one day when we were in her room getting ready to go to bed and I told her “uh oh Bella, we don’t have a paci. Can you go to bed without one?” She did and from there we just told her that she didn’t need one at night anymore. Initially she told us to “buy more pacis at Cub!” thinking we ran out, but eventually she gave up on that too. Just within the past couple of weeks I stopped giving one to her at nap time and she’s been fine. Every once and a while when she’s getting tired she’ll ask for one if we are in the car or out and about, but a reminder that big girls don’t use pacifiers usually takes care of it.

Like I said, she is still using them for naps during the week/when she’s not home I’ll probably ask family to stop that w/ her 2nd birthday coming up.

Outside play
It’s so nice that the weather warmed up early this year. Bella loves to go outside and play in her car in the driveway, blow bubbles, draw with sidewalk chalk and water our plants. She LOVES watering the plants! I know she’ll be a big help in Papa’s garden this year!

Potty Training – not yet!
We have the ‘big girl’ potty out in our bathroom but it’s been used as a stool for the past 2 months rather than a potty. Every once and a while she’ll ask to use it (her: "You go potty!" me: "what? no, I don't have to go" her "no, YOU GO POTTY" me: "oooh yeah, you is you"), but never really needs to go. While I’m sure if we tried right now we could get her trained, but we are holding off for a few months until she seems really ready. She’s not quite dry all night yet anyway. Also, I’m not sure if I’M quite ready for that yet. I actually don’t mind diapers. Everything is contained and there is more control over when you make a stop to change her. I’m not really looking forward to running to the bathroom at Target to try to make it in time or cleaning up pee off my bathroom floor!

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.

We Caved

And by ‘we’ I mean I caved. I gave the go ahead to Aunt Mara and my mom to let Bella watch a little TV during the day. So now she watches 30 min of Sesame Street with Mara and 30 min of Mickey Mouse Club (Hot dog!) with my mom...and football with Daddy on the weekends :)

I’ll admit that part of the reason I gave the OK was because it’s entertaining for me to talk to her about what she saw that day. It’s cute to ask what Elmo did today and have her dance around or see her imitate Cookie Monster shoving cookies in her mouth (which no, we still don’t let her have those!!). She knows Mickey and Minnie and loves Donald “Duh!”. It’s amazing how fast they catch on to these characters. I predict a lot of Disney/Sesame Street licensed products coming into our house for Christmas...

Also, I know it’s nice to have a little break during the day and as long as she isn’t totally addicted to the tube, I know it'll be fine.

Stats from 18 m check up

• 24 lbs 14 oz -- 50th percentile
• 32 inches long - 75th percentile (only grew like 1/2 inch in 3 months!)
• really big head (can't remember the number) - 90th percentile. This is why it took me almost 3 hours to push her out. :)

She got her flu shot and her H1N1 shot. Otherwise pretty standard/uneventful. Dr. Amy did say she was impressed with her 'advanced vocabulary' but I know that really means she is the smartest baby she’s EVER met. Right? ;)

Where did Oct go?

For real. Time is flying. And Bella is growing way too fast. Every day she amazes us with something new.

She's picking up on words really well. Not stringing any together, but is able to communicate with us just fine. I love having a 'conversation' with her each night. Although every night she tells me pretty much the same thing (her and Papa drew blue snakes, she ate 'fish' for a snack, and sang songs about the sun)...but she does remember things. For example, JT's mom told me that they sang Wheels on the Bus a lot one day and when I asked her later that night "what song did you and Nana sing?" she did the 'wheel' motion.

Simple things like this make you realize that she is a little person with a mind of her own. Which is also clear as she starts to get more independent. For example, she no longer wants to sit in her high chair - it's her booster or nothing at home. She fought a bib for a while but we are over that, thank god. But the trick is to let her choose things now. Let her choose from 3 bibs, let her decide what she is eating for breakfast (Rice Krispies, toast or oatmeal is usually her request), let her pick out her shoes, etc.

While TV is pretty much still off limits, we’ve caved and started letting her watch YouTube videos of songs. It’s so cute to watch her dance along and point out her favorites. I don’t mean to be one of those strict moms, but I just don’t want to get her in the bad habit of being addicted to TV….but I’m thinking for Christmas she can get an Elmo dance DVD. Just no movies or cartoon shows yet. We’ve got plenty of time for those!

On that same topic, we get a little bit of a hard time for not letting Bella eat candy or fried food…but I think it’s been good. So yes she went trick or treating, but no she didn’t get any of the candy. It goes back to getting addicted to things early- the last thing we need is for her to stop eating fruits/veggies because all she wants are fries and cookies!! So still no candy, no fries, desserts are a special treat on someone’s’ birthday, etc. I know it won’t last forever, but her liking apples and broccoli over anything else won’t last forever either – so we are taking advantage of it while we can!

There’s the monthly update. For pictures go to facebook or flickr.