The Zoo!

Last Night

I feel compelled to blog again. Go me!

First, I got called out already for my last post when I said this year was my first Mothers Day. It wasn’t. We brought Isabella home from the hospital the day before Mother’s Day last year. So that was my first. I guess this year maybe felt like my first since last year I was in a daze and not sure what the hell I was doing?

Last night was a good night. Even though I got home late and JT was at a work ‘thing’, Bella and I were able to have dinner together. Then JT came home and took her outside to play while I got some stuff done in the house. I love, love, love looking out my window and seeing Daddy and Bella having fun together. It is such the stereotypical suburban family scene and I wouldn’t have it any other way!
Another thing I love is that Bella now has a ‘lovely’ with her at almost all times. Her top three are Ike the monkey, Dublin the frog, or Finely the pig. I should get pictures of her with each of them at some point. But the cutest is when she goes to bed and snuggles with one….then when we go to wake her up she is still clinging to it. It is such a common thing for a kid to do, but for whatever reason when it is YOUR kid it is just the cutest thing ever! I think it is because we’ve watched her develop from not really knowing what the heck these stuff animals were, to starting to recognize them, to picking out her favorites and then using them as comfort items.

That’s it from last night. No, I won’t be blogging daily…just when the mood hits!

May 2009

I’m horrible at this blogging thing apparently. So what has been going on in May 2009?

Bella turned 1, of course (on May 7). So I now have a one year old kid. No longer a baby… so sad yet so exciting. The year mark has brought many exciting things including



Not just walking but RUNNING away from us…which has also included trips and falls and bumps and bruises

• Climbing up and down stairs





• More words…kind of. She’ll look at us and talk like she really thinks she’s saying something. I swear I heard her say ‘ball’ the other day and think ‘no’ isn’t far away.


• Happy screaming. :D The best.

• Not-happy screaming/whining…not so great. I’ll just say she is getting quite the personality…



• Outside toys!! Grandma and Grandpa Hajder got her a slide and car that she (and mom and dad) has had a lot of fun with (water table fun to come in warmer weather).





• Food – she can now eat just about anything we do (exceptions are peanut butter and shell fish). It’s fun to be able to share our food with her. She is learning to take ‘bites’, too, which means I can break off a chunk of banana or slice of tomato and she’ll be fine with it.





• Milk – no more formula for her! We’ve also gone about a full week without any bottles. Using milk instead of formula is so nice/much easier….but I do miss “baba bedtime” L It was a nice snuggle time with her. However, we have seemed to replace it with a good 10-15 minutes of snuggle time when we get home from work.

• No more baby carseat...we upgraded to the next level and turned it front facing. I guess recently the recommendation is to leave it rear facing but it just doesn't work in my two door car. I figured if it was OK a month ago to have her forward facing then it’d be OK now.
  
  
  
  

At her 1 year appt she was 75th percentile for both height and weight and 90th for head.

My first mother’s day was great. Bella planted me an herb garden and got me a nice lawn chair for relaxing in the sun (let’s hope I can actually use it).

We baby-sat Jonah (8 months) and I saw first hand the difference between a ‘daycare kid’ (Jonah) and my non-daycare kid. She was not too happy about having someone else play with her toys. At one point, when Jonah was paying attention to JT, Bella got up and literally ran to her room. What a brat :)

She loves to feed Scrappy and does it once a day.

For Memorial Day, we went to the Como Zoo for the first time (pictures to come) and had a bunch of people over on Sun and Mon for brunch. No pictures of that though… hmmm…I’m slacking.

Sorry if this format is all wonky...but I did what I could :)

In one week...

...my baby will be a year old. I always think it is funny that we know things are coming yet they never cease to amaze us. Every milestone is as amazing as if we didn't know they were coming. I knew Bella would start eating food by herself, yet I'm still amazed to see those little fingers pick up a cheerio and make it into her mouth. I knew she'd start to recognize people and animals, yet I'm convinced that she is a genius when she can point at a picture of a chinchilla after I ask which one is Scrappy....or when she says 'meow!' after seeing a kitty (ok, more like "eeee-oow!"). I knew Bella would start walking, but I also feel as though she is the only child in the world to figure out how to stand on her two legs.
In other words, she just flat out amazes me everyday and I couldn't be more proud of her. I look forward to a lifetime of this!

Not only is she walking...

...but she taught herself to climb up the stairs. Geezus, when will she slow down?!

Updates (orginal title, I know)

I really shouldn’t be blogging. I have so much work to do ….but I have so much work to do that I’m overwhelmed and ignoring it all to blog instead. Go me.

I just realized how long it has been since I’ve given a true Bella update. So here we go

• Per the last post, she is walking short distances. She’ll walk between people and
  furniture pretty well. Around 7 or 8 steps is the most I’ve seen her do without
  losing her balance, but I think she probably walks more at my in-law’s during
  the day.




• Her vocabulary is still the standard Mama, Dada, Baba and Kitty
  (kinda…more like “ki-KI!” and every animal is a kitty now…) but she recently has
  seemed more focused/determined with her babble. I feel like she is really trying
  to tell me something and/or she really thinks she is speaking.




• She still loves books. My god, how this child loves books. Her favorites include Ten Little Fish, Say Ahh! Finley Pig, Mr Brown Can Moo!, Time for School, Mouse! , Princess Baby Night Night, My Big Animal Book and Baby Einstein Mirror Me ....just to name a few. She has dozens more at home but those are the ones she tends to pick out most often.




• She gives kisses and only on the lips. Kind of odd; not sure where she learned this. But I've tried to get kisses on the cheek and she'll move her head around to try to get to your lips. Sometimes she forgets to close her mouth when she kisses, so those can get slobbery.




• For sign language, she still uses "more" and I made one up for "all done" at meal times. Otherwise nothing else has really caught on/we aren't pushing too hard. I can tell her to drink her water and she will, but she doesn't know how to ask for it. There is just a lot of pointing around until we figure out what she is pointing at.




• She is 11 months old TODAY. Holy crap. 11 months...that means she is almost a year. INSANE. Granted, I knew she would age and I couldn't stop it...but a year means she is almost a toddler...and I've figured out this baby business but a toddler?! What the heck do I do w/ a toddler?!?!




• On that note, we aren't having a big 1st B-day party for her. It'll just be immediate family (grandmas/grandpas, aunts/uncles); we made a list that included all family and friends but once it got to 50 people we put the kibosh on it. That is just too much for a first birthday and we want to enjoy the party, not be stressed about it.




• She loves outside and can't wait for nicer weather!

• Her and Scrappy have become good friends

• She also went to her first birthday parties - one for Eva (3) and Emma (1), friends, and another for Mia (2), her second cousin. I am looking forward to getting to go to many more children b-day parties in the future...but I didn't take any pictures at these ones. What the heck?! They were fun, though!


• We took pictures at JC Penny again and weren't impressed. They mistook 'Spring' pictures for Easter pictures so most of them were of her in bunny ears or w/ an Easter basket. I didn't realize that they weren't going to take more non-Easter pictures and then all the sudden our session ended. Oh well...the sitting is free and we get a free 8x10 so it's not like we are spending a ton of money there. I'm looking forward to having JT's cousin take her 1 year pictures in about a month!

Holy shit she's walking!

enough said.