Month: August 2011

Weeks are just flying by, I can’t believe I am almost half way through this pregnancy, time just needs to slow down 🙂  Our first appointment went great, Dr’s exact words:  “It’s a big healthy baby”  We are very excited to find out the gender and are counting down the weeks 😉  It seems like only yesterday I was filling out paperwork for hospital admission for Bella and here I am doing the same thing for our new baby- wow!  The closer the time gets, the more excited we get.  I think Bella will be a great big sister 🙂  On August 2, Barry felt the baby for the first time, it was very exciting.  The little person was boxing away 🙂  Below is the first picture of our second bundle of joy 🙂

There is not a day that goes by without Bella surprising us with something new.  Many times Barry and I look at each other in disbelief asking: “Did she really say that?”  I beat myself up for not finding the time to write her progress down, so here is the list mostly for us to remember 🙂 and for all that are reading this and simply want to share our joy.
Bella, at the age of 18 months:
–  Counts to 15 out loud, starting with 1 and so on without stopping.
–  Sings the whole “Twinkle, twinkle little star” song, keeping the tune that it should be sang with (I love hearing her sing it 🙂
–  She also sings the “A,B,C Song” and the “Itsy bitsy Spider” with tiny hick-ups, so I am thinking in about a week she will master those 🙂
–  Says the alphabet from A-K, skips L, M, N, and goes straight from O- Z
–  Puts on “Tea Parties” every night for Barry and I (it is so darling, I never want her to stop)
–  Enjoys “Peekaboo” books, she has four and pretty much has them all memorized.
–  Knows and calls out the following shapes:  circle, square, triangle, diamond, rectangle, oval, star and heart.
–  Recognizes the following colors:  red, yellow, blue and orange.
–  Loves to watch Veggitales, her favorite character is Bob the tomato 🙂  she memorized lines from the stories and sings “Oh little Joe”  (extremely cute)
–  Can pick out the following letters from her “alphabet letters collection” M, P, N, O, G and A.  Calls them out and tells us what starts with those letters 🙂
–  Loves Elmo “Look & Find” books, she is very observant and loves to find missing pieces.
–  Mastered the shape cube and puts all of the shapes in the right cut-outs.
–  Loves building towers from whatever she can get her hands on.
–  Talks in phrases, some of the examples:  “Open the door”, “I love …. (whoever she thinks of)”, “snacky time”, “Buddy is barking”, “Dinner time”, “Go to Nana’s/Papa’s”,
“Bella time out”, “Sleepy time”, “What are you doing”, “What is that”, “Help Bella”, “Mama helps”, “Park time”, “Go get mail”, “Mama is cooking” and many more.
–  She can say pretty much every word she hears, at least she always tries and her pronunciation is amazing, one of the big words she said recently was, certainly.  I just
looked at her and smiled, explained what it meant.
–  If she hears a line out of a book or one of the videos she has, she will tell you the name of the book or the movie, it’s pretty incredible how much information her little
brain holds.
–  Names all of her close relatives by name, she has now mastered adding uncle or auntie and then the name 🙂
–  Absolutely loves to draw, she draws at least 3-5 times a day.  She is familiar with crayons, markers, chalk, and a little bit with water colors.  Whenever she feels sad, she
wants to draw, which reminds me of one individual (myself)  She loves to use the isle, which we bought her a while back.
–  She calls crayons “crannons”  and we both love hearing her say it 🙂
–  Eats with a spoon all on her own, I didn’t even know until I walked away for a minute and she was going after her Chinese fried rice all by herself and ate two bowls without
making any mess.  I was so impressed, just stood and watched her in disbelief, thinking (when did she master this?)
–  She still continues to clean up messes as she makes them.  If she sees something sitting not straight, she will definitely try to straighten it out, we just shake our heads 🙂

There is so much to write, it can go on forever, but I am glad I am able to record it here, since there is only so much you can fit into “The First Year” book.
Below are a few recent pictures of our little busy bee 🙂

Yes, our family went tent camping!  Can I say that probably out of all of us, this seemed to be the biggest ordeal to me and I stressed about it for months in advance.  Camping lovers would call me crazy as it was only for 2 nights and 1.5 days, but I call it survival.  I have come to one conclusion, you either love it or you hate it and I just happen to be on the dislike it side 😉  We had a great time as far as camping goes, if you do not count night time.  I told Barry, if we cross out night time and move it indoors, I just might like camping a whole lot better.  The nice thing about this trip was that Barry’s and my family were all there, with exception of Lily, TJ and Ava.  It was nice to reunite and just enjoy the outdoors.  We went to the Pinecrest lake in Sonora county.  The drive was a bit challenging as it goes in stages of highway speed to city therefore we had many stops on the way of just waiting at the traffic light.  Bella was not in the best of moods when we left our house, so it was definitely an interesting drive 😉  Our daughter absolutely loved camping and I believe she would like to go again sometime soon, although her mommy said it’s not looking positive for at least 5 more years.  She enjoyed throwing dirt around and playing with her bucket and shovel, she loved the tent!  We have had this tent since we got married  and I never saw it opened until just now- it’s definitely a nice tent, fits 8 and 4-6 very comfortably.  Some of the things we did while we were there:  men went fishing, ladies took many walks, cooked a few meals, played with kiddos and enjoyed the fire.  Fire was my best friend as it got cold very early in the day, and just the beauty of it is quite breath taking.  All in all, great time and I am glad we went, but once I got home and took my first shower in 3 days, I realized that I do not appreciate showers as much as I should.  The feeling of being clean is absolutely indescribable.  Bella’s whining attitude has stopped and now we get only a few tantrums here and there, but that’s nothing compared to the nonstop whining.  We believe camping experience has put a positive spin on her little world 🙂  It’s great to have our daughter back 🙂