Day: August 13, 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 🙂