21 Months!

I'm a little slow on posting this month, which I'll blame on the wonderful weather we have had! We have spent lots of time outside, and I just haven't gotten around to writing a post. Here is what's new in Bella's life-

-Favorite games: Bella LOVES to play little games with us. Some are common children games, like ring around the rosy and singing and walking to the Ants Go Marching, but some we have made up. We play Ghost, which is when Bella goes in her room and one of us hides in another room, and then we jump out to scare her. We also play wolf like in the 3 Little Pigs.

-We started saying nursery rhymes to Bella, and she loves them! They are now part of our bedtime routine with books and singing. Humpty Dumpty, Hey Diddle Diddle, and Hickory Dickory Dock are her favorites. She also likes doing The Little Mice are Playing rhyme.

-Becoming Miss Independent. "Bella do" is a commonly heard phrase in our house. She wants to eat by herself, get dressed by herself, so on and so forth. Definitely exerting that 2 year old independence!

-Learning: Bella has started to learn some letters and pretty much consistently knows B, M, and D (for Bella, Mommy and Daddy of course. :)) She also knows the colors pink, blue, green, and brown typically. The craziest learning development has been that she can count to 10! All of a sudden one day, she just kept counting rather than stopping at 2. So all this time she has been listening to us; she just refused to say it.

Miss Bella's hair is continuing to grow, albeit ever so slowly. She definitely inherited some of Mommy's natural curls- she gets some cute little flips going on in the back and sides!
Our transition to toddler bed has gone very well. Bella was waking up earlier and sleeping less for naps than she used to in her crib, but that has gradually gotten better. However, she found that she had full reign of her room after she woke up, which left us with some interesting messes in the morning! Thankfully the only drawers she could get into just had pajamas and some summer stuff in them, so it wasn't a huge disaster. Often times many of the clothes would be ON Bella when we went in as well- multiple layers of them! Thankfully we broke that habit- she still says every night before she goes to sleep, "no drawers."
Showing off her cheesy little grin, with her beloved blanket behind her. That particular blanket is now referred to as "big nigh-nigh." We bought Bella a smaller blanket that is similar to hers so that we didn't have to take the big giant one with us wherever we go. HOwever, when we are home, she now has to have them both of course. The new one is naturally "little nigh-nigh." :)
Hiding under her "tent."
Modeling her stylish new sunglasses. :)
And for some reason, Bella thought she needed to wear Mommy's coat one evening. Complete with the sunglasses of course! She is quite the silly girl, and if she gets a laugh, she will keep doing it!
Our family of four going out to celebrate Valentine's Day! We had to go to our family favorite restaurant, the Olive Garden. Bella eats almost as much as we do there! And she especially likes the salad- quite strange that a toddler loves lettuce so much. It's not just the Olive Garden dressing either; she always wants salad when we eat it!
We enjoyed playing out after the last big snowfall for one last time on a day that wasn't too cold. Not that coldness affects Bella; she would do anything to go outside!
The slides are still her absolute favorite!
And they were even more fun when she got to land in a pile of snow!
Making snow angels with Daddy!
We introduced her to the snow mountain, which Bella thought was pretty fun.
However, she kept asking to go back on the mountain even after the snow melted!
Had to test out the riding toys too. :)


Bella received some nice presents for Valentines Day. Here she is looking at a Twinkle Twinkle Little Star book from Grandpa Doug and Grandma Sheri. Books are Bella's favorite things!
She also got a little Dora coloring set.
Derek and I further fueled Bella's obsession with Dora by giving her a book that has little Dora characters to play with. They were obviously a big hit!
We also gave her several books and a coloring book.
Bella likes to share her toys with Tommy, even if he doesn't always appreciate it. :)
I decided Bella is now old enough to start playing with Play-Doh. I personally hate the stuff as I think the smell is awful, but she had lots of fun with it. However, now anytime she sees the Play-Doh containers, she wants to take it out to make "snakes." My own fault!
One Saturday in February, we took Bella to the Incredible Pizza Company in Des Moines. We thought it would be something fun and different for her to do to burn off some energy. She definitely had a good time and wanted to play with the "toys" rather than eat! Here she is enjoying a ride on a lovely "neigh."
Helping Daddy shoot some baskets- or maybe it was more hindering. :)
There was an area designed specifically for toddlers, so naturally Bella had to hit up the slide multiple times.
Here she is enjoying a ride on a little car!
She enjoyed this a lot too!
We started to go a little stir crazy in February being stuck inside, and our trips to the library were starting to get boring. So I decided to take Bella to Barnes and Noble in Des Moines on one of my days off. We had a fun little mother-daughter outing looking at books and going out to eat for lunch!
Our most exciting news of the month is that Bella was potty trained around the end of February! All of a sudden, it just clicked for her. She started going one day and kept up with it with very little accidents. I think it really all happened in the span of a week, which was pretty crazy. But I guess she was just truly ready at that point, plus she was proud of herself for going. We did a stickers reward chart which I took a picture of at some point. It's now laden down with stickers as she likes to pile them on top of one another. :) I was thinking when she was still learning that last year at this time, she wasn't even walking. And now she is telling us when she needs to go to the bathroom! It's just crazy how much she has changed developmentally since last year.

20 Months!

Oh, our little girl has been soooo much fun this month. Not that the past 20 haven't been fun, but Bella is now developing such a fun and goofy personality! She is quite the little show-off and performer- if she makes you laugh, there's a guarantee that she will keep doing whatever she did! She is so happy and easy-going (90% of the time anyway- temper tantrums definitely do occur!). Bella is also very sweet and loving- we get lots of hugs and kisses from her throughout the day!

Bella continues to be quite the little chatterbox. And she has started talking more and more around other people, not just Derek and I. So now nobody has to think we're crazy when we say how much she talks. :) Bella pretty much knows the right words for most objects and things. She continues to talk more sentences, and I think she has probably said 4 words at a time. Our favorite saying this month has been "I love _____." That was adapted from the Barney I love you song, but she started filling in the you with whatever was going on or whoever was there. Pizza, Mommy, Daddy, puppy, pop, etc. :) Another cute saying has been "___, where are you?"

Bella also loves to sing! Twinkle Twinkle is still a fav, and the I love you Barney song. Her lyrics to Twinkle Twinkle however vary a little bit from the original- she typically sings "Up a twinkle twinkle star...." She also has started singing Happy Birthday- and she knows her tunes!

Bella very much loves our kitty. She brings him toys, food, books- hasn't quite figured out that he doesn't so much care. :)

She also likes to gives him kisses and hugs. Not sure if his love is mutual, but he tolerates her!

I have started working with Bella on counting, and identifying shapes and colors. Counting progress hasn't been too good- she refuses to go past 2. :) Actually her version is 2, 1, 2, 1, 2... Oh well! She is getting the shapes- she knows a circle and triangle. And she knows the color blue and brown.

Bella has held an extreme love for Elmo, but I'm afraid that may be phasing out. She still likes to watch him, but she has now moved on to some other favorite shows- Dora the Explorer and The Wiggles. I like Dora, so I'm good with watching her. And she is very much obsessed with her! The Wiggles is a little scarier- but the main reason she likes to watch them is so that she can dance along with the music.

I attempted to take pictures of Bella wearing her Christmas dress one morning. Obviously.... it did not go well. Bella is generally a pretty easy going girl, but she was not in any mood to sit for Mommy on that day! Her sad face is pretty heartbreaking.

And here is the best picture I got- where Bella looks quite down.

I even tried bribing her with M&M's, but she just blew me kisses.

Bella loves, loves, LOVES her books. She loves to be read to, to read on her own- digging out books from her bookcase is an everyday activity.

We usually accumulate quite the pile by the end of the day. :) The Llama Llama books are a favorite!

Her "reading" is quite interesting to listen to. She talks about whatever she sees, occasionally even reading the page if she knows the book really well, interspersing it with jibber jabber.

She even reads her books to Tommy!

In terms of eating, Bella has been a super super eater. We had a week early in January where she ate awful. It was very frustrating to me, so I decided to take a new approach. I don't push her with eating things I know she doesn't like that much, and rather I just give her things I know she likes. And then she'll eat it awesome. It has made mealtimes much more pleasant for everyone! Granted, that has phased eating many vegetables out of her diet- just occasional green beans and carrots- but she eats fruits really well so I don't stress to much. Her favorites include pizza, mac and cheese, fish sticks, spaghetti, fried chicken (kinda strange), chicken strips, grilled cheese, bananas, applesauce, strawberries, pasta- typical kid fare. M&M's remain the favorite treat of choice, and a very very weird thing she likes a lot is pickles. If Bella even sees the jar in the fridge, she'll want them. So strange.

Potty training front: I decided to be a little more aggressive with working on potty training. I had just been randomly doing it here and there, and I didn't think that was creating any major interest. So last week, we ditched the diapers and started wearing big girl panties. (Pull-ups don't work for Bella- she just goes in them like her diaper). Last week was actually very successful! She had very few accidents and went in her potty every day. However, over the weekend, we lost interest again. She still tells us when she is pottying, but she won't go sit on the toilet. However, she is getting that feeling of when she needs to go, so I figure that is progress. Now we just have to wait for her to want to do it. But I still feel pretty good about how it is going thus far.

Daddy has initiated a new game with Bella this past month- playing "catch" with a ball. I guess he gets sick of our girl games. :) Catch is actually Bella both throwing the ball and attempting to kick it. She likes to play this game when she has lots of energy and can run around like a crazy woman in the basement!

This picture shows Bella's all-time favorite game- the one she asks to play about 923898239 times a day. Okay, maybe not quite that much, but seriously a lot. It's called "Getcha?"- which is what she says while looking at you with a mischievous smile. Either Daddy or Mommy is instructed to "getcha" at which point she runs off to the other parent and jumps in their arm. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Until Mommy and Daddy can no longer take it. She loooooves it.

Bella also loves to be tickled- and she is super ticklish! She went through a little span of wanting us to tickle her every night after we read books at bedtime.

We had a big change this month as well- Bella's crib was converted into a toddler bed. She is still in the same bed, but we took the front part off and put on a guard rail that came with it. She has now been in it for almost 2 weeks, and I would say it has been mostly successful. She liked being able to get in and out when she was just playing in her room, but she was a little scared in laying down for her naps and bedtime. However, she's now good with it and goes to sleep pretty quickly without crying. Bella also has quit banging on the door when she wakes up- she has learned that she can just play for awhile. Unfortunately, that has meant that I sometimes have a disaster to pick up- i.e., she has taken all the clothes out of her drawers... but she's having fun! The only downside is that she is now sleeping less. Nap time, which has never been a strong suit of hers, has been ending shortly after 1 hour. And she is now waking up an hour earlier in the morning- 7:30 instead of 8:30. I'm hopeful that she will continue to adjust... Derek is not so optimistic. :)

We also shared some very exciting news this month- Bella is going to be a big sister come September! Obviously, she is thrilled about it. :) Maybe not so much when a baby actually comes... She knows that she is going to be a "big sisser" and that there is a "baby" in Mommy's tummy. She'll be 2 years and 3 months when baby does arrive, so she'll obviously have a good understanding at that point. And I think she will be a little mommy to new baby!

I am now 10 weeks along, with an official due date of September 6. Yes, it is going to be a very long hot Iowa summer. :) But we're obviously thrilled about our news and so thankful that we are being blessed with another child. We've had an ultrasound already and saw the heartbeat, so we are pretty reassured that everything is going as expected. I have been feeling really good, just extremely tired at times. It's still kinda crazy to think that we're going to have 2 kids in just 7 months! However, I adore the baby stage, so it will be nice to have a baby again.