Trip to Kansas City!

The last weekend in July we embarked on our first family trip of the summer to Kansas City with my whole family. We went to Oceans of Fun one day and Worlds of Fun the next. Although it was EXTREMELY hot outside, it was a lot of fun spending time with everyone.

We left right around Bella's naptime on Thursday thinking she would sleep a good part of the way down. Well..... not so much. She slept all of 20 minutes and was awake for the other 3 hours. However, she was happy watching DVD's and playing with Mommy! Blowing kisses...
Making silly faces...
Kicking the chair and playing peek-a-boo...

And snuggling with her little buddies, Elmo and baby!

Daddy walking around with Bella outside of a restaurant on the first night. That night, she was so completely wiped out. When we got to the hotel around 4, I tried to get her to take a nap since she had only slept 20 minutes the whole day. Well, apparently she just had too much energy from being cooped up in the car, because she definitely did not go to sleep! So Bella had a 20 minute nap the entire day! :) She was still happy though, but conked out quickly that night.

Bella had lots of fun playing with her cousins, especially "Dee Dee" (Bella's term for Dylann).

On Friday, we went to Worlds of Fun. We never ventured too far from the baby pool area because Bella refused to leave the water. Anytime I took her out for a drink or to eat, she started saying, "Pool! Pool!"

She kept us very busy following wherever she decided to take off to!

Pretty sure nobody should look this cute in a little bikini. :)

Bella loved splashing around in the water!

Mommy and Bella- notice her mad expression because she wanted me to let her down to go back in the pool!

Bella is apparently telling stories to Jager here!

The best picture I got of all the kids- not so easy to do with busy Bella who wants to take off all the time!

Thankfully Bella slept really well at the hotel. I was a little nervous because the last time we tried to have her sleep somewhere besides home or her carseat, she was scared. We brought the pack-n-play along, and although she was a little scared at first, she did fine and slept great every night. This was after she woke up on Saturday morning- everything had to be on her lap!

Saturday we went to Worlds of Fun, and it was ridiculously hot. We ended up going to the car for a bit because Bella needed a nap and she wasn't falling asleep in the stroller. I think it was just too hot for her! So Derek and I brought her back, which was fine because we got to cool off as well. And actually, the power ended up going out in the park during that time, so we really didn't miss anything at all!

Bella is obviously too little to go by herself on any of the rides, and they wouldn't let adults go on any of the kid rides. However, there was this ball house in the kid part of the park, and Bella had lots of fun playing around in there!

I think she may have even swiped a ball from here. However, we disposed off it as it was very dirty!

We stayed at an Embassy Suites, so Bella had lots of fun playing with the water fountain!

Saturday was also my dad's birthday, so we had a nice meal at the hotel restaurant to celebrate it. We ordered a piece of chocolate cake for him... but I'm pretty sure Dylann and Jager might have taken down more of it than he did. :)

Uncle Jer with Bella, Dylann, and Jager after we ate on Saturday. Tatum unfortunately didn't feel very good on Saturday, so she didn't want to be in any pictures.

Our family- complete with Bella's precious nigh-nigh! It was a very fun weekend, and we are ready to go on our next few trips soon!

14 Month Update!

July has been an incredibly busy month for the De Haan household! We have been very busy enjoying the sunshine (and humidity!), swimming, hanging out with family and friends, and taking our first vacation of the summer. Bella has been busy continuing to grow and develop as well! She is talking SO much and is definitely starting to become even more of a little girl rather than a baby! She is still Miss Independent and knows exactly what she wants and when she wants it! She loves to show off and make us laugh and smile, but she also is so sweet and loving. We love this little girl more and more every day!

We still spend lots of time in the "wah-wah" (Bella's term for water). We have been able to enjoy swimming at Grandpa and Grandma's pool a few different times! Bella is not too sure of the floatie toys- in fact, she is pretty terrified of them. But she likes just splashing around with Mama and Dada.

Bella loves dancing and singing to music. She often makes a singing noise to herself when she is playing, which is so cute to hear. She also helps sing along to some of her favorite songs, like Skidamarinkidinkydink, the Itsy Bitsy Spider, and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.

For some reason, Bella thought she needed to put her toys in Tommy's little bed- which is pretty gross since it is covered with cat hair. She loves putting stuff into places and taking them back out. It's a fun never-ending game!

And here she wants to demonstrate just how strong and determined she really is. One afternoon, Bella decided to pull out all the chairs from the table and pushed them around on the floor. As I said, she's quite persistent in what she wants to do! :)

Apparently Bella thought she could fit into her baby's crib. When that didn't happen so well, she was rather mad! Bella is still loving to play with her babies and "La-la" (Elmo). She gives them kisses, feeds them, makes them go nigh-nigh, throws them across the room when they are being naughty...

Bella loves our new family member yet. In fact, he helped introduce a new word into her vocabulary- Kitty! Bella always has big huge smiles whenever she sees Tommy and I know that she just wants to go jump on top of him. Thankfully, she does not do that and only goes by him with Mommy.

Bella has been quite attached to "Mama" this month. She is fine when I'm at work, but if she knows that I am around, she has to be nearby. I can't lie, it's pretty fun to be so wanted, but carrying around a 25 pound child can get rather tiresome! But now that she says up when she wants to be held, I really can't resist.

As I said, Bella has started talking soo much this past month. I try to write down all the words that she uses or has said, but it's getting hard to keep track of! She has said up, tractor, purse, apple, kitty, shoe, backpack, cheeka (a character on a show), and baby (she's finally not calling babies mama!). Bella also knows and identifies pretty much all our family member names. Some are a little harder to say than others, but she makes an attempt at all of them.

She started to learn our family names by looking at our wedding book. She is obsessed with looking at that and photo albums. They are looked through daily, and she points to and names all the people and things she knows.

Bella blows kisses when she tells somebody bye-bye, although she doesn't usually "blow" the kiss.

I think I mentioned in my last post that Bella loves to do silly tricks that makes us laugh. She "runs" in place, does this silly walk where she lifts up one of her legs, and makes a yodeling noise. She thinks it's so funny when we laugh at her, so she loves to keep showing off again and again!

Bella is still a really good eater and sleeper. She goes to bed around 9, and typically gets up between 8:30-9. However, I don't think she usually goes to sleep until 10- she likes to play around in her bed! She still takes 2 naps a day, although she can survive on one. But she does better with having 2 shorter naps rather than 1 longer one at this point.

Bella typically eats oatmeal and yogurt for breakfast, some type of pasta/main dish with veggies and fruit for lunch, a snack in the afternoon, and whatever we eat at night with veggies and fruit for supper. She drinks a few cups of whole milk a day, although it has taken me some time to get her to like it. She loves apple juice and water as well. Bella had been getting a bottle at night up until this week. I was very sad to take it away as she loved her ba-ba so much! But she has done fine without it, and has only asked for it a couple of times.

Happy Fourth of July!

This years Fourth of July was definitely much better than Bella's first- particularly weather wise- and we had a multi-day celebration for it!
Bella of course had to wear a special outfit to celebrate the occasion...
Complete with matching shoes...
And headband!
Our little girl is very patriotic. :)
Pella celebrated the Fourth the Saturday before. We didn't go to the parade or any of the activities that day since we knew Bella would be up late that night, and we wanted to let her have a normal schedule during the day. We went to Derek's aunt and uncle's house for supper that evening and hung out with his extended family before the fireworks started.
Bella loved running around outside and showing off her tricks for everybody- notice the rosy cheeks!
Bella wasn't too sure what to think about Uncle Case (still haven't completely lost her fear of men), but she was willing to look at her book with him- from a distance.
Here she decided she needed to look at it herself in Corbin's chair.
I was pretty worn out from chasing Bella all over. At our house, she usually sticks to our yard and doesn't stray too far from it. However, over there, she decided she needed to go up and down the driveway, the sidewalks, etc etc.
We decided to keep Bella up to watch the fireworks. They were SUPPOSED to start at 9:30, but for some reason didn't until 10- a second after we decided to just go. So we stuck around, and it's good that we did- Bella liked watching all the pretty lights in the sky and actually sat still on my lap. We were far enough away that the booms weren't loud, so she wasn't scared at all. It was definitely a late night though- we didn't get home until 10:30 and Bella wasn't asleep until 11! Thankfully, she slept until 10:30 on the actual 4th, so she wasn't too affected by the late night.
That day, we had some friends over to our house in the afternoon and evening. Bella got to meet another new baby! My friend Lori had a baby in May, and Bella was intrigued by him. She wanted to keep touching him and probably would've pulled him into her lap like one of her babies if we would have let her.
Then on Monday, we headed to Sully for the annual celebration there! Thankfully the rain held off on Monday for the parade, so Bella was able to watch it. Bella is making faces at Tatum for some reason here...
"Hi Mama! Can I have the camera?"


So Bella enjoyed most of the parade... except when they fired off cannons after raising the flag not once but four times. She was scared half to death. And she also was not a fan of the fire trucks blaring their horn. I can't say I blame her for either one, they made me jump too

Bella with big cousin Dylann. Dylann is our babysitter for Bella whenever she's around. She is such a good little helper, and Bella loves her!
Aww. :)
Bella on the way home at the end of the day. We were at my parents house until from 9 until about 3:30, and Bella went without a nap that entire time. I tried putting her in the crib in the afternoon, but she was scared of not being in her bed. I even had her rocked to sleep, but she woke up the second I laid her down. However, she didn't get grumpy or crabby- just took a long nap when we got back home!