My "Baby" Girl is 2!!

What is Bella most excited about for her birthday?  CAKE...it is all she talks about when I tell her she is turning 2!  Since Bella's birthday is so close to Christmas, every year we plan to do a family birthday on the actual day and then a party with friends after the new year.  So Karen, Alli and McKenzie came to spend the day with us.  The girls had a great time playing and it was perfectly low key. David had to work but once he got home we opened presents and of course had lots of cake!

It is truly a miracle to me in which the way this little human being can develop and change so much in just two short years.  She is now very big into imaginative play and loves having tea parties, "going shopping", and pretending she is all sorts of animals. She still loves to read and will sit for a good 30 minutes at a time with me reading stories (and hence has most of her books memorized and will "read" to me). She is also starting to be really funny and will talk in a silly voice or make up silly words and then say "I'm so funny"!  She knows all her colors, can say and identify all the letters of the alphabet (and is starting to say things like "O" is for "octopus"), can count to 20, knows all her shapes, and since there were no more body parts to learn we have taught her most of the medical terms for them!  She still cracks us up with the pronunciation of a few quirky works such as "onjen" for "orange", "pinow" for "pillow", and "blankwee" for "blanket". 

She continues to amaze us and we fall in love her more each day.  Happy Birthday my sweet Isabella Rose.

Never to young too start house work!

 Sweet cousins!

 My how she has changed.  Newborn: Dec 2009

First birthday: Dec 2010!

Festive Fun

Bella and I have been able to escape the craziness in the house (all the remodeling) and enjoy some seasonal fun.  We have been to see Christmas lights, to see Santa (whom she was not a fan of as most toddlers are not!), to build gingerbread houses, and to a Christmas book exchange.  I think Bella's favorite part of this holiday season is all the treats she is getting to eat. 

Christmas craft Bella made in the nursery.  I will treasure it forever

Who knew tinsel could be so much fun!

Intensely focusing on decorating her gingerbread house!

The Unpacking Never Ends!

Yay....we are officially moved into our new house.  Thank you to my wonderful parents and brother who helped us!  We are still living out of boxes and a guest bedroom but at least it's HOME!  The paint is done and carpet installed and now we are waiting on the new windows to arrive.  It is so beautiful out here...so quiet...and so dark at night (I am so used to all the city lights).  We see deer running across the yard daily which is so exciting to Bella. 

Between unpacking I have managed to get our Christmas cards in the mail.  Here are a few pictures we didn't use for our cards.

 This wasn't a Christmas card picture-it was the sunset in our backyard last night....spectacular!

The "Lake House" and Christmas Fun

WE ARE HOMEOWNERS!  We closed on a home here in Belton.  Bella refers to it as our "lake house", appropriately so since it is right on the lake! David is in heaven-he is just beside himself that he can fish anytime he wants!  We are very excited about having so much space and a place to call our own.  We have a lot of ideas for upgrades and remodeling but are starting with window and carpet replacement and some paint.  So we haven't officially moved in yet but we did go ahead and put up a Christmas tree.  I probably wouldn't have bothered but since Bella is a Christmas baby I want it to be special.  At this time last year Bella wasn't even walking so it was so much fun that she could actually decorate the tree with us this year.  And of course, she was jabbering away about it!  She loves pressing the button to turn the lights on and off and loves taking off and putting back the ornaments at her level.  I told her how to do it so now each time she tells herself "open the string and pull it off gently.  Good job"!  I love how she always coaches herself!

Our backyard

 Climbing a tree in the front yard

 "Helping" clean!

 I have an almost identical picture of when I was a little girl decorating the tree just like this, with the same expression!

Thanksgiving 2011

Thanksgiving is usually pretty predictable in our house.  We spend the Thursday at my parents house in Conroe all in anticipation for some crazy Black Friday shopping.  Then we head to David's mom's house in Austin for the rest of the weekend.  This year my parents went on a Hawaiian cruise so we spent the whole time at David's mom's. Bella and her cousin McKenzie had a blast playing together and David and I even got to sneak away for a date night to go see Breaking Dawn!  I did do some shopping, on Gray Thursday, as David calls it!  I got a Cricut scrapbooking machine for dirt cheap, something I had been wanting for years.  The girls played in the box for hours!  We also scored some cheap movies and video games.  Yeah!  Karen and I took the girls to the mall over the weekend to ride the carousel and train....the loved it.

This season we are so grateful for being back in TX and close to family. 

23 Months Old

Yikes, one month more and my 'baby' will be 2!  Bella's vocabulary continues to amaze me day by day and she is FINALLY starting to gain some gross motor skills/confidence.  She will now walk up and down a step (it has to be tiny) without holding on.  It could be an inch off the floor and she pauses before stepping up it as if it is a mountain, but hey, at least she is doing it!  She loves to run, walk backwards, walk on tip toes, and just learned how to jump (and successfully get both feet off the floor)! 

Big girls get to stay up later so Bella's new bedtime is between 7:30 and 8 pm (instead of 7), and she gets up between 6:30 and 7am.  It's nice that she gets extra time with David in the evenings but it seems like I am ready for bed shortly after her! She naps from about 1 to 2:30 in the afternoon.  We got into a bad habit of letting her carry the 'lovey' she sleeps with around the house. The other day I told her from now on it was only to sleep with. She very obediently reminds me "lovey stays in my bed" when I go get her!  Also, since we are getting to be a big girl, we bought her an Elmo potty seat so she will now sit on the toilet, wipe, and flush (but hasn't actually done anything yet!).  

Some of my favorite phrases:

-In Old Navy the other day I tried on a shirt and asked if she liked it.  In her most emphatic voice she replies, "oooo, Mommy!  That one is so cute!"

-She was playing with a sign outside a store and didn't want to go in.  I told her they probably had signs inside the store she could touch and play with.  She looked and me, thought about it, and said "True..." and walked on in.  Really? What kid says "True"!

-Everything is "I need that one" or "I want that one"...we are trying to learn "May I have it please".

-She says "Excuse me" if she burps (without being asked to say it!)

-She is insanely observant about everything. She will tell you the shape of anything, it's color, whether someone has short or long hair, etc. My favorite is, "that's a circle.  Has no angles"!

-I had been telling Bella Stop Signs were hexagons (not one of my smarter moments!) and while in the car with David she said "look, a hexagon".  David corrected her, so now anytime she sees a stop sign she says, "look, an octagon.  Not a hexagon".

-If you tell her she can't do something she says, "Hmmm....let's try it"!

-She is such a negotiator.  If she wants something to snack on besides what I have given her she says "I take a bite, then have (fill in the blank with desired snack)"!

Halloween 2011

Trick or Treating brought back a lot of fond California memories of our Halloween last year.  Bella wasn't even walking yet, she willing donned her Halloween costume, and David and I got to eat all the candy! This year was quite the opposite!

We have had Bella's costume for over a month...it has been sitting in her room and she would talk about it all the time:

However, putting the costume on was another story.  We had been to several parties where her fit throwing ended in just wearing a Halloween themed t-shirt.  But come time to Trick or Treat I was forcing that thing on her no matter how hard she screamed.  Daddy came to the rescue mid fit throwing with some chocolate bribery and the costume went on and stayed on without a hitch (minus the Tinkerbell wings)!

We went with a girlfriend (Christina) who has a 2 year old son, Noah.  The kids rode in the wagon for the first half of the evening because they were so busy shoving their faces full of every candy they were handed!  And finally by the end of the evening they were running around like crazy from all the sugar.  They were so precious...they would go up to each door, knock, and say "Trick or Treat", and then "Thank you"!