BellaBlog

Archive for November, 2008

Cute Words

Bella is saying a ton of words now and I’ll try to remember them all now.  Of course, while reading this list, you must remember that she ends all words on a higher tone like she asking a question.

Juice is juice.  Diaper is Biaper. Poop is poop.  Peepee is peepee.  Ready is Weddy.  Puppy is (no way to spell that).  Dog is Woof.  Mama is Mama (although sometimes she calls me Dada).  Banana is Myninny.  Water is Wawer.  Ball is Ba.  Bottle is Ba.  Balloon is Ba-oon. More is ‘moooor’.  Mine is mine.  Yours is mine (JK).  Seat is seat.  Hot is hot!  Cold is hot!  Yuck is hot! (basically anything she doesn’t want to eat is called hot – it’s a good excuse anyway:) Cracker is kacker. Basket is baket.  Buckle and unbuckle sound the same – ‘bac-kool’. Paper is paper.  Teddy Bear is B-Bear (she loves the one her Uncle Steve and Aunt Donna gave her last year).  Peas are peas.  Help is hop.  Help me is hop me-she loves saying this in the morning when really she’s asking to help me take my pills in the morning.  I put them in my hand, she takes them one by one and puts them in my mouth and then points to my water and says ‘wawer’, basically telling me to take them with my water.  Qtip sounds like pretty please.  Blanket is becky (her favorite to carry around is the blanket her Aunt Linda brought to her back in April of this year–her favorite to sleep with is the throw we bought to replace the one Aunt Misty burned up in our fireworks fiasco this past summer).  Ears, eyes, nose, toes, shoes, sock, eat, hat, hi, hello (she’s hello and waves to strangers-especially old people), bye bye are all legible words that most folks can interpret.  She’s blows kisses but doesn’t say the word kisses.  And she is talking constantly in sentences and phrases now too but most of the time, we have no clue as to what she’s saying but we try to keep up our end of the conversation.

She responds to a lot of animal sounds questions too.  Lion is ‘wooaarrww’.  Dog is ‘woof’.  Cat is ‘now’.  Elephant is ‘bthbth’ and she raises her arm to her head like we do when we blow our elephant horn.  Monkey is ‘ee-ee’  and she puts her hands to her armpits like we do when we rant like a monkey.

I’m sure I missed something but I’m sure this loving, doting Mom will repeat it again in another post:).

No more bottle

Ever since Bella turned 17 months old on the 1st, she hasn’t needed a bottle of milk to put her to sleep.  To take it further, she’s even changed her routine like she’s a toddler instead of our little baby girl.  For example, Friday night when Paul came home, I was hoping that she wouldn’t revert back to her old routine since Dad was back so we were careful not to mention the ‘M’ or ‘B’ word (that is milk or bottle for those of you not following along).  We played with her for a while on the floor of her room, changed her diaper and put her PJ’s on.  We brushed her teeth, read two activity books where she can pull tabs and then she stood up and started cleaning up the room.  Once she had put away the few books and toys that were on the floor (with only a little assistance from us), she walked over to her crib and started pulling on the door.  Trying to follow her lead, we opened the door to her crib, gave her a boost to let her climb in and she crawled up on her blanket and acted like she was going to sleep.  Stunned, we said our goodnights and gave her kisses and started to walk out.  She jumped up on her feet and watched us walk out.  We shut the door behind us and never went back in.  She never cried and slept thru the entire night til 7:15 the next morning.  Last night was a similar routine and she slept until about 7 as well.  What a big girl she is and what lucky parents we are to have such a sweet baby.

One small addition to last night’s routine that I have to tell you.  As Paul and I were telling her it was time to go night-night and that we neede our kisses, she began the kissing game.  She would pucker up and give me kisses and then she’d say ‘dada’, then I would swing her toward Dad where she’d get her kisses, then back to me for more kisses, then it would start all over again.  She did get into the crib but wanted to continue the kisses game.  We let it last a few minutes longer and then we left the room after telling her we loved her.  As we were leaving the room, Paul said ‘Now I know why every parent thinks their kid is the greatest’.  No explanation needed!

Communicating Really Well

It is amazing how well Bella is not only saying words but communicating in other ways as well.  Just the other day, she started saying ‘Back’ and walking to the fridge when she wasn’t quite finished with her drink.  Not sure what she meant, I followed her to the fridge, helped her open it and she placed her unfinished drink cup on the shelf and shut the door behind her.  Paul and I have done this many times with unfinished milk and juice but we’ve never made it a point to show her what we were doing.  It’s almost as if she figured it out just thru observation.

Speaking of observation, yet again, Paul questions whether or not Bella belongs to him (he is not very observant but Bella is:).   We were at a park yesterday for an Easter Seals charity walk and as we were finishing our first round of the park, Bella started pointing and saying ‘balloon’.  Paul and I started looking around for one in the direction she was pointing and sure enough, way up in a huge oak tree was a lone red balloon that had floated away from the registration tent.  We were amazed that she noticed something so small and far away.  Every day is an amazement with her and we love it!

Face Painting

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Picture of the Week – November 6, 2008

Missing Dada

Paul has been away in Chicago since Monday so Bella hasn’t seen him for 4 days.  She calls out for him occasionally but she’s been a real sweetheart spending time alone with her Mama.  Tonight she did something so sweet that I couldn’t help but share with Paul.  As we were waiting for the pizza delivery guy to show up (yes, she loves pepperoni pizza like her parents), I was going thru the mail and she was rifling thru my purse for goodies.  She found my work Blackberry.  Since it doesn’t have phone hooked up and she’s not in the habit of breaking things like this, I let her play with it for a little bit.  I have a photo of Bella in her lion costume at a fall festival we attended at her daycare a few weeks ago.  The picture is of Bella waiting her turn to enter the bounce house and Paul was holding onto her in the background.  When she turned on my phone and saw this photo, she began pointing at the screen, jumping up and down, smiling from ear to ear and shouting ‘Dada, Dada, Dada’.  It was so sweet, I immediately called Paul so he could hear how excited she was.  Of course, this broke his heart since he had been away from us so long and missed us terribly but I think he realized that I only had good intentions about this sweet moment that our daughter was having.

By the way, when the pizza guy showed up, he rang the doorbell, Bella clung to my legs and begged to be picked up when she heard it.  We walked to the door and from the moment the guy started talking, Bella was just laughing and laughing.  I kept looking at her wondering what was so funny but when the guy said how cute she was laughing at his jokes (which were not all that funny, trust me), I knew what it was.  This was our little social butterfly flirting with yet another boy.  We’ll have to learn to stop that eventually or at least tone it down.  She must get flirting from her father:)…