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Thursday, December 30, 2010

Bella Sings to Backyardigans

Bella has always loved The Backyardigans. She would always get so excited when the theme song would come on. Well now, she dances and sings along. You only get a little taste of her awesome dance moves in this one (it's where she shakes her arm around) but she loves to "whisper sing" along with the theme song. She does it pretty much every time now and so far we have only noticed her doing it to the theme song and she usually does it in the same parts! Love her teeny tiny sweet little voice!

Monday, December 27, 2010

Bella's First Christmas

We had such a wonderful and blessed holiday season this year! Having a child during the holidays is really the best thing ever! It just makes everything more fun. Rowdy took off starting December 23rd and doesn't go back until the new year so we are really enjoying some family time at home. We had a lot of fun going to parties and our church's wonderful Christmas Eve service where some good friends of our's directed/starred in A Christmas Carol and just enjoyed being with family and eating a lot of good food! We, of course, forgot our camera at the party the night before so our pictures of Christmas morning at our house and at Rowdy's mom's house are all on his phone, there will be another post with those. All the Christmas morning pictures below are from my parent's house. These pictures basically tell the story of our Christmas season.
We started out Christmas Eve with a family walk around the neighborhood. We got Bella all bundled up and really just enjoyed some relaxing time together.
Bella helped us get some of her Christmas clothes ready. She practiced wearing her little Santa hat too.

Our little princess at our church's Christmas Eve service. She did so great snacking on Cheerios and watching the show. She started to get antsy because all she wants to do right now is crawl and climb on things so Rowdy decided to walk with her about half way through but it was a wonderful show!

Before the show Bella took turns sitting on everyone's laps. Here she was sitting on Daddy's lap.

Here she is with Uncle Matt

Bella and her boyfriend Micah

Aren't they just so cute together!

Not exactly the happiest face, she was ready to be picked up but the picture showed her fun outfit the best. Oh how I loved dressing her for Christmas!

Bella with Grandma and Grandpa
Trying to get a good picture of the 3 of us. Bella wouldn't stop chewing on her hand so we went with it.
Love my family

Grandma Valley and Bella. She decided to ditch the bow for the Christmas Eve party and decided the Santa hat was just way cooler.

Opening some Christmas presents.

So many presents, so little time!

Bella and I checking out her presents

She LOVED ripping the bows off the presents and tearing the paper and shredding the tissue paper. It was basically baby heaven.

So excited about her new walker.

Trying out her new walker, she really liked it, and especially liked that she could put some Cheerios on the tray and see everything.

SOOOO excited about her new chair from Grandma and Grandpa! She loves climbing in/on it!

Merry Christmas sweet Bella!

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Our Little Troublemaker

As Bella gets older and more mobile she gets more inquisitive and curious. Those are the nice ways of putting it. I might have said she was a terrorist that keeps dropping little bombs in our house. I frequently spend my days following her around from closet to cupboard as she rips everything out and once she gets bored I put it all back and then we do it all over again. But I seriously love to watch her little mind try to figure out what all these new little things that she finds are. The other day she went through all of my headbands and inspected each one carefully and then moved on to the next and I can't help but picture her wearing those headbands and looking pretty darn cute. Here are a few pictures of her being our "inquisitive and curious" little girl.

Momma left the computer unattended on the couch and Bella is obsessed with electronics and especially the ones she sees mom use like her cell phone and computer. She gets so excited when she is allowed near the computer but it is always short lived because as soon as she gets it she starts slamming her hands on the keyboard and inevitably we spend time after trying to figure out how in the world she: opened that/locked that/how the heck did she change that?

She figured out how to open cabinets and doors and is very interested in it. Any time she sees anything that looks like it is a door that opens she tries and gets irritated if it won't open. This is our pantry. On the bottom is all the tupperware, leftover shopping bags, and miscellaneous plastic type things. Basically, baby heaven.

And this is an example of cabinets taht need to be locked up.....in here she found the blender. Not exactly baby friendly.

Just another day pulling everything out of the pantry.

And this one she is actually totally supposed to pull everything out of, it's her toy basket (we need a bigger toy basket/more toy baskets since you can see we have been using a huggies box as additional storage....classy)

Sunday, December 5, 2010

Double Digits! Bella is 10 Months Old!

Isabella is 10 months old! We are just loving every second with her. There is something about having a child around at the holidays that makes them so much more fun! Even if Bella doesn't understand this year we know she still loves how pretty our Christmas tree looks! I can't believe that this month last year we were having a baby shower for her. How has it been a year? Two months and counting for party planning!! Eek! She is getting so big and changing every day! Here are some updates on Bella:
  • We had our first big trip with Bella this past month. We went to Wisconsin to visit Rowdy's family and also took a fun little quick trip to Chicago. She did great on her very first flight!
  • Our first trip led to our first real illness. Bella started out with a stuffy nose and it progressed to some chest congestion and then she completely started refusing fluids. And of course, the dreaded fever, so we went to the doctor and they confirmed that Bella had the flu. Boo! That's all I can say about having a sick baby, it is NOT fun! The funny part was she really was such a trooper and was generally in a good mood as long as you weren't trying to make her drink fluids. I think we are finally starting to get back on track after that and I hope our next illness is a long way away!
  • Bella seems to really prefer "real" food as opposed to purees now. She will still eat her purees but she loves to feed herself. She is very adventurous with food too which I love! She seems to really love garlic (good little Italian girl!). She had her first experience with pasta and red sauce, she seemed to really like little pieces of bread with pesto, she tried hummus (didn't seem to be her favorite) but she pretty much loves to eat whatever is on my plate. The best was on Thanksgiving. Grandpa gave her just a taste of his cheesecake and she LOVED it! She couldn't get enough of it and would start anxiously shaking her hands at him if we wasn't getting the spoon full of cheesecake to her mouth fast enough. The whole time I was trying to mentally run through all my books to figure out if she was actually allowed to have cheesecake (aside from the obvious over-exposure to sugar....oh well, it was a holiday) but I couldn't, in the moment, come up with a problem and she never had any sort of allergic reaction and I think it may have been the best day of her life! Seriously, she looked like she was in heaven while she was eating that cheesecake!
  • She loves to play the "how big is Bella" game now.
  • She claps......all the time :-) It's the cutest thing ever. And when she does somethigng "good" she claps for herself and looks at you like, "come on...that deserves a clap!"
  • She seems to be starting to understand "mama". She still babbles mama and dada constantly for everything but I have seen her actually say mama and look around for me, I absolutely love it!
  • We are getting our first little tastes of her "will." She definitely lets you know if she doesn't want certain foods we are feeding her. She holds her hand up in front of her mouth and turns away. And we have experienced a few occassions of little "tantrums." You can't really call them tantrums yet, thank goodness!! There have just been a few times where she has something that she wants and maybe isn't supposed to have and we go to take it and give it back to someone or put it away and she protests and makes sure you know she isn't happy about it. Thankfully these are momentary and very rare but I can see what lies ahead for us when she can start using her words!
  • She is such a busy body. She is all over the house and seems to really love cords. New forms of baby proofing are happening all the time around here!
  • She just had her first "good day" in the church nursery. We haven't really left her in there much, not because we don't love the church nursery staff, but because she usually would freak out. So generally she is only in there if I am going to be working in there or my mom is going to be working in there. Today she went in there all by herself and lasted the wholes service!! It was great! Usually I am just waiting for our number to come up on the screen that pages us to let us know that our child needs us but not today! They said she was the star of the nursery and did great and didn't cry or anything! Of course, right when she saw me she started crying! Poor little thing! But it was nice for Rowdy and I to both be able to sit all the way through a whole service together.
  • No walking in this house, but she is getting stronger every day and each day she manages to do something new and amazing!
  • Her love affair with cheerios continues. She would drop what she is doing at any given point in the day to eat cheerios, she is obsessed.
  • She is the LOVE of our lives and seriously, her laugh is just the best thing in the universe. She cracks us up every day!
I mean, can I squeeze that sweet little face!

LOVE her!

I just love the many "looks" Bella gives!! She is so expressive with her face and definitely has a little personality. We like to say she is "sassy"!

Sweet little face!

Doing her favorite thing right now "clap clap"

This is what nap time looks like with a super sick little baby. She was SO exhausted! Poor little thing, I had to go in to get her up from nap early because we had her doctor's appointment and she could not be woken. I turned the lights on in her room, turned the humidifier off, took pictures WITH flash, started slowly whispering Bella and increasing my volume, trying not to startle her, started rubbing her back and finally had to say her name at like full volume and she finally woke. I almost never get pictures of her sleeping because she usually wakes up the second I walk in the room so this was extra fun for me because I LOVE watching her while she sleeps, she is so peaceful!

This picture just cracks me up. She looks so tiny sitting on this big couch! This was on Thanksgiving before we went to feast on yummy turkey.

Our family on Bella's First Thanksgiving!

Helping Daddy hang ornaments on Bella's first Christmas tree.

Love this picture of Rowdy and Bella

Helping get the ornaments out of the boxes

Silly girl!

Love my sweet girl!

I can't get enough of that smile!

Holding on to the tree, she loved it!

Friday, December 3, 2010

GIVEAWAY!!!

As you may or may not know, I have started a baby shoe business. Gracie Goose Baby Shoes makes soft-soled baby shoes in some fun and stylish designs. Well, today Scottsdale Mom's Blog is doing a GIVEAWAY!! One reader will win a pair of Gracie Goose shoes of their choosing, and just in time for the holidays!! Giveaway ends December 10th so hop on over to Scottsdale Mom's Blog and enter, its as easy as a comment on the blog! And if you like Gracie Goose Baby Shoes and see a style that you want just mention Owens Family Blog in your checkout message and you can receive a discount of 10% on your order through December 31st, 2010!





Saturday, November 20, 2010

A Special Friendship

Bella and Maya were destined to be best friends. My good friend Jenny and I were pregnant at the same time and we were so excited that we were both having girls and that they would be so close in age. Maya is only 4 weeks older than Bella (though you probably wouldn't know it by looking at them!). I have written about it here before, these girls have a special friendship. I have had the priviledge of watching Maya a few times a week since she was about 10 weeks old so basically, life with Maya is all Bella has ever known. Maya is like a sister to Bella, and for good reason, we love the Spires family and they are like family to us! We have a lot of fun on our days together and I try to take pictures to remember these early days of the girls together, because, well, I know Jenny and I are going to try our hardest to make sure these girls have a lifelong friendship! I see lots of make believe, and song singing, and dressing up, and sleepovers in these girls future!

It all started here, Bella and Maya's first meeting. They were quite into each other yet (or even aware of each other!)

They love playing with this table together! Usually though, they are battling over the same side, today they were sharing and not competing for the same three inches of the toy!

Sometimes we make obstacle courses out of furniture to add to the fun!

Ladies who lunch. Just the first of many lunch dates for these two!

Maya is playing in the entertainer, so of course, Bella wants to crawl into it! She is always interested in what Maya is doing!

And once Maya was out Bella decided to climb into the underside of the entertainer, silly girl!

Sometimes we use old diaper boxes to put lots of toys into and then they have fun pulling everything out of it. And then we fill it back up and....repeat.

Sometimes Maya makes silly faces for the camera....

Ok a lot of times Maya makes silly faces for the camera :-) She is a ham!

And we are back to playing with the play table. Basically this is how our day goes, we just rotate around the living room from toy to toy! Mix in a couple naps, a few meals and wham! It's 5pm! Where does the day go!?

Notice they are each looking at the toy the other has. Why is it that kids are so interested in what other kids have? It's like they could love the toy they are playing with so much but they see the other playing with a toy and immediately, they must have it! A lot of days I will be constantly saying, "no no, Maya is playing with that, lets share with Maya and let her have her turn with the toy" or "no no, be gentle, we can't push each other out of the way to get a toy" or "no no, Bella was chewing on that book, lets let Bella finish chewing on the book and then you can have a turn" (Yep, **ew** is the correct response here, but they are babies and there is only so much I can do, they both chew on everything and well, yes, they frequently end up chewing on the same toy, it's life)

I will leave it with this picture. Sweet friendship. A moment where they were both trying to play with the same toy but it was so incredibly cute. Maya put her arm on Bella's back and left it there for like 1 full minute, which in baby land is like an eternity. Love these girls!!