Bella's 2nd Birthday Party

We had such a wonderful time celebrating Bella's 2nd year of life with our family and friends. It is such a joy to celebrate such a sweet and wonderful litte girl who brings so much happiness to everyone. We had mini cheeseburgers, mini hot dogs, mac and cheese and a dessert bar. We tried to keep it small, mostly just inviting Bella's little friends (and their families of course) and our family, but we have a big family, and so, no party is ever very "small." As I mentioned in my last post, Bella's Uncle Matt came into town for her party (such a good Uncle/Godfather!) and that was pretty much the highlight of Bella's life! Bella definitely can take her time to warm up to a party, being the center of attention tends to make her a bit nervous. But, she loved showing her friends her new toys (her play kitchen and her sandbox) and running around the yard so she definitely had fun at her party! And, as usual, our regular photographer, the wodnerful Jenny Spires, took pictures of Bella's party for us, because she is just seriously that awesome of a friend. And, as usual, she captures Bella so perfectly in her beautiful pictures! We just love our friends and family, it's so nice to celebrate with people we love so much and who take the time to come to a party for our little girl. I still just can't believe this was party #2, it's going so so so fast! There will only be more wonderful celebrations for our little girl....and we can't wait!

Bella's 2nd birthday cake, I was pretty happy with how it turned out!

Our fun little dessert bar, we had people fill a bag as a favor

All our food, it was delicious thanks to lots of help from my mom!

Playing with her kitchen, she just LOVES cooking all sorts of things for us in it!

Bella is probably telling Jenny what she is cooking in her microwave

Bella playing with her bestie Maya, cute little munchkins!

Silly girl!

Oh my goodness, can she get ANY CUTER??!

Cutie Pie

Singing Happy Birthday to Bella, as you can see, she is a little apprehensive about all this attention

Helping our girl blow out her candle

The girl loves her sweets! (No shock there, she is my child after all!)

Yum! I think she approves!

Chowing down!

Opening presents.... Jenny's mom drew this incredible picture of Bella, it is just so special to me, I love it so much!!

Quite possibly Bella's favorite girl, a little puppy that barks when you pet it and it came with a tiny bottle to feed it, she was immediately in love!!

Oh I just love her so much! God has blessed us beyond our wildest dreams with Bella!!

Happy birthday sweet girl!

Uncle Matt Comes to Town!

Uncle Matt came to town for the weekend for Bella's birthday party. It was pretty much the equivelant of us hiring a major celebrity because Bella was BEYOND excited! He was definitely the VIP guest.....it's so cute to see how much she LOVES her Uncle Matt! Literally, the second he walked in the door, she had so much excitement she was basically running in circles cheering because she didn't know what to do with her energy and excitement! Come back SOON Uncle Matt!!

She then played her favorite game. She likes the other person playing to sit on the floor and then she runs over and knocks that person over. She then climbs on top of that person and bounces on top of them in victory!

Rowdy had to get in on the fun of beating up Uncle Matt

She then proceeded to show him every one of her favorite toys and things to do. So, of course, she had a tea party with him. Adorable!


She wanted Dad to come to the tea party so she gave up her seat for him and she decided to entertain her guests by rocking on her rocking horse.

The next item on her list of "must show Uncle Matt my cool stuff" was her play house. She INSISTED that Matt play INSIDE the house. And, of course, Minnie Mouse came to the party also!

She then went and "baked" some "cake" for Matt.....notice who's face is peeking through the window

Her expression here pretty much sums it up. This is her (oh so adorable) huge smile that she gets when she is really excited about something and wow....was she excited Uncle Matt was playing in her house!

Here they are...."eating" her play cake

And here they area at her birthday party, she was just loving sitting by her favorite person at her party. She had the hugest smile any time he said or did anything. It's so fun to see how much she LOVES her Uncle Matt and, like I said above, come back soon Uncle Matt!!

Happy Birthday Bella! 2!

Somehow another year has passed, I have not aged at all, and yet Bella has turned 2! Amazing! She is such a sweet and wonderful little girl! She is a blessing to our lives, and brings us so much joy! She does not really throw many tantrums, which we are hoping we can just bypass altogether :-) She definitely asserts her will and shares her opinion in her own way and has her days, but she really is such a sweet and happy girl. She absolutely loves to play outside, I'm pretty sure she would eat sleep and play outside if we let her. She is very imaginative, she was given a play kitchen as a gift and loves to "cook" us food out there (usually rocks and leaves) and puts her sippys in the fridge or in the grill. She has a love/hate relationship with Oreo. Whenever she gets a snack and wants to walk around with it she usually asks me to put the "doggy outside?" She is scared (rightfullly so) that Oreo will try to steal her snacks. But, she absolutely loves to chase around and play with Oreo. We had her 2 year appointment, she did so great! She weighed in at 22lbs (3%) and 34in (67th%). Our tall skinny girl. Everything looked so great, we will have to have her umbilical hernia checked out but hopefully it will just go away :-) The doctor said she was doing and looking so great so it's always nice to hear that. She is talking a TON! It's so crazy to me the sentences that she can put together. I have lost track of how many words she has now, if I had to guess I would say somewhere in the 125-150 range. I think she seriously adds about 5-10 words a day right now. She can count to 3 and sometimes 6. She frequently leaves out 4 and her favorite number seems to be 5, sometimes she just jumps straight to 5! :-) She is a very picky eater, and we are constantly trying to figure out ways to incorporate healthy foods into her diet. It's not necessarily that she doesn't like a lot of the foods, she is just not always willing to try them, and one day she likes something, the nex day she doesn't.....we cook a lot of food around here right now. She has such a sweet and tender heart. She loves to take care of her babies or her stuffed animals and Mickey and Minnie dolls. She frequently shares her sippies with them and loves to rock her babies to sleep and sing them "Row Row" (Row Your Boat). She has learned how to be "sneaky".....seriously, how do tiny humans know how to do this instinctively??!! I will frequently find her walking quietly through the house holding something behind her back and when I ask her what she has she just diverts her eyes and says "no no mama, no no." and then keeps her back turned so I can't see what she has and tries to sneak away! She did this on her birthday when she found a wrapped birthday present and then proceeded to open it. She is just so silly and such a goofball, she definitely keeps us laughing. She had such a great 2nd birthday. We spent the morning of her birthday playing with friends at a jump place here tht is wall to wall trampolines, which she LOVES. She had a Mickey Mouse shaped pancake and lots of treats, lunch with friends and dinner out with us and her grandparents. Her birthday party is coming up this weekend so I will have more pictures to come from that.

Enjoying a birthday cookie, she LOVES Oreos

Waiting to catch a ball at the jump place

She was playing catch with Jenny and loving it!

Opening birthday presents without a shirt....just how she rolls in our house :-)

She loved her new puzzles

She got a sandbox from Grandma and Grandpa Julia and she LOVES it and wants to be playing in it all the time. We now frequently find about a bucket full of sand in her shoes every day.

Digging with the giant shovel

Just using the lid for the sandbox like a jungle gym

Checking out the menu at dinner

Insisted on sitting on Grandma and Grandpa's lap instead of in her chair

This might be my new favorite picture of her, I literally just can't get enough of her cuteness!

Living it up at dinner!

Eating her birthday sundae, she, of course, loved it! And then she proceeded to eat half of my cheesecake too. She literally ate more dessert than all of the adults at the table.

She wouldn't let anyone hold her after dinner except Grandma Valley (she got really mad at us when I wanted to hold her to take a quick picture, she went immediately back to Grandma)

Love my sweet family!

Happy 2nd Birthday Bella!!

Happy New Year!!

Well.....it's only been 2 months or so since I really updated the blog....whoops. We were just having so much fun and staying so busy! We had such a wonderful holiday season filled with so much fun. I still need to do a post about our wonderful pictures the Jenny Spires took of our family, and I swear, that is next, but I figured I would catch up on what we have been up to the last 2 months. We had a great time having holiday parties with family and friends, our small group had a wonderful and delicious Thanksgiving meal....yes, we ate 2 Thanksgiving meals....I think I can hear my waste line groaning as we speak. Bella has been one busy little bee and we are just so in love with her. She is talking up a storm, talk about explosion! She has about 90-100 words, I was really doing such a good job keeping a list and lost track around 80 or so. And she speaks in so many sentences I can't keep track, I think her longest at this point is maybe a 5 or 6 word sentence, crazy! I love our little chats, she has the funniest little stories to tell! And we had such a beautiful and blessed Christmas. It was so fun with Bella this year. She still obviously doesn't understand how Santa works but she could say Santa and loved reading her little Christmas stories and she absolutely LOVED our Christmas tree. The moment she came out of her room every morning we immediately had to turn the tree lights on. She was also great at opening presents this year all by herself but occassionally became overwhelmed by having to open so many presents, sometimes she just wanted to play with the present she had just opened, so gift opening took a while.... It was just so fun and made Christmas so magical this year and I know each year will only get more fun! We are looking forward to a fun filled 2012 with our sweet girl!

In November, Bella peed in her potty for the first time and since then has gone a few times in her potty but we haven't really been trying to potty train yet, we just have her sit on it right before bath time. Lately, she has seemed very interested in the potty (and definitely loves getting an M&M for going) and I actually think she may be ready, I just need to make myself be ready to take on the challenge. She's getting so big so fast!

Somteimes after bath she just runs around with her jammies like a cape on her, if I haven't mentioned it before, she is goofy!

We celebrated Bella's friend Oliver's 4th birthday at a trampoline place and she LOVED it. I really can't emphasize enough how much she LOVES trampolines. The Fays have introduced this love into her life because they have a trampoline at their house and then had Oliver's birthday at trampoline heaven.....wall to wall trampolines.

She had so much fun running around with her little bestie Maya!

Bella tried to bounce but hasn't really mastered "jumping" yet so most of the time she would just sprint full speed or do an intentional belly flop and wait for Jenny or I to come and bounce her!

Oliver's birthday was superhero themed and Christy's mom Shelagh (who is an incredible seamstress and made Bella's gorgeous curtains in her room) sewed everyone superhero capes. I actually thought Bella would rip it off the minute I put it on her but she loved it too. And Bella got to eat a yummy cake pop....seriously, I'm pretty sure this was Bella's idea of the perfect day.

Superhero Bella!

I walked into the playroom one day to find Bella had climbed into one of her buckets...again, goofy kid. She thought she was hilarious!

Then, she yelled "night night" and tucked her head in like this.........

And then she peeked out to see if I was still there and started cracking up at how hilarious she found herself!

Christmas morning, opening presents, I think this is the only picture I had where she was actually looking at the camera, she was very consumed with her new toys!

New Minnie Mouse ornament! Bella LOVES Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, I think Bella received every Minnie Mouse ornament made this year, and she loved them all!

Bella loved this tea set and has been having tea parties at her new table and chair set every single day. Her usual attendees are her two new baby dolls that she LOVES, sometimes Mickey and Minnie, sometimes doggie, sometimes lambie, and almost always Mommy or Daddy.

One of her new baby dolls. She is SO sweet with them and takes care of them all day. Bringing them blankies, fixing their pacis, feeding them bottles, sharing her snacks with them, it's seriously so adorable!

Our family at McDowell Mountain Church's production of "It's a Wonderful Life" (which was incredible!) (Bella's mouth is full of some cookie she found at the snack table....of course)

More pictures.....more Bella chewing on a cookie :-)

Tried to get one of just the 3 of us. I should have known better, between Bella's squirminess and what I'm sure was her need for another cookie we only got this one of her diving away :-)

Hope everyone had a blessed and wonderful holiday season!! Happy New Year!