What has Bella been up to lately?

What has our little troublemaker been up to lately? Just that....a lot of trouble making! She definitely keeps us on our toes around here! She is so fun and exploring everything right now! A few little fun tidbits about Bella that I either left out of her 1 year update or have just started to notice: Bella now has 4, count 'em, 4 teeth! That's right, got her first the day before her first birthday and now has 4 through! It's been a busy few weeks for this little one! I love her toothy little grin, so adorable! Bella will comb her hair on command. When I am changing her diaper I will get out her comb and hand it to her and say "comb your hair!" and she will sort of wave it over her head like she is trying to comb, so cute!. She points at everything, I'm not joking, everything! She "wants" everything, this new form of communication is very interesting but I can't wait until she uses more words, sometimes it's obvious what she wants (the ipod, phone, remote, etc.) but sometimes its hard to tell! She will also "stir" on command. She loves to sit in the kitchen while you are cooking and sit with her bowl and big wooden spoon and "stir stir stir", again, pretty adorable! Here are just a few snapshots as of late, she is generally a blur in every picture now and it is becoming impossible to get nice picture of her because she is go go go or she is reaching for the camera and whining because I won't give it to her! Loving our little 1 year old!

Here is a perfect example, she was looking all adorable and playing so sweet and I wanted to get some pictures. The second she sees the camera come out she is coming right at me to try to get the camera. Apparently she is trying to work the whole cute angle here to try to get the camera....it probably worked.

She crawled over and stood up at the chair to try to see what was in the diaper bag. I'm pretty sure she was 2 seconds from pulling it down on herself!

We have a caffeine addict (see pictures to come). She found some closed cans of coke and was demonstrating how she would drink them if they were open

On tihs particular occassion she was pointing at my coffee cup and wanted to see it so I let her hold it as it was pretty much empty. She immediately threw her head back, acting like it was her sippy, and got a massive sip of coffee! She seemed very confused at first but didn't cry or seem extremely grossed out.

And then she went back for more! Little caffeine addict just like her mom! Dont worry, this was her first and last taste of coffee for a long while....

She loves her stacking toy and is so good at it! She will gently (everything with her is gentle, she is such a girl) take each little piece off and then put them back on, her dexterity is impressive!

And her new favorite game, the ball pop Uncle Matt got her for her birthday!

And last but not least this incredibly beautiful picture of my girl :-) It perfectly showcases how goofy she is and also....her new teeth! You can see her top 2 here, she also has her 2 bottoms poking through!

1st Birthday Party!!

We had a party to celebrate Bella's 1st birthday at our house. It was a great day to see family and friends and celebrate a very special little girl and her first year of life! We had so much fun seeing everyone and celebrating and are so thankful for such a wonderful group to share our life with and help support our daughter as she grows. As the group was singing the "Happy Birthday" song all I could think was....."is this really me, is this really my daughter? How am I at my daughters 1st birthday??!" So crazy how time flies and life changes! It was the perfect way to celebrate our sweet Isabella Grace!

Some table decor

The dessert table, lots of yummy treats!

2 shades of pink homemade cupcakes, Bella is a girly girl and these cupcakes scream girly girl!

Bella and Grandpa Julia hanging out before the guests arrived

So excited and ready to party!

My sweet girl and I, love her SO much!

She is so silly!

All the "babies"....but they aren't babies anymore *tear*. Maya and Charlie are about 4 weeks older than Bella and Micah is 10 weeks younger, friends for life (and with 2 boys and 2 girls....who knows, maybe a husband and wife) :-)

Bella and her Godmother Erica. She may not always remember it right now but she loves her :-) But Bella gets shy and always tries to escape, which is what she is doing here. Someday soon she will be begging to play with Auntie Erica!

Getting ready for her cupcake. I made her little, scratch that, HUGE party hat to celebrate being 1, she wasn't exactly fond of it, nor did it really stay on, but we got the picture!

I had also bought her this little heart headband and she didn't mind wearing this so she still had her fabulous style! Here she is staring at all the people singing at her!

Staring at her cupcake, about 2.2 seconds after this she tried to touch the fire :-)

So close to the flame...she really was interested in it, we blew it out quickly so she could have at her cupcake

And true to her style she was the perfect little prim and proper lady. Slowly tasting little bits of the frosting and licking her fingertips.....

She realized she liked it and started to dig in a bit more....

And then she really went at it and ate pretty much the entire cupcake! Whoa sugar rush!

Ummmm.....any similarities between Bella and I here.....Ha! I laughed when I saw this picture and how we are both examining presents as we open them.....like Mother like Daughter

Helping open her presents, she really had fun seeing all the new things she could play with and some of the older kids were more than happy to help her open presents!

A last sweet image of Bella from her party. Such a sweet a beautiful girl with such a fun personality

February 3rd, 2011

We had a simple and fun day to celebrate Bella turning 1. Her actual birthday fell on a Thursday this year so we did a lot of our usual every day routine. When I went in to get her in the morning this is the sweet face I saw, have I metioned how much I love that little face?! Sometimes I really cannot believe that she is mine, my daughter, and that she is 1! What a blessing! We then went to visit Dad at work and went to lunch with Dad and Grandma Valley. We finished up the day playing, opening Bella's first ever birthday present from us, and giving her a test run on the happy birthday song and eating a cupcake. What a simple and perfect celebration of the day that changed our lives in the most wonderful way!

Seriously gorgeous little girl, I'm in love!

At the restaurant for lunch, Bella was very focused on eating her ice cream sundae they brought for her since they heard it was her birthday. She liked the ice cream but was very interested in the strawberries, she LOVES strawberries!

This was the real treat of the day for Bella! I always forget to buy pickles at the store for her and she seriously could gnaw on one all day long, she loves them and I think they make her incoming teeth feel better. She always loves waiters/waitresses and this waitress was no exception. And when the waitress brought Bella a pickle she won Bella's heart forever. This is Bella's ideal birthday feast!

Laughing and smiling at the waitress and the other table she was serving, she loved her and them (there was another birthday at the other table)!

Enjoying a birthday cupcake

Opening her first ever birthday present, a new doll!

A picture of the 3 of us, my how much has changed in one short year! Love our little family of 3!

Bella's First Birthday Montage

Bella's first year was incredible, here is a video that recaps some of that wonderful year.....

Happy 1st Birthday Isabella Grace!

Isabella Grace, our sweet and most precious gift from God, is 1! I don't know how we ended up here but somehow my teeny tiny infant became a 1 year old before my eyes! On February 3rd, 2010 Isabella Grace was born at 2:16pm weighing in at 5lbs 5.5oz. Even premie clothes were a little big on her! She was our tiny precious miracle and we were so happy to finally meet our daughter. When I pictured who my daughter would be, what she would look like, what her personality and disposition would be, she was that image. Obviously there were some things that were different, I never thought I'd have such a small baby but she was still so strong and healthy. Those first few weeks were exhausting and long and in the fog of sleep deprivation and a sometimes fussy baby I kept thinking....gosh I can't wait for the next --fill in the blank-- phase. But each phase went way to fast and now I want to go back to those perfect first few weeks, snuggling with my tiny girl who would only sleep with me/on me. All the quiet private moments we shared together that, when I was in the moment, I would try to remind myself to take a mental snapshot to hold onto for later. And I'm so thankful for those sweet memories that I preserved so that I can transport myself back to those moments and smile. And while I loved every minute of those early stages each new stage was just more and more fun and I can honestly say she is my little partner in crime. She is the best shopping buddy in the world, and since I might enjoy shopping just a little she is my perfect little best friend. We won't have her doctor's appointment until next week but we know that she has tripled her birth weight and, while still relatively small compared to other babies, she is HUGE to us! She is so sweet and funny, has an incredible sense of humor already and the best smile in the world! We will have more posts soon with lots of fun pictures from Bella's 1st birthday party but for now, I will share some trivia about Bella at age 1 and some fun pictures from recent activities.

• Bella is crawling still, no walking. She still prefers the army crawl even though she has proved she can do the "all fours" crawl, I think it's just she has perfected the army crawl now and that is her speed crawl.


• She is always wanting to stand now and is cruising a little which is new for her since she is still a big scaredy cat. It's another one of those things, she is capable, but she gets scared and looks up at you with her big eyes and holds her hand out for help. It's so cute!
  
• She is a good little eater and is pretty adventurous with flavors and spices. She generally likes stuff with more flavor and spice.


• She doesn't have a lot of words yet. She still loves to babble "dada" in different tones and with different levels of excitement and sometimes it sounds like she is saying other things, like "doggie" but I just can't confirm one way or another. She will also occassionally say mama, but its not very often. She definitely knows who mama and dada are though and will babble them with intention. She also says "uh oh" and thinks its funny to drop things and then look at me and say it, oh silly girl. She knows the word doggie also and if I ask her "where is doggie?" she will either find the dog in the room or will point to it in her book.


• She has just begun productively teething and it has been painful for her, but she has been a trooper. She definitely gnaws on anything and everything and on the day before her first birthday (Feb. 2) her first tooth popped through! It is her top center left tooth, you can feel it and its very visible. You can also see the top center right tooth just sitting there waiting to pop through. Then as the day went on, I felt a teeny tiny little bit of tooth had popped through on the bottom. It feels like the left but I haven't been able to see, so only time will tell. I can't wait to see what she will look like with teeth but I will definitely miss her toothless grin.


• She has begun switching over to whole milk and really likes it!


• She is funny and she knows it. She does a hilarious keep away game now when we ask for things. It's not mean, she just does it because she knows we will laugh and she gets a kick out of it. She also drinks her bath water, who knows why this started but it definitely makes all of us laugh!


• Her favorite foods are: yogurt, cheese, strawberries, goldfish, graham crackers, guacamole and cheerios. She also likes all sorts of different purees but she prefers to feed herself and have big girl food.


• She still has her killer eyelashes and daddy is in for trouble when this girl hits her teen years! So beautiful!
  

Isabella Grace is the joy of our lives, our perfect daughter, God's most gracious and wonderful gift we could have ever hoped to receive! Here are some pictures form when she was brand new and some from the last couple weeks.

February 3rd, 2010 ~ 5lbs 5.5oz of perfection!

A joy filled family of 3!

So peaceful and beautiful

Cozy on mom's chest, oh if I could only go back to this moment....

Snuggling my perfect daughter, love at first sight!

Our big girl eating goldfish in her jammies, some big time teething going on, hence the majorly rosy cheeks!

Her favorite thing to do lately, stand up in her crib and toss out her pacifier. I think this phase may be over....hopefully. I don't mind the standing as long as she sits herself back down and doesn't throw her pacis out and then get mad! :-)

This is how I am greeted almost every time I go in to get her up from nap.....all smiles!

We can pretend like this is her waving hi but in reality.....she wants the camera :-)

My big 1 year old Bella, so beautiful and so fun, such a blessing!

Stay tuned for more pictures from her 1st Birthday Bash!