Isn't She Lovely

I've said it a million times, and I know I will say it at least a million times more, she is so gorgeous! My sweet friend Jenny let me borrow her camera today and I got some cutey cute pictures of Bella. I could just take pictures all day long, which is basically what I did. So these will be Bella's "8 month old" pictures. There are a ton, sorry for picture overload but really, isn't that what this blog is all about?! :-)

Love her!

Blowing raspberries, she does this A LOT!

Sweet giggling girl

Chewing on those fingers, she has been up to this a lot as well

Such a big girl!

Yum!

More raspberries!

Love her pretty eyes

Hi there!

Playing with her moo cow, this is a great distraction during diaper changes!

Pretty girl

She's so funny!

On her third round of blowing raspberries in just this sitting!

Happy 8 Months Bella!

Bella is 8 months old now and just so fun and sweet! Her sense of humor is really starting to come out and she just has the funnest laugh in the world. She finds the oddest things hilarious....like picking out clothes from her drawer and when I had to change a not so lovely diaper. She was so proud of her stinky diaper and thought it was hilarious when I made a face and said "stinky stinky." She just brings us so much joy and we can't wait to have so many fun things coming up in the next few months, first Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years and then her birthday! We know they will all be here before we know it! Here are some fun things about Bella at 8 months old:

• She LOVES to eat. Particularly, she loves to feed herself. She has gotten so good at feeding herself puffs and other small things, she almost never misses her mouth. She will shovel more and more food into her mouth so excitedly that if you give her a handful of puffs they will be gone in 2 minutes flat. Food is the best distraction for her, she absolutely loves it. She has tried french fries a few times now and, while not the healthiest, she completely loves it and well, she can always use the extra calories :-)
• She seems to be getting back to normal with naps and goes down for naps pretty easily and sleeps for long stretches again, thank goodness! One new favorite games when she is in her crib is: throwing her pacifier out of her crib. Generally (I think) she pushes the pacifier through the spot between her bumper and matress. She may also have started tossing it over the side of her bumper. If we go to get her from nap and we can't find her paci we generally just look under the crib and there it is! She also loves to pull down on her bumper so she can see out. It is VERY entertaining to watch her monitor when she is in her crib. The funny party is, she can go from playing like this to being asleep within seconds, literally. We have looked at the monitor and seen her sleeping with her arm holding on to the top of her bumper, crazy girl.
• She is thisclose to crawling (I think). I always say this but she is scooting really well and starting to get more movement forward on her belly. I don't know if I would call it army crawling, it's different. She frequently plants her toes into the ground and gets her but up in the air and then moves forward little by little. It's not army crawling, but it's not up on all fours crawling, it's Bella crawling. Her best motivation for crawling is my cell phone, this girl loves her some technology. We will see what month 8 brings in terms of movement, I think it will be a lot.
• Her favorite phrase right now is "dadadadada." I don't know when we will officially call it her first word, I guess when we can really, without a doubt, tell she is directing it at Rowdy. She has said mama a lot, but not as much recently. She has said baba a lot as well but dada is by far her favorite. But sometimes we can't tell if she is saying it to her duck and our dog, both of which could sound like dada. Of course, Rowdy absolutely loves that she babbles dada all day long :-) She has also really started testing the boundaries of her voice lately, she screams, I mean screams at the top of her lungs. Sometimes when she is frustrated, but also when she is happy. This girl has some lungs on her (as all the customers in babies r us now know because she screamed and babbled all up and down the aisles there recently, not out of anger, out of joy and just flat out fun, she sounded nuts! She is a very vocal little girl right now.

Love that smile!

Wearing dad's hat, she wasn't super excited about it, ha! But she looked so cute that I had to post a picture of it. Plus, how cute are those monkey jammies, love them!

Playing with her train, we spend a lot of our time doing exactly this, playing on the floor with toys.

That's all for now, more pictures and updates to come soon, I promise!

Little Miss Independent

There seems to be a trend here. All of our recent posts have been about our fun weekend family meals out. This weekend we just grabbed a quick lunch but of course I had to take some pictures of Bella. I promise, I will have more posts soon where Bella isn't in a high chair. Bella is becoming quite the little independent lady. She has quickly become so good at feeding herself. I have to be careful because if I give her a lot of puffs she will eat them all and I am pretty sure she would never stop eating them if I didn't regulate them. We also finally found a sippy cup she likes and now she LOVES her sippy cup. She still has a hard time holding it for herself to drink, she can get it to her mouth but I think it's too heavy for her and she doesn't like to tilt her head back to get the liquid so its usually a lot of playing with her sippy cup or I feed her her sippy but it's quite the improvement from never using a sippy cup. The funny thing is, she prefers an open cup, she loves drinking from a big girl cup. Because, once again, she is little miss independent! She is so sassy and so cute! More updates to come but here are some cute pictures from last weekend's fun family meal!

Smiling so big, there was an elderly man standing near us that she was so fascinated with! She loved him! She was the entertainment of the restaurant!

I put this in just because the face she is making cracks me up!

Loving her meal of puffs

This is her very concentrated face as she goes to grab her puffs, when it comes to puffs, she is all business!

This is what her cute little cheeks look like when she is chewing. She gets little chipmunk cheeks!

Hi mom!

Taking a break from her puffs to chew on her moose!

I can never leave out a picture of that beautiful smile!

Making a move for the puffs....

Ok, puff in the right hand......

Grabbing the puff out of her right hand with her left hand

Success!

And back to chewing on her poor moose!

Silly girl!

So sweet, she just tilted her head to the side and rested it, it was so cute! She is getting such a little personality!

Apparently she was resting up before making a move for the camera. She is SO aware of the camera, she wanted to chew on it, because she loves to chew on expensive electronics, yikes!

Still wants the camera, and her face is hilarious to me!

A Little Saturday Brunch

Today we went to brunch together and just enjoyed a nice Saturday with no plans, it was so nice! Bella is so fun to take to restaurants now, she sits in her highchair and plays and loves to feed herself puffs and her crackers. Today she even made a dive for my food! She is just becoming such a big girl and she just looked so adorable I had to take about a million pictures!

Bella was helping Dad pick out something to eat

Ok seriously, I know she is mine, but come on....could she be any more gorgeous?!

I just want to squeeze her and those cute little cheeks!

Feeding Bella some food of her own, she was waiting so patiently to get a bite while we took this picture, poor thing!

The sun was shining bright and she looked like she was glowing!

Love that face!

I know I say it a lot, but she really is a total goofball!

She loves sitting at the table like a big girl

Cutie face!

Love my little girl

We have fun together!