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!

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!

Scottsdale Mom's Blog Gracie Goose Giveaway

Gracie Goose Baby Shoes on Etsy

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!!

Our First Big Trip with Bella

We recently went to Wisconsin to visit Rowdy's family and also took a quick overnight trip to Chicago to see the city. It was Bella's first flight and our first flight with a child! We seriously loved the trip and loved seeing everyone but, I have said it and I will say it again, traveling with a child is just SO different than traveling with just adults! Man, I was exhausted by the end of the trip! Bella did great, especially considering how unstructured her usually very structured schedule was. She did good on both flights and was very interested in everything that was happening on the plane all around her. The only part she didn't like and got a little grumpy with was landing, not her favorite. A little story from our flight home: we had made it the whole flight and Bella did great, we were so excited to be home. We landed and the pilot came on and said, the good news is we are here early but the bad news is they don't have a gate for us so we have to wait about 10 minutes. Not great news but not devastating either. So we got everything together so we'd be ready to go and then, cue the scary music, Bella made her **ahem** "poop face." Sorry folks, but, it's the truth! Well, I was holding her and there was definitely something going on. We pulled up to the gate, the seatbelt sign went off, I could smell Bella so I wrapped a blanket around her and hoped we could fly under the radar until we got off the plane. The whole flight Bella had been "talking" to a 2 year old boy in front of us. Well, we stood up to get our bags and the boy stood up and looked up at me and promptly announced to the whole plane that "Your baby has a stinky diaper!" Thank you little boy, thank you for making that known to the whole plane, if it wasn't obvious already to everyone around us with a functioning nose. It was a good laugh and we got off the plane and beelined it for the bathroom to change the little miss. Oh traveling with kids! It was so fun to see family and so great to have all of Rowdy's siblings in one state at the same time! Rowdy's Dad was inducted into the Milwaukee Baseball Hall of Fame so that was also very exciting. We stayed one night in Chicago and explored the city a little but we definitely need to go back so we can see more of it! Please excuse the excessive amount of pictures, we just had so many fun things to capture and remember!

This pretty much sums up our little girl on her first flight. She took about a 30 minute nap and wanted to play the rest of the time!

In Chicago on Michigan Ave. We loved walking around and we had such great weather while we were there. I loved snuggling Bella close and she definitely loved exploring the city this way!

Me and my sweet girl!

Bella and I on the Magnificent Mile

More Bella and I, near the Old Water Tower

Our family near the Old Water Tower in Chicago after a yummy lunch

Bella, Rowdy and Grandma Kay (Bella's Great Grandmother)

The Whole Gang! Rowdy's Dad and all 7 kids! A BIG family!

Rowdy and his brothers, Scott and Tuffy

Rowdy and I at one of the parties

This is what Bella and I did during church. We stayed in the service for a little while but Bella got a little squirmy and rambunctious so we headed out to the lobby. She was very content to play with the contents of her diaper bag and eat Cheerios.

How cute is she, seriously! Love her!

Goofy face!

Love her!

I can't help it, I have to post every picture, she is just too cute!

Giving Dad "the eye" Ha! Seriously, what is that little face she is making!

Being a little social butterfly

Silly girl, we had a lot of fun playing in the lobby!

Daddy and his princess

Uncle Tuffy, Rowdy and Bella

Oh how I love her face so much!

Just chilling on the couch in her jammies, eating cheerios and reading Harry Potter, my kind of girl!

Attempt #1 at getting a family picture....hmmm...a little distracted and Bella is apparently trying to jump out of our arms and get the camera

Ok, we will take it, a family picture at church in Wisconsin

Playtime with Peanut

Here a few pictures from our recent playtime. Yes, we still call her peanut, because well, she is a peanut! She is at such a fun age right now and we are just loving every minute! A few updates on Bella: She is clapping, still playing peekaboo, playing some version of "how big", has pulled up to stand twice but she is still not doing it a ton yet, she loves to stand and her crawling is improving day by day, she is addicted to cheerios (seriously, she sees a cheerio and that is all she can focus on, she becomes obsessed with getting the cheerio!). She is such a sweet and joyful little girl and we just love her!

I could not love her sweet face more!

She loved having so many toys to play with!

Dad kept putting letters on her head, she didn't mind (or even notice really) that they were stuck on there!

This was the first picture with all of her new toys, it took her a minute to fiure out why there were so many floating toys in her tub!

But once she figured out they were all for her she had so much fun!

Seriously, I could squeeze her! Such a cutie!

Reading a book with Daddy, she LOVED it!

I'm not sure why she doesn't have a shirt on but she loves her play table!

She loves standing up and playing with all the fun buttons and music

Silly girl! This is how I found her one day after nap. Granted, I played a roll, I am the one who apparently gave her three pacifiers for nap time somehow!

Getting Ready for Christmas!!

Ok, ok, I know we still have Thanksgiving but I can't help but get SO excited for Christmas. It is, and has always been, my favorite holiday and seeing all of the new Christmas items in stores is really getting me excited to celebrate! There is just so much adorable baby stuff, I don't know how I will pick out just a few things! Bella may end up with different Christmas pajamas for each night in December! One thing I am excited for this year is holiday cards! We have always wanted to do holiday cards but never really got around to it when it was just the two of us. Now that Bella is here, we can't wait to order our cards! We are taking special Christmas pictures this year and I know I will have so much fun designing a card. I have used Shutterfly in the past for ordering pictures and they are awesome! I even made a special book of all my pregnancy pictures, pictures from my baby shower and ultrasound pictures, basically everything from Bella's entire time in my belly and I love that sweet little book so much and Bella even loves it too! Their website is so easy to use and they are super fast at getting your order to you to enjoy! I have been trying to decide what holiday cards to order and so far I think my favorite is this one, I love how traditional it is! I also really like this one, I just think it is so cute and joyful, which is what its all about! And then there is this one, if I could make it say "Merry Christmas" it would for sure be the one! And another cute one is this one, again, very traditional and very "Christmas" which I love! It will be so hard to make my final decision. Once I pick out our pictures it will make it easier and then I can't wait to order our Christmas cards! They also have a great selection of other cards for any time of the year and, as I mentioned in my last post, I really need to figure out Bella's birthday and I have already seen a ton of cute birthday invitations! So many fun things to celebrate this time of year! Merry Christmas!! (Even if it is only the first week of November!)