Thursday, July 24, 2008

She's Really Talking

I can't believe I forgot to even mention her vocabulary skills these days. We suspect that's why she isn't making serious progress in walking. We're spending all out brain power on talking. To date she says... bye bye (with waving) night night, mama, puppy, cracker, and Kristen swears she can here her trying to say Grandma. We have more words on the brink because we chatter away constantly like a little monkey. Just a matter of time before she puts them together with an object. A year ago she wasn't even smiling yet and now look at her. So many changes they make in such short time. Kristen took a couple of adorable pictures recently and as soon as she downloads them off the camera I'll put them up. You'll just love them. Till then

Monday, July 21, 2008

The First Year Birthday Party and Naming Ceremony

Normally a naming ceremony is done the first months after birthday. But it never seemed like we could coordinate everyone's schedule for last summer or even early fall so we opted for her first birthday. So Belly has a Celtic Naming Ceremony which essentially was many blessings said to her for a happy and healthy life. It was a great party. Everyone had a wonderful time. Belly was excellently behaved (being it took place after her nap) and we have tons of pictures and videos. I'm thinking of posting the pictures on another site with a link to it instead of putting everything on here. If that's accomplished the link will be in this post.
Okay here is the link for the entire days events at Photo Bucket. Enjoy. There are ALOT of photos so have some sit down time before you view them all.
Birthday Party Photos

So Much Going On

I have so much catching up to do on here and I will try as best I can to remember everything that has been going on in Belly's life these last few months. Aside from her first birthday party, which will be in a subsequent post she has made so many accomplishments.
First off, she is finally crawling normally. For the time being she sees this as the best mode of transportation and is not walking on her own yet. Although we are getting close and braver. She takes a step or two sometimes from one object to the next.
Second, we have 9 teeth now and are almost transitioned all the way over the adult food. She got very sick and tired of baby food and was refusing to eat much of anything. She's excellent at managing the 9 teeth she does have so we figured it's time.
Next, she is being transitioned off a bottle and onto at least a sippy cup although she does really well on a regular cup (with our help of course)
She is getting really tall and she's into 18-24 months clothing now. We finally managed to get her a decent array of summer clothes. Only took half the summer :) Now to get into fall and winter clothes. Seems like summer is so short around here.
We still find it so hard to believe a whole year has gone by since her arrival.
Let me see what else has been going on. OH yeah how could I forget that one afternoon not to long ago. I imagine every mother has gone through this at least once. Well one day she was up for her nap. She had on cloth diapers and her diaper cover and no bottoms on over the diapers and cover. We don't usually do that as she has taken to ripping her diaper and cover off from time to time. Well this particular afternoon she did just that only she had poopied, of course. Well after 3 hours she was so quiet we began to get a little worried. She hadn't taken 3 hour naps since she was about 6 months old. So I went to peak in to see if she was okay and was met with a most foul smell. You guessed it. She had been finger painting with the only available material. I called mom and dad up, took her into the bathroom for an early bath and left THEM to clean up the nursery :) I figured I'd already done this once before with her uncle so it was their turn. They thought it was funnier than I did when it happened to me. But then there were 3 people to clean up the mess instead of one exhausted mother.
Another fun story. About 7 weeks ago we attended another dog show with Belly in tow of course. Our first one since she was about 4 months old. This time she definitely knew it wasn't home and didn't sleep well at all exhausting all of us. But the fun part was she had her first introduction to a pool. IT was indoors so it was bath water warm. Well she took to it like a fish in water. I really wish I had the camera handy at the time. It was the funniest thing in the world. She splashed and tried to swim and swallowed alot of water. But none the worse for wear. She just had such a great time.
I think that's about all our accomplishments as far as developmentally. Now in the next post will be her birthday part with LOTS of pictures.