Christmas Update

Finally some updates. Well her second christmas was alot more fun than her first, naturally. Although by the 4th gift she was already tired of opening presents. We do have lots of pictures and videos and I'll get to those as soon as possible.
For now how about some verbal updates on her developments.
We've stopped counting teeth as she is growing them in faster than we can count and sticking our fingers in her mouth is not beneficial to our digit safety any longer. Suffice it to say she has enough now. She is feeding herself and beginning to use a spoon to feed herself. She is still a VERY picky eater. So we struggle with that daily. She is an expert walker and runner now. She LOVES her books and has pretty much an unending vocabulary. She mimics about everything you say and is beginning with multiple word sentences now. She climbs on and off furniture without falling now and walking upstairs most of the time holding onto the railing. She is more little girl than she is toddler or baby these days. We are amazed at how she has changed in a year. She looks nothing like that chubby little thing we had last Christmas. Time does fly.
I'll get those Christmas pictures and videos up soon.

And A Few Cute Pics

As the title implies...

Walking Videos

Here are the much awaited walking (and talking)videos of Belly. Enjoy.

She's A Walkin!!!!

I am about a week or so late with this Blog and I apologize. But when you know now that she is finally walking those mommies out there will understand. Boy dies she keep us a hoppin!!!! All she wants to do now is walk everywhere and mostly outside. She LOVES being outdoors. So after a mad rush of cleaning indoors she is outside until nap time. She is so much happier and her personality is changing daily now. She is so much the toddler/little girl now and no real baby left in her anymore. We're climbing things, and sliding and swinging and learning how to run and everything a little girl would do. She isn't a baby any longer, and I admit (and I know mommy feels the same) we really miss that baby sometimes. Although not the late night stuff. She's totally on solid foods and transitioning nicely to a sippy cup and just really growing up so fast now. Every day brings so many changes. We do have some videos of her first steps and will take some new ones of her actually walking now.
Our vocabulary skills have also grown since the walking. Our list of words...
flower
kitty
puppy
night night
bye bye
baba (bottle)
mama
dada
cracker
nice
car
Kyle (which is her Uncle Kyle)
and some non-descript sets of sounds that always mean outside yet isn't the word outside. Don't know where that came from?
So every day is something new with her as she discovers all the things she can do now. She is so giggly and funny, always trying to get you're attention now with her antics. Typical silly little girl.
So hopefully tomorrow we'll have at least her first steps video up and some real walking ones in the coming days.

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

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.