22 months old

This time last year I had Bella's first birthday party planned out. Fast forward to this year....her birthday is sneaking up on me. I have the date of her party and general ideas of what I want. But nothing like last year. That's ok though. I can not believe it is coming up in a few weeks!

Here's what we've been up to this past month:
1. She still loves to play in the bathtub. And I think it's time to put her in swimming lessons because she likes to get on her tummy and slide all over the tub. This is usually accompanied by her adorable "whoooooaaaaa". Then she'll look at us and say "whooooaaaa" again.

2. She is counting but she can't quite get "one". She usually starts with two and then every number after that has a high pitch voice inflection at the end of the word. "Twwoooeee, ThreeeEEE, FourrRRRE..."

3. One of her favorite things is to go get the mail with us. She just likes to be outside. But it's so stinkin' hot in Texas that we can't get out and play because it's 100 at 6pm. Yes, that's right non-Central-Texans. 100 degrees at 6 or 7 or 8 pm. And this is followed by a full day of hair-destroying-humidity and sweat-inducing-sun... Too hot for us! (Can you tell i'm a cool weather mountain type of gal?) Anyways, back to the point. She will walk towards the door but not go outside until she has a hold of my hand. Very good Bella! The whole point of this paragraph is that she's doing great at understanding she has to hold our hands if she goes anywhere outside of the house. This feels like a big deal to us because we had to work a while on this lesson!

4. We were watching an interview Oprah did with Justin Beiber (nothing else was on). Just to clarify we are not Beiber fans nor do we watch Oprah every day. Bella was actually just inconsolable for some reason and we were hoping we could distract her. I know - parents of the year, right? Beiber actually sang one of his new songs and Bella started dancing. So I proceeded to teach her to say "daddy-fever" since we're working on the no-dating-until-you're-28.4-policy. She thinks it's funny.

5. She is wanting to put on her own clothes. She can get to her drawer with her pants and skirts. This past week we've found her sitting on her window ledge putting on a skirt over her pants over another set of pants...you get the picture.

6. Discipline is gradually being needed more often! I (Emily) just have a hard time enforcing it sometimes because she's so funny. Tonight I found her on top of our desk. I asked her to get down and she started jabbering really, really fast - almost like a teenage girl would when she's talking to her best friend over the phone. Bella even had the hand motions. What did this mother of the year do? I busted up laughing. What did Bella do? Busted up laughing too. So, that discipline episode was an epic fail. But we both had a great laugh!
Bella Grace, we sure do love you. Thanks for keeping us on our toes and always smiling.
Love you,
Mommy and Daddy


This was my first attempt at the giraffe pictures. Notice a little someone running in the left side of the picture? See that little tuft of hair running away...
She just wanted her daddy!