15 Months

Life with a 15 month old is always entertaining. She is quite the little comedian these days. Some nights we find ourselves without even turning on the TV and just watching her in action.

She has several words:
"hiiiiii"
"heeeey"
"hiii-deee"
"et" = eat
"wa sis?" = "what's this"
"mama"
"dada"

and she also has a language all her own, that only she can understand, which is what we hear most often.

She loves to read and the book is almost always upside down. She has recently started pointing to the words as she reads (I do this when I read to her.....once a kindergarten teacher, always a kindergarten teacher). She is quite cute when she is "reading" as she "reads" aloud. I love it!

She LOVES to walk around with her blanket on her head. We get a good laugh out of this because it usually ends up with her bouncing off of a piece of furniture. She walks very slowly and carefully but she still usually ends up in a wreck. She thinks it is just as funny as we do.

She loves her puppy, Gabby. She really loves to feed Gabby her food. They are two peas in a pod and it is alot of fun to watch them together.

She loves to scream. Mama does not love this so much. It is a high pitched, at the top of her lungs, girlie scream. YIKES!! She especially likes to do this in public. Bigger YIKES!! It's not an "I'm mad" type of scream, it's a "let's see how loud I can get so everyone will know I am here" kinda scream. I should reiterate this, she LOVES to scream.

She loves to go. She is always on the move. I'm pretty sure she never stops. She is in constant motion. She has been walking "full time" since she was 13 1/2 months old. She is also a climber and loves the stairs. She can climb all the way to the top of our stairs and then scoot on her bottom all the way down. She is a mover and a shaker.

She loves chicken. Since she is allergic to milk and soy, she eats a lot of chicken. Thank goodness she loves it. I'm waiting for her to get tired of it. She also enjoys peas, corn, mandarin oranges, cheerios, applesauce and that's about it.....did I mention she is also PICKY. Yep, she's my child. It is hard to feed her a variety of things anyway with this whole milk thing. She has me and Terry and thank for that. We were both allergic as well.

She loves for Daddy to play with her. He can get her in a giggle fit like nobody else. I love that too!!

She loves to make us laugh. It cracks me up when she realizes she has done something to make us laugh and then she deliberately continues in a quest to get more laughs out of us.

Mama loves when:

she giggles
she belly laughs
she has crazy hair in the mornings
she snuggles when she is sleepy
she grunt/growls when she is thirsty
she grins from ear to ear
she gives wet, slobbery kisses
she pats me when I'm holding her
she plays with her toys and keeps herself busy - I love to watch her!
she wallers all over me
she walks around with a purpose
she sits to scoot down the 1 inch drop off from the garage to the driveway - makes me laugh!
she wants me to pick her up - miss independent!
she reads to herself
she brings me a book to read to her
she gets excited to see me in the afternoons

Mama loves this baby girl so very much!! Sometimes I am just overcome with emotion just holding or looking at her. She is such a precious little angel.

We went for her 15 month check up and here are her stats:
Height - 29.5 inches - 18% she hasn't grown since her 12 month
Weight - 18.4 lbs - 1% yep she has lost weight, more on that later
Head - 19 1/4 - 99% that thing just keeps growing and growing

SOO she has lost some weight. 14 ozs in 2 weeks to be exact. She had a cold and I took her to the doctor 2 weeks before her 15 month. She weighed 19.2 at that time. I of course freaked out a little when I read the scale at the last appointment. Doctor thinks it's because she isn't getting enough calories from her Rice milk (what we put her own when the Soy started going straight through her). Doctor told us to put her back on formula, nutramigen. We did. She hates it. We have a weigh in on the 10th and I'm afraid she won't have gained anything. Mom tried putting the formula in pancakes but she still seems to know it's there. We put a tiny spoonful of it in her Rice milk and she knew it was there. There is no tricking her. I'm not real sure what they will suggest next time. She doesn't seem to be acting any different or any less active. I'm not real sure what is going on but I hope we get it figured out.

Also, I'm just going to throw this out there. How in the world do you get your child to sleep in their own bed??? This, after I SWORE I would NEVER let MY children sleep in my bed. How did this happen? I suppose it happened when we decided we needed sleep rather than fighting her all night, getting up and down. We put her in her bed every night but she tends to only stay for a few hours and ends up in our bed (yes, it's because we put her there). We tried the whole "let her cry it out" thing. She pooped. Yes, that's right, she POOPED. What do you do when that happens? Well, I actually left her there because I knew she would wake up pretty soon. She did fall asleep.....SITTING STRAIGHT UP!! Of course she woke up when I went in to check on her and I couldn't take it anymore....plus, she had pooped. Then for the next month or so she screamed bloody murder anytime we went into her room and she even thought we were going towards her crib. Well I got in there with her one day to play. Yes, you read that right....I got into her crib to play. She is now not having a conniption fit when we go near it. In fact Daddy built her fort in there and they played the other day (no, daddy did not get in....I know you were wondering). We just don't know what to do to KEEP her ASLEEP and IN the crib. I'm not sure this child will ever sleep through the night. She just isn't a sleeper. Not really sure how that happened to MY child, sleeping is my favorite. Anyway, I know there are some books out there to help with this situation but I'm not sure what the best ones are. If anybody has a suggestion let me know.

Alright, enough of that. Onto the pictures. I took her out and had a little photo shoot with her. She actually smiled for me.....ok, maybe it was daddy :) But, she is my very favorite subject!!

"there she is"

"yes, i know i'm pretty cute"

"hiiiiii"

"i told you, i know i'm cute"

"mama, are you almost finished?"

"eeeeeeeeeee"

"i'm a big girl"

"see ya next time"

I know, I know....I've been a bad blogger.

I have been horrible about blogging lately. I'm not sure why. After Puerto Rico I had 4 weeks left of summer and I just kinda quit blogging, and now I am back at work so things are pretty busy! I promise I will try and get back on top of things.

This particular post is now a month over due. Dad had a birthday and we celebrated at Outriggers again this year. It is in Seabrook and a great place to sit and watch the boats. We had a great time! The birthday boy and the Bell

Mom, me and the Bell

Me, Bella and Courtney (who started Kindergarten this year )

Dad and Ryan

Dad and the babies

Bella clapping about something

Me and Bell

Daddy and Bella watching the boats

The boys and Bella

The girls

Bella and her Uncle Tim. She likes him alot.

Sorry it took me so long to get this posted Dad!! I will do better!
Happy Birthday and We love you!

Takin' a walk...

Bella has been a full time walkin' girl now for a little over a month. When we were at the river in the RV she started taking steps in between the furniture without any coaxing from us. When we got home she continued to get braver and braver. By the time we left for PR she was walking all over the place but still couldn't stand up from the floor without pulling up on something. Shortly after we got home she got that part down and has been unstoppable since. She is little miss independent in a BIG way.

A couple of weeks ago we went with my parents up to The Woodlands to the Town Center and my dad took these pictures of us walking down the street. Since she is a big walkin' girl, she no longer likes her stroller........

Shawn and Donna get Married!

The day after we got back from PR some very good friends of ours got married. (We have been to ALOT of weddings lately.) Terry and Shawn have played soccer together since we got married so we have know him for quite a few years. We have known Donna for quite a few years now as well. We were so excited that they finally got married. Terry was an usher and he did a mighty fine job!! The wedding was at Butler's Courtyard which happens to be 2 blocks from our house. Nice and convenient!!

Bella played in the grass during the wedding. That's what you are suppose to do, right?

Bella and I with the beautiful bride, Donna.

Bella and her very tall friend, Ross. Ross use to be scared to hold her. Not so much any more. She loved him!!

My sweet little family!

No Words....just laughter

Day 4. Old San Juan

Our last day we checked out of the resort and headed to Old San Juan. I think OSJ is one of the neatest places I have ever been. We kept hearing about how pretty it was so we decided that we had to check it out before we headed to the airport. Our flight didn't leave until 4 so we had plenty of time to do some exploring. That is one thing that I really loved about this trip, the amount of exploring we did. OSJ was super clean and had the most beautiful buildings. I wish that we had been able to spend more time there because there was alot more that I wanted to see but we didn't have the time. We just walked up and down the streets and went in and out of the shops. There were all kinds of shops down there from souvenir shops to Radio Shack and even a Starbucks. They obviously take a lot of pride in this area because several buildings were being painted as we walked past. They do a lot to keep everything looking neat and clean.



We asked a lady in one of the shops where we should eat lunch and she told us to go to a local place. We went in and found a seat. Luckily the menu was in English and Spanish. I ordered chicken strips and french fries thinking I couldn't go wrong with that. We were after all getting on an airplane shortly and I did not want an upset stomach. The chicken strips were not at all what we eat. They were AWESOME!! It was fajita meat that had been lightly battered and fried with onions served on top. I'm not a fan of onions but they gave a great flavor and I easily moved them to the side. Terry got another fabulous sandwich.
This was right after we ate lunch. The group of guys in this picture were US Coast Guard. There was a very strong police and military presence down there. I loved this view because there we were in a downtown area and you could see the ocean and even further in the distance, mountains. Beautiful!!




You can see how narrow the streets were. When we were driving around through here it was slightly stressful so I was glad when we found a place to park and got out.



This is the last picture we took while in Puerto Rico. We left from here and headed to the airport. It was such a great and well needed vacation. We had such a great time and I really do hope that we will someday get to go back.

Day 3. Water park

Our third day in PR was pretty relaxing. We hung out at the water park at the resort. There 3 different slides, a lazy river, and several pools. Terry was all about the slides. I only rode on one slide but Terry kept going back for more.

I stood here and waited for him to come down this slide in the heat for a good 15-20 min. When it was his turn I couldn't get the camera to work fast enough and completely missed him sliding. Not good.
This is where I spent the majority of my time at the water park. They had a zero entry pool that I thought was fabulous because I could keep cool in the sun. Terry was off playing and I was relaxing. It was really hot that day so the water felt really good.

After the water park we were walking back and we took a detour to sit on the grass out by the water. We found a nice shade spot under a palm tree and just sat and watched the water for a while.
This is the ferry that took us back and forth between the resort and the beach at Palomino Island.

View of the resort from the bottom up to the top.
This is volcanic rock that lined the ocean.

We stopped for a snack on the way back up. The wind was blowing through here and I think I could have stayed right there until bedtime but we decided to go get cleaned up and have a nice Italian dinner instead.

On our way to dinner.

Day 4 up next - Old San Juan