Bella is eleven months old today! Just a little while longer and she’ll be a year old. I can’t believe how quickly time has passed.

Bella has SEVEN teeth right now. She just started teething 3 months ago and has been producing new pearly whites non-stop since then. So, she’s been a little grumpy for a while.

She’s very efficient at walking. She usually walks holding our hands. She’s taken several steps by herself, when she’s not thinking about it. But she’s very very cautious and won’t make the transition until she’s completely confident that its going to be perfect. One of her favorite activities is holding on to the back railing of the stroller and pushing it around. She will walk around the house for an hour just pushing the stroller.

Bella loves to figure things out. She likes watching what you do and then trying it herself.  A couple days ago  she wanted to push the stroller around, and we usually keep the wheels locked. So, realizing that the stroller is going nowhere, she reached over with her foot and did what she always sees me do, trying to unlock the wheel with her foot. Today, she went and found the stroller and it was in a corner behind the couch. So, she grabs the stroller and drags it backwards out of the corner until she clears the couch, turns it out towards the room and starts pushing!

This is the first time she’s gone to sleep outside someones arms.

Our little daughter has grown up so much. She went from a 6 pound skinny newborn to an 18 pound pudgy opinionated baby (she is 8 and a half months old now.) She mainly prefers to stand, and is about a head above my knees now (knee high to a grasshoppah!) She has super long legs and has been wearing 9-12 month pants for almost two months now. She hasn’t started solid foods yet; she has only breast milk and is gaining weight well (just look at those pudgy legs!)  

Bella pretty much has her own schedule. We try not to force anything. If she wants to sleep in, we let her. If she wants to nurse, I nurse her. She does keep a fairly consistent schedule though.  She usually goes to bed around 10pm and sleeps most of the night, waking at around 6 to nurse and goes back to sleep until around 8:30. I am a little hazy on how often she wakes up because she sleeps next to me and I hardly wake up to feed her. :)  

There are two ways that Bella likes falling asleep. One, nursing. Two, something I like to call The Daddy Dance. Adrian will hold her in his arms and walk-bounce-lunge around the house a few times. I’ve tried to duplicate it, but The Momma Dance isn’t quite as successful. :) Which is okay with me, because I can nurse her to sleep. 

She is so sweet when she sleeps. Even then she has strict preferences. She prefers to sleep with her arms stretched way out, and if she touches anything, she gets fidgity until that something is moved (usually me.) And when she isn’t all stretched out, she wants to sleep with her face upturned into my pillow. Not enough to where her nose is covered. Just her eyes. And she arches her back in a way that she is still mostly laying flat on her back, with just her face turned up. It is so cute. 

 About a week ago, Bella got her first tooth. AND started crawling at the same time. She is very deliberate with her crawling. She picks up her hands and places them very carefully and matter-of-factly (factly? is that even a word?) When she is on all fours, she likes to look under her belly with the top her head rested on the ground to look back at her feet. She loves standing and walking while you hold her hands. I think if she could, she’d prefer to get around by hopping everywhere. When you stand her up, she immediately starts hopping. If you walk with her, she’ll hop the whole way. She is so awesome.  

Bella LOVES outside. She loves going on walks. Any time she is upset, bored, or sad, we can take her outside and it calms her immediately. She loves looking at the flowers, the squirrels, trees, and grass. About a week ago, she got to experience playing in the grass. She loved running her hands over the grass and pulling up little fistfuls of grass (which promptly went into her mouth.) 

 Everything about her is so cute and amazing to me. The way she chews on her bottom lip, how she sings herself to sleep during The Daddy Dance, when she pulls off her sock and eats it before I can get the other one on, her adorable little laugh,  the way she buries her face in my shoulder and starts singing (ah bah bu bah bu baaaah!) and how she shakes her head as she falls asleep sometimes. I love her so much. Even as she erased half of this post that I had to retype. I am so blessed to be the mommy to such an awesome, amazing, sweet, smart, pretty little girl.

Bella has been growing so fast lately. Every time I look at her, she’s pudgier, longer and she smiles even more. Really, she’s turned a personality corner in the past couple weeks where she understand she doesn’t need to fuss about things. She smiles all the time, laughs when she’s entertained and she’s much more patient with diaper changes and feeding preparations. She’s got so much personality, with preferences about everything. Its so beautiful to watch her grow.

The other week, Bella got her first snow! A rare thing here in Houston. Unfortunately, it also brought her first cold with it. She started out with a little nasal congestion that turned into coughing and wheezing. Sarah and I got a little concerned by about the 3rd day and decided to take her to the doctor. We just wanted to rule out any standout medical issue and make sure it was just a cold.

We went to see Dr. Seymour Goldberg, as we heard he was open to natural parenting ideas. Overall, the visit was better than I had expected. Dr. Goldberg was respectful of our desires and did the examination right in my lap. The whole experience was so much better being able to hold my daughter when she’s upset and not worry that she feels scared in someone elses arms.

Anyway, Dr. Goldberg diagnosed her with Respiratory Syncytial Virus, which in most cases, usually lasts 7-8 days and the symptoms are nothing different than a cold. He perscribed some antibiotics and a low-dose sterorioid for her lungs. Knowing that antibiotics do nothing for viruses and seeing absolutely no need for steroroids, we were happy to leave knowing what the deal was and that we were already doing what we needed to do. So, we continued with the humidifier in our room, lots of sleep, Eucalyptus oil on a difuser and the occasional breastmilk up the nose (really, it works great!).

Sure enough, Bella was healthy and normal at the end of the 8 day cycle, without drugs and medical intervention. We were so relieved to not see our baby not coughing anymore. Since then, Bella has been on this massive development streak. She’s trying everything!

Bella almost has the ability to roll over from her stomach to her back. She gets her arm straight, and rocks her leg back to get that flip-over momentum going. She just has a little bit more to go. But otherwise, she’s been standing up, supporting her weight for up to 5-6 minutes at a time. When she’s on her tummy, she gets to the full head-at-ninety-degrees pose… without her hands. She does it all back and stomach muscles with her hands out to her sides. I’m not even sure I can do that for as long as she does.

For a couple of weeks, Bella has done the gather-in thing when reaching for objects. You know, where babies try and hug objects to pull it to their mouths. But in the past couple of days, she’s progressed to proper grasping. She loves vitamin bottles. We sit her in her high chair and she just reaches with both hands and grabs the bottle and puts it straight in her mouth. She’s a pro at it already. We’ve moved it mid-reach and she’ll adjust her course and follow the toy.

Bella has also started talking a whole lot. She does low coos, extended bubble-producing goos and loud, long squeal conversations. They’re not just outbursts, they’re long sentences and stories. She delivers these emphatic speeches that range from excited to concerned to story-telling. Seriously, the girl has quite a repertoire. And you can definitely tell she’s talking to you, conveying her stories to you. She’s doing so great.

My family gave me a Burley Bee bike trailer for my birthday so I can take Bella out on bike rides with me. So, it took a few days of rain and such, but Sarah and I finally got it hooked to my bike and Bella securely strapped in and we took off! She had the perfect look of snobbiness as I pulled her along in her chariot. We took her around the block twice before it started raining. I cannot wait to take her out again though. She’s going to spend a lot of time in that trailer.

 So, as you can tell. I love my daughter. She’s so incredibly awesome. I really don’t know what I did before her.

Photo 1:

Photo 2 (thank you, Tia Amanda for taking this great picture!):

Photo 3 (thank you, Tia Amanda for also taking this great picture!):

Cast your vote for your favorite Bella smile!

Bella at 3 months…