Too cool for school

I ran across this picture while I was cleaning off the memory stick today, and I had to post it. This was taken a few weeks ago. Bella normally doesn't like for things to be on her face, but she was in a rare mood on this day and didn't mind the shades.

This picture was taken this morning. She reminded us of Sherk in this picture, but a much cuter version.

This past weekend has been the most fun I've had with Bella so far. We played hide and seek upstairs and crawled around chasing each other. She still squeals when she sees me, like after I get home from work. That will never get old.

The dog days of summer...

have brought about lots of changes for Bella. This month she has started crawling, pulling up, and now her teeth have come in. The bottom two teeth poked through this week. If you look closely, you can see where the two teeth are struggling to break free. Good-bye gummy smiles, hello smiles with teeth!

Yeah, look at me!

Tada! Bella is crawling, and I have finally posted a picture of it. She started crawling just before she turned 7 mos. on August 7th, and ever since then she has been getting faster and faster. She'll try to crawl after us as we leave a room, but she is still not fast enough and will sit down and cry if you walk beyond her line of sight. She has also successfully pulled herself up while in her crib and play pen, so we have had to lower them so she doesn't tumble out. In fact yesterday when we tried to put her down for her afternoon nap, she did NOT want to go to sleep, so when we finally went in her room to get her, she was kneeling in her bed and peering over the railing starring at the door waiting for us to rescue her.

To "da" or not to "da"

OK, as we already established, Bella has had "ba ba ba" down. Well, she has also mastered other consonant/vowel combinations since that entry and has most recently added "da da da" to her repertoire. Now, would somebody please tell Bella's daddy that when Bella says "da da da", she is not referring to him, and that no, we cannot put "da da da" in her baby book as her first word. He says I'm just jealous. Yes, you're right. I am jealous that she doesn't address her shoe, toy frog or granny as "ma ma ma". Because guess what, she's called all of those things "da da da". I've tried to tell him that around 1 year she'll say it and mean it. She'll cry out "da da da", and that will mean, "Daddy come get me. I'm lonely." or it will mean "Hi daddy! I'm so glad you're home." Of course she already lights up when she does see him, and they've had fun on their walks together (see above), although it has gotten too hot recently and the walks have been temporarily suspended.