random pictures from this month...

One of Bella's new favorite things to do is to steal other people's seats. If you leave the room she will sit wherever you were sitting. Tonight I was laying on the floor and when I got up to make dinner I came back to find this...

We went to the Temple with Jen and Maddy. We had fun walking around the pretty grounds. These girls love to walk together holding hands... well, most of the time they do...

Faux-hawk Bella

Rock star...

She can fly, she can fly, she can fly...

Bella can wink... almost.

Watch the beginning and you can see Bella 'swim.' She was doing it better and for longer, but by the time I got the camera out she was done with the costume.

Playing with Aunt Kellie when she came up to visit us last week.

pumpkins and trick or treating...

We had to try out a few costumes before we found one that Bella liked. At first she was very scared of this Nemo costume, but eventually she let me put it on her. She didn't mind having it on, but it would only last a few minutes until she wanted it OFF! Obviously this wasn't going to work...

We went out to a pumpkin farm outside of Portland. It was a lot of fun and the weather could not have been better (the day before this is was rainy and gross).

Here's Bella measuring herself (you're supposed to measure yourself every year you come to this patch, but it's unlikely that we'll every be back).

You ride a train out to the patch and Bella really liked it. There were two different trains to ride, unfortunately we had to ride the green and yellow train, we wanted the orange and black one, darn it...

Bella and Maddy had fun picking out multiple pumpkins.

She liked to ride...
...but she really liked to push.

One the way back, we rode a paddle boat. They had a dragon that rose up out of the water. They also had a shark that came out of the water, just like the JAWS ride at Universal Studios (okay, maybe not just like Universal Studios, but it was pretty cool).
Bella was being pretty quite so I went to check on her. When I walked into the kitchen this is what I found. She got out her raisins on her own and was munching away... in her Halloween costume.

Bella ended up wearing the costume Uncle Grant wore when he was Bella's age. Before the trick or treating...

She really liked her costume. Thanks to Uncle Grant for letting us borrow it.

Getting some treats from Queen Amidala at the Trunk-or-Treat. She had a lot of fun trick or treating. By the third or fourth trunk she knew if she held out her hand she would get some candy. And then she liked putting her candy in her little bag.

17 months

Bella passed her 17 month mark last Saturday, but we've been a little busy around here so I haven't had time to post anything about her. She is growing by leaps and bounds. It seems that she has decided that she is no longer the baby, but instead is a big girl now. She loves living here in Portland with her friends so close (we still miss those friends we left in Corvallis, but at least Bella has someone here to distract her). She loves going to play or go shopping with Maddy. If I tell her we're going to see Maddy, she automatically goes to the back door (the fastest route to their apartment) and says over and over MAAA, MAAA (that's Maddy in Bella). Even though she can't quite keep up with Maddy she certainly loves to hang out with her.
She is becoming quite the talker. She believes that she is saying actual words and will say them over and over until you figure out what she is telling you. She has gotten pretty good at showing me what she wants. So if I can't figure out what she is saying, I can say 'show me' and she'll do it. It works out pretty well until she wants something that she isn't supposed to have and she won't give it up. This seems to happen most often when she gets out a snack that she wants that she can't have (like four or five packs of fruit snacks... I don't think so). All of her snacks are in a low cupboard so she can get to them. Which works out most of the time, but every once in a while it's a pain. She new favorite snack is rasins and grapes. I'm glad that she likes things that are healthy, but if it were up to her she would eat rasins all day long (maybe not so healthy after all). We got her a fish this last month and she loves it! It's a Beta fish, which the lady at the store said are very easy to take care of, so we'll see if I can NOT kill it. She loves to look at him swim around and say 'shish, shish, shish' over and over.
I don't think there are too many new words that she has learned, but I can't really remember whay she was saying a month ago. She has learned how to ask for more and she knows that she won't get anymore until she asks. She can say please, but it doesn't happen every time she should be saying it. She is more and more aware of things she does that she isn't supposed to do. She says 'no no no', but then usually does it anyway. We're working on this and hopefully it'll get better.
We think that she is starting early with the terrible twos. When she doesn't get her way she really doesn't like it and she definately lets you know. I don't know if this early transition is due to the fact that all of the kids that she plays with are going through this same stage or if she's got something else going on (like a new tooth coming in). We'll see if it goes away soon or if we can get this transition over with early.