18 months!

It is so crazy to think that my little tiny ball of feist is a year and a half old! This age is by far the most fun (although I think I say that at every new stage) because we are seeing her personality bloom so much.

At 18 months young, Bendelle is independent, adventurous, hilarious, dramatic, energetic, dangerous, wild, sweet and oh-so loving. You cannot take your eyes off this child for a second! She is fearless. She is always trying to climb (up anything!) as high as she can. And then she'll just sit there for a minute before she decides its time to jump off (umm, no!). A month or two ago I taught her to hold our hand before she attempts to climb/walk/explore anywhere and that has been not only the sweetest thing ever, but also a lot safer! It's the cutest when she holds her hand open to you and says, "hand! hand! hand!" until you hold her little hand.

Outside is her favorite place to be. Sometimes she'll ask to go "outside? outside?!" as soon as she wakes up. When I go to get her from her crib in the morning, sometimes she'll ask for her socks, then shoes, then bow - she is so smart and knows how to dress herself (more or less) and is obsessed with accessories. Homegirl always has to have a bow in her hair. Sometimes she'll be playing and out of nowhere she'll pat her head and if there's no bow there she'll ask, "bow? bow? bow?!" And she loves necklaces (which I am still careful about) so if she sees one laying around, she'll immediately grab it and put it around her neck.

She doesn't watch that much TV but some mornings or evenings we'll stick on a movie or show for her. Her favorite show is Caillou (sometimes she'll give me the remote and ask to watch "Cai") and her favorite movie is Frozen! Every once in a while I will pop some fresh kernels of popcorn for her and put her in her tiny comfy chair with a blanket while she watches Frozen for a good 20 minutes. I think she's really captivated by it because of all the singing, but we don't mind because we love the humor in it and can totally relate to Kristoff who talks for his pet reindeer :)

As always, she is loving her baths and will stay in there as long as we let her. We've been introducing and encouraging her to use the potty and to our surprise, she both peed and pooped in the potty several times before she turned 18 months old. Once it really starts to warm up here, I want to do some serious (naked) potty training!

When Aaron has off, we've been taking her to church on Sundays and story time at the library on Mondays. Our church is not that big but there is always a responsible adult/leader of the church that will take her off to do some one-on-one reading, playing and learning during the service. And we love taking her to story time at the library where she can listen to new books being read out loud (by someone other than us!) and be around other babies and toddlers. We recently enrolled her in a 1000 Books Before Kindergarten program, which has been so fun since she loves books and reading so much. Basically, we keep track of everything we read to her and every time we hit 100 books, we turn in her reading log and her picture gets bumped up a notch on the reading log chart!

She loooves playing at the park, going down the slide, playing in the sandbox and swinging on the swings. We recently went to Seal Beach for a week and I had so much fun taking her to the beach and letting her play in the sand. She loves playing with rocks and pebbles as well, so when we went to an old favorite beach, we collected some pretty beach stones for her to play with and they are sitting on our bedroom floor right now, where she plays with them on a daily basis.

The other day we took her to my sister's new pool to swim and even though it was in the 90s she could have stayed out there all day. Aaron taught her to kick in the water and she had so much fun splashing around and holding our hands while she explored around the pool.

Everything is so fun, new and interesting right now and it's so exciting to see her learn new things and hear her say new words everyday. I feel so blessed to have this fun, bright and beautiful little daughter and could not be more in love with our little family.

Life with my little.

It has been MONTHS since I have written! Although life has been crazy and sad and beautiful in the past few months, making blogging kind of an overwhelming thing to do, it is something that I want to continue doing despite how busy everyday can be. So here I am! And here is an update on my precious little mini:

She is so social, active, charming and hilarious. And the most beautiful little girl I know. I love that she seems to have the same sense of humor that Aaron and I do (funny how that happens ;) ) and cracks us up with her cheesy expressions and unexpected attitude.

She overwhelms us with her bursts of love and affection, which is my favorite thing ever. And those sloppy little kisses? The best. She also loves surprising the dogs with hugs and kisses. Darcy has mixed feelings about it, but Bennet loves being her sidekick . . . most of the time ;)

She is obsessed with books and reading! Sometimes we read over 20 stories in one day! I am so proud of how smart this little girl is and how she loves to just absorb everything we tell her. She is constantly learning new words and pulling out her books to have us read to her. She makes us so happy!

She is wild, reckless and fearless. I love her sense of adventure and her need to explore. She loves being outdoors, just like her parents, and I love that we have this in common.

She is stunningly beautiful with her bright blue eyes and rosy red cheeks. Sometimes I feel like people do a double take when they see this little blonde hair blue eyed girl with her brunette and hazel eyed mom and dad. But if you look closely and study her, you'll see us there :) The shape of her eyes, her plump lips, round face, long lashes. A beautiful mixture of the both of us. 

I love doing everything together-taking baths, eating lunch, playing outside, cleaning up the house, watching a movie- it's just better when I have this little mini me around to do things with and be inspired by.

Holidays & baby bump

I am so excited for the holidays this year, because let's face it, the holidays are ten times more exciting when you have a little one! And now that Bendelle is technically a toddler--taking steps and learning new words left and right--we are even more stoked to start holiday festivities.

We will be spending Thanksgiving with my grandparents and aunt and uncle in Claremont, and I must admit, I am relieved to not be hosting! Don't get me wrong, we looove hosting parties and get-togethers, but since Christmas will be at our house, I am grateful for a little break. My aunt and uncle are great hosts and I love learning things from my mom and her generation about hosting. We are old fashioned when it comes to parties and hanging out-we love creating a fun and cozy atmosphere, and love being in the moment and enjoying great conversation with the special people in our lives.

I hosted a baby shower with a couple of friends for my dear friend who is due next month with a sweet baby boy, and I couldn't help but notice how involved Bendelle was when the gift opening took place. It made me fast forward to Christmas mode and imagine how excited (I hope) she'll be on Christmas morning. I've been collecting things throughout the year for her--books, shoes, little things here and to give her on Christmas, but I am MOST excited to put this in front of the tree for her on Christmas morning :) I snagged such a good deal on it a few months back and have been saving it ever since.

 
We are giving mostly handmade goods to loved ones this year, which I am actually really excited about! I have so many great ideas and goodies I  have already started to make. I feel like handmade gifts are the best because you really pour your heart and creativity into them. I have even gotten ambitious and wrapped a few! 

On top of it all, we are so excited for our little blip to join the family in May! People have been asking if we are hoping for a boy or a girl. To be honest, I really don't have a preference! I loooove having a girl and think it would be great to have another one and for Bendelle to have a sister. On the other hand, a boy would be a whole new adventure! The more I think about it, the more I realize I don't have a preference. I always wanted a girl, so the first time around I was secretly hoping for one. But more than anything we just want a healthy baby :)

 

Baby #2!!!

We are so very excited about the arrival of baby #2 coming May 2016! We kept it (kind of) a secret until Halloween when we made this announcement:

This Halloween was a lot of fun because we all got dressed up together as a family of skeletons and Bendelle was able to participate in tirck-or-treating! Well, she held the bucket and we ate the candy ;)

Baby number two came as a little bit of a surprise to us! It was honestly the best little surprise-after feeling a little bit off for a while I decided to get a pregnancy test and took it as soon as I got home. Aaron was playing with Bendelle when I found out. Within second there was a strong little plus sign on the stick-it was official, we would have two babies under two! We had decided to start trying for baby number two once Bendelle turned one. But unlike the first time around, we got pregnant very quickly! We made a doctor's appointment and found out we were already 8 weeks pregnant! (I found out at 4 weeks with Bendelle.) And what made it even more amazing was that we were even able to hear AND see baby's heartbeat on the ultrasound! It was such a good feeling to see our little blip and his/her little heart pumping away! We ended up telling some family members and a few close friends right away, but I wanted to wait until about the second trimester before we made it public knowledge . . . which just so happened to be around Halloween! So we did a fun little announcement with our skeleton shirts I bought when I was pregnant with Bendelle, and let her wear her pink skeleton pjs for a family photo :) I also took this picture, because we had the perfect amount of pumpkins, so how could I resist??

Even though life is busier than ever, I still want to do little weekly pregnancy updates like I did with Bendelle. I bought plain wooden blocks off of Etsy and painted them black and white to use as a prop for my pregnancy updates. I did chalkboard updates with Bendelle, but I wanted to change it up so I wouldn't have the same type of photos for both pregnancies.

It is so sweet because Bendelle has made it very clear that she loves other babies and kids, so we are so excited for her to have a sibling of her own. I think it will be great that they'll be close in age, although I'm already preparing myself for years of arguments down the road!

So the countdown is on! We have about 24.5 weeks until baby number two makes his/her debut! And YES, we will definitely be finding out the sex! We will be waiting a little longer this time around to find out, but will know by December :)

First Birthday Party

Bendelle's birthday party has come and gone but we had a wonderful and relaxing time celebrating our sweet pumpkin with a few friends and family members :)

Little Miss Social loved having people over, interacting with all of our guests and playing with all her new toys after she helped open them. It took a while for her to get excited over her multi-layered pink ombre cakes after waking her up from her beauty sleep so we could sing to her and cut the cake, but she finally did break into her smash cake. And loved it.

Although I didn't take a lot of beautiful pictures or have a professional photographer capture the essence of the day, we had a lot of pumpkins, Halloween, girlie and sparkly pinks and creams, and mostly handmade (by mama!) decor. It was fun to put a lot of love into her cakes, banner, crown, and all the different little aspects of her party.

Thank you to everyone who wished her a happy birthday. I am already thinking of themes for all the birthdays she has to come . . .not to rush ANYTHING because I am enjoying every single crazy, hilarious, and beautiful second with this girl and our little family :)