Memories of Christ

The other day we were at the garden center looking at herbs and peat pots when Bea spied a small statue of Christ about her height and no sooner did she see it did she wrap her arms around it and start repeating to me, "Jesus, Jesus!"  I told her that she was right and then she started giving the statue kisses on the head.  Henry saw what was going on and joined in in the hugs and kisses and soon they were both hugging each other around the statue. I was really impressed that she had such a love for Christ at such a young age.  She has been so good lately at folding her arms for the entire prayer and saying her version of "amen" at the end.  She even kneels on her chubby little knees.  The amazing thing is that, being the second child, we haven't stressed a knowledge of Christ like we did with Henry.  I was just realizing it this week.  However, it seems like she just picked it up naturally...or maybe she still remembers him. 

New Words

Bea is definitely not as articulate as Henry was at this age in the pronunciation of words so it's hard for anyone but me and Henry to decipher what she is trying to communicate.  For example, even when she says "mommy" she doesn't even close her mouth all the way to say the ''m" sound and it comes out sounding slightly like "wah-wie".  Some of the fun words I can understand are...

Flush -- she loves flushing the toilet and now says flush when she does it
Chair -- this one sounds the most clear and I think she's extra proud of being able to say it because she's constantly pointing out every chair she sees to me. She also tries to say any word that rhymes with chair like bear and hair.
Pasta --  she loves eating her pasta every day!
Owie -- this one is the most hilarious because it's said super nasal and always with a scrunched up nose.
It's Hot -- every food I put in front of her she assumes is hot and looks up to me asking me if it's hot

The words and phrases she can not say she just says "na na na" in place of words but with the perfect inflection so you can easily tell what she's trying to say.  She says and signs, "all done" by saying "na na" with the inflection.  She also says, "na na na" for "here you go" and "I'm sorry" both with the correct inflection. 

One thing Bea does a lot is hit me in the face just for the entertainment value.  I try to tell her to not hit me very calmly and give her a serious look but she avoids any scolding by quickly pointing to my nose and saying "no" and then saying, "eyes, ears, mou(for mouth) and air(for hair)" Then she gives me such big hugs that it's hard for me to just put her down and ignore her for 10 minutes which is what they suggest you do if your baby is hitting you.  She's just so smart!

One thing she does when she knows she's doing something bad is when I catch her in the act, she points her finger at me and says, "no!" in that same nasal tone which is so funny to me.  I don't know how she got that because I make it a point to correct without saying no.  It is really cute though. 

So just to compare Henry with Bea at this point.  I think Henry recited the entire ABC's to me at this age and I still can't believe he was this young.  Goes to show how much more attention the first child gets.  Bea is no where near knowing her alphabet.  Poor neglected baby!

Easter/Earth Day petal dresses

I, of course, put off making an Easter dress until last minute and since I couldn't order any cute fabrics online due to time I had to resort to JoAnn for their less than stellar selection of fabrics.  I usually wonder around for hours trying to put a few fabrics together and never feeling satisfied in the end.  This time, however, I hit the jackpot.  I walked up to a rounder that had only green and brown fabrics on it, which was what I was searching for because I just had to make a very earthy and organic looking dress for my friend Christi's new baby daughter, Nya, and I thought I should just make it Bea's Easter dress as well.

I was floored when I found the most perfect fabric in the world...trees with environmental expressions underneath and brown fabric with green leaves.  I picked up some light green fabric as well as some green leaf buttons.  I put the dresses together using only a visual from my cousin's blog in about three days and staying up until two in the morning trying to figure out the Velcro that I decided to use instead of button holes(which are a disaster when trying to dress squirmy toddlers. 

I made Nya a wrap dress similar to the one I made for Bea at Christmas, but I made it versatile enough to even almost fit Henry as a shirt, so if it doesn't get eaten by their dog, it should last until she's three or four.  Bea's dress is also a wrap dress and will probably fit her until she's three, I'm hoping.  Don't ask me how I sewed them because I don't even know and they're not perfect at all, but it kind of goes with the organic theme, don't you think:? (please agree with me).  All I know is that they're darn cute and I'm going tomorrow to buy the rest of the fabric with my 50% off coupon!

Bea and Nya were so darling together.  Bea is obsessed with babies and had a blast being around sweet Nya all weekend.  I can't wait until they are running around together like Henry and River do.  Nya never cries and sleeps wherever and whenever.  She's also exceptionally chubby and snuggly so it's easy to fall in love with her.  Nya and my baby girl won't be very far apart in age so the three girls will surely become great friends/sisters. 

Beezy

Bea is getting attached to quite a few things lately and just tonight I realized that I may be in a lot of trouble.  Everywhere she goes she drags along with her...

1. Her small blankie which she calls her "beezy"
2. Her stuffed animal doggie called "doddie"
3. Her baby doll called "baby"
4. The blanket that we wrap her doll up in
5. Her large fluffy pink blanket

I can barely breathe as I carry all that stuff and her down the stairs after each nap.  Tonight I had everything except her dog which got left in the car but she was calling, "doddie, doddie" in a very desperate voice and didn't settle down until I retrieved the doggie and she had everything in order, even her baby doll wrapped up in her blanket. I am in deep trouble if anything happens to any of those things.   What should I do? Please tell me.

Excited for Baby

Bea has a new cousin, Joshua, who was born a couple of weeks ago and we've been spending a lot of time around the baby. I'm relieved to see that Bea seems way more excited about the baby than jealous of it even when I'm holding him.  She is learning to pat his head softly and not hit him excitedly in the face.  I hope she learns really well before her baby sister arrives.  We actually had two babies born in the last two weeks but I don't know what the others' name is yet.  Two little boys and I'm having a girl.  Figures!

Kisses for the Babies

This week I went to visit two of my friends who have had babies recently.  I was curious to see how Bea would react when I had another baby in my arms since I really haven't had that opportunity lately.  I was pleasantly surprised when Bea was so gentile and kind to the babies in my arms.  She very softly patted their heads, gave them tender hugs and then turned away to go play.  I was so relieved that she didn't immediately defend her territory. 

She got two baby dolls for Christmas and she's slowly getting more interested in them and is getting a little less interested in only boyish toys.  This morning she clearly said "baby" and has been walking around carrying her babies and a little purse around the house. 

Until yesterday morning Bea had never really understood the action of kissing.  Never closed her mouth, puckered, no suction, etc.  Yesterday I caught her hugging her baby next to the ottoman and I saw her repeatedly kissing her baby when she got totally carried away with it, leaned back, lost her balance and fell to the ground on her back.  I ran over and she looked like she was in shock, unsure about what happened.  Since then she's been kissing my head, kissing Henry and kissing her babies all over the place.  The cutest thing about the whole thing was the repeated kissing sounds she was making.  She just gets more lovable every minute!

Best snowsuit ever created

Bea inherited this 12 year old hand-me-down pink snowsuit from her cousin that has been the biggest blessing for Bea this winter.  It's for a 12 month old so it has soft feet and probably wasn't meant for bombing around in but our tiny little girl can really book it in her suit.  The great thing is that it makes her look wider than she is tall.  Everyone who has the chance to see her in the suit bursts out laughing and wants to squeeze her fluff.

 This photo clearly illustrates Bea's horrible underbite.  There could be some serious head gear in her future!

She spent many contented hours outside during Christmas wearing this suit and has never cried from the cold when bundled up in it.  She doesn't even mind the mitten ends which don't allow for any hand movement.  Her favorite thing to do is lay on the ground and eat the snow straight from the ground or from Gammie and Grandpa's pond(yuk).

When all the other little kids were crying as they struggled to walk on the ice or through the snow, Bea found it quite entertaining to fall on the ice since there was no way to get hurt in her suit.  She willingly puts it on and all she wants to do is walk around in the snow for hours.  Good thing it's going to snow all day tomorrow so we can have fresh snow to play in and for Bea to eat.

Christmas Dress Inspiration from Heaven

I knew I wanted to make a dress for Bea for Christmas and I had already bought the fabric a couple weeks ago and it had been staring me in the face every time I walked into the sewing room(that barely gets used).  I began the dress on Saturday late morning the day before she was supposed to debut it the Sunday before Christmas and I had no idea what I was going to make.  I learned from my good friend Cynthia about just putting something together without a pattern so I started with a band around the middle and the straps over the shoulders and then I had to leave until 11pm on a date with Justin.  While I was on my way to pick up the babysitter I had a revelation about how the dress would look.  My heart was pounding and my adrenaline was pumping.  I didn't even want to go on my date but I couldn't back out.  I came home, began sewing and it all just came together like I was a pro.  I was all but finished with the last details around 2am and it was exactly what I had imagined.  The finishing touches were put on the dress five minutes before we had to leave for church and I ended up tying down the top to the straps and tucking in the corners to make it rounded.  Now it's perfect.  I just love the big pleats.

A few things need to be changed with the design, like it would have been nice if I could have measured Bea before starting or during construction because it was supposed to be more like a wrap dress in the back but I ended up having to sew snaps on the back.  I'll make another and measure it out better.  The idea was that the dress could somewhat adjustable so she could grow with it but it's exactly her size.  Luckily she hasn't grown in about 6 months so maybe she'll be able to wear it for a few more months. 

If you love this dress as much as I do, I'll make you one for a small fee.  I need the sewing practice!

Regression

As soon as Bea seems to learn something, she seems to stop saying it.  I don't think I've heard her say mama in the last couple weeks and now she only says dada and doesn't call for me anymore.  She also won't wave goodbye anymore and prefers to just blow kisses.  She still only says a few words, mostly animal sounds.  Has anyone had this happen to them?

Belated Halloween Post

Here's a photo of her in her flower suit.  I had ordered a peanut costume but it never arrived since I didn't get the million emails Amazon.com sent me about the card on our account being expired since they all went to Justin's Yahoo account which gets hundreds of emails every day,  most of which are spam.  Why do people even use yahoo mail anyway? Well, this is what we got instead courtesy of Nanna B.  If it weren't for her, she would have gone as a trash bag or or a sack of rice.

You will notice I could have fit two of her heads into the hood.  I ended up using a hair tie to tie a small ponytail on the hood so we could see her face which was covered by a constant stream of drool from her sucker.  I hardly got anyone saying how cute she was with the mess on her face and front.  haha.  They were more like, "oh, and you're a flower, nice".  Last year it was all coos and giggles with her mermaid costume. 

As you can see Bea didn't have enough sucker in her mouth and tried to steal cousin Matthew's sucker as well.  This was her first sucker.  I don't know where she would have put another one seeing her mouth was barely large enough to fit one.  I know it goes against everything I believe about the evils of sugar to let my kids eat Halloween candy, but I always LOVED Halloween, even more than Christmas and I can't deprive my children of that experience, and with that comes hoards of candy.  My philosophy is that my kids can eat whatever they want a couple weeks after Halloween and then eat the treats and sweets of the Holiday season but on January 1st, it's all over.  Candy gone, hidden, trashed, whatever. So far it's worked pretty well.  When Henry knows(or thinks) there's no candy in the entire house, he doesn't even ask for it.

Haircut

Not perfect...but much better.  Maybe I'll try to even it out next time. It's hard to cut hair while she's walking around!

Tomboy?

I'm sure Bea is influenced in a major way by Henry but I think she truly is a tomboy.  The first thing she goes for in the toy room are the cars which she brings to my feet and while she rolls them around the kitchen I make the car noises.  She also loves playing with a ball and can throw and chase it for hours. The best, though, his her animal sound effects, particularly the growling. 

Bea will find a dinosaur toy and walk around the house growling.  She even growls when nothing is going on.  I just assume she's practicing for when she finds something to play with.  Henry growls a lot while he's playing with toys so I can only assume she's copying him.  She loves playing in the dirt, splashing in puddles, getting really messy, and making animal sounds.  Today we went to the zoo and at every animal I made some sort of a sound she could copy and she loved hearing the real roar of the leopard.  She growled at almost every animal as we made the rounds.

As a greeting or a sign to show she likes you, she loves to bonk heads, so ironically as she was petting the sheep(rather hard, more like slapping them on top of the head) she was head butted by that sheep, which knocked her down and she hit her head pretty hard on the ground as she flew back.  I feel bad because I'm always saying, "look at the nice baby lamb" and "pet their soft wolly coat" while we read the animal books.  There was nothing nice or soft about this mean, dirty creature! Haha! Bea makes a funny "ruff" noise for a dog bark, says "baa" every time she sees a sheep, can say "meow" and peeps like a chick or bird. 

She is also picking up more signs for bird, airplane, fish and will finally do the sign for food after so much coaxing! She's pretty stubborn and only likes to do things her way and in her own time.  Reminds me of some sisters-in-law I know! She's such a sponge and I think she'll start saying a lot more words than mama, dada, uh-oh, woh and oh-yeah, which is actually really funny.  I like that one. 

I gave her a haircut since she has absolutely no curl and it was looking mighty scraggly.  Now it's short in the back and she has bangs in the front with long sideburns, like the long bangs people wear these days.  It's totally cute and looks a lot more kempt and a little punkish.  

Giggly Girl and drowning in the hot tub

Well, I hope all of you got to see Bea eating the snake on the post below because I just looked at it up close and it grossed me out all over again.  Bea spent the last week in Dallas visiting Nanna B and she was a total angel the entire trip.  Can I just say halleluja to the Lord for sending me a baby who sleeps through the night wherever we go? I can handle horrible plane rides, long layovers, giant messes at mealtime(Henry), small injuries, growling poodles, stair climbing, and giant poopy diapers as long as my babies sleep through the night.  Nanna B has the best setup at her house with a totally secluded and quiet room in the back corner of her house with a really loud humidifier to plug in right beside her.  Magic I tell you.  She made the trip so much easier! Yes she had some issues with the flights and I'm dreading the flight I have to take out to Reno in six days(I don't even want to see how long the Atlanta to Reno flight is). Mercy me.

Bea was such a joy to be around for the whole trip. She's at a stage where she thinks everything is funny and giggles non stop with a scrunched up face and huge smile wherever she goes.  The things she thinks are most funny were the poodles.  Just the thought of touching them made her laugh with excitement until she managed to pinch their hair and pull turning it into screams after they would growl and nip at her.  Most of the time she had a great time with the dogs.  Standing at the top of the steps makes her laugh for some reason.  She actually learned this week how to descend the steps backwards(something Henry never learned) and now I'm excited to soon be able to put the gate down for good! Can't stand that thing.

As for the hot tub.  Not as bad as your imagining.  So just as Henry had taken to submerging himself in the hot tub, Bea followed suit.  After a few days she decided to take the plunge and never looked back.  If I can describe it well enough...from standing on the seat, she would turn from the side, take a couple small steps towards the edge of the seat, close her eyes in a squint, smile really big, take a deep breath and let herself fall into the hot tub, completely under water.  While under for up to 5 seconds she would open her eyes, stick her tongue out and attempt to swim around.  I cannot tell you how Henry and I laughed at her little tongue sticking out at us while she looked at us from under the water.  After I would pick her up out of the water she would take a big breath, regroup and do it again.  Over and over again.  She is a little fish! The big difference I think is the warm water.  She is a whole different baby in warm water.  No wonder kids can't learn how to swim in the frigid waters of the community pool.  I'm taking my kids to the Bahamas to swim where it's warm like bathwater.  Henry is learning what the word "drown" means and he couldn't distinguish between what Bea was doing and what drowning was so he called her little stunt, drowning.  He would say, laughing, "I want to see Bea drown again. Lol, That was so funny mommy."

So the happy little toddler just parused the whole house, playing with toys, chasing the dogs and being hugged and kissed by Nanna B.  Also, just for posterity, Bea can eat an adult portion of any meal at mealtime.  She does not need any snacks because she eats so much at mealtime AND she eats with a fork and spoon.  You should see her pound down a giant bowl of oatmeal. It really is astounding.  Makes me wonder why she's still 18.5 lbs and can't turn around yet in a carseat.  Hmmmm.  What's up?

Eskimo Baby

We went camping last weekend in Blackwater Falls,West Virginia  with an excursion to Seneca Rocks  and since it's September we knew it would get pretty chilly at night so I thought I packed some really warm sleeping clothes for Bea but, as I found out later, I misplaced them and couldn't find her snuggly night one piece so I ended up layering her clothes, her robe, and a sweatshirt to keep her warm at night.  She also had to sleep like that.

The second night she screamed for quite a few hours, possibly all night.  I was so tired I couldn't remember how long it was.  She's usually such a great sleeper but I could tell she was trying to fall asleep but since she has to suck on her tongue with her blankie on her lips to fall asleep and with the cold she acquired, her nose was all stuffed up so she couldn't calm down and get comfortable.  Where's a snot sucker ball when you need one!!? That was pretty brutal but other than that, she had a fantastic time.

She really had fun exploring the campsite, eating moss, tasting snakes(click on photo below), playing in the river, running away from Henry, and doing her first rock climbing.

At the climbing site and up at the top of Seneca Rocks she was pretty hard core about manouvering around the tree roots, rocks and other obstacles.  She showed some very impressive problem solving skills that were pretty amazing to me.  She did fall and roll down a few small hills, but recovered quickly. 

One other thing is that she's saying her first word other than mama and dada.  And that, just like Henry, is Uh Oh.  I really love Uh Oh.  She says it when she drops anything or throws anything to the floor.  She usually looks up at me with a guilty look and says it under her breath.  Henry thinks it's hilarious, and so do I.  I love my little Uh Oh girl:)

                    This is right after one of her little spills.  I think she looks adorable with leaves in her hair:)

Teeter Toddler

I didn't jump to the computer, nor did I call my loved ones when Bea started walking like when Henry did.  Maybe it was because it was so gradual that it wasn't so amazing when she finally took a whole bunch of steps all together.  She basically took her first stable steps the week after her Birthday so it's been almost a month since then and she's still not as stable as Henry was right away.  One thing's for sure, she LOVES to walk and has completely abandoned crawling even when it gets tough and frustrating.  She's so wabbly that it's always entertaining to just watch her.  One thing I'm happy about is that she never wanders off too far and always comes back when I call her which is something totally new for me.  Henry used to just head in the opposite direction and never look back.  Bea, however, always looks back, gives me a scrunchy smile and a giggle and walks as fast as she can to hug me.

Bea had a friend come to visit last week named Eva.  She is exactly her age, has the same manorisms, walks about the same, talks the same but is about twice her size in height and weight.  This baby is so chubby and tall! I loved hugging her squishy little body. I doubt I'll ever have a super chubby and squishy baby:( Bea played with her in the warm pools out back, tried to teach her how to eat all her food, toddled around and tried to avoid being attacked by Henry.  The girls were on almost the exact opposite nap schedule, but it worked out for us to not have both wandering babies all over the house all day long. Bea tried to teach Eva how to climb up the slide, but a wet slide with naked babies going up and a big brother coming down does not add up to success.  Usually she can do it in a bout 5 seconds but got really frustrated when she kept slipping down.  I, however, didn't mind watching the whole spectacle:)