"Opening" her first stocking. She got her first toothbrush, a teddy bear, some mini Munsch books and some Little People.

The telephone I searched high and low for.

Her first Bible.

An oldie but a goodie, remember when you used to play with one of those?

Would it be Christmas without new toques?

A new twist on the "shaking" technique to find out what's in the gift. She did this with everything she could lift.

She almost got the idea here. I think it took us 1/2 hour to open this one.

Let the holiday traditions begin. I took Isabella to see Santa a few weeks ago, and it was fun. We did it at Market Mall. There they take your name and put you on a list then you get to go with your child to a play area and wait for them to call your name, like they do at restaurants when it's busy. We watched a movie, played with some fake snow, worked on crawling. And then it was our turn. I didn't want Belle and Santa to clash so I chose white instead of pink and everyont thought Belle was a little boy. Oh well. The Santa was very awkward and Belle was his last picture of the day, all he wanted to do was get out of there. So there wasn't any effort to make her smile, he didn't even talk to her. Hence the face. I thought of getting it done again, but this is a good memory, we can't erase what's less than picture perfect! So Merry 1st Christmas!

Necessity is the mother of invention.



Belle is no longer a happy baby when it comes to playing and sitting, or playing and lying down. She wants to be on her feet all the time. This makes for some very sore arms on my part. I decided she needed something totally baby safe to try out her standing technique on. So, we invented a little somethin somethin. This is her exersaucer, with a few minor tweaks. The water jug does well to hold it in place and keep it from toppling on her head and this way she has things to play with once she's on her feet. It's working well. And when she gets a bit taller we can pull the saucer up a bit. I love baby toys that are multi-functional.

One step closer.



Belle has learned to pull herself up to a standing position using the furniture in the house. She can't quite get a grip on the leather sofa but she holds onto the coffee table and reaches out for it. Then when she has one hand on each she tries to switch herself over to the sofa. She's one step closer to walking, I can't believe it.

There are things I can't take pictures of.

Belle has started to really become a little person lately. She does all sorts of cute things I can't take pictures of. She's started playing this game with me when we're eating. She'll shake her head no until she's ready for the next spoonful, but once she's done shaking her head she'll look at me until I shake mine yes before she opens her mouth. I told people about it and now whenever someone shakes their head yes at her she shakes hers no.

She sings. When we're in the car and the music is on if you listen close you can hear her singing along. Little 'la-la-la's'. It's quite cute. She also does it when we're singing to her. She also claps her hands a lot. Everytime someone claps on tv, she's right there clapping along. Oprah has become a very loud hour in our house.

She's now crawling all over the house and I can't get a picture of it in motion, plus whenever she sees the camera she stops crawling and puts on a big smile for a pose. Too funny.

She's learned the word no and knows when she's in a place she shouldn't be. She ducks her head a little bit and closes her eyes when her shirt is going over her head. She knows that when her jacket is on it's time to go to the car and when Nick walks through the door she gets all excited to see him.

It amazes me how many things she's learned when I feel like I've taught her so little.

GET ME OUTTA HERE!




This past week has been quite cold here, but Belle and I had a lot of errands to run, she got stuck in this snowsuit a few too many times for her liking I think. She did get herself out of it on her own, it just took a little while.