Arabella's First Birthday!

Arabella had a great First Birthday this past weekend. On Sunday we had a few friends over for lunch & cake to help us celebrate. Arabella loved her new toys, especially the zebra that  Grammy got her. Here are a few short video's I took over the course of the event. I can't believe she is already one, the year has flown by!

In the morning she got her zebra bike/scooter. She loved it, she especially likes us pushing her around the house on it. She got the hang of it quickly.

 

Arabella was not sure what to think of the China birthday candle, Dakota was interested as well. She did decide that she likes cake and chocolate ice cream.

Arabella loved her cake and the chocolate ice cream. I don't think she ate any of the cake but she sure enjoyed the frosting!

 At daycare during snack time they had a birthday cake for Arabella. She wondered why everyone was singing and looking at her during snack time. She loves all her friends at daycare. Apparently she is very popular and there is fights over who gets to sit next to her.

She enjoyed the cake that they had at daycare too. She ate the entire piece!

Our friend Kevin took this video of Ara-B and Dakota doing the bubbles, they both love it. I think Ara-B likes to watch Dakota eat them more than anything.

 

The Holidays are Coming!

Wow - I can't believe Christmas is almost here.. this year has flown by so fast and I'm sure that the next few weeks will too. Here are some updated pictures of Arabella. She is getting so big so fast. This one was late one night last week. We always do a final play time before bed. You can see how tired she looks in this one - she was almost ready for bed, she just had to get in some quick toy time first. She loves this pink bucket of toys, she likes to empty it all out all over the carpet.

Arabella now eats breakfast and dinner every day. Around 8 months we will add in lunch. After her initially boycott of a few foods she has generally liked everything we have given her. Her newest green vegetable that she likes is zucchini. The pictures below are from last week when she had blueberries for the first time. She was messy with them.

 In this next one she saw Dad making funny faces above me and she just thought it was so funny. She is starting to enjoy playing with her food as well - let the messes get worse! If any food drops  on her high chair she likes to smear it all around with her hands and make designs. We have tried to give her the little O's - she likes to play with them but will NOT put them in her mouth. Eventually they end up on the floor and dakota cleans them all up. Dakota has decided that he should lay near her high chair around dinner time.

 
We went to our friend Jean's house the other day to visit and she had this huge Christmas bear. Arabella didn't know what to make of him at first, but eventually she wanted to pull him close and suck on him. She is wearing her Santa Rocks t-shirt - she is ready for Christmas!

 When we got home later that night we decided to pull out the Christmas lights to see if we could fix the dead parts of the strands. As soon as the lights  went on, Arabella wanted to help out. It was really hard to get her to look up for the picture, she was too preoccupied with the lights.

Tonight when Arabella was on the floor Dakota came right over and sat next to her. I think he wanted to play with her. I took a video of them as well but was not able to upload it?? (Half the time they upload and the other half I get server errors?) He is so good with her. Every so often he leans over and licks her. 

 Not sure in this next one if she was reaching for me or for Dakota. I think it was Dakota. I wanted to get a few pictures of her in her snowman hat. She has been wearing it out everywhere and people are always commenting on how cute it is. Thanks for making it for her Auntie Kim.

And finally a bath time picture. She will be moving to the b ig tub soon. She loves to play in the tub now. She is going to need some new bath toys for the big tub.

6 months and counting!

Arabella is just over six months now. We can't believe how big she is getting and how fast it has been going by. Here are some updates on her - 

• weighs in at just over 17lbs
• 25 inches long
• is wearing 6/9 month clothing
• sits up completely on her own (for almost 3 weeks now)
• on her tummy she can pivot and move backwards
• reaches out to be picked up
• loves sweet potatoes, squash, mango, pumpkin, prunes and pears
• hates apples, avocado and peas
• eats dinner every night and we just started adding in breakfast
• loves to drink ice water out of mommy's cup
• loves dakota 
• really loves cali

Here are a few new pics and videos of Arabella. This first video was taken by Will and shows you how much Ara-b loves Cali. I can't believe Cali just lets her do this, Cali is always coming over and sitting by there and letting her do her version of petting. It is too cute. If I did that to Cali she would bite me, but not Ara-b.

Her are some pictures of us while we are waiting to get the ferry out to Peaks Island. It was Arabella's first boat ride. It was too cold to go outside though, we were all bundled up.

 This is after her bath, doing some cuddling while we dry off. She is such a sweety.

 We tried to get Dakota in there but he didn't look the first time, so we had to take another one.

Sitting & Playing!

Ara-B has been working on sitting now for weeks and she has almost got it down. She will fall to the side occasional but if she has something to focus on she will do good for a bit. Here is a video we took of her today playing with her new vtech toy. 

She loves her new toy,  there is another video of her below in her bumbo playing with the new toy. It has legs that can be on/off or one on so you can slope it to her. She was giggling and laughing. I think it is stimulus overload for her... it has lights, sings and talks.

Eating Cereal Video

I took a short video of Ara-B eating her rice cereal tonight. She loves it but she really wants to help feed herself. She finished it all though, I guess I will have to slowly increase the amount. She does love to eat ... so far.

First Food

Ara-B had her first food tonight - rice cereal mixed with breast milk. She ate the whole thing - all 4 tablespoons of it, she loved it. We took some pictures but unfortunately the flash was not on for most of them - oops so they came out dark. The picture program fixed them but now the colors are not that great :(    They are still cute though.  She sure got messy, she had it everywhere by the end.  There are a few that look good - they are smaller though since they were on the iphone, they aren't as many megapixels.

This is the pre-cereal picture, she is ready and waiting, wondering what we are doing next

Whenever the spoon was away she stuck a hand or finger in her mouth immediately

She got the idea pretty fast and would open wide when the spoon came her way

By the end she had it everywhere

Now we will have to see if a full tummy at night helps us sleep better (mommy is crossing her fingers that it does).

Ara-B goes to PumpkinLand!

We took Ara-B and Grandma to PumpkinLand today. Its just in the next town and there was a ton of stuff to do there. I think she will really enjoy it next year and the years after when she can do more of the activities. 

Family Picture when we arrived, it was a walk just to get to the entrance.

We wanted to see how many pumpkins high Ara-B was... I think it is about 2. We will have to see where she is next year.

 We did a bunch of the pictures through the holes, she rarely looks out though. She is always looking down at the wood or had sun in her eyes. It was a gorgeous fall day.

This is a picture of the corn maze that they have. It is one of the biggest around and in the shape of a lobster. We didn't do it this year but figure we will spend many of our future years exploring it.

We walked through part of the mini corn maze for small kids (no wrong turns, etc.). Ara-B was interested in the corn - one of the rules is don't pick the corn.

We were watching the older kids ride the bikes around the track

This one was the best one she actually looked at Will and Grandma for the picture!

Blowing bubbles...

Posing with the pumpkins. We propped her up with a few of them but she ended up taking home a tiny one.

Arabella Goes Apple Picking!

We finally got out apple picking with Arabella. She had a good day out, she saw sheep, goats, and cows, picked some apples and hiked around. She loves being outside. Of course right in the middle of it all she decided that she needed to eat, but that is pretty normal. So here are some pictures from our day at Wallingfords Apple Farm.

Arabella gets her first experience with a picture through a hole, mom had to hold her up,  maybe next time we can both be in it.

She was very interested in the sheep, goats, cows and other animals they had. They were interested in her until they found out that she did not have any corn/grain to give them.

She held on tight to Daddy during the tractor ride out to the apple trees

Helping Daddy pick apples!

She was interested in the apples. We will make some applesauce with some of them and she can have it in another month or so.

There were so many apples in the trees - it was easy pickin

I started WW last week, 5 lbs down already, a lot more to go, but its  start!

too preoccupied with the apples/trees to look for the pictures

Eventually she went into the moby for some walking around, we walked back to the main area.

These apple tree's grow in a funky way, tons of apples on them though. they would be good climbing trees

rows upon rows of apple trees

we ended up with 15 lbs of apples, not even a full bag. 

Here are a few pictures of Arabella earlier this week in her bouncer, I think we forgot the flash so they are a little dark.