Yikes...time for an update!!!

Eeks, it's well into 2010, and I need to post a family update!!

Mirella is growing into a very smart little toddler. She loves playing with her toys and her friends.

She loves to taunt the dogs, which I find hilarious.

She is growing so darn fast! She talks soooo much - she can count to 10 and knows all the letters in the alphabet. She can't quite recite the alphabet yet, but she will say the letters that she knows when she hears the song.

She loves "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and will try to do the motions with you.

She absolutely LOVES anything Elmo, and will watch all of Sesame Street just for the last 15 minutes of Elmo.

She loves to tackle/climb all over her big kid friends that I watch after school and plays dress up with them.

We just converted her crib to a toddler bed over the last weekend. She just loves being able to get in and out of bed. She gets in and says nigh night and closes her eyes, then opens them and laughs. She is such a silly little girl, always making us laugh. We have a feeling she may be a comedian or some sort when she is older.

She has taken to calling Grandma "Bugga", which is adorable. Not sure where the name came from but it's what she calls her. Both of her Grandpa's are called Poppa or Poppy. :)

She enjoys talking on the phone, whether there is someone on the other end or not. ;)

She loves to play outside and calls slides "weeeeeeee!"

It's hard to believe she is going to be 2 in a matter of months!! Time is certainly flying by way too fast with her. I want to keep her as my little baby forever.

Fall Update

Well we made it through a really hot summer, and now enjoying the lovely Fall weather. So thankful it's bearable to go outside now.

Mirella is walking like a pro, and is learning new words all the time. She now says "Sesy" for Roxy our dog, "Shez" when she points at her shoes, "Go" after she climbs onto our legs for a horsey ride, "Bye-Bye" as she waves and usually it's when someone has their car keys or heading for the door, "Ah-yee" is for Ally her cousin and also for Ellie one of the girls I watch after school, "Mommy" "Momma" "Daddy" "Dada" "Doddy" for doggy.

Mirella can whistle (YES, WHISTLE!!!), blow kisses, clap, give hugs, and kisses. She pats her leg when trying to get the dogs to come to her. She is great at giving High Fives. She LOVES when we do "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and does the ...wash the spider out... movement when she wants you to do it again, then claps at the end. She tries to wink at you if you wink at her first, it's adorable! She loves to laugh and be silly.

She has a total of 6 teeth now. During July her top two teeth made their appearance and just during the past couple of weeks two more bottom teeth surfaced!

She has a lot of hair and it's getting long. I can make two little pigtails, which looks absolutely adorable!

She would eat fruit all day long if I let her. She loves milk and she loves ice cream. Yummmm!

She loves the "Hot Dog" song on "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse" and a few other theme songs on some of Mommy's shows haha! She will come running from where ever she is to sit on my lap during the song. It's really funny!

Mirella helps Daddy put the mail out and she LOVES to do that. Whenever she see's him with mail (normally our red Netflix envelopes) she goes straight to him so he can take her with him. She knows how to open the mailbox, put the mail in, close the mailbox, and raise the flag. She is one smart cookie!

She has recently learned how to put the right puzzle pieces in the right spots, she has trouble making them fit perfectly in, but she knows the right places to put them!

Over the summer we acquired some fun outdoor toys for Mirella....FREE! We got a very cool play structure with 2 slides and a door and a little crawling tube from some people we met in our town who no longer used it. We also got a neat little play house for her from one of the families I care for after school who no longer used it. She loves playing outside with her toys.

She loves to feed the dogs and pester them with pets, hugs and kisses. :)

She really enjoys being around the older kids that I watch everyday. They all love playing with her and she has a blast with them!

She is going to be Tinkerbell for Halloween. Although she cries when she see's and puts on her costume, but is fine after a little distraction.

Hmmm I'm sure there is tons more...I will have to add to the post later. :)

We are looking forward to experiencing Christmas this year with our little angel. Every year is going to be more and more fun as she learns what it's all about! :)

Hope all of you are well! xoxo

A few articles I've written

I am starting out on a new career in life, and learning to write articles. I will post them here from time to time. Here are the first two I've written, hopefully they get better with time. :) Wish me luck!

http://www.squidoo.com/pocketchangefromhome

http://www.squidoo.com/breastfeedingbabies

Mirella is a one year old!!!

Happy Birthday Mirella!! I can't believe a whole YEAR has gone by! I have been really slacking on updating my blog. So I thought what better than her one year mark to update!? She had a wonderful birthday celebration with a lot of her baby friends and family. She received a lot of very fun gifts which now take up a lot of our living room.

She absolutely LOVES pushing her toys with wheels (even some with out wheels) ALL over the house. She will push/slide everything from the kitchen table chairs to her puzzles from room to room. It's pretty comical to watch, but she never brings them back so I end up having to pick everything up and bringing it back to the living room to her play area.

Mirella can crawl extremely well. She started doing that around 10 months old. She will walk if holding your hand or holding on to the couch, table, toys etc. She most recently starting taking a few steps with out holding on to anything or anyone, but they are usually just between Mommy and Daddy.

She LOVES to play "I'm gonna get you". If you say it to her she moves as fast as she can to get away, yet keeps looking back to see if you are coming. She laughs and smiles the whole time. It's very cute.

She enjoys the dogs very much. She will try to chase Roxy sometimes and occasionally Roxy will taunt her and act like she is going to pounce. Mirella cracks up at that. She is always trying to pet them, but since she hasn't really mastered petting nicely, they usually growl at her when she comes too close because they are expecting to be hit. Poor dogs. Although they are her BEST FRIEND when she is in her highchair. They wait patiently underneath waiting for her food to drop. She loves to feed them from her highchair.

Mirella is a big fruit eater. She could eat fruit all day long. She loves her puffs as a snack, and enjoys eating anything she can pick up and feed herself, chicken, ground beef, pasta, peas, carrots, cheese. She loves ice cream (would be very surprised if she didn't seeing that mommy and daddy looooove it!)

She is still nursing, so we haven't yet tried milk, but plan to do so soon. I will probably continue nursing for a bit longer, don't feel a need to quit just yet, and she doesn't seem very interested in stopping either. So we'll continue on for now!

We recently tried taking Mirella in a pool. At first she wasn't real sure about it, didn't like her floaty at all and cried the whole time almost. But by the 2nd and 3rd time of trying she really enjoyed it and kicked her little legs and splashed around.

She doesn't care for TV much which is surprising. Whenever it's on she doesn't pay much attention to it. She would much rather play or chase the dogs or get into their dog bowls. There have been a couple things that catch her attention like PeeWee's Big Adventure. She just sat and watched it until we turned it off. She also seems to like Fifi and the Flowertots cartoon. It's pretty cute and I like it myself so that is good! She laughed one time when a picture of Michael Jackson came up on the TV. That was pretty funny! She will sit for a minute or two when I put the Baby Einstein DVD's on. She also stopped and watched a Disneyland commercial one time, seeing as her parents are Disneyland fanatics this is a good thing!!!

We plan to take her to Disneyland by the time she's 2. We can't wait!! (As I'm sure you can tell by the ticker at the top hehe.)

Mirella is saying "Hi" all the time, it's adorable! She also started saying "Daaw-Dee" which we assume is Doggie since it started by staring and pointing at the dogs. But then it turned into her word for everything. She will point at an Elmo doll and say Daaw-Dee. She will point at her toys and say Daaw-Dee. Everything is that right now. I have been practicing saying "Mama" while patting my chest so she knows I am talking about me, and she has started to repeat it and patting my chest also. YAY! I am excited for her to start learning new words.

She has 2 bottom teeth, which she has had for a few months now. Her top ones are making their way down and should appear pretty soon, her gums are are pretty swollen looking.

She waves bye-bye when someone says "bye-bye" to her. I love it. She started out waving with both hands facing herself...but she has started to turn them outwards to wave at others. So sweet!

She points at things she sees and says some gibberish, of course that is cute too! I just love all the new things she is learning and enjoying watching her grow and learn everyday. I've been truly blessed to be able to stay home for as long as I have with her. Thank you Tony for working a full time job so that I can raise our daughter! I appreciate it more than you know! And being that it's Father's Day, Happy Father's Day to you!!

I was watching some children after school from October to June. They didn't need me to watch them during the summer so I am out of work for a bit. I recently was offered another "nanny" type of job to watch 2 little girls in their home starting in August. So I will be doing that for a couple days a week. They are really sweet girls and loved Mirella so I'm looking forward to doing that.

I guess that is enough for now...picture time!!!

Playing outside in her walker. She makes some silly faces!

Baby in a basket.

Outside again

Sportin' her sunglasses on her head like Mommy and Daddy do.

Playing with her cousins Sophia and Brooke in February.

Brooke, Sophia and Mirella at Easter in matching dresses.

Playing at the park.

More of Mirella's cousins: Hailee, Faith, Cammy, Ally, Tegan, Mirella

Such a sweet little face.

Uh oh...

Santa Cruz with Momma and Gramma

On the wharf. It was a beautiful day.

Easter fun with Cousin Sophia and Uncle Jay!

Easter Egg Hunt.

Swimming at Uncle Chris and Auntie Veronica's house.

Often times I find her on the dog bed petting them.

Moving the kitchen chairs around.

Sweet baby girl.

Kisses from Cousin Hailey!

Whatcha got there? Mirella with her cousin Allison.

Pretty girl!

Family photo at Marine World. (Or Six Flags whatever it's called.)

Daddy reading to Mirella.

Close up! She's so cute! :)

Eating a chocolate lollipop for the first time. I made them for her birthday.

I think she liked them!

Pigtails for the first time. Soooo cute!!

Momma and Baby on her Birthday!

Present time!!

Happy 1st Birthday Mirella!!

She took her time, but she eventually started squishing it up in her hands.

She took the top layer off...but really didn't eat much of it or make that big of a mess on herself.

Sitting on one of her gifts. She didn't want to get off, so I just pushed her on it.

My sweet sweet Birthday Girl!

Riding around on her pony that Uncle Jay and Auntie Cara got for her!

Birthday Family photo!

Viva la Mexico! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Sweet Potato and more!!

Hopefully everyone had a wonderful and safe Christmas and New Years Eve! It's been a while since I posted and I've been receiving emails for updates! So here ya go!! :)

-The Cruise-

The cruise to Mexico with Tony's company was fun! We had fairly nice weather. The traveling went pretty well with Mirella on the way down and on the ship. We had some yummy tacos in Mexico and a mango margarita and of course chips and salsa. YUMMMM! We had awesome food on the ship. I loved the 24 hour food anytime you want it, anything you want, as much as you want. So much fun!!! One day it was kind of bad out on the water. I felt pretty sick most of the day, and took about 3 naps from the motion sickness medicine I was taking. By dinner time the ship was more steady so I was able to enjoy dinner. The trip home was so long, and Mirella was a fussy pants and wanted to be home...as did we! We needed a vacation from the vacation!!

On Amtrak...sitting like a big girl!

Just aboard the ship...Long Beach behind us.

In Mexico, our huge ship behind us.

Mirella and her towel buddy.

Another towel buddy!

-Christmas & New Years-
We spent Christmas Eve with Chris, Veronica, Hailey and Brooke. It was a nice quiet evening, we had a pork roast and asparagus. Yum! Mirella got to open her first present, which she loooved the wrapping paper of course!!

Christmas Day we spent the morning at home, Mirella played with her gift from Santa, and opened her gift from mommy and daddy. Again, she loved the wrapping paper! She had such a fun morning playing with her new stuff that she fell asleep on the floor next to her toys!

Later on Christmas Day we went over to Andy and Lisa's for dinner with Aaron, Chandra and all the girls! We did a White Elephant $1 store gift exchange. That was a lot of fun. We ended up with some Moonpies and Zip Popper candy. FUN FUN FUN!! I love white elephant exchanges! We had a very yummy dinner and yummy desserts! I think I had like 3 servings of the Jell-o Chandra made. Thanks! I need the recipe! :)

The Saturday after Christmas all of my family came up to Folsom to celebrate. Tony ended up with the stomach flu that morning so we changed plans to Chris and Veronica's house. It was a fun day, lots of yummy food. It was nice to see Bettie and Gordon, Pop and Ann, Peggy and Tom and Mike and my mom and Jay Cara and Sophia, and of course Veronica Chris Hailey Brooke Mirella and myself! It was a full house!!! The babies and Hailey all had lots of gifts to open. That was really fun! I couldn't wait to get all of Mirella's new toys home and opened so she could experience them!

I went home around 8pm, and my stomach was starting to hurt. I ended up with a mild case of the stomach flu that night as well and all of Sunday. Not fun, but at least it was the weekend and I could just relax. Mirella seemed to be ok, and didn't catch it. YAY!

Back to work the following Monday, except the boys I babysit had no school, so their mom dropped them off at my house for the full day. Same went for Tuesday. Then Tuesday night the boys were spending the night because the mom had to go out of town overnight. Well...lucky us, one of the boys ended up with the stomach flu that night!!!! Thankfully Tony was able to clean it up for me, I can not stand vomit. I called their mom multiple times, she never called back. Luckily I remembered I had the phone number to their grandparents house. So I called and Grandpa came right over and picked the boys up. So I spent the next day disinfecting my house again and I think I cleaned everything possible!

Everyone has been ok since, thankfully! New years was quiet...went to bed around 10pm. I woke up at exactly midnight when I heard fireworks outside. I said Happy New Year to a sleeping Tony and Mirella and fell back asleep.

Look what Santa Claus brought Mirella!!

Playing on her activity table!

Poppa Mirella and mommy

Brooke, Mirella and Sophia in their bumbo's!

-Baby Food-
After I was sure all the flu germs were gone and done with, I started Mirella on real food!! Sweet Potatos were her first since the rice cereal and oatmeal. She seems to really like it! After a week of sweet potatos, Mirella tried carrots. She didn't seem to impressed with it, and it was hard to feed her, but by day 4 she was liking it a lot! I did carrots for a week, and today started Green Beans. She liked it on the first try!! So we'll do that for the next week, I've already made Butternut Squash for week after. Then we'll do pears. I am so in love with making all her food from scratch! It's so much fun, and feels good that I'm giving her fresh all natural stuff!

Sweet Potatos


Carrots