Nineteen Months

Stella is nineteen months old now. She continues to grow and develop at a very rapid rate and the time flies by. This month, she's been practicing her tantrum-throwing skills. Super exciting. She has learned to protest when she doesn't like something. And she currently doesn't like diaper changes, being pulled down from furniture she has been climbing up on, being moved from any situation or environment that she thinks she should be a part of, being told "no", not getting milk the instant she asks for it, etc, etc. We get a lot of protesting around here now.

Stella is also getting good at tormenting Scout. And Scout, bless her heart, has been the epitome of patience through it all (probably because she knows what'll happen if she does anything to Stella). As soon as the trouble begins, Scout flees the situation. It's slightly reminiscent of Joseph fleeing from Potipher's wife.

Case in point: Stella thinks it would be funny to crawl into Scout's kennel to bother her while she's trying to nap...

... Scout gets the hell out of Dodge...

... as fast as caninely possible!

Scout's only safe haven now is a small space under Stella's crib. And she goes there often. She's a good dog. They actually do like each other and play together sometimes. And, on very rare occasions, can even be coerced into taking a picture or two together.

Stella continues to be an excellent mess-maker. In fact, she sometimes does things with the express purpose of making a mess. Like hauling her mega blocks into the kitchen, dumping them in the middle of the floor, and then promptly making her way back to her room to actually play with something.

Stella loves her Daddy. Especially when he's computing. She loves to join in on the fun.

She also loves seeing her Daddy at church. Since he's in the bishopric, he always goes to church early for meetings. Stella doesn't get to see him on Sunday mornings until we arrive at church. And, since he sits up on the stand, it's always exciting when she first catches a glimpse of him up there. She starts yelling "daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy" and waves at him until he waves back. This usually happens within the first few minutes of arriving, so someone is speaking at the podium or the organ is playing - something is making noise that helps to drown out her excited daddy greetings. But, a couple weeks ago, she noticed him during the Sacrament. There was no other noise to drown out her yells. And she became very upset when I wouldn't let her run up to see him. I started to hear people around me laughing as her excitement and protesting got louder and as I dashed out of the chapel with her, I could hear most of the congregation laughing (myself and Mr. Frisby included). It was very cute and very embarrassing all at the same time. I'm glad she's the source of entertainment for so many during church.

Speaking of church, Stella is now going to nursery. She hates it. But, she goes. She screams when we drop her off (again with the protesting). But, eventually she stops crying and participates a little here and there. Hopefully she'll continue to get more comfortable with nursery and maybe she'll even start to enjoy it.

Stella continues to enjoy her gym class. She gets excited when we pull into the parking lot and she's getting really comfortable with running around and exploring everything there is to do at the gym. She's even getting braver on the balance beam.

One week they did baby rock-climbing and Stella absolutely loved it. She was pretty good at it, too. All I had to do was show her how to put her little feet on the rocks and she climbed right up the wall by herself. She made sure she got a few turns on it.

Her personality is starting to show even more and it's fun to watch it develop. She's starting to show her preferences, too. One of her current favorite things is her BYU shirt. Remember how she learned to say "cougar" last month because of her shirt? Well, now she just loves the shirt. She goes looking for her "googah" shirt everyday. She opens her shirt drawer and starts pulling out shirts until she finds it and then she carries it around with her. If I tell her it's dirty and it's in the laundry, she pulls things out of her hamper until she finds it and then she carries it around with her. Mr. Frisby and I are very concerned about what will happen when she outgrows it - which isn't far off.

She's also recently gotten into strawberries. She learned how to say the word and she recognizes them, so whenever she sees one, it's "bawbry, bawbry, bawbry". She has pajamas that have strawberries on them that she loves to wear and she has a book about a strawberry (it's actually about a mouse and a strawberry, but she just cares about the strawberry) that she loves to look at. And she likes to eat them. She also likes big trucks. She gets very excited when we see them on the freeway. It's handy if we're driving and I need to keep her awake. I just tell her to look for trucks. She also still gets excited whenever she sees the mail truck, garbage truck, or street sweeper.

Her vocabulary continues to expand and she's even started to say short phrases. Her first was, "Hi Daddy!" She's learning her body parts and can point to lots of them if we tell her to. We keep trying to teach her animal sounds, but she's having a harder time with those. She just barely started doing a monkey sound, but that's about it. She's very hesitant to try new foods, but she seems to sense when it's a dessert type food and usually has no problem with those. She's getting better at feeding herself with a spoon and she's working on drinking out of regular cup. She's a good little helper and loves to help us with whatever little task she can. Currently, she loves helping me put all of the pillows on our bed after I make it in the morning. She also likes to help pick up her toys at night.

She's very particular about putting things away. She will often put things back where she got them from and in the same position they were in. She's very observant and knows exactly where everything goes in her room. My mom says she's going to be a perfectionist. I have slight concerns about obsessive-compulsive disorder.

She definitely keeps us entertained. She was helping me get dinner going the other day and decided to wear her sunglasses for the occasion.

She also had her first trip to Gilroy Gardens this month, but that is for a different post. I guess that's our little Stella this month and we're excited to see what she comes up with next month.

Happy Easter!

This year's Easter celebrations were pretty quiet. There was an Easter Egg Hunt we could have gone to on Saturday morning, but instead we went to the airport to pick Mr. Frisby up from his two week long business trip. No matter. Stella won't remember anyway. I did want to do something, though, so we decided to dye Easter Eggs. This proved to be a very exciting activity for all involved. At first, Stella was not interested.

After she watched for a few minutes and saw what we were doing, she was eager to join the fun. And that's when things got exciting.

Take several hard-boiled eggs, six cups of dye, and one toddler who doesn't understand the concept that eggs are breakable and that dye can stain and you've got an evening of fun ahead.

We managed to keep her busy and happy away from the dye by having her put stickers on the eggs.

The finished eggs. If you look closely, you can figure out which ones are Stella's.

On Easter morning we checked out our Easter baskets to see what the Easter Bunny brought. I had gotten a bunch of stuff for Stella's basket, and then when we went to Disneyland, we found a couple of other things to put in it. So, when I put her basket out with the stuff, I thought maybe I had gone overboard a little. But, then I saw pics/read posts about what other people had done and decided we had not gone overboard at all.

We didn't get many pics of her checking out her basket, but suffice it to say she enjoyed everything in it. Particularly the M&Ms. Oh, and the mail truck. She loves it.

After checking out the Easter Baskets, we got ready for church. Mr. Frisby went early for meetings, so I attempted a photo shoot of Stella without him. I got her all ready in her new dress and fancy shoes. We had a few extra minutes before we had to leave, so I even grabbed the neckerchief Scout recently got from the groomer and included her in some of the photos. It went about as well as one would expect a photo shoot of an active toddler and small dog to go.

This is actually one of the better shots I got. And it's not good. We tired of this location quickly as the lighting wasn't good, and we moved to a different room. If you look closely, you'll see some tears in Stella's eyes. This is because she had a cold and her eyes were watery.

After moving locations, things went better for a few minutes and I got a few good pics, but the photo shoot still suffered from a definite lack of cooperation.

Apparently, it just got too exhausting at one point.

And, finally, we ended with this. You'll notice once again that Stella has some tears in her eyes. This had nothing to do with her cold and everything to do with her being done with the photo shoot. Oh well. She looked super cute even if you can't tell in the photos.

We hope you all had a wonderful Easter. Here's to better photos next year.

Eighteen Months

My word, last month seems like forever ago! I just looked over my last post about Stella and it's amazing how much she has changed over the last month. I didn't realize how much she is doing now that she wasn't doing just a month ago. This raising kids is crazy business.  So, what is Stella up to? Well, let's have a look-see.

Stella is busy. Always busy. Though, rarely do we find any one thing that keeps her occupied for more than a few minutes. She mostly keeps busy exploring and making mess after mess after mess. Here she is, very satisfied with herself, after climbing up on Scout's kennel and retrieving a sleeve of girl scout cookies from the counter all by herself.

She thoroughly enjoys her time at the Little Gym and is getting braver on the balance beam.

She loves her little class and I love that, for the hour or so that we're gone, she's not making messes at our house. It's a win-win. Win.

Her vocabulary has grown a lot this month. In fact, she tries to mimic a lot of the words we say. She now says cheese, puppy, hi (and she finally waves!), please (along with signing it), hiding, hungry (along with signing it), ball, and home. She has also finally started signing thank you. She did learn one more word this month that we're all very proud of - Cougar. I put her BYU shirt on her one day and she looked down at the design and pointed at the cougar. So, I told her it was a cougar on her shirt. She smiled, pointed at it again, and said, "googah". Throughout the rest of the day, she would occasionally look down at her shirt, point to the cougar, and say, "googah". Even now, if she sees the shirt, she'll say it. It's awfully cute.

Stella also got sick this month. And she felt lousy! She has gotten a number of colds before, but it's never really slowed her down. Aside from snot coming out of her nose and waking up in the night, you would never know she was sick. But the bug she got this month had her down for the count. She had a pretty high fever that was off and on for a couple days and when it was on, she only wanted to sit on my lap and do nothing. Poor girl. She also was exhausted, so she slept a ton (which, of course, was awesome). And her appetite was almost non-existent. I took her to the doctor because she had had some episodes of really rapid breathing during the fevers, so they wanted us to follow up with her doctor. He could see her throat was red, so the poor girl had a sore throat, too. It was a sad couple of days, but she actually bounced back pretty fast.

She seemed to be feeling much better on gym class day, so I decided to take her. She got really excited when we got there and she did have fun, but it may have been a bit premature. Her energy level wasn't quite where it normally is. Obviously, she was still recovering.

I mentioned last month that Stella had gotten her first goose egg. I think it was the opening of Pandora's Box. This month, the bumps and bruises have come fast and furious. The worst one was when she knocked one of her front teeth loose on the shopping cart at the grocery store. I didn't think she had hit it that hard, but when I looked at it it was bleeding and when I wiggled it, it moved a little. Not a lot, just a little. We're hoping that it was so little that the tooth won't die and turn dark. So far so good.

Speaking of teeth, Stella finally got her last canine in and is now done teething until it's time for her two year molars. This is great for all of us because it means she's sleeping much better at night. In fact, she's slept through the night pretty much every night since the tooth finally came in.

Stella LOVES being outside. She has a great time at the park, but mostly because she's outside.

Since the weather has warmed up, we often go outside for a little bit when we're at my parents' house. Stella loves checking out the yard and everything in it. She recently discovered Bruce, the fake owl that I bought to put in the yard when we lived there. Bruce was supposed to scare the squirrels away. He did not. But, now he's a good friend for Stella to carry around in the yard, so I guess he wasn't a total failure.

I recently gave Stella her first bubble bath. She was a little confused when I first put her in, but she warmed right up to the plethora of bubbles and had a great time. I made the mistake of trying to give her a bubble beard. When I put the bubbles up to her chin, she thought I was trying to feed them to her, so she promptly began scooping up bubbles and shoving them in her mouth. I thought after one scoopful she would quickly change her mind, but she happily spent the rest of her bath eating bubbles.

This month, Stella decided that she wants to help me vacuum. She insists on holding onto the vacuum handle while I do it. Since she's under three feet tall and doesn't have a very long reach, it was taking forever to vacuum with the short little passes we could do with her holding onto the handle. So, finally I just picked her up, put her on my hip, and let her hold onto the vacuum handle while I vacuumed away.  And that's pretty much how I vacuum now. It actually works out because it keeps her out of the way and I get an excellent workout pushing the vacuum while lugging around a 25 pound child.

She has shown this month that she is a very strong-willed little girl. Unfortunately, I'm a pretty strong-willed mom. So, the battles of wills have begun. They almost always occur at mealtimes. Most of the time, Stella is actually a pretty easy-going little girl. But, it seems she has chosen food as her vehicle to assert her growing independence and she can get very finicky about what she eats. She will just decide that she's not going to eat something (regardless of whether she actually likes it or not) and the battle ensues. Good times.

Most of the time, Stella seems to just go about enjoying life. She's a happy little girl and very curious. She has her moments (usually when she's tired) when the smallest problem becomes the biggest crisis ever, but usually she just has a good time figuring life out. It's fun to watch her. And she has a very contagious smile.

Now that Stella is eighteen months old, she's finally ready to go to nursery at church. I've been taking her for the past month and staying in there with her to try to get her used to being there and getting to know the nursery leaders. I think it's helped, but I fully expect her to completely freak out when I drop her off this Sunday. Although the glue that has bound her to my hip practically since birth is finally beginning to weaken a little, she's still firmly attached to me. I'm hoping this is one of the ways she'll change a lot over the next month. She's so great!

Five Years

I got married five years ago today. That's nuts! So, what did Mr. Frisby and I do to celebrate? Well, he's currently in Beijing, so nothing. But, it's totally fine because that's why we went to Disneyland last week! We decided to celebrate this milestone with a couple days at the Happiest Place on Earth. And, it gets better. My mom agreed to watch Stella for us for the couple days, so we got to go by ourselves! How fun is that? Super fun - I promise. Just look how happy we are.

We dropped Stella off at my parents' on Wednesday morning and then caught our flight to OC. We quickly dropped our stuff off at our hotel and headed to the park. I absolutely love walking into Disneyland because all of the anticipation and excitement of the great times ahead suddenly transitions to actual good times occurring. It's magical!

Our first stop was at the Town Hall to get our Happy Anniversary buttons to wear. All day both days people were wishing us Happy Anniversary. In fact, Princess Aurora even wished us a Happy Anniversary when we bumped into her on the way out of the park on the second day. We had reservations for lunch at The Blue Bayou (you know, the restaurant inside Pirates of the Caribbean) and had some amazing food. I love that place. The rides were so great, as always. Except, it would've been nice if Big Thunder Mountain Railroad had been open. Still, when riding Space Mountain is part of your anniversary celebration, it doesn't get much better than that. Oh wait, yes it does. When you meet up with a good friend on day 2 and all get to ride Space Mountain together!

And when said good friend doesn't do spinning rides and is, therefore, available to take photos of you on the Teacups!

I really like the teacup pics because I'm cranking that little wheel as fast as I can trying to get us spinning as fast as possible and Mr. Frisby is trying to focus on one point so that he doesn't get too dizzy to the point of being sick (except the one time when he stopped to wave at Amy).

Our first day there, I must admit, I was less relaxed because I was a little stressed about how Stella would do. We have never left her overnight before, so this was a big deal. I had slept horribly the night before because I was worried that I would forget something she needed or forget important instructions for my mom and that Stella would not take being left well. Plus, we had to get up early to get Stella to my parents' and get to the airport. So, I was sleep-deprived and a little stressed. But, we still had tons of fun and a few texts from my mom throughout the day assuring me that Stella was doing great eased my mind. Though we had lots of fun, we got tuckered out a little earlier than I would have liked (proof that I'm getting old. Bleh.) and headed to the hotel to relax.

With my mind at ease about Stella and having gotten more sleep, I was much more energetic on Day 2. Good friend Amy picked us up from out hotel and we headed to the park for lots of fun. It was a fabulous day! We rode rides, we ate more good food, we enjoyed not having to worry about a small child. It was awesome!

The saddest part was having to leave the park to head to the airport on Thursday night. We had such a blast and it was such a great break from Stella. We love her to death and were really excited to see her when we got back (even though it was late when we got to my parents' and we had to wake the poor girl to go home), but breaks are really nice sometimes. It was a magical anniversary celebration!

And, lest you think we completely forgot about Stella while there, rest assured we didn't. Our 2 days in the park brought me to the realization that I will be somewhat annoyed when we have to take her because I know she will slow us down and we will not be able to ride all of the rides that we normally would. However, the whole time we were there, I kept thinking about how much she will love it, so it makes me excited to take her someday in spite of that. We also had fun picking up a few little things to bring home for her. The favorite was the little stuffed Chewbacca. She learned about Wookiees from her Star Wars ABC book. Her favorite page is the W for Wookiee page. So, when we saw the little stuffed Chewbaccas, we knew we had to bring one home for Stella. It was a huge hit.

A proper way to celebrate five years, I'd say!