Monday, October 31, 2005

Peekaboo with Daddy


Peekaboo 1
Originally uploaded by Isabella Youlan.
The title pretty much sums it up. Bella had so much fun playing peekaboo behind the chair at Grandma Lorrie and Grandpa Ron's house.
Click on the photo for more pictures of the peekaboo game

Thursday, October 27, 2005

Talking and more Talking!


Oak!
Originally uploaded by Isabella Youlan.
Bella is talking so much now! We lost track of how many words she knows sometime in September, at over 50. She has started speaking many of her signs as well. (I mean besides MORE, which she's been both signing and saying since May!) Some favorites are airplane, stars, bubbles, arm, knee, Uh-oh, bye-bye, up and eye.

Some words are a little hard to understand, at least without context. The dogs, known to us as Zima and Iris, are called Mimi and Aiiii (eye). And her good friends Ch'aska (age 6 1/2) and Callum (4 1/2) are Dada and Mum! (hmm, I thought that was us?).
Our current favorite, though (and the reason I chose this photo to illustrate the blog) is her word for Hug, which sounds just like Oak! She likes this word so much now that she is forever going around asking for an Oak! So cute we have a hard time not laughing. We have even tossed around the idea of faking her out and pretending that really is the way to pronounce it, so that she won't change, but figured that would mark us as "bad parents," so we won't (probably).

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Vacation at Silver Lake

Okay, very far behind in blogging. I put up this bunch of pictures, though, from our vacation (in early August!) to Silver Lake, by Carson Pass and Kirkwood, in the Sierra. Click on the picture at right to see more.

Isabella had sooo much fun on this vacation! We had a housekeeping cabin right by the lake, and Jeff's parents and brother had another a few hundred meters away. So the day consisted of walking over to Grandma's and eating, then walking home and changing and going to the beach and playing in the water, then changing again and walking back to Grandma's and eating, then a hike or maybe more beach, and then walking back (she was having great fun practicing walking at this point, since it had only been about 2 or 3 weeks) for an extended eating period in the evening, and then early bed. And parents focused just on her, with no pesky phones or computers. And lots of birds and squirrels to watch. The only thing missing was her doggies, but otherwise this was heaven!

We really had a good time too! Jeff's family first rented one of these cabins 42 years ago (see photo in the album by clicking on the picture above) and have come most years since then. This year was pretty different from previous years--not nearly as much hiking or long paddles, but we got some very nice hikes in and had so much fun watching Bella having fun! And the sunsets were beautiful, and there was a really cool sun dog that we had to take lots of pictures of as well. Click on the photo to see all of the above and more.
-Andrea