THE NEXT MILES DAVIS?

Eh? Maybe not, but this is pretty funny. Bella really got into her instruments a while back, and her improvement on the trumpet was of particular note. There'll be some guitar songs forthcoming as well!

RUNNING THE HALLS

A few months back - January and February - for some reason Bella started wanting to run down our hallway and back. Mind you, we don't have a hallway in our apartment. This is the hallway outside our apartment. It is, I would estimate, 60 feet long. At first, she just ran down and back. Then she started wanting to run two or three times back and forth. Then she wanted to do it, but with our door closed (and her dad watching out the peephole). She did this every night for a while, always in her pink slipper boots. Was this a good idea so close to bedtime? Doubtful. But it saved us fighting about it with her, and made some some cute videos.

A FALL & THE DENTIST

Bella fell while her class was visiting Hippo Park last Thursday, March 17. She was running up some stairs on a jungle gym play fort thing and fell forward. She hit her lips and teeth against the steps, and went back to school bleeding. Her parents were busy at work, but her grandparents, Nana & Nunya, were available to come pick her up. She spent the rest of the day on Nana's tummy, watching TV and eating some yogurt and pudding. By dinner time, she was eating steamed broccoli and other goodies, and her mom scheduled an appointment to go to a dentist the next morning to be sure there was no real damage.

So I took Bella to the dentist, and it turned out to be easier than, well, pie. This is mostly because this office knows kids - it a pediatric dentist - so there was a TV in the lobby playing a cartoon, a train that ran on tracks along the ceiling, a TV in the ceiling above the examination chair, Dora and Diego dolls waiting for Bella when she got to the exam room, and a treasure chest filled with cheap toys that Bella was promised she could rummage around in after the exam.

Long story short, I don't think Bella even noticed the dentist, Dr. Rob, come in and feel her teeth. There were no problems, her teeth appear fine, but we scheduled a return visit - with a real exam - for next month. We'll see how easy that one goes. Maybe Bella's mommy would like to take her?

MARBLE CITY

Bella and her dad have become quite fond of building large scale (for us anyway) cities out of building blocks and this amazing marble run construction set her Uncle Reid and Aunt Claire got her for Christmas. We can use it to assemble Rube Goldberg/Mousetrap the Game style mazes for marbles to roll and drop along. When we add them to the building blocks given to her at birth by Cameron and Carol and the killer Twig blocks Aunt Lindsey got for her, we can build a pretty remarkable minitropolis if we do say so ourselves. Especially if the marble makes it all the way down to the spiral landing pad at the end!







Video to come...

OLF

So, the other morning, Bella was allowed to put on some make up. When she was done, she came in and showed her parents, announcing she looked like Olf the Pirate. Olf is a character in one of Calef Brown's books, specifically Dutch Sneakers and Flea Keepers. So we got her to hold up the picture of Olf and let you, the reader, decide.

PS - She did not go outside like this, and we washed the makeup off after about 20 minutes.