What if the Hokey Pokey Really is what it's all about: The View from Here....

We had a low key weekend at home. We all had a few small naps here and there, but Miss Bella is still not on board with the whole sleeping a lot at night thing. I know part of this game is us learning her just as much as she is learning us, but the sleeping at night thing we just can't figure out. I thought it was maybe the light coming in the window, so we covered the window with a blanket, and she woke up even earlier this morning. I thought it was because she was hungry so we started giving her a little snack before her last trip out to go potty, at night, but that didn't do the trick, I thought it was just simply the amount of time in the crate, but last night we stayed up later and she went to bed later and she woke up even earlier than the usual this morning, so we are sort of back to square one with the guessing. We always take her out to go to the bathroom right before bed time and she always goes. Any good suggestions are welcome!
Saturday, our neighbors had a birthday party for Hudson who is turning 2. We stopped by for a little bit to say hi and happy birthday!! Such a cute birthday party idea. They had a pony come for kids to ride (around the cul-de-sac) and a portable petting zoo that they set up in a small portable fence in their front yard and all the kids climbed in and played with all the animals, it was such a cute idea, and quite funny to be hanging laundry in the closet and look out the window and see a pony walking around the cul-de-sac on a Saturday morning ....

I swear our little Bella is growing every single day, literally. I am curious to see how much she weighs when we go to the vet again on Friday!! She is learning to use her paws to get things and move things, however, she surely is not using them to go DOWN any stairs. She barks and squirms and cries and runs from the top of any stairwell, but takes the up direction of a stairwell like a champ, and can beat me up the stairs now!
We started working on "come", although she is not a huge fan of it, but we are working on it and hopefully will get further every day!

In big news, the crate is no longer seeming like such an "evil" place to Bella. She still whines for a few minutes every few times I put her in there in the middle of the day to run to grocery, etc, but not nearly how she used to, and she is always sitting quietly and playing with a toy when I come back up to get her!
On Friday, she came up stairs with me when I brought a load of laundry up, and she darted into "her room" and I found her chilling in her crate .... I of course used it for a photo op. As you can tell, I am LOVING my new camera, and I want to capture all these puppy moments while I can!!! :) If these bore you, I am sorry, I really want them for our own documentation reasons to look back on one day!!

Our baby girl is slowly becoming a big girl, but still is so stinking cute... here are some more pictures on friday, so we can see her grow, and I thought the mat was a good size comparison too! This is the mat that sits in the corner of our room and she chills on every morning and anytime we are in the room

Bella has been eating extraordinarily fast, so we went to petsmart and got the metal ball that goes in the bowl to try and slow her down. Don't you think for a second she doesn't still down her food in no time flat but it has seemed to slow her down a little bit, and she now stops and takes sips of water in between bites, so I guess it's fair to say it is working!

She still pushes her bowl around making sure to get every last kibble though...

Miss Bella looooooooves to sleep on the cold tile. If we ever can't find her on any level, we always know to first look in the tiled rooms.....

Today she found the downstairs basement bathroom....

If we ever can't find her in a tiled room, then look between large pieces of furniture/ walls here she is between the couch and the wall/baseboard in the basement. Please note the couch is as close to the wall as it can be, as the arm of the couch is practically touching the wall .... not much longer she will be able to squeeze in here...