At 21 months, Bel has been getting bored with her toys. She has taken interest in playing with other children, rather than by herself. She's even given up coloring with crayons, and even markers. So I found this Water Wow Color With Water book, and it's been one of the best $6 I ever spent. It has several pages that you can color with this "pen" that you fill with water. They squeeze the pen as they scribble, and the paper turns color! It's amusing to Bel because it's something different, and fun to watch the colors appear as she scribbles. You can even reuse it over and over again. We got the princess Water Wow book because it's all they had at the store, but there are many other ones online. I might just have to order a few more. It would be great to take to restaurants, too!

She got this Toddler's First Band Set as a birthday gift for her first birthday. I come from a musical family and thought it would be great for her to have some instruments, too. As with the majority of her toys, she likes for me to play with them with her.

So for these instruments, which are all types of shakers or rattlers, I turn on a fun song and dance while shaking them. And she just has a blast dancing and shaking the instruments along with me. She has her favorite song, which for now is "Rhythm of Love". She'll go and grab a shaker and then point to the iHome and ask us to play that song and dance with her.

We just got this Weebles Tree House for Baby Bel today. She loves it so far. But for now, she likes me to play with it with her. It's for 18 months and older, and she is almost 18 months, so I thought it would be perfect for her. She loves the slide and hiding the weebles behind the door. She is still learning how to crank the escalator.

The set came with two weebles. But we had another set of weebles that we had bought a while back. It was fun to load the escalator with all 4 weebles. I gave them the names of some of her friends so she could do some role playing. 

Shortly after Baby Bel started walking, I noticed that she seemed to be walking weird in these cheap shoes that I had bought her. Her walk seemed labored and she tripped easily whenever she wore them. Barefoot, she was fine.

I had heard a lot about Stride Rite SRT shoes from some mommy friends and decided to try some out. As soon as we tried on some velcro tennies on her, she took off practically running in them. She seemed really happy and could get around easily in them. Big difference! So we were sold.

Since then, we bought a couple more pairs, as her feet grew bigger. We absolutely love them and would recommend the Stride Rite SRT series shoes for any young toddler who recently started walking or learning to run. The SRT shoes are supposed have great support for bone and muscle development, help them keep their balance, are comfortable, light-weight, and there are many cute styles. Another advantage with these shoes is that they come in half sizes and wides, which we've needed for Baby Bel's chubby little feet.

Normally, I'm not a big fan of buying expensive baby items because they outgrow them so quickly. But with Baby Bel being a new toddler who is just learning to run around and explore, it has made a huge difference in her comfort, her confidence on her feet, and her ability to run and play, without some flimsy shoes flopping off.