Christmas Time is Here...

Christmas time is upon us and we are very excited to celebrate Isabel's first Christmas! We had to put the presents up a little higher as she likes to eat the paper, but she has been leaving the tree alone. Tim got the lights put up on the outside of the house last week. This is the first year we have had Christmas lights. Hopefully we will be able to spend a little each year until we have a respectable light inventory! Right now it's just blue lights around the front of the house.

Her first visit to Santa went very well. She did not cry at all and appeared very facinated by him! Maybe he will bring her something special for being so good!

Cat Wars

There is something to be said for forbidden territory. That tantalizing object you are not allowed to hold. The litter box with all of its hidden treasures just waiting to be explored. Since discovering her new found mobility, Isabel is lamenting the new philosophy her parents have adopted, boundaries.

Yes folks, Isabel is learning the word "no" and is not pleased. The cat is thankful though as she can always count on the privacy of her litter box when all else has fallen to the conquering sticky hands of Isabel Marie.


We often look to the blankets, laid on opposite ends of the living room to signify feline vs infant territory, to find Isabel sitting on Pele's mats and Pele sitting on Isabel's blanket! Whether one does it to annoy the other, I know not, but both are waged in a war of the border lines. Pele usually strikes first by laying a fine layer of kitty litter, like a minefield, across where Isabel plays. Isabel responds by stealthily sneaking up on the cat ready to squish her in the biggest gooiest hug ever. Luckily for Pele, Isabel is usually foiled with choruses of Mom and Dad yelling, "Isabel NO!" And running, panicked, to pull the infant to safety. Of course Pele's plans are foiled when Mom runs the vacuum, picking up the litter/mines, and freaking the cat out in the process.

So happy 8th month, Isabel, and here is to a harmonious one!

Sense of Humor

The weeks have simply flown by and her personality is becoming more distinct. We began a new tradition on our recent vacation to Birmingham, which is a new toy to commemorate the trip. We took her to Toys R Us for the very first time and she had a blast! One of the best parts was her reaction to a remote control Big Foot doll. Of course it was too expensive for us to consider, but we enjoyed watching her reaction to it.

She laughs more now and finds oddest things hilarious. We will sometimes just hear her break out into peals of laughter over the silliest things, like faces or sounds.

This week has also been a week of more firsts. I was on the phone with my mom when Isabel suddenly crawled across the room! She is crawling now!!! Then, a few days later, a pearly white tooth was spotted! Her lower right incisor came in. It is being closely followed by the left, which should be here soon...

I will try to get the crawling video posted soon!

Laughing!

Some more video of her beautiful laugh!

Isabel's First Swim

Isabel took a trip to the neighborhood pool today with me and Aunt Sara. She loved it! She was smiling when I first put her in the water and then kicked her legs to propel herself around the pool in her little raft. I think she is going to be a water baby like her mama!

6 months old today!!!

Today, Isabel is 6 months old! She had a fun evening and even got to choose what she ate for dinner...

6 months here we come!

I cannot believe it has been so long since our last posting! I can only apologize for the lapse in pictures... It is not that we haven't been taking them, but I just have not had the time to post them until now.

As Isabel is nearing her 6 month birthday, we are seeing more and more of her personality come out. She is very curious and loves new toys. I have been rotating her toys every couple of weeks, so when I bring an old toy back out, she acts like it is brand new and she has never seen it before.

She has also been keying in on our voices and will turn around with the biggest grin when we walk into her daycare room to pick her up at the end of the day!

She is eating "solid" foods now too. Her favorites are apples and bananas, but she seems to like everything she has tried so far.

Where's Isabel???

Isabel enjoys playing games and one of her favorites is "Where's Isabel?"

She is still very vocal and while this is cute now, I have to wonder how long it will remain so...

Talkin' talkin' talkin'

Tim and I are trying to guess what Isabel's first words are going to be. Vanity brings me to hope it's "mama", but reality says it will probably be "dada". Afterall, he is the one who can make her laugh, and he is the one who calms her down when she is really ticked. (Tim says I am just as good, but I see her resond to him better :) )

She does do a lot of talking with me, though- which is very well shown in this video...

New Vidoes

This is Isabel's Jumparoo and she really seems to like playing with all the toys on it... I just wish there was a way to have the lights on, but no music...that song gets in your head!

Her laugh is absolutely adorable! She has been interested in her reflection lately and will smile and coo at the baby she sees.

Day at the Museum!

We received an invitation from the Reptile staff at the Zoo to join them for a tour of the new Archaeopteryx exhibit at the Houston Museum of Natural Science. This was Isabel's first outing to the museum!


We began our day by meeting up with the Reptile staff at their building and then walking over to the museum. We decided to use the Ergo baby instead of the stroller in case there were stairs. It turns out that Isabel kind of enjoys the Kangaroo approach to things!




She even showed some interest in the fossils at the museum and was looking around quite a bit.

But at the end of the day, she was pretty tired and definitely ready for a nap!

May is here...

The first week of May is here and I find myself thinking, Where did the time go? I know it probably sounds cliche, but time has been absolutely flying by and Isabel is growing so very fast.

She is laughing more now, but my attempts at catching it on video have proven futile. She readily smiles at the camera, but they are usually paired with a movement, forever blurring the moment.

I hope I am not jinxing myself, but she sleeps pretty well now. She will sleep straight through to 4AM about 3 days a week, which is great for us. The other days she usually wakes around 1 or 2 AM, but will usually go right back to sleep once she is fed. The other night was a different story as she apparently wanted to tell me all about the dream she had. She was up from 1-2AM chattering away in her crib...not fussing, just talking. The talking is something else I have been trying to capture, but with limited success. Hopefully soon I will be able to post a video of these absolutely adorable moments!

3 Months!

Isabel just celebrated her 3 month birthday by enrolling in day care full time! We received the call this week that they can finally take her during the week, so we are breathing a sigh of relief.

We are seeing more and more changes with her lately. Her eyes are changing color, but haven't decided which color they are going to be. Lately they have been an inner ring of brown surrounded by blue on the outside. Today they were actually completely blue, and other days they sometimes appear green.

She is starting to hold objects with her hands and loves her plush doll best of all right now. She will hold onto it and sometimes falls asleep with it in her chair. Unfortunately, she has also started drooling all over everything as well, so every time I pick up the doll, she is sopping wet with cold drool!

She babbles a lot and likes to tell us all about her day. She also likes singing. Whenever Tim or I start to sing to her, she starts to chime in. I don't know if it's because she wants to join us or if she wants to drown out the sound of our singing voices :)

Rollin' Rollin' Rollin'

Isabel surprised me a few days ago by rolling onto her side while laying on her play gym mat. I was so excited, I ran to get the video camera, moved her onto a blanket for more room to roll, and waited....and waited...and waited. She finally did it again and though she still needs a little help to complete the roll (she has not perfected the arm removal yet) she is getting better and better!

She is in daycare for two days a week now and Tim and I split up the remaining days with a babysitter thrown in here and there. As much as it has been a hardship not having full-time daycare, I am kind of happy it happened this way as it eased me into leaving her there. The daycare workers now know her by sight and coo whenever they see her come inside. They say she is a happy baby who only really cries when she is hungry. It is a relief to hear she appears to enjoy her time there so I don't feel so bad for having to leave her. The first day was the hardest and I cried as I left. After rushing back at the end of my shift to pick her up, she was contentedly napping and had done perfectly fine that day :)

Happy Easter!!

Maternity Leave Ending...

My maternity leave is coming to a swift end and I will be going back to work on April 3! I can't believe it has come up so fast... Isabel's day consists of a few basic things- eating, pooping, sleeping, playing, and GROWING! She weighed in at just over 10lbs at her last doctor's appointment and has outgrown all of her Newborn sized clothes now.

Of course, this could be due to the fact that I never told her bibs were not for eating!

Her eyelashes are also coming in and they are beee-u-tee-ful! Tim and I both think her eyes might be starting to change, but it is difficult to tell whether this is due to tricks of the light or if they are really turning brown. Some days I look at them and they look like they are blue with a lighter blue in the center...weird.

She is starting to use her voice more, though not in the crying, screaming way that I thought she might. She punctuates her smiles with squeals and often greets me with coos when she wakes from a nap. She also yells this loud, flat, AAAH! when she is hungry. I think she is going to be a talker. She still amazes me how well she adapts to social situations where there are lots of people around. We have gone to several functions in the past few weeks and she is wonderful at each one causing people to comment what a mellow baby she is. I love that I can take her places! So long as I pay attention to her as well, we can go to restaurants and she will be quiet the entire time. I am enjoying this phase as I am sure it will not last once she reaches 6 months or so :)

Moving Around

We are seeing more and more movement each day! Whether she is reaching out to grab toys (she isn't quite holding on to them yet) or doing reverse crunches while she is supposed to be napping, Isabel has already shown she is ready to be on the move! I sometimes walk into her room after nap time to find her in a completely different position and area of the crib than I put her down in.

Isabel has also developed the ability to fall asleep anywhere but her crib! We are working through it though and she is doing much better with not fussing so much at nap times. Her fussy time of day really seems to be between 8 and 10 PM. Nearly every night we can count on at least some crying during those times.

For the most part, we are very blessed with a generally happy baby. I can only hope she stays that way and find myself knocking on wood everytime someone asks me if she cries and I reply "Not very often." Luckily she does not appear to be a child who will cry for seemingly no reason. Generally, when she cries she is either hungry, tired, wet, or gassy. Each of which we can do something about... even the gassy one! I actually read how to help a baby pass gas (not burping, but the other way!) and was astonished to see it actually work! Much better than the "pull my finger" method Tim was wanting to try.

We were also happy to discover that she takes to crowded situations quite well. We took her to a baby shower held in the staff break trailer at the zoo. It was very crowded and quite loud, but she was calm and appeared to be curious during the entire party. Several people held her and she did not mind one bit. She even got her first real glimpse of other babies and seemed very interested. I have also been showing her mirrors and watching her reactions. Either she is very vain or is interested in babies! I am not sure which it is...

It is hard to ignore all the growing she is doing. With tears in my eyes, I have started to set aside all of her Newborn sized clothes. She is just getting too tall for them. I think the "Love Me" outfit (shown above) and the elephant pajamas she came home from the hospital in were the hardest to take out of the drawer. I just feel like this newborn stage is passing too fast...

Double-click on filmstrip to see larger size

First Videos!

As much as I have been taking pictures of Isabel, Tim reminded me that we have not taken any video of her! So we made a point tonight to sit down and make some memories...

It's amazing how expressive she is getting. She started to fleetingly smile a couple of weeks ago and then progressed to smiling in her sleep. I started noticing her smiling at me in the middle of a night time feeding several days ago. It was about 2AM and I was half-asleep. I looked down at her with my eyes half open mid-yawn to see her looking right back at me, unlatch, and then open her mouth in the sweetest grin! She smiles frequently now, but it is difficult to get a picture of as she changes so quickly. I managed to capture some of her swiftly changing faces...

Then later this evening, Tim filmed her bath. She seems to enjoy bath time and we have started to make it our nightly ritual before reading a story and going to bed. Even if she is fussy, she quiets down as soon as we go into the bathroom and I see her start to smile as she sits in her tub!

When all you think about is sleep...

Feeling Tired?

Cranky?

Or Just Plain Poopy?

Well, here is the secret to blissful uninterrupted sleep:

You start with one awake baby...

Then say the magic words...*

...and watch as she blissfully begins to nod off.*

No more rocking!  No more praying to the nap gods!*

Just a quiet sleep.*

*Results not typical.  Actual sleep times may vary.  Magic words can change at any given moment and may not work with any child as they do not actually exist. 

Sigh.