Ah, on the mend!

Well, it seems like the stomach bug is behind us! Isabelle has been eating everything in sight to make up for the things she didn't absorb while she was sick since nothing stayed with her long enough. Even that, though, is waning a little.

At our house now, you can hear Izzy at most times of the day, talking, chuckling, or just generally exploring anything she can get her hands on. "DA DA DA DA DA DA" is currently her favorite. Cruising along furniture and the wall and stretching between things is the new activity of the moment. Well, that....and playing with the dog toys. She's also taking to playing with Magnum's feet if he happens to be laying on the couch. Magnum's feet are ticklish, so this is usually pretty entertaining to watch. This morning, Magnum and Izzy started playing tug a little. It was going pretty well, until Mags forgot who he was playing with and tipped her over. Oops. No tears were shed though, and the morning went on.

The other thing our little nut is up to is letting herself....fall. She will get upright on her knees and if she's on our bed or has a blanket or pillow in front of her, she will sort of...dive...or at least let herself fall onto her elbows on her stomach. Crazy girl!

Ok, I know it's been awhile, so here are some recent pictures.

The bib says it all...

Our little cruiser working her way upright down the hallway.

Climbing into...and falling out of our activity table is a favorite right now.

Uh oh....a TICKLE ATTACK!

Again?

Ok...you got me!

Stomach Ick

I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post and the last. Since Sunday, our household has been battling through a stomach bug. It started with me on Sunday night with throwing up. Now that it's Thursday and I'm finally starting to feel better, Dan seems to be in the middle of it. Isabelle seems to be spared from many of the bug's symptoms for the most part, but we know that she's still sick with us. I am thankful that she hasn't had the pukes, but she's been more solemn than usual. I will also have to admit both me and I assume the sitter are growing weary of cleaning up the poop that ends up all the way up her back EVERY time she goes.

Vocal talents continue to grow. Last weekend she was saying what sounded like "go, go, go!" so we were trying to coach her to say 'go, go, go, Steelers' since cheering for the Packers isn't an option. We didn't get that far....go go go was all she knew for a couple of days. Today, however we're onto something that sounds like a hard "K," so I'm sure that will be the sound of the weekend.

Before this whole stomach bug business, Isabelle had her first grown up supper with us. I made tater tot casserole one evening for supper, and everything in it Isabelle has already had in one form or another, so we figured why not? She really seemed to enjoy being able to feed herself the whole meal.

The last thing I can think of before I sign off is that Isabelle is really starting to understand things. If I ask her where Magnum is, she will look for him. When she finds him she grins. She is starting to do the same thing with Daddy. She knows 'no' and 'up' and to 'come here' or 'come with me.' She's starting to know what it means to 'sit' because she's told over and over in her bath that's what she's got to do. When I'm dressing and undressing her, she's starting to help out too. When I tell her 'one arm' she'll either bend her arm out of the shirt/onsie if we're undressing, or straighten out her arm if we're putting the shirt on.

I hope everyone is well, and I'll be back with some pictures as soon as I can.

And the screeches appear...

Still talking up a storm, Isabelle has realized this week that with her relatively new vocal prowess comes another register with her voice....the screech/squeal register. Right now, it's cute....but I can see a time coming where it might not be, especially if used in a tantrum instead of being used in play. Time will tell, like with all things, of course.

9 Month Old Check

Isabelle had her 9 month check-up today. Thankfully it was early, so no one was running late and there weren't that many people in the office (fewer people sneezing and coughing). We received another gold star from the doc...everything is as it should be, and he found a fourth tooth that was coming in that I hadn't seen! This newly appearing tooth explains her temper last night...thank goodness there was an understandable reason for it! Isabelle is 29" long and weighs in at 21 lbs. This puts her at 90th percentile for height and about 82nd for weight. There were no shots needed today...hooray!

No sooner had we gotten home from the doc and resume playing that we had our first mishap of the day...they happen a lot with her these days as she cruises the furniture and appliances. So...we get a gold star from the doctor....and promptly come home to cut our lip by falling on the oven and hitting our teeth. This is the first time I'd seen any blood from any of her spills....but I'm sure that it won't be the last! She's fine, and the actual cut is really pretty small.....even so, I'd rather not see her bleed. :P

Izzy is standing by herself now for longer and longer, sometimes with a toy to wave around when she feels brave. The sitter tells Dan and I that she's been pushing toys around a LOT these past few days. She continues to love to splash in the bathtub, and Monday even launched a protest when bath time was over. Yep....she's starting to be at that age where if you take something away or do that offends her sense of what is right, she has something to say about it! Case in point...she chewed out the doctor this morning because she just didn't think that he needed to look in her second ear! He commented that it looked like she was developing a temper! LOL!

We have a toy plane that has sort of a kazoo incorporated into it. Recently, Dan and I have been trying to teach her how to blow into it to get it to play. She lights up when you show her how it works. Then....we hand the plane over and it looks like she knows what to do. She raises the mouthpiece to her lips, takes a breath.....and HUMS in an imitation of what she thinks the kazoo sounds like. Isabelle is great comic relief....and these days, all the world's a drum!

The other new thing....when feeding her, habit has us still using burp rags (cloth diapers) just under the bottle or when we're rocking afterwards. I've noticed lately that when I lay Izzy down for a nap or for the night she likes to have a burp rag in her arms and snuggled next to her cheek. Maybe she's going to stay a cuddly girl!

Onto the fun...

A sleepy girl....what you can't see is that she has a burp cloth in her hand under the blanket.

Oops...you caught me playing with Magnum's rope...what you don't know is that she's working on filling her pants at this point. Note the posture and the hunched shoulders and the faint distracted look....

Exploring the camera case

Exploring the camera case WHILE trying to stand up, we're trying to master doing 2 things at once.

My little lovey.

9 Months Old!

Isabelle is now 9 months old! Where did the time go? It's hard to believe that she's through 75% of her first year. She maintains her mostly cheerful and easy going attitude, and makes Dan and I laugh daily. She is still quite the peanut, even though I don't call her that often anymore.

New things that cause gales of laughter: watching mom toss something up in the air and catch it, Dad showing her how to 'play drums' on the ottoman, watching someone else burping (I wonder where she gets THIS from??), chasing Magnum while holding her hands so she can 'walk' along after him....it's always something new.

She 'talks' almost non-stop lately, and seems to be working her way through the letter sounds that she hears most often. Her most recent is an interesting sound that is like a mix between an S, a Z, and a wet raspberry. Right now this is her favorite and can be heard ALL the time. That seems to be the way of it....once she learns something new, she practices, practices and practices until there's something else to practice. She's also started being crabby when you take away something that she wants to explore, be it Dad's glasses, the laptop, mom's earrings, or anything else she thinks she thinks she should have. It's frustrating when your parents try to limit your never ending exploration!

The other thing that she's been starting to do is play with my hair. She doesn't pull it or yank on it (unless she forgets to let go, which happens sometimes...), but she will pick up some of it with her now-much-practiced Pincer Grasp and let it fall back to my shoulder, little by little. It doesn't happen often, but I'll have to admit that when it does it touches me. The moment is usually short and then it's back to grabbing for earrings or trying to chew on my necklace. Even though short however, some moments are priceless.

Oh, and it's official...we now have THREE teeth! This week Isabelle's top right tooth broke through.

Playing with mom and Magnum

The truck says I'm not supposed to stand in here.....but it's a heck of a lot of fun!

Look who found the pots and lids entertaining...if only for a few minutes.

...and the Kleenexes...

...and scattering her Cheerios to the 4 winds. Note her 'attentive servant' in the background ready to clean up...

The Budding Conversationalist

Isabelle has been working on her language lately. Every morning when she wakes, you can hear her in her room talking to whoever or whatever will listen. Then when you open the door to her room to get her, she's standing at the corner of her crib waiting for you, one hip cocked with a big smile ready when you say 'good morning.' As a side note, it's a good thing that we didn't get one of those fancy, expensive cribs....Izzy has made (and is continuing to make) her own mark on her furniture, but hey, that's what it's for!

I've heard things that sound like 'dada' but nothing like 'mama' yet. Such is life, I guess. :P She doesn't say 'dada' discriminantly yet but it won't be long. While we were in IA over Christmas, Dan was feeding Izzy at the table, and she was having a great night with her solids, eating well and finishing off with some Cheerios. She kept eating and eating her Cheerios. Dan said to her "Isabelle, I just don't know where you put it!" Isabelle promptly responded with what sounded like "It's good!" There have been a few other times where I could swear she's saying 'good.' Maybe she is, and maybe she isn't....the jury is still out. Either way, it's pretty entertaining.

Isabelle is also seeming to take cues from conversation. If you talk to her, or ask her something and she's in a social mood, she will respond. She's also learning the meaning of no....albeit slowly. I'm choosing to use the dog food and water on the kitchen floor as a learning tool for that. She and I feed Magnum in the evenings and I explain to her what I'm doing and that, someday, she will be able to feed him. Then I fill his water bowl and watch her closely. She used to make several attempts for the food bowl and then I would have to remove her when she would not stop. Eventually she started to get the picture. These days, she usually makes one attempt, then I tell her 'No, Isabelle...Magnum's food." and she'll crawl to see what I'm doing or explore his kennel. In case your wondering...yes, she's already sampled Magnum's dog food (at least the food is all natural, and I was able to retrieve it before she swallowed it). More recently she will be on a mission heading towards something and when I say something to her she will stop, sit up, look at me and say what sounds like 'huh?' complete with raised eyebrows. She's a nut.

Merry Christmas....Take Three!

Delayed a day by an ice storm that rolled through IA Saturday, we finally were able to attend my family's Christmas on Sunday. It was great to see everyone, and as usual, it seemed like we didn't get to spend as much time with everyone as we would have liked. We would like to thank everyone for their generosity during Christmas! Isabelle is enjoying all of her new treasures from each of her Christmases! In fact, we've started rotating some of the toys so she has "new" toys to play with for some time to come.

It was awesome to be able to see both families, and be able to share our greatest gift with them over Christmas. Isabelle has been a joy and a surprisingly flexible traveling companion. Reality will come Monday, though, when normal schedules will have to resume. Isabelle has been allowing us the luxury of sleeping in until after 7 these last couple of days.

Izzy enjoying some of the wrapping accouterments. I think she looks smashing in that bow, don't you?

Izzy meeting her baby Eeyore, straight from Disney (and cousin Erin)

Here we discovered that Baby Eeyore makes noise!

Hang Time

Between our Christmas celebrations, we spent some time at my family farm. It was nice to be able to stay a couple of days and relax a bit. Isabelle gave my dad a fair amount of heckling as she wanted to get at his glasses most of the time. She told us a great many stories and had a great time crawling around and exploring different things.

Izzy got to open Aunt Trudi's present a day early!

I don't remember what was happening here, obviously it was hilarious...

We found out that the metal tray on this high chair sounds different than the plastic one at home.

Isabelle telling Grandpa a story.

My sister captured Izzy pulling up......again.

Playtime - toys are always more exciting at other people's houses!

Magnum waiting for the go-ahead to get his treat.