Birthday

Isabella turned three. Since Bill was leaving on Isabella's birthday, they opened up one of her presents early, a Lego house. It took a while to put together (her attention span for the project was around 20 min) but it is finally together. She plays with it now, putting the people and things from the camper van in it.

I did my first solo night. Ian didn't go to sleep until 9 something, then Isabella woke up, so I ended up sandwiched between them at some point. But we all survived and I got them all out the door in the morning.

That night we also opened up presents from Grandpa and Nana, and (accidentally) some from Grandma. And we had a bit of cake. Her birthday dinner consisted of sushi and macaroni and cheese. She of course put the hair clips in and proceeded to have a tea party by fetching water from the bathroom and filling up the cups.

I think it was the morning after her birthday that was a complete disaster. She wouldn't get dressed, got upset because she wanted to restart Ian's swing and it wouldn't start, got put in a timeout for throwing her magnifying glass, got upset about how her hot chocolate was on the table and left it, finally went back to the table after I said it was time to get jackets on and screamed that she  wanted breakfast... so she ended up being carried out to the car (still screaming) with no shoes, no jacket, and no breakfast. She apparently was very well-behaved that day, and we've had a lot fewer problems in the morning.

She can now get dressed entirely by herself (except for buttons and starting zippers). She can get shirts off and on, with some wriggling, and socks on. We've compromised on clothes; she's still wearing summer frocks, but with a shirt on and tights or pants. Still working on the shoes, but it's been nice out so socks and sandals kind of works.

Favorite Isabellisms:
Warm-leggers (leg warmers)
Daddy, I like you today

Ian had his two month appointment, which included shots. He is 15lbs, 9 in, in the 75th percentile, but the 95th for length. Almost half Isabella's current weight. He took his shots well - only cried for about 20 seconds, but wailed for a long time when I took his bandaids off later. He is now attending to things, and has discovered that his arms belong to him and can be used to bat things around. And grab mom's hair. He's also fascinated by the kick and play, since it makes noise and lights when he kicks it. He has also spontaneously fallen asleep - I was taking him out of his car seat, laid him down on the mat to go put something down, and came back to find him asleep.

He's still sleeping 5-8 hours straight in the night. It does lead to some nursing problems - I keep thinking he's going to choke, especially with the stuffed up nose - and then he often upchucks a fair amount afterwards (over me, of course). Burping beforehand doesn't seem to help. I think he just gets too much.

Trick or treating

This is the costume they made at daycare. They had a little parade and then a party. Amazingly, they got all of the kids into their costumes and makeup on in half an hour. Isabella had wanted to put her costume on for several days, ever since they made them. It's from a story they read a lot that has a blue dog in it.

We've started putting her to bed an hour later in the hopes of getting her to take a nap at daycare. Seems mostly to be working, although not today. Oddly, going to bed later seems to lead to her getting up earlier. Hasn't stopped her from getting up in the middle of the night, unfortunately. We have a nocturnal visitor about every other night, and she's been wetting the bed. Which probably has more to do with her drinking lots of water from a squirt bottle just before bed...

Here's the collection of them with the candy collection. Molly's parents kindly had us over for dinner, along with a couple who use to live next door. Morgon and Molly were flowers. Rena and Jeremy also joined us for trick or treating (she's Minnie Mouse). The weather was wonderful, and the kids collected tons of candy. They were very cute walking around together holding hands. Of  course, once one had candy they all had to start eating some... They played afterwards for quite a while. Ian slept in the sling through the whole thing, and actually stayed asleep until 2pm.

Isabella has been sharing her candy with us - she gets out three pieces when she gets home for after dinner. Well, sort of after. She eats three bites then says she's done. Then wants to get back in mom's lap to eat the rest of dinner.

Ian's been making smiley faces and gooing. He seems to alternate between doing 40min catnaps during the day, and longer sleep stretches. He actually fell asleep twice! while just being held. Chris and I went down to the climbing gym with him. He fell asleep by being rocked in the car seat, woke up, nursed, then sat happily in the car seat. Screamed the entire drive back to pick up Isabella, though.

 She likes to hold Ian on the couch. He doesn't seem to mind.

We're going to try a new incentive strategy for getting her through the morning routine (she got so upset this morning about getting socks and shoes on that she threw up on my last clean pair of pants). Wish us luck!

Some photos courtesy of Nathan & Jennifer.

Halloween party

With some repair, her bunny costume fit. And she didn't mind wearing it. Except the feet - she made us take them off.

Day care had an outdoor party the weekend before Halloween. Unlike the rest of the week, the weather was beautiful - pretty warm and sunshine. There were bouncy castles and slides, face painting, and balloons. Her friend Hanah got a little balloon ladybug for her wrist, so of course Isabella had to have one, too. We also took home a helium balloon, to which we tied Katie's birthday balloon. It's been drifting around the house, one balloon on the floor, one floating. Turns out Molly's parents took home all the remainder, and were quite happy to give us some - so we now have 15 balloons.

I wasn't sure if she would want face paint, but Molly had it done, so... It came out pretty well.

She also had fun in the bouncy castle. Of course, she gets in and jumps from tube to tube very carefully - which is a pretty long jump. It wasn't until Hanah joined her that she started running madly back and forth.

We held our pumpkin carving party the next day. Unfortunately, someone's been getting sticky fingers on the camera lens, so the pictures are all a bit blurry. She got to see Katie, Molly, and Rena - we only managed to carve out the inside of the pumpkin, (no faces) but that's ok.

I thought I'd list the subjects of her latest melt downs. Of which we've had a few too many.

1) Mom took Isabella's PJs off her feet.
2) Mom didn't open the gummy package exactly like Dad does.
3) Mom put Isabella's socks on.
4) Mom unbuckled Isabella's sandals.
5) Mom got mad when Isabella picked up a knife.
6) The map dropped on the floor of the car where we couldn't reach it.
7) Her bucket got taken away when she dropped it when told not to.
8) Her rocking chair got taken away for similar reasons.
9) She didn't want a fork with her eggs
10) Her plastic easter egg was in two pieces
11) Mom wouldn't walk back to the top of the steps.

Nae Chin

It's official - he has no chin. Or a big upper lip. Or both. But other than that he does look a lot like his sister. Getting bigger, fast, tho - just broke out the 3-6 mo clothes. He's wearing things Isabella didn't wear until several months later.

He's up to 5-6 hours (6 or 7 until 12-1) pretty reliably - if dad takes him. He tends to wake up more with me. Now if we could just get his sister to sleep through the night... More early morning wake ups. The other night she threw herself on the bed demanding her new striped underwear. Which she was actually wearing (?) Go figure. Still not sure what woke her up last night.

Doing better on the EC thing - have to let him sit for 10-15 minutes after waking up. Like his sister, he produces a lot. I think he's starting to "wait" for the potty a bit, and fussing when he has to go.

They both fit, sort of. Isabella is willing to share, as long as Ian doesn't touch her. We keep explaining that he can't control his hands, but I'm not sure she gets it.

She was sick for a week - kept coming back with a low fever. Dad got it, then mom, but it looks like Ian miraculously escaped. Surprising, given that she likes to stick her face in his...

Funny quote "mommy, you wear socks in bed. That's silly!"

We are slowly working on the morning routine. She can mostly get dressed herself (socks, shoes, tights, dress) but wants to do it herself and is easily distracted. Lots of cajoling and threats of us doing it for her.

Sick child

We went back to Milstadt's to pick out pumpkins, this time with Molly and family. Isabella perked up when Molly showed up. They rode the airplanes together, went on the tractor pull, and spun around in the big apples. Lots of holding hands, which is just too cute. Isabella kept sharing her water bottle with Molly, contributing to the disease vector. Isabella came down sick that night, which was a shame because it was Katie's birthday party. Isabella was so tired that she actually asked to go lie down. But she did have a good time, and keeps asking for the Katie's b-day party song at night, with the big (Hello Kitty) cake, the balloons (she's been playing with her pink one all week), and presents.

This is the big red spinny apple; I don't think Molly and Isabella were that thrilled with it, even though Nate and Jennifer did their best to not spin it much (I sat and fed Ian).

Isabella has been sick since Sun night - keeping herself (and us) up all night coughing. We've had her sleeping on us, either in the big blue chair or the poofy chairs, or with us (and thrashing around) since then. I think it's finally over - she slept until 10am this morning and isn't coughing much. We thought she was better Wed - took her to the doctor and no fever - but it came back. So back home she came. Ran into Michael's mother, also picking up a sick child.

Tried getting a baby sitter Monday to give me a hand, but Isabella would have nothing to do with her, and would cry if I was more than a foot away. So I've just been looking after both of them. Reading books, lots of looking at pictures, pretend building sand castles. She doesn't seem that sick most of the time... Monday afternoon she looked so bad I called Bill to take her to the doctor. Gave her some Tylenol. By the time he got home, she'd gone from being at death's door to her usual cheerful self. Despite being sick she's still helpful, getting the boppy pillow, throwing stuff away, fetching things.

This is one of the 56 photos she took with PhotoBooth. She's getting better about hitting single keys and can move the mouse around.

Her latest conversational topics are how big things are (she checks her height and weight almost every day - 3'1" tall and 32 lbs), how far away and how tall, names - both whole and first, can I have some candy, when's the trampoline going to get here, can I give Ian a pacifier. She likes to make up names for us. Bill was Bubba the other night.

She now combs her hair - we borrowed grandma's comb, can unbuckle and put on her shoes (can't buckle them) and can undress and dress herself except for buttons. The new clothes from Aunt Barb and Grandma are a hit - she willingly picks out different outfits now. Got her some size four organic cotton underwear, which she picked out online, and that's all she wants to wear now. Especially the striped ones.

Ian's reliably going to sleep between six and nine, waking up at 1, 3ish, and sixish, sometimes sleeping as late as 8. He spits up a lot more than Isabella, so I've been sitting in the chair and rocking him upright for a bit. Seems to help him sleep longer. Also, I can pop him off earlier  and rock him the rest of the way to sleep instead of suffering through a bad latch and tossing and turning. And from over eating. Did lead to Isabella freaking out last night, though, because she couldn't find either of us (Bill was downstairs). The newborn diaper covers are already almost too small, as is the green one piece sleeper.

We went down to the apple-picking place again. Isabella rode the airplane ride several times, a pony, and a camel. Mom rode the camel as well, which perhaps wasn't the best idea because camels have very bony backs. Isabella went up on the fort as well. She did really well, until she got to the top and got stuck. There was a big step at the top, and she got up it but with all the big kids tearing by she got scared, so I had to rescue her. She also thought the haunted house was pretty scary, especially the pop-up mouse.

She really liked the apple picking part, and of course ate an entire apple herself. Poor dad got stung by a bee.

Some funny things she's done: We're sitting at dinner and she suddenly starts to wail. We ask what's wrong, and after a few seconds she looks up and grins like crazy and laughs out loud. Gotcha!

One evening Bill took Ian and got him to sleep downstairs, so I had the entire evening with Isabella. Who was very excited - we read books in the chair and ate dinner. I'm not sure if it was the sugar or the fact that she had mom to herself, but she was so wired she didn't go to sleep. We'd done the puzzle, sang a few stories, and she wasn't in the least bit looking sleepy. So I told her I was going to get my PJs on, check on dad and Ian, then come upstairs and lay down with her. She was so excited that she said "I'll stand in the middle of the room and wait for you!" Which she did. And then took about an hour to stop kicking and tossing and turning. I'd just gotten to sleep when Ian woke up... so got him to sleep. In the morning, Bill took Ian again, and I'd just laid back down and in came Isabella... sigh.

She really likes it when I pick her up/drop her off. She tells everyone this is her mommy and this is her baby brother. The firemen came yesterday to the day care, and apparently Michael, one of the other kids, was scared. So Isabella put an arm around him and said "It's ok".

We had Rena over (along with some adults) to celebrate Bill's tenure. They actually played together for the first time, showing each other things and eating dinner together at the little table. They took just about every toy off the shelf, but they had a really good time.

She's been into names - she wants to know everyone's name. And she likes to mix them up - so I became Mommy Dudley, and she's Isabella Irkabitz (her mangled version of Hannah's last name).

Ian's still been pretty mellow. I got out to the climbing gym with Isabella and Chris, while Bill stayed with Ian. He took a bottle, so that's a good thing. He's still waking up pretty frequently at night, but mostly goes back to sleep. We've had some luck with pooping in the potty, which is a good thing because he pretty much explodes out of his diapers most of the time.

Last weekend we went to see the local high school parade with Molly (from daycare) and Lynn (her teacher from the old day care). Whatever Molly had, Isabella had to have too. If Molly's dad and mom were pushing her on the swing, she had to have mom and dad, too. They're funny together - usually neither of them will go running off, but when it's the two of them, they run and run and run.

Isabella is wearing 6mo pants because she had another accident (we've been having a lot of those) and mom forgot to pack Isabella-sized pants. Oops. Amazingly, they still fit around her bum.

Grandma's visit

Grandma came out to visit again, which made Isabella very happy (and very sad when she left). We played hooky and took Isabella to the zoo. The train has replaced the carousel as the favorite ride (or at least as good) despite the train ride itself being pretty boring.

All the way through the River walk (which is a long walk for a small

person) she kept wanting to go to the park in the children's zoo. We did see the baby elephants playing in the water. Which has a couple slides and some things to climb on. Isabella actually petted and brushed the goats this time. She wanted to feed them, but they don't let you do that. Had a bit of a melt down on the way out because she wanted to ride the train again. But we did pacify her with popcorn.

Ian pretty much slept in the sling through the whole thing. Makes it easy to take him places. Isabella is coping fairly well and seems to be proud of her baby brother (at least she tells everyone "That's *my* baby brother"). She always comes and helps with diaper changes by letting Ian chew on her finger when he fusses. She loves to get right in his face and talk to him. She's always asking when he's going to get teeth, wants him to wake up so she can play with him or hold him, and tells us when he needs his diaper changed or munchies. She's been very gentle around him, and gives him very gentle hugs and kisses. Although she does tend to bounce near him (ok, she bounces all the time) and wants to wake him up when he's asleep. She's slowly getting better about sharing mom; it helps that I can pick her up now (which she missed a lot).

Grandma helped us sort out clothes - one big pile of girlie clothes for my friend with a new baby girl, and a pile of boy clothes. Where did they all come from? Grandma and Aunt Barb sent some new clothes for both kids; Isabella *finally* wants to wear different clothes. She really likes her new shirt/dress and tights combinations, which is a good thing because it's getting cold out. Even got her to wear socks and shoes. Somewhere in this pile there was a one-piece pajama suit, I think from Cori, which is now her favorite one.

Isabella decided she wanted a bath, not a shower. Which she hasn't taken in

a long time. She insisted on sitting in her duckie tub, which she barely fits in anymore. So she and Grandma played in the water for a very long time, until she was a complete prune. Grandma made her a necklace out of the bubble wands from the bubble bath bottles.