Isabel's first sleep-over

I don't have any new pics to post, but I had to share about Isabel's first sleep-over. this was a pretty busy weekend for us. Jason's birthday was on friday, 36! He's taking it rather hard, I think he feels a bit old. Then our anniversary was on monday, but we celebrated on sunday. We received a gift certificate from my sister and her hubby for Christmas for a night out to dinner and a movie, complete with babysitting. So we went to church in the morning, then to my parents' house for birthday lunch for Jason. Yummy ribs, mmm! then Mark and Sarah took Isabel home with them and we went to an afternoon showing of Ghost Rider. Not a great movie by any standard, but still fun to go. Then off to dinner for some seafood and good wine. Sarah had offered to keep Isabel all night since I was taking care of Rowan there on monday anyway, so we took them up on it. Unfortunately Isabel didn't sleep perfectly all night, but she did okay. She didn't even seem to have missed me that much when i showed up them next morning. She had a great time hanging out with her cousin Rowan the whole time and she snuggled up to her Uncle Mark, who she absolutely adores, a whole lot. It was really strange not having her here for a night, but amazing to be out without her for an actual date. My little girl is growing up!

Quick post with some cute and funny new pics

One of Isabel's favorite things to do lately is to play dress-up. She loves to steal my sweatshirts and ask me to put them on her. These pics were from last night. She wore this sweatshirt around the house for about an hour. Here she's talking on the remote as a phone and snuggling on the couch all bundled up in my sweatshirt. I just thought this was hilarious and so cute.
Rowan and Auntie came over yesterday and hung out for half the day. They hadn't been to our house in quite a while, usually we're at Auntie's house. Isabel loved having them here and they had such a blast together. They both love to color pictures and here they are coloring together. Rowan draws lovely swirly pictures and gets really close to the paper, while Isabel hovers above the paper and draws lots of long straight lines with very intense concentration. It's so fun to see how they differ so much. Two cousins couldn't be more different in every way really!
Isabel also loves to wear her cowboy boots so much that here she is wearing them with her little track suit. She really loves to accessorize already. She loves her shoes!

Finally some snow to play in

We finally got some decent snow last week, the Valentine's Day Blizzard hit New England pretty hard. I was able to find Isabel a snow suit at the outlet store for only $5.00, lucky for me since I'd waited till most places had switched over entirely to spring clothes. Today was really nice out, about 40 degrees and sunny, so I bundled Isabel all up and we played out in the front yard for a while. She loved making and throwing snowballs and sliding down the tiny snowbank on her bottom and on her tummy face-first. What a little daredevil! We had a blast and I managed to get a couple decent pictures. I'm also going to post a couple of pics of Isabel's Valentine's outfit that her daddy dressed her in one day last week. He loves to get to dress up his little girl occasionally and the results are usually very interesting. This outfit is pretty cute, although very girly and extremely colorful, with lots of pink. I bought Isabel's little cowboy boots at Target, I saw them and just couldn't resist. She loves to wear them, actually she loves all kids of shoes right now. Usually she wears about 4 different pairs each day. She likes to play dress-up and brings me different shoes to put on her and tries on my shoes too. I need to get a pic of her trying to shuffle around the house in my sneakers. Another big milestone, I finally got to turn her carseat to face forward! She's finally 20 lbs! (At 17 1/2 months) Still a tiny little peanut, but she doesn't seem to realize that. She thinks she a big girl! All bundled up!
Goofy $5 snowsuit
Yay, snow!!!
Girly-girl in her cute new boots.
Peek-a-boo!

Cutest Kid in the Universe

Cutest kid in the Universe, and it's finally been acknowledged by people other than us. Our little cutie was chosen as a daily winner on http://www.parents.com/ as their cutest kid on February 2nd. If you're reading this on the 3rd or 4th check it out, she's still up there on the page. In other news, my parents retired from teaching on December 22nd and we attended the big party for my dad on January 20th. He'd been teaching at Sunderland Elementary School for 32 years! It was a fun night with lots of great food and a great slide show of pics of my dad throughout the years. Isabel was a little intimidated by all the people and wouldn't leave my hip for most of the evening. Two days later my parents headed down to Florida to visit friends and family and enjoy a little sunshine. They just arrived back yesterday so we dropped in today so Isabel could see her Grandpa and Grandma who she missed quite a bit. While they were gone we got to use their tickets to the Umass vs BU hockey game. Isabel wore her Umass sweatshirt and had a blast cheering and dancing and making eyes at the little boy down the row. She's a natural flirt! I think we're in trouble when she gets older! I'm happy that we finally got some decent snow here, so hopefully Isabel can get out and play in it. She loves to look at it and has learned to say "pretty snow". She seems to learn new words every day lately. Tomorrow we'll work on having her say "Go Bears" and she'll get to wear her Bears jersey one more time as we watch the SuperBowl. Since the Patriots didn't make it I'll be cheering for the Bears as well. Go Bears!

Isabel hanging out with all her pals in her big chair.

Bubble bath time, check out all that hair!

Some random recent pictures

So these are just a bunch of pictures that I've taken recently. The first is one of Isabel doing one of her favorite activities, Swiffering the kitchen! She loves to help me out and push the Swiffer around. It's great for keeping her occupied for a while. Then there's a pic of her building towers with Daddy with her new blocks from Grandma and Grandpa. She still gets more excited about knocking down the towers than building them up, but she is able to stack about 3 or 4 now. She loves building towers with her Megablocks also, those are a lot easier to stack together. Some more of her favorite things to do lately are: climbing on everything, she's quite a little daredevil sometimes; climbing into Rowan's Tonka truck and asking him to push her around; watching Sesame Street and trying to sing the song. She also loves Elmo and as soon as he comes on the tv she jumps up and down and dances around and claps her hands. I don't know what it is about Elmo that the little ones love so much, but they sure do love him. Sesame Street is on everyday at 9am; I think I've seen the same 6 episodes about 5 times each this past month! As I write this it actually just came on tv and Isabel is ecstatic.
Not too much else is going on around here. It's been ridiculously warm for January, we actually took Isabel to the park on Saturday as it was in the 60's all afternoon. We've also had a whole bunch of illness in the family lately. Isabel had a horrible cold the week before Christmas, I had a migraine most of last week and just felt miserable, and my sister and her husband and Rowan all had a horrible stomach bug last week. Hopefully we're out of danger of catching that now. I really hope this isn't what the rest of the winter is going to be like. Isabel also had her 15 month Drs. appointment last week. My little girl is still very little. She is 29 inches tall now, but only 18 1/2 pounds. Her height is fine, but her weight isn't even on the charts and I still have to wait till she is 20 lbs to turn her car seat forward. Poor little girl is going to be facing backwards till she's a year and a half! She eats plenty, she just runs it all off I guess. But she's very healthy and the doctor wasn't really worried about her, i just have to work on getting a little more weight on her. Lucky girl gets cream on her cereal and butter on everything!

Helping mommy clean the really dirty floor.

Ooh, block towers.

I finally took a pic of our tree right before we took it down. Isn't it so pretty?!

Pretty little girl in her new dress and shirt from Kate, I love this dress!

I love these two pics of Isabel and Jason, what a good looking family I have!

Christmas

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. We had a great time, although very busy. We attended Christmas Eve service at my parents' church in Hadley. Then we headed back home where Jason and I exchanged our gifts to each other that night. Then in the morning we had the chaos and joy of watching Isabel open all her presents and then we headed back to my parents' house to open more gifts and have brunch. My sister and her husband and Rowan joined us there and the kids had a blast checking out their new toys and clothes. I've posted a bunch of pics of Isabel with her favorite new stuff. We got her the huge Pooh chair which she loves to snuggle and pounce on. My parents gave Rowan the Tonka truck that Isabel is perched in, but she couldn't keep her hands off it, I guess we'll have to get her one of her own sometime. My mom made sticky buns that morning and I got very few pictures of Isabel that didn't include her stuffing her face with a bun. They were very very yummy. After spending time at my parents' house we all headed out to my Grandma's to join the whole extended family where the little ones proceeded to get even more loot. It was a very nice and very exhausting day. It was so much fun buying things for Isabel and Rowan this year, knowing that they'd have fun opening their gifts and playing with their new toys. They were definitely a bit overwhelmed, but they had a good time. I hope everyone else had a wonderful day also and has a Happy New Years also.

Finally allowed to pull everything out of her stocking.

She loves her Pooh Bear chair.

This is her special Christmas outfit picked out by Daddy. She just couldn't leave the Tonka truck alone. See how perfectly she fits in it!

Evidence of yummy sticky buns all over her face as she checks out her new farm toy.

This is Rowan's funny new grin with his eyes all scrunched up. Isabel is busy pulling all the ornaments of the tree.

This is Rowan and my cousin's son, Austin, playing the organ at Great-Gramma's house. Austin is 8 months older, but Rowan actually weighs more and is the same height, what a tall boy he is!

Christmas is coming...

This past weekend we went and got our Christmas tree. We went to a wonderful place that let us pick out our own then they cut it down for us. Isabel wanted every tree in the lot, especially the ones that were her own size. But we settled on a big gorgeous tree and we're all very happy with it. Isabel had such a blast running through the trees and falling in the mud. She had a fit when we put her back in the car. She kept taking off and trying to hug all the trees. She's pretty fast for such a tiny tyke, I'd turn around and she'd be three rows over in no time at all. This place also had a device that they put the tree in to shake it out and get rid of all the junk before you take it home. I'd never seen that before and thought it was pretty cool. But Isabel hated it; she thought they were hurting her tree and was very mad to see it being shaken so roughly. She also had a rough time with the decorating of the tree. All the non-breakable ornaments were put at the bottom of the tree, but she kept taking them off and hugging them and crying when i tried to put them back on the tree. One snowman she kept putting on and taking off again. At least she got to feel like she was participating and had fun, that was all i cared about. She's been really great with the tree, just saying hi to it in the morning and cooing whenever she sees it all lit up, but not messing with it too much. I don't have any pics of it all decorated yet, but I'll take some soon and post them. The other pics I've posted here are just of one day that we were hanging out with Rowan and Sarah. Isabel climbed in Rowan's wagon and he pulled her all around the house. She giggled the whole time. For the most part they play so well together. They give each other lots of hugs and kisses which makes up for all the fighting over toys that occurs. I'm so glad Isabel gets to spend so much time with her cousin. Christmas is going to be so much fun this year with these two little ones. And getting to spend the first Christmas with my family in 6 years is going to wonderful also. I hope everyone is enjoying this holiday season and all the preparations. Merry Christmas to all!

Ooh, trees!

"I want to hug them all!"

This pic is a little blurry, but I though I'd post it anyway cause it shows how happy she was picking out her tree.

Thanksgiving, Bears, and more...

So it's been quite a while since I posted anything here, so if anyone actually reads this then I am sorry for being such a slacker. I think it's been about a month since I last wrote and quite a lot has happened since then. Isabel and I still spend two days a week at my sister's house hanging out with Rowan while Mark and Sarah are at work. I love to watch the two of them run around together and entertain each other. Their favorite things to do are to play with blocks, play peek-a-boo around the chairs, and take turns climbing in the toy bin. We have a lot of fun on those days and I'm so glad that I get to spend so much time with my nephew and have such a great bond with him. Plus, I get completely crazy if I spend too much time at home with just Isabel!

We spent Thanksgiving at my sister's house with my parents and Mark's mom and brother and another of Mark's brothers and his family came over later in the day to hang out after dinner. It was such a fun, relaxing day. It was the first time our whole family had been together for the holidays in 6 years and it was especially great since Mark is just back from Iraq. It was a really special time with family. I'm really looking forward to more of the same at Christmas.

The pictures you see below are of a couple different times. The first ones are of Rowan and Isabel playing Ring Around the Rosy. My sister taught that too Rowan, and he taught it to Isabel. All they know is to hold hands and move in a circle, they don't know the song yet, but I think it is so adorable to watch, so we took a bunch of pictures of it. Then there are pictures from the big Bears vs. Patriots game this past Sunday. We went over to Sarah and Mark's house to watch and ate all sorts of junky football food, yumm! This game was much anticipated since my whole family are Patriots fans and my husband is a staunch Bears fan. Please notice Isabel's Bears jersey, thank you so much Suzanne for sending us that! She loved wearing it and will wear it for all the rest of the games. And Jason was so proud of his little Bears fan! So I guess that is the update for now. I will try hard to post a little more often. I hope everyone out there is doing well and having a wonderful holiday season. God bless.

Auntie, Rowan, Isabel, and Caesar hanging out in Auntie's kitchen.

Ring around a Rosy

Little Bears fan lounging in the chair

Crashed out on daddy towards the end of the game.

Doing her little dance and showing off her jersey.

Isabel loves hanging out with Uncle Mark and eating chips.

Some cute new pics

We've had a pretty exciting couple of weeks in our family. My brother-in-law, Mark, arrived back home from Iraq after being gone for nearly a year and a half. They purchased a house and are in process of moving in and fixing it up a bit. The pics I have posted below of Rowan and Isabel are from a day that I watched him while Mark and Sarah did some painting. Isabel lvoes to sit in the papasan chair; so much so that now we all call it hers. There's a set of bongo drums at the foot of the chair that she uses to climb into it. She loves to bring books or toys up there to read or play. On the day that I took theses pics Rowan decided to climb in there with her and bring a book with him also. I didn't pose them, they were both "reading" their books and just playing so cutely together that I couldn't resist taking some photos. Isabel's other new favorite thing is to drape all sorts of things around her neck like a scarf. So I just gave her a couple of my fuzziest scarves to see what she'd do. She proceeded to parade around the house with them both on for the rest of the evening. She loves anything fuzzy and fluffy, whether it's a stuffed animal, real animal, or just my swiffer duster. We didn't do much for Halloween, just stayed home and handed out candy, but Isabel had a ball. Of course all the tiny kids dressed in animal costumes were her favorite. She wanted to pet them all. She loved handing out the candy and seeing all the kids. Next year we'll have to take her out and dress her up. She's also having a vocabulary explosion lately. She still doesn't have too many words, but she's really working on it. Some of the ones she does say are: mommy, daddy, kitty, doggy, all done, down, go, oh boy, cracker, auntie, hi, and uh-oh. She's so entertaining lately, we can just spend hours watching her and laughing. She's definitely a little character.

Our new blog

Hey there everyone. I just decided to create a blog page to keep friends and family updated on our lives here in Massachusetts and to post new pics of Isabel as i take them. This weekend was a big one for Isabel. She got to play in her first leaf pile, go to her first Umass hockey game, and pick out her own pumpkin. The leaf pile was a big hit with both her and Rowan, they instinctually knew just what to do as soon as i created it. They ran right for it and jumped right in. It was so much fun to watch them. The hockey game was a big hit also. We left after the 2nd period, but Isabel had a great time. On sunday we went to pick out pumpkins. Isabel wanted to bring home every one that she could live and insisted on keeping her little pumpkin in her lap the whole ride home. It was a fun time for all.

Isabel and Rowan in the leaf pile.

I love this pic!

This is the first picture I have of Isabel walking.

I hope you all enjoy this blog and it keeps you up to date on our lives. I'll try to update it as often as I can.