Photo Card Post

I just posted a birthday invitation that I made for Isabella's 1st birthday to show. Sorry everyone, it's just a family party this year :)

Photo Card

Baby Bloom Collage Birthday

Turn your photos into happy birthday cards at Shutterfly.com.

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Falling Behind!

I'm so sorry I haven't written in awhile. I'm sure most of you have been waiting for that to happen. "Stacy can't possibly stay on top of this blog much longer", you were right! Life is getting busy! Isabella is crawling really fast, pulling herself up on things and cruising still. She is starting to think about going from one thing to another with out holding on to something, but not much progress on that yet. She had said her first word "Mom" LOL, she does say mama and mamamamama but "mom" seems to be her word of choice. She had her 9 month well baby appointment last week. She is 29 inches tall and she is 20 pounds 14 ounces. She fits into 12-18 month clothes now. She only has maybe one or two outfits that are 9 months that she still fits into. She has her first ear infection right now. She is on medication for it. She has an appointment in December to see an allergist. Since Matt had a food allergy as a baby/child to dairy, and Isabella has been on hypoallergenic formula for months now, it's time to get her tested for a dairy allergy. She is getting close to that year mark when she can have milk and we want to know if we can give it to her or not! We also have found that she is allergic to oats, gives her a bad breakout of eczema.
Her personality is showing more. She really is fun loving, but if she doesn't get her food in time, her nap on time or see daddy or mommy she WILL let you know.

I also started a new career as an Independent Pampered Chef Consultant this month. I have been busy getting that put together the last few weeks. Late nights sometimes, but it's worth it! Just working on being ready for parties :)

Well I think that's all for now. Here are a few new pictures :D

This was handed down from a friend of mine. It's a  12 month size, so we are using it :)

Isabella's first fort, made with help by daddy!

Grandma and Grandpa Forbes bought Isabella her very first jail!  We don't really have it set up this way, we have it surrounding the wood stove.

Waiting for the FedEx guy

9 months old today!

Contemplating the toy

Shared photo book from Stacy

I FINALLY got an email from Shutterfly.com offering a free photobook! Just had to pay shipping. So the last photobook I made was from Isabella's first few days of life. This one is from months 1-6. If you click on the link at the bottom to see it larger, it brings you to the Shutterfly site. There, if you want, you can order a copy of the photobook :)

Click here to view this photo book larger

Alaska State Fair and Misc

Our little family went to the state fair yesterday with my parents, sister and niece. Isabella did very well in her stroller most of the time. She didn't fuss much, just enough to let us know she wanted to fall asleep and to eat.

Isabella looking at the reindeer

Chillin' by the Kangaroos

Checkin' out the chicks :)

Isabella with her cousin Ashlynn by the reindeer

Not too much has been going on since the last blog. Matt has been away working most of the time during the week, and it's been just Isabella and I hanging out. She is really fitting into her 9-12 month clothes and growing out of her 6 and 7 month clothes. She is full on crawling now, none of that crawl-flopping she was doing before.

We went to my parents' house on my mom's birthday weekend and I got a shot of her and Isabella playing:

I'm starting to get to the point where I need to move things so Isabella doesn't destroy them. We are thinking about moving our coffee table in the living room down to the family room for now. Isabella hurts herself pulling up on the coffee table more than anything else.

I have a couple of cute video's of Isabella here. Just short ones:

and a few more pictures:

That's MY hat daddy! (We went to the fair on Alaska Mining Day and they handed out all these cute  and crushable hats)

Chloe, what are you doing in my toy box??

Waiting for daddy to come home...

Until next time!

Updates

Well, apparently I have to start writing blog posts a little at a time offline instead of spending a couple hours when Matt is home getting one put together. I had every intention last weekend on writing a blog post, but life got in the way. We were pretty busy doing random things last weekend, and I didn't get the chance. I'm trying a new house cleaning technique; I clean the house really really well, then as the days go by I just pick up and wipe down. Due to our broken vacuum belt (and our lack of focus while at Walmart to pick up a new one) I haven't vacuumed in a number of weeks. That being said, the house looks pretty good. Our bathroom, it seems, is not part of this new house cleaning plan. I can't seem to keep it clean. Mostly because it's really our main bathroom for everything. Showers, Isabella's baths (in her ducky bathtub on the counter) AND the cat's litter box. It's flat out a mess in there. I clean it every so often, but it's one of the rooms that I can't clean when Isabella is awake because I use so many different chemicals, I don't want her anywhere near the bathroom. This house is a lot harder to keep clean than our old house, and it's tough to keep up. We do need to get that new vacuum belt...the cat hair isn't going to vacuum it's self!


Not too much going on these days. Matt is still working in Talkeetna as director of maintenance for Sheldon Air Service and a aircraft mechanic for Talkeetna Aero Services. He is usually in Talkeetna from Monday morning until Wednesday evening, then he comes home for the night and leaves Thursday mornings to come home Friday afternoon or evening. This week, to save gas, he is waiting until Thursday evening to come home and will be staying for a three day weekend. Isabella and I took a short trip to Talkeetna on Monday afternoon to visit everyone. They had not seen her in a couple of months, so we figured we should go up. We only stayed for a couple hours then headed home. Isabella did pretty well. She wasn't happy at all about going back in her car seat and making the hour and a half journey back home, but she eventually calmed down and fell asleep. 


Isabella is still doing well overall. We are now entering into the separation anxiety portion of babyhood. *sigh* It's been interesting so far. I mentioned in the last blog post that we left her with my parents for a couple of hours one day so Matt and I could enjoy a pre-anniversary lunch alone. Isabella didn't take to that too well. Since then we have been trying to get her to spend more time with my parents so next time she isn't so freaked out. It's not easy with gas prices still pretty high and living in Wasilla with my parents in Eagle River. It's not really that far, but to go back and forth a couple times a week just isn't practical for anyone. 
Church last Sunday was....a new experience. Isabella, up until now, had been doing fine in the church nurseries. I say nurseries because generally she is combined with older kids because of the lack of volunteers for the 9:00am service. Normally, as long as she can watch the big kids play, she is ok. Well last Sunday her number flashed up on the board during the service, fairly early. Within the first half hour. So I went back and the whole room was full of screaming and crying babies. The ladies said it was a domino affect, one baby started crying and the rest of them started...and wouldn't stop! So when I got there Isabella was fine, and no longer crying, but I took her anyway to give the ladies one less kid to look after. They had combined the 0-11 month room (just Isabella really) with the 12-24 month room, so the majority of the kids were toddlers. Poor Isabella was getting lost in the mix I think. So she and I went to the lobby and walked around...for an hour. I did, at one point, try to bring her into the main room and sit with Matt, but she kept making noises and I didn't want to disturb people. It's a good thing we went back into the lobby too because she kept crying off and on. She was acting really tired, so I took a chance and rubbed some Ora gel on her gums and tried to get her to sleep by walking her around. She did go to sleep, but still, I didn't dare bring her back in. So we just stood out in the lobby until the service was over and Matt came. 


Our problem is that all three services don't work with her schedule. She goes down for her morning nap at 9:30 (hence the overtired/sleeping issue of last week) so the 9:00am isn't working. The next service is 11:00am and she is normally still napping OR eating at that time, so even if I let her sleep an hour starting at 9:30am that would be 10:30am and she would need to eat before we left, and we have to leave by 10:30. It takes her 15-20 minutes to eat. The last service is 1:00 and she goes down for her afternoon nap at 1:30pm! We can't win no matter what service we go to. On top of all that, because of the lack of volunteers, the 0-11 month old room will be closed for the 9:00am and the 1:00pm services, so if we want her to stay in the 0-11 month room (and I do because she gets more attention from the adults), we have to go to the 11:00 service, and we don't really want to go to that one, it doesn't work well for Isabella eating and nap wise. Boy are we in a pickle.


I'm still having trouble with her sleeping during her nap times too. She doesn't seem to want to stay asleep for very long. I don't get it. She used to sleep for 2-3 hours during her morning and afternoon naps, then she would go down for a short evening nap around 4:30 or 5:00 and sleep until I wake her up at 6:00. Apparently those days are over. I'm lucky if she sleeps more than an hour during her morning and afternoon naps and her evening naps are only for 20 minutes to a half hour. I'm trying not to complain here, I know there are kids that won't even do that much. I'm just used to her sleeping longer, that's all. It seems like something keeps waking her up. I have tired everything I can think of. The only thing that seems to help is if she eats her solids 45 minutes or so before she is due to go down. That seems to help her sleep longer and better. I have tried getting Ora gel on her gums before I put her down in case her teeth or gums are bothering her, I have given her infant Tylenol in case something is hurting her too. I don't know what else to try. She might just not want to sleep anymore. I get it though, lots to do during the day. Now that she can move around more, I'm sure she just wants to be up doing that. She is still sleeping through the nights, occasionally she wakes up early, makes noises, fusses a little bit, then goes back to sleep until it's time to get up. Lately she has been screaming in her sleep. At least I think she is still sleeping, because that's the only sound she makes. I think she might be having bad dreams...


Isabella is doing a lot more now. Some things are happening very subtly, others are very noticeable. She is still crawl-flopping, but she is starting to move her arms now instead of keeping them were they are and just moving her legs. So she is starting to get it. She is also sitting up on her own now, sometimes she can even get from a laying position to a sitting position with the use of leaning on something (usually her little Dora couch). She is also starting to pull herself up on things and she is starting to play on her own for short times. I don't have to sit on the floor anymore the entire time she plays. I can sit on a couch and read while watching her and as long as she can see me, she is ok...most of the time. I have been taking video and pictures as much as I can. Last month I got a Samsung Focus, it's a Windows formatted smart phone. It's helped a lot with my ability to take video and pictures more. I'm trying to keep my pictures organized by month so at the end of the year I can make a photo album through Shutterfly.com for the year. It also helps me keep track of what she looks like at each of her "birthday days".   


Here are some pictures and videos!

Isabella's First Thunder Storm

Here is Isabella moving. She is moving faster than this now. This video was taken last week, and today I almost couldn't catch her before she reached the floor vent that she isn't allowed to get :)

In her hat and dress Grandmama made her

Teeth!

She loves to slap her face into the couch and yell into it :)

Sitting on her couch

Sitting up on her own!

Chewing on a banana

Daddy feeding her peas for the first time.

She got herself up on that!

Feeding herself in the car

This is how Matt lays on the couch...scary.

Until next time!!

New Car-New Food

I have been meaning to post about our new car! We had an excellent opportunity to buy a used Ford Explorer from some friends that bought it to use while they were up for the summer. I don't have a picture of it just yet, I keep forgetting to take one. But I'll be posting a picture soon.


Isabella tried green beans the other day, she wasn't sure about them at first, but yesterday she had them again mixed with rice cereal and she loved them. 

I also wanted to post a couple of pictures of Isabella in her new cart cover that my mother-in-law made for her. It fits the carts very well and I have even had a couple people comment on it in the stores. Isabella likes it because it's so colorful and she can chew on it :)

Isabella turned 7 months old yesterday (Friday) and I forgot to get a picture. I'll try and get one sometime this weekend while I have Matt home helping me out.


One last thing. I got a video of Isabella moving around. She is moving longer distances since I took this, but you'll get the idea.

Matt and I celebrated our 3 year anniversary on Tuesday the 9th. He came home from Talkeetna for the night to spend with us. We had a Papa Murphy's pizza and a Redbox movie (we saw Arthur, the new one with Russel Brand). It was a nice little celebration.


Well I think that's everything for the week. Hope everyone has a fun weekend!

Rock....Rock....FLOP :)

This past week has been pretty eventful for Isabella. Last weekend she started going on her hands and knees and Monday she started rocking! She gathers up so much momentum that it looks like she is about to take off...then she flops down. She is starting to do this belly flop thing, where she rocks rocks rocks, gets up the momentum, then flops herself forwards instead of crawling. It's cute, and she eventually gets to where she was trying to go. She will be crawling VERY soon, so Matt and I are about to start baby proofing the house. We are in the market for a gate that will attach to the railing at the top of the stairs. Gates are pretty expensive these days. The pressure gates aren't too bad, but since it needs to be sturdy enough that Isabella can't just push on it and fall down the stairs, that is creating a challenge. Here is a very short video of her rocking:

This was the first day she really started rocking.


Isabella had not tried any new food lately because we are trying to narrow down some issues she is having with something she is eating. She was spitting up more frequently after she would eat solids some days. So I had to start over again trying to find what food did what. I know I should have been looking for this before, but things get hectic. Plus I figured as long as she wasn't running a fever or developing a major rash, she was fine. 


Apples: (homemade) She flat out just does not like. I have tried two different types of apples and she didn't dig either one. I'm still going to give her apples though, just on the off chance that she will grow to like them.


Peaches: (Jar) She LOVES, and so far no reactions


Squash: (homemade and in the jar) She LOVES. I don't think she has any reactions to it. Her eczema started acting up around the time she started this food, but at the same time we ran out of her usual lotion and started using a different kind we already had. That may have been a contributor.


Carrots: (homemade) This seems to make her spit up a bit more than usual. She likes them though! I'm sure she will like them even more when it's made with Alaskan grown.


Oatmeal: Another food that seemed to add to the normal amount of spit-up, plus the eczema. She might have a gluten allergy.


Sweet Potatoes (homemade and jar): I think by far, her favorite food. Unfortunately it does make her spit-up the most. I'm not sure why... 


Rice Cereal: She has always liked this just enough to tolerate it. She would rather have it mixed with peaches than with formula (who could blame her??)


Bananas: She has only had this one time. They weren't mashed very well so she had trouble. She didn't seem to like them, but it could have been the texture at the time. I have some mashed up bananas in the freezer for banana bread that I might designate for Isabella instead. She had the banana so long ago that I can't remember if it caused anything. I know it didn't cause anything major of course.


Pears (jar): This was her new food that we finally started last night. She did start spitting-up more after she had it, but it could also have been that she had just had a bottle a half hour before this and was already full. I'm going to give it to her again after the nap she is taking right now and see if it makes a difference. She seemed to like it though. 

Pears 8.6.11

Pears 8.6.11

Her next food will be green beans. We have a bunch of it jarred and need to use some of it. So far she still has not had a green vegetable! It's been mostly because I have been trying to find a good fruit for her for breakfast to mix with rice cereal. Because apples weren't working, I went on to peaches. Since they work I need to find one more to rotate with the peaches. Now that I found pears, we can start on green beans.

Happy Baby 8.5.11

One of the first times on her hands and knees

Matt was playing with the Snap-On guy a couple weeks ago, spending money and whatnot. The Snap-On guy gave him a water gun that looks like a cordless drill:

If you didn't know this was a water gun, you might be freaking out right about now. :)

Snap-On Poster Child 7.20.11

Playing in her bouncy center

Daddy and Isabella

Matt and I attended church this morning online. Our church has a live feed option and we thought we would check it out. Isabella got a morning nap (a rarity on Sunday mornings these days) and she is in better spirits because of it. I think we will have to tune into the live feed once or twice a month just to give Isabella a break. She goes into the "baby beluga" room for babies her age. She tends to be the only one in there during the whole service! Only a couple of times have there been other babies to watch and play with. I get called out of the service every time anymore because she is having problems. I think the separation anxiety has hit. Lucky us. 

We tried to leave her with my parents yesterday while we went and had lunch in Eagle River for our anniversary. Our anniversary is on Tuesday but Matt will be in Talkeetna working so we celebrated early. By the time we got back to my parents' house she was a wreck! Apparently she had been crying her head off most of time we had been gone. MAN! I don't think we fully took advantage of our situation before the separation anxiety hit her. Now the fun really begins. It's not so bad when Matt leaves, but when I'm not there or neither of us are she really loses her mind. I knew there was a draw back of being a stay-at-home mom. 

Well I think that's about it for the week. More to come I'm sure! Hope everyone had a good weekend!

Stacy Schneider, "Mother Extraordinaire"

6 Month Well Baby Check-Up and New Foods

I have to say, before I start in on everything, that just gathering all the pictures I want to load onto the blog takes so much longer than writing the blog it's self. I have pictures on my camera, on my phone, already saved on my computer...I have so many USB cables coming out of my computer it looks like it's on life support. I have so many windows, tabs and programs up and running my computer SHOULD be on life support. Not to mention how hot it is in the house right now. It's almost 9:00pm and it's 78! Isabella's room is 75 and she seems to be ok with it. She fell asleep fast enough.


So on with the show!


Since I blogged last I think the only new foods we have introduced are peaches, squash and oatmeal (oatmeal for babies that is). She liked the squash for the most part, but it was the texture that got her I think. Of course I purred it, but you can only puree squash so well:

Squash 7/15/2011

Squash 7/15

Squash 7/15

She did ok with peaches. She seemed to like them, but occasionally would make a sour face:

Peaches 7/17/

Peaches 7/17

Oatmeal came next. I did this one just this week while Matt was gone. It was the first time Isabella has had a new food and he didn't feed it to her. But she had not had a new one this week and the oatmeal was just sitting....and it was breakfast time....

Oatmeal 7/19/2011

Oatmeal 7/19

Not sure what to think about the oatmeal (7/19)

She likes the oatmeal better than her rice cereal I suspect. This weekend we are going to introduce green beans and next week will be pears. She has never eaten anything green before so the green beans will be interesting. I felt that I should mention that even though Isabella looks pretty messy when she is fed, she is not the "real" messy one...that would be me:

Carrot/Sweet Potato "Mommy" Mess 7/22/2011

So what your looking at here is carrot/sweet potato that I painstakingly defrosted (homemade in the freezer) and heated to the PERFECT temp. I fed Isabella ONE bite, went to put the spoon back in the bowl and somehow, in my attempt to multi-task by making silly faces at Isabella and getting more food on the spoon, managed to knock it over onto the carpet. It got on my sock, purse, high chair as well as the floor. Yeah, at least she isn't this messy. She was very patient while I cleaned up as much as I could and rushed to get more stuff defrosted and ready for her to eat.

On the 17th we went to my parents' house on our way into Anchorage (to pick up our 2nd car!! More on that in the next blog) to have lunch and for a pit stop for Isabella to eat, roll around and get her diaper changed. While she was rolling around, she became enthralled with my dad's feet.

Trying to eat Grandpa's foot 7/17

She LOVES feet, can't get enough of them. Not just her own, everybody's feet! I have to keep her from trying to eat my feet!! 

She is getting the hang of the Johnny Jump-Up her Great Grandpa and Grammie Goodenberger bought for her. At first she just kinda swung in it:

She wouldn't take her arms out of it in the beginning, that's why her arms are tucked in until Matt gets them out again. Also, apparently one leg is shorter than the other because that one leg has always been the only one jumping!

But now she is jumping!!!

Don't ask me why this is sideways, apparently I need to play around with my phone's camera more.

Alright, enough with all this silliness, time to talk about her 6 month well baby appointment. This was the first EVER doctors appointment Matt has missed. He has been to every single appointment from the very beginning. By the beginning I don't mean since she was born, I mean since we went to the doctor for the first time I found out I was pregnant. So this was kind of a big deal to us that he wasn't there. But he was working in Talkeetna and needed to stay. This was bound to happen at some point! Matt always does everything at these doctors appointments I'm just there to ask the questions. He gets her undressed, goes with her while she is weighed and measured, holds her while we wait for the doctor, and holds her arms down when it's time for shots. Yeah. So needless to say I was doing everything for the first time. It wasn't too bad, even the shots were ok. One of the vaccinations she gets is a liquid that she needs to drink. The first time she had it, she drank it all (she was much younger, 2 or 3 months maybe), the second time she had it, she kept spitting it out and it took the nurse 5 minutes to get her to drink just a little bit of this stuff (maybe around 4 months). This time she drank it but it made her cry! We were trying so hard not to laugh, because we knew it was going to get MUCH worse. She got the shots and settled down pretty quickly. 

The doctor said she is doing great, nothing new to report. Here are her new stats:

7/22/2011

Hight: 27"

Weight: 18 lbs 4.5 oz

For some reason she is super tall. We are not a tall people, so I'm trying to figure out why she is so darn tall. She is in the 90th percentile for her age group on hight. Weird.

So, I'm thinking that needs to be it. I'm so super tired and I have as of yet to eat dinner and it's after 10:00pm. I hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!!