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!!

A Few Promised Pictures

So I still don't have any pictures just yet of Matanuska Glacier, but I do have some other pictures that I had promised in the last blog.

Here are pictures of the advent calendar that Susan (Matt's mother) made for us:

Full shot of the advent calendar

Close up

Extreme close up of the middle (showing how everything is attached)

We love it and can't wait to use it for Christmas this year. Now that we have Isabella we are in the market for some family traditions to start this year. In previous years, Matt and I didn't really start many traditions. 

Here is a picture of Isabella trying banana's for the first time:

Bananas (7/8/2011)

She wasn't too keen on them. I think I will have to start slow with them, adding some of her formula to them to keep her interested. We bought butternut squash yesterday that I'm going to bake today and freeze. It will be her next new food. So far she has not shown much of an allergic reaction to anything we have given to her.

Last night I took a couple of pictures of what we see at 8:00pm in our back yard:

You can see the chunk of cotton hanging off that Cottonwood tree

The purple flowers are Fireweed

That's all for now. I hope everyone has had a fun and safe weekend!!

Grandmama's Visit

We have been having fun with Isabella's Grandmama (Matt's mom Susan)! She is up from Oregon and will be leaving tomorrow morning. She has been here since June 27th. Susan had not seen Isabella since she visited in February, shortly after Isabella was born. We do try to Skype with her often, but it's just not the same. The first week Susan was here I came down with Matt's cold. It hit me pretty hard. Susan took Isabella with her to Talkeetna that Friday to visit with Matt and his co workers. I had a nice day at home alone, to just rest and relax. It was pretty nice...however, it would have been better had I not been sick.

We have tried to get out of the house as much as we can with limited transportation. We rented a car the first week she was here, then this week we have been hanging out at home most of the time. Yesterday (Wed) my mom took the day off of work and drove us to Matanuska Glacier. I didn't get any pictures of it but I did get a picture of King Mountain:

We didn't get too close to the glacier, but hey, it's a glacier. You don't have to get close. I'll post a picture from either Susan or my mom in the next blog.

Isabella has been eating more new food. Since the last blog she has had apples and sweet potatoes. She isn't digging the apples so much. I think it's because they are a bit tart. I feed her them in the morning mixed with some formula and rice cereal to cut the tart. Here is her first apple feeding:

She did pretty well that first time, but after that, she is really showing the sour face when she eats them. I'll make sweeter apples next time.

Here is her first sweet potato feeding:

She LOVED them! Just like my mom...I'm glad mom now has another sweet potato buddy.

Susan has been making us an Advent calendar for Christmas time. I'll post a picture when it's done. She is working on the last few pieces for it as I type. She made Isabella a dress today and I got some pictures:

Susan and Isabella

She was so enthralled with the fabric

Matt's Grammie (Susan's mother) bought Isabella a Johnny Jump-up. Matt put it together and Isabella has spent a bit in it. She is still getting the hang of it. She mostly swings in it, and spins. Here is a picture I took today:

I have a video of her in it, but it didn't come out well. I'll make another video of her in it and post it next time. 

We didn't do anything at all for the 4th of July. I was still semi sick, Susan was getting a little sick and Matt was working in Talkeetna with the car so we couldn't go do anything even if we wanted to. PLUS we had a heck of a time finding ANYTHING 4th of July related for Isabella! I was pretty shocked about how little the stores had, even last week! So we ended up not even dressing her up. We had nothing red, white and blue for her. 

Well, that's all for now. I hope everyone had a safe and fun 4th! Until next time!