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!!