Izzie's checkup

Izzie had her 9 month check up today. She did very well although she was trying to walk all over the floor. I have no idea how we are going to entertain her when we go to PR in a couple of weeks. It will be a long flight. Anyway back to the appt. she got one shot that she was supposed to get at 6 months but did not get because they were low on supply and they had to draw blood to check her iron (normal check at 9 months old). She did well but she cried a lot. Poor thing. She has a band aid in her finger that she is trying to eat.
Here are her stats and I am including Natalie's at the same age, funny but they are almost the same!
Izzie
weight: 18lbs
height: 27.75 in

Natalie
weight: 17lbs 11.75 oz
height: 28 in

9 months old

Today July 30 Izzie is 9 months old. I cannot believe it. I have no idea where the last year has gone by let alone the last 9 months. She is getting so big so fast it is incredible. I thought time was going fast after Natalie was born but since Izzie came along now it seems to be going by even faster. My babies are growing up. Although if you ask Natalie if she is a big girl or a baby she will tell you she is a baby. I am sure if Izzie could talk Izzie would say she is a big girl. She just adores Natalie and whatever Natalie does she follows her and tries to do too. Now Izzie has started playing with the baby strollers. Natalie so far has been good at sharing them but not all the times. We have one of those big riding cars in the house downstairs and Natalie gets on it and Izzie takes off crawling behind her. Natalie does loops around the house with Izzie behind. Pretty soon Izzie will be pushing something behind her.
Izzie is cruising really good. She pulls herself up on anything that will provide a little help and support. She is very curious about everything. She still has not tried climbing on the stairs but I am sure it is just a matter of days.

Izzie has been crying every time I put her in her car seat. We think she was not that comfortable in the infant car seat. I was not comfortable carrying it. It was so heavy. So I got Natalie a booster seat and Izzie got Natalie's convertible car seat. Natalie loves her new car seat since it is pink and apparently that is her favorite color. Izzie seems to be doing ok in the new car seat but she is getting tired of facing the back. I am sure she will be very happy come October when she can face the front.

Izzie's latest funny faces is that she has discovered her tongue and that she can stick it out. She crawls around with her tongue sticking out and then grabs and pulls it. She is so silly.

Natalie is doing very well with potty training. She does not tell me she has to go but if I tell her to sit she goes pee pee. I have noticed that she has started to hold it for longer stretches and she is peeing a lot more than just the drops she was doing a couple of weeks ago. I am trying to keep her without a diaper when we are home to make it easier to go the potty and make her hold it. So far it seems to be working but the other day she went #2 in the carpet. The potty was right there but I guess she is still not getting it. Later on in the day she was playing and forgot to go sit so she peed on herself. When Aaron got home from work he asked her if she had poo poo in the carpet and she informed him "and pee pee too". We will see how this progresses. The latest in her adventures is that now Pi (her stuffed piggy) goes potty. She sits her (we were told by Natalie that Pi is a girl...) down in the potty and gives her stickers.

Well here are some pictures taken today of Izzie and the girls with their new car seats.

Our Weekend

So we had a pretty uneventful weekend. Yesterday Aaron took Natalie to the pool and the park while Izzie took her morning nap and I did some chores around the house and enjoyed the quiet house. Aaron took Natalie on the backpack. The pool and park are a little over a mile away from our house. I have no idea how he was able to walk that far with her but they made it and apparently she had a great time. In the afternoon we all went to the pool (in the car though). Izzie had a great time, she loves the pool.

On Sunday Aaron took Natalie to the park again. They were going to go on the backpack but at the last minute she wanted to go in the car.

Sunday afternoon we went to Georgetown looking for a playground that I have read was supposed to be one of the nicest in Texas. We did not find it but we found another park that was pretty and Natalie had fun running around and looking at ducks.

Here are some pictures taken this weekend.




Here is Aaron with Izzie at the park.





















Here is Natalie at the park



























Here is a picture of Izzie showing off how well she can stand by herself. On Thursday she took 2 steps towards me. She is getting much better at standing by herself without any support. We think once she can stand better she will take off walking. She can't wait to chase after Natalie.












Here is a typical Izzie smile. She always tips her head back and grins as wide as she can with her eyes all squinty.

"I pee pee grass"

So we started a little bit of potty training Natalie. They do it in school and she started going at school so I decided to try it at home and see what happens. Some days she is more willing than others but in the last few days she seems more interested. I have a special box full of stickers which she gets one every time she goes. But now she has learned how to work the system. She realized that she gets one sticker every time she goes so instead of doing all her business in one sitting she goes a little bit, stops, she tells me she went, shows it to me, goes to the toilet flushes it and then asks to have her hands washed and get her sticker. So I think she is done, as I am about to put a diaper on she says "I pee pee more" and off she goes back to the potty and the whole cycle starts again. Yesterday she did this 5 times. By the last time she is pushing with all her might and getting only a drop, but hey she got 5 stickers so she was very happy.
Today in school she actually peed in the potty the whole day, every time they took them and she stayed dry all morning. We will see how she does at home tomorrow. I try to get her to wear underwear but she is not interested at all. She will wear them for a little bit (5 minutes) and then take them off. She does not ask for a diaper she would rather stay naked. Apparently she does not like the feel of the underwear.
Now on the issue of #2 it is a different story. For the past year Natalie has been doing her business mostly outside. I guess she likes to be in nature with the dogs, who knows. But usually in the mornings or early afternoons if she tells us she wants to go outside it is to do her business. So as we started potty training every time she asks to go outside I ask her if she has to poop and if she does she should go in the potty. Her response " I poo poo outside". I even tried bringing the potty outside one day and she paid no attention. So today after dinner she says she wants to go outside. Given that she had such a successful day at school I ask her if she has to go poop. I get her usual response of "I poop outside". I tell her that I will bring the potty and I would read her a book. She gets all excited and agrees. So off we go to the back porch. She sits, I start reading her book and she pees. So she is happy and I am thinking that this may work after all. Well after peeing she says she wants to move the potty to the fort part of her swing set. So we move the potty and she sits down and I continue to read. I guess now that she peed once she lost interest and seeing the dogs go in the grass she starts thinking because next thing I know she is off the potty standing in the grass and telling me "I pee pee grass" and there she goes peeing in the grass, standing up. She is very proud of herself, I have to stop myself from laughing because the last thing I want is to encourage this. (This morning she came inside half naked because she was able to get her diaper off ). So after doing this once she runs around after the dogs and stops by the fence, her back against the fence and I can see she is concentrating on something and then I see that she is peeing again and she starts yelling to me "I pee pee grass".
At least she did not go #2 outside since I did not really want to clean up that mess. We will see what she does tomorrow. Here are some pictures of Natalie outside today....

Izzie is doing good. She is all into people food and eats anything you put in front of her. She likes chicken, ground beef, cheese, pasta. She likes all kinds of fruit. She eats her baby food as long as no one else is eating around her. If we are eating she screams until we give her what we have. And if Aaron is cooking and she can smell it forget it, she wants it too! She is standing really well on her own now and her cruising is much better and faster. She loves getting into the pantry and playing with whatever is at her reach.

Pictures

So last week I got the brilliant idea I wanted to get an updated pictures of the girls. Last time I attempted this was back in January. I really wanted a picture of both girls together. Natalie was almost 2 and Izzie was almost 3 months. I thought it was possible. Well little did I know. Natalie would not even get out of the stroller. So it ended up being an Izzie session only. So now I thought that Natalie was bigger and could understand more and Izzie was able to sit up by herself and stand so again me with my brilliant ideas..... All week long I kept mentioning to Natalie how we were going to have pictures taken. I bribed her with everything I could think of. She was always very excited about it and kept saying yes that she would have her picture taken. So off we went on Wed morning. We had an appt at 10am. I figured it was a great time, Izzie would have taken a morning nap so she would not be cranky and it was still early for Natalie. Well it was an ordeal. Both girls crying and would not stand in the middle and let the lady take their pictures. I finally convinced Natalie by making her jump around. Since she likes to show off this worked pretty well. Then we tried both girls. This is when things got crazy. Izzie is a little too mobile. She is crawling all over the place and Natalie is going in the opposite direction. When Izzie would sit still Natalie would be on the other side and nowhere close for a picture to be taken. We tried for so long. I was helping myself to all their toys, just anything to try to keep them still and together. Natalie was getting restless and was trying to climb back into the stroller. We got only one picture of them together. Izzie looks ok, she is somewhat smiling. Natalie looks like she is being tortured. Needless to say I did not get a together picture. At least the girls did very well on the individual pictures and I got some really good ones so I can replace them, especially the ones of Izzie since she does not look like any of the pictures I had. So then it was time to leave when they tell me that their printer is broken and I had to come another day and pick up the pictures. At first I was upset but at this point it is almost noon and everyone was starving so I just wanted to get out of there, give them lunch and put them down for a nap. Today I picked up the pictures, they are really cute and I am glad I got them. I am still hoping soon I am going to get one of them together. Part of me wants to keep trying and part of me wants to avoid this things altogether. Maybe I can convince Aaron to come with me......

Sisters

When I was pregnant with Izzie and I found out I was having another girl I was excited for Natalie to be able to have someone to play with. Since they were so close in age I hoped they would be very close. After Izzie was born I thought it would take a while before they could start playing together. Well I can start seeing them playing together now and I am excited that it is happening earlier than I thought. Now that Izzie can pull herself up and crawl she pretty much follows Natalie around. Whether Natalie wants it or not. Whatever toy Natalie is playing with Izzie has to come and check it out too. It is annoying for Natalie but it is very cute to watch them. At the same time Natalie likes it, she gets to boss her around. There are times when Izzie falls and hurts herself and cries and Natalie comes running and asks her if she is ok. Other times when Natalie is the cause of Izzie's crying then I can tell because Natalie is usually running in the opposite direction trying to hide it. Izzie is starting to show some personality and every day it seems like she is sillier than the day before. She is still liking cables but now that Natalie knows that Izzie should not be near them then Natalie is my cable patrol and tells Izzie no. Again she loves to boss her around. The other day Natalie came over and grabbed Izzie by the hands and tried to play Ring around the Rosie with her. Izzie can only stand while holding on to stuff so it was very difficult to try to do this, specially since Natalie was trying to also spin her around. The falling down part they both nailed. You would think that Izzie would have been upset since she can barely stand up and here is Natalie spinning her around and pushing her on the floor but Izzie was so excited to be playing with Natalie that they were both giggling. I can't wait for Izzie to get bigger so that they can play better.
Natalie is still in her dancing stage. She now dances to any music that she hears. At the stores she stops walking so that she can dance. The other day at the mall I was in the dressing room with both of them and I turned around and Natalie is standing in front of the mirror dancing. She then decided she wanted to try clothes on so she took off her shorts and diaper. She then opened the door and was trying to run down the store half naked. Good thing the stroller got in the way.
We did not do much this weekend. We went to the pool this afternoon. Natalie was in the pool for a little bit but then she sat in a chair eating a snack with her sunglasses on like she was sunbathing. Aaron is getting a little scared of what the future is going to hold for him with the two of them. Izzie loves the pool so she just hung out in her raft.

Here are the most recent pictures
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=19okkvhx.4g44nzy5&x=0&y=kmigb0&localeid=en_US

Messy Izzie

So today I got the brilliant idea to give Izzie a blueberry nutri grain bar. She is losing interest in baby food and I wanted to give her something that would fill her up more than just cheerios. Well I am sure if you ask her she would tell you that she loved the nutri grain bar and would eat one every day. If you ask me it was a disaster and it is going to take a while before I give her another one. Check out the pictures and you can decide.....









Also yesterday Natalie went to her first friend birthday party. It was from a little girl that lives in our neighborhood as is part of our playgroup. The party was at Chucky Cheese. Natalie was a little scared at first but then she had fun in the rides. Her favorite part was the cake :-)

First blog - 4th of July weekend

Hi ! I have been meaning to do this for the past two years and now I finally decided to do it. Hopefully this way I can keep you all updated with what we are doing in Austin and how the girls are doing.
So far we are doing very well. We are settled and starting to know the area better. We don't get out much (thanks to our little monsters ;-) but slowly we will get there. It is starting to feel like home so that is good.

The girls are doing well. Izzie is 8 months old and is growing up really fast. She is very good at crawling now and she is pretty fast, especially when she sees a cable she wants to get her teeth into. She is pulling up on anything she can find and has started cruising around. She loves to play with all of Natalie's toys, especially the ones that Natalie is playing with at the time. Also Izzie has discovered the basket where we keep the dog toys and she thinks they are her teething toys, so we have to keep our eye on her. We started giving her some table food. She tries to eat it but it ends up mostly on her lap. She makes a big mess but she is very happy about it and is happy to try. So far she likes peas, broccoli and chicken. Parker is very excited and he has become our official high chair cleaner.

Natalie is doing good as well. Also getting very big. We moved her up into a big girl bed. She loves it and I can't believe she is not a baby anymore that does not need a crib. We started a little bit of potty training, since they do it at school but she does not have that much interest at home so I stopped trying until she shows more interest. She is currently crazy for dancing. She pretty much dances to any music she hears, even commercials. It is hilarious to watch. She has finally accepted other music than Jack Johnson so Aaron is very happy to be able to hear other music. We have been going to the pool and she has been enjoying it a lot. Not as much as Izzie. Izzie could be in the pool all day if we let her. Natalie jumps in and tries to put her head in the water. Maybe by the end of the summer she will. At least it is better than last year.

The doggies are doing well. Parker hates the heat. Abi does not mind it as much. They are both in hibernation pretty much all day and are awake early in the morning and in the evenings. The rest of the time Parker is somewhere in the tile floor and Abi is hiding from the girls.

This past weekend was 4th of July. On Thursday there was a party at Natalie's school. They had all the kids in their bathing suits playing in the water and running around. It was cute seeing all the kids running around. Natalie was trying to show us around the school. At the school there is a little farm with some ponies and goats. She was showing us the horses. She won't pet them but she gets close to them through the fence. They do have a baby goat inside the playground and all the kids are crazy for him. We were shocked to see Natalie pet him. Since she is so afraid of everything. We will see when the goat gets bigger how she does with him.

On Friday we went to downtown Round Rock for their annual parade. We went with a mom I met at playgroup and her husband and their 2 year old daughter. We had a lot of fun. Izzie did very well. Natalie was scared but she did better than we expected. As people walked by they would throw candy. Natalie never tried to get any (must be Aaron's genes). For the rest of the weekend we did not do much more. We set up Natalie's new room with her new bed and stuff and moved her old stuff into Izzie's room.

I will try to keep updating as much as I can and put pictures or the links to kodak gallery.

take care
Irene