Water fun!

Isla hosted a water party for a bunch of friends over the weekend. Everyone seemed to have a great time! Here are a couple pics I took, as well as a couple that Hope Carroll (www.hopecarrollphotography.blogspot.com) posted as preview pics...

The pre-party setting....

Isn't this ice cream face shot of Ella absolutely adorable??

Isla kicked back in her lounge chair for much of the party...


Jonathan decided to stay for the party and ended up giving wagon rides to the little kids...

I WANT IT!!!! Her first clear sentence. Said while crying. Momma was laying on the pillow she needed. The other one just like it would not do.

Girls and their dolls.....and their tractors....

Can you tell I got some time to myself?

P took Isla on some errands this afternoon so here are some pictures! He bought me a tripod a couple weeks ago so we were playing with that yesterday and I actually got a picture with me in it! The Winston picture is from the 12th--I hadn't even had a chance to download them. It's getting pretty challenging to get a posed picture of her with the bear. In the past few weeks, Isla has REALLY gotten in to pretend-play, especially with the "kids" in her room. Pooh is just one of her kids who moves from the rocking chair to the bed to the floor to the chair....





This post took 2 hours to finish. Guess who realized one of his errands would be next to impossible with the pint sized protege?

One more week....

And I will be unemployed for the first time since I was 16 years old. Hopefully I'll end up working part-time but for now, I'll have plenty of time to devote to projects around the house and spending time with my baby girl. Our daycare doesn't do part-time enrollment until they turn 2 so for the next 6 months I'll be able to take her there everyday, go to the gym, work on projects, then pick her up after nap time. I figure she'll probably be there about 5-6 hours a day when I'm not working--much better than 10 hours! We're going to have library afternoon each week--I introduced her to our wonderful public library a few weeks ago and she loved it. And I'm going to get a pass to Discovery Playhouse so we can go there one afternoon a week. Grandma's one afternoon, grocery shopping one afternoon....

Then when she turns 2 and I'm (hopefully) working 2 days a week, she'll probably be at daycare all day 2 days a week, then spend an afternoon each week with Grandma so Momma can clean the house. We'll go to storytime at the library, play at the Playhouse, go on picnics in the park.... I never expected to want to be a stay at home mom, but right now, it's my dream job. (Good thing I finished that Masters Degree before she was born! HA!)

I have a long list of projects that I've been writing for weeks (I gave almost 6 weeks notice at work). Now that we're done to just a few more days of work, I'm revisiting the list, trying to decide where to start. We've lived here a little over 4 years now. I've been used to moving every few years and purging as I packed. We have no plans to move so I need to do a thorough cleaning and purging. A big garage sale is in my future. Plus my dad is wanting to go set up and sale at a flea market so I'll go with him and do that a time or two this fall. I've also told him I'll help him clean up a rental house he has that will be vacated in the next week or 2. And I need to finish the makeover on our kitchen. And I have a huge pile of things I want to put on eBay. And self-study projects I want to work on--learning how to use my camera better, Photoshop, bow making, things to sew.... And there are 2 or 3 big ongoing projects at church that I'm interested in. And cooking! I miss trying new recipes instead of just throwing something quick together. And I've joked that I want my dad to teach me how to put in our bathroom downstairs--may not be a joke!! I've wanted to learn how to do more DIY projects around the house for a long time. He taught my brothers how to build houses--he can teach me how to install a toilet!!

But for this week, I work. Patrick is making dinner for us Monday night for my birthday. Tuesday afternoon I have to take off early to take Isla for a test. Then one of the girls from work is coming over to look through outgrown baby clothes and a couple of us are going for sushi. Wednesday my brother and I are taking each other to lunch for our birthdays (his is Saturday). Nothing is going on Thursday and Friday is LAST DAY!!

More aaaaaahhhhhhh.....

I hope you can sing the aaaaahhhhh properly to get the full affect. Really, I need to record Isla saying it and post that on here. If we get on to her for being too rough (especially towards Speckles), she pats toward whatever she was being too rough with and sings aaaaahhhhhhh.

We had our 18 month well baby check this week. Baby girl is finally up to 20 pounds. Hanging on to her growth curve. Our doctor asked if she's using 15 different words and I said she is. The next morning she erased any question about that. In the first 15 minutes she was awake, she told me she wanted "egg," then to add "cheese," and put it in "dat bowl." When I handed her dat bowl, she told me "hot" and started to blow on it. She asked for "milk," told me about "dog" while she was eating and her "shoes" on the kitchen table. Yes, the shoes were on the kitchen table. We actually had to put her shoes on over her footed pajamas. (The shoes are croc-like so very wide). She also told me when she wanted "down." She peppered a few "no's" and "mine's" into the conversation too. So many words in such a short time.

After her bath last night, Isla again wanted the shoes on over her footed pjs. Daddy didn't realize this when he put her to bed. At 5:45 this morning, I awoke to a couple babbles, then "Shoes. shoes. shoes." I looked in the monitor and she was laying on her side, one shoe on, trying to get the other shoe back on over her jammies. "Shoes. Shoes. Shoes."

My heart melts....

She doesn't say momma very often, but today when we'd ask Isla what my name is, she'd say "mine." Sigh. Aaaaahhhhh.

Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!

When I ask Isla where momma's little baby is, she sing-songs "aaaaahhhhhh!" Sometimes she'll put the side of her face up against me as she says it. If I'm handling her, I'll cradle her as I ask. She smiles as she gives her sing-song response. Thursday night before bed she crawled up on my lap, laid into a cradle position in my arms and said "Baby? Baby? aaaaaaaaahhhhhh!"

I love that little face....

Gardening.....

Changes!

We see new things and hear new words everyday these days. Today I noticed Isla pointing with one finger (um, the middle one though), so grown-up like. I always loved the cute little way she'd point with all four fingers kinda cupped together. Yesterday she started saying hotdog. Yes, my child loves hotdogs. I try to make healthy choices, but when she starts screaming to eat as soon as we walk in the door in the afternoons, convenience wins out. And hotdogs are one of her Daddy's favorites. She's also saying "pease" a lot. She'll come up to us, hold her hand out, cupped, tilt her head and say pease? Melts the heart. If I knew what she wanted, I'd give her anything.

One big change coming up is that I'm going to be a stay at home mom awhile! I never in a million years thought I would want that, but Isla changed everything. I hope to be able to go back to my current job for 2 days a week, but I have to be off awhile for that to happen, and the agency budget and workload has to support it. They don't expect it to be a problem, but no promises. I'm nervous and excited and thrilled and scared and....

Isla will stay in daycare. Her daycare is actually a "babies" daycare, then they have a "kids" daycare next door once they turn two. The babies side doesn't do part-time enrollment, but the kids side does. So we'll be paying full-time daycare until January, then she can just be enrolled two days if I'm only working two days. My Mom said she'd help me out and take her one of my days off so I can clean house and things like that.

Clean house. Sigh. I have to fire my cleaning lady. P said we could try it awhile and see how expenses go, but I can't justify spending the money to have someone else clean if I'm quitting work to focus on taking care of my family. I'll also be taking back over the mowing. Cutting out those two expenses will roughly save us enough to cover the cost of adding me to P's health insurance. So at least I'll be able to go to the ER if I run over my foot with the lawnmower. (Actually I don't really mind mowing, although I'll be taking over in the worst of the summer heat and will most likely need to do it during the daytime when I can take Isla to daycare.) Cleaning I do mind.

So that's the news here. I haven't downloaded pics from my camera in awhile, but I think I have a couple from my phone.... The one of her sitting outside at her picnic table was right after she got out of the hospital--baby girl doesn't have room to lose weight when she's sick! I think she's gained back what she lost when she was sick. The swimming pool was pre-sick and the ice cream cone was the first thing she was excited about eating after she got out of the hospital.

Little Miss Attitude!

We've had a sudden emergence of attitude and sass the past week! I expected to see a lot of changes in Isla with her moving up to the toddler class at daycare. Since she was out a week sick, it took a little longer to see the changes than what I expected. Mine, want that, give me, no, off, please.....all things we heard this weekend. When we picked her up from the church nursery yesterday, they told us she'd been flirting with a little boy. He was trying to take a book from her and she went over and sat in a spot he couldn't reach her, and put the book under her dress and smiled at him. She also seemed a little flirty with Sutton when he came over to play yesterday. And she was SO chatty at Applebees last night when we took Daddy out to eat for Father's Day. It amazing to see all the changes. And as she communicates more, has more opinions, and more attitude, she's also more demanding and gets frustrated when we don't understand what she wants. We're dealing with tantrums and trying to redirect unwanted behaviors positively. She's starting to understand that when she does something she shouldn't, she's gonna get in trouble.

She's BBBAAACCCCKKK! Tidbits....

My very busy 1 year old is back in action!

This afternoon I showed my mom the ruffles on Isla's bottom. Then she turned around, jutted out her hip and was trying to raise the back of her dress to show Pop-pop her butt. As we were leaving their house, we picked up our toys, then she grabbed her little bag of bowling pins, put it on her arm, and told Grandma bye-bye.

She decided she likes corn last weekend but wouldn't eat it off the cob. Tonight, she wanted the cob and did a good job gnawing off the bounty.

She's gotten a bit used to being held to sleep the past week so we had some fights about that this weekend.

I have mixed feelings about her starting to like tv, or at least a couple DVDs. On one hand, it's nice to have something we can bribe or with or get her to sit still for, but on the other, we don't want her to get TOO used to tv. You know? But this weekend, she saw a DVD sitting on the table, picked it up, went to the tv, and started waving it at the tv, grunting.

There are so many more things, but momma is getting tired and can't think. More later. And new pictures!!

Poor baby....

Sunday night Isla woke up a bit before 10 vomiting. By midnight, her tummy was empty and she was vomiting bile. I think I'd taken 4 or 5 showers by this point as momma was the target most of the times she got sick. We went to the ER in the middle of the night and she got some IV fluids so we could try to keep her out of the hospital. We went to see Dr. S mid morning Monday and called her back around 4 to let her know Isla hadn't kept anything down. She admitted us for 23 hour observation and more IV fluids. Her fever went up to over 103 and poor baby just felt awful. She wouldn't eat anything most of the day today but we did get the ok to try solids which she was interested in once her fever went down since what fluids she had had stayed in. But since she hadn't really had much, we're staying another night. The solids she ate didn't stay in so we're back on solids. Isla's in bed asleep. If she gets up during the night, I'll try to give her jello or a Popsicle so we can see if she can keep something down. At this point, I expect when Dr. S rounds tomorrow morning, she'll say we'll have to see if she keeps anything down. We don't want to take her home and have her continue vomit ting or not eating and dehydrate again. As long as we're here, she has an IV bag of fluids and will stay hydrated. Damn bug.

Update: We got to go home Wednesday and Isla seemed back to herself. I took her to daycare today though and had to pick her up right after lunch because she was vomiting again. We had a few more episodes after we got home, but baby girl was hungry too. At one point she was cramming crackers in while she was puking. Silly girl. The past few hours have been quiet, so momma is praying for the best. We're supposed to have a playdate Saturday so I'll see how she does tomorrow and let the other momma know what's going on. Hopefully today was just a little relapse and she's all better now!