She's here!

Carol had her baby girl today! Babies are such miracles. I flew up to Atlanta yesterday so I could be here for the birth. What a wonderful experience. I actually wrote a short blog on Carol's blog and created a slide show. So if you are interested you can visit Carol's blog. I am so proud of Carol and thrilled for her and her family.

Thanksgiving...a time for thanks

We hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! We certainly did. We had two delicious Thanksgiving meals. The first one was about a week before Thanksgiving at Ma's house. She was going to be off in California and Nevada over Thanksgiving, so she decided to have a feast before she left. It was wonderful to all be together. This Thanksgiving we have much to be thankful for.

My mom and Ma

Nana and Isa

The Saturday before Thanksgiving Charles, Isabelle, my mom, Roland, all the kids and I drove up to Carol's house in Atlanta. We went up and stayed in a cabin up in the Georgia mountains. The trees were all so beautiful. We miss the fall and changing of seasons living down in Florida. We had a great time relaxing at the cabin, playing games, playing family football, and spending a day shopping in Blue Ridge, GA. We were planning on driving back the following Saturday, but Carol started what we thought was early labor so we stuck around. Sunday morning everything had stopped so we packed up. A word to the wise...don't drive anywhere the Sunday after Thanksgiving. It took us 10 and a half hours to drive home, compared to 6 hours on the way there. Not so fun, but we just tried to laugh and enjoy the time together.

Shopping in Blue Ridge

We had to bring Isabelle's favorite princess chair. It's a good thing we drove up to Georgia.

Mikenzie, Laila, and Isabelle

The view from the cabin

Happy Birthday Isabelle!

Two weeks ago Isabelle turned 1!!!  I can't believe my baby girl is getting so big.  Of course we had to throw her a birthday party, even if she won't remember it.  We decided the best place for a party would be at Chuck E. Cheese's since I had my birthday there almost every year for the first 25 years of my life (and no 25 is not a typo).  And since Isabelle is my little princess we had a princess theme for the party.  Everyone had a great time, especially Isabelle.  

At  our favorite grocery store, Publix, they give a free individual cake for 1 year olds when you buy a bigger cake.  I expected it to be the size of a cupcake, but it was much bigger.  

Before we were done singing "Happy Birthday" Isabelle already had her fingers in the frosting. How do 1 year olds even know to go for the frosting?

As tradition goes, we allowed Isabelle to dig into her cake.  It got everywhere!  But she loved it. She seemed more and more amazed with every bite.  

Mmmm...this is good stuff!

There was no sharing of the cake!

What was left when we finally took the cake away!

One of Isabelle's favorite presents was her new princess chair from Mamie and Papy.  Isabelle absolutely loves it and goes to sit in it whenever she sees it.

Isabelle even got to play on the slides and rides.

All in all we had a wonderful first birthday party!

Grandpa also came up the day before Isabelle's birthday and took us out for a nice birthday dinner.  Thanks Grandpa!

A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT ISA ON HER 1ST BIRTHDAY!

Favorite foods: Cheese, cheese and more cheese, I guess she is half French after all.  Isabelle also loves fruit, especially bananas and grapes.  We are still having a hard time with her veggies, thank goodness for Juice Plus.  Isabelle also loves anything sweet as you can see from her birthday cake.

Words: Mama, Papa, Nana, Tata, num, banana, cheese (sounds more like eese), up, more, mmmm, ewwww, ouch, yuck, eat, no,  and nez (french for nose).  There are probably others that I am forgetting or haven't been able to recognize yet.  

We have also been working on signing with Isabelle.  She has really caught on fast. I think everyone should do signing with their babies, it is so helpful to have Isabelle be able to communicate what she wants or needs.  We are learning new words each day, but so far she can sign the following:  cheese, water/drink, eat, nurse, please, thank you, more, all done, all gone, hot, pretty, dog, I love you, chicken, hi, bye, licorice, apple, banana, yes, no, 1 (for her age), star, spider, brush teeth, and blows kisses.  One thing we are really happy about is that we can be speaking to Isabelle in either French or English and she will sign in response.  That gives me a lot of hope that the French is sinking in.  

Mobility:  Isabelle is walking everywhere.  She is also a little monkey.  She likes to climb on everything and climb down from everything, even our really high bed.  

My favorite things:  Isabelle's smile, when Isabelle signs I love you without me even saying it, cuddling with Isabelle in the morning, Isabelle's hugs and kisses, her many facial expressions, the sound of her voice, when Isabelle asks for nums and does the sign at the same time just in case we didn't understand her, Isabelle's rolls, dressing Isabelle, and watching Isabelle dance.

Stats: 21 lbs and 10 oz., 29 1/4 inches in height (finally over the 50 percentile mark on height!), 4 teeth and 4 more coming in.

Isa's Favorite Songs: Hips Don't Lie, Closer, Low and anything else with a little rhythm, she loves to dance.  

It has been the best year of our lives and we are looking forward to many more wonderful years with our little princess.

End of an Era

For anyone who knows Isabelle, they know she loves her pacifier.  Not any pacie, only hers.  I began giving Isabelle this pacie when she was born (thanks Janice!).  We started off with two identical ones but my mom's dog chewed up the other one.  I searched high and low for more of the same kind, but came up empty.  I found the same kind but much smaller (newborn size). Isabelle's was the size of a ring pop!  I finally called Gerber and they insisted that they have never made any other sizes and that they just expand as the child sucks them.  There is no way that the tiny newborn pacie could become this big.  So with all my hopes shattered of finding another pacie of the same caliber you can imagine how the world stopped whenever we couldn't find Isa's pacie.  Well two weeks ago I went into Isa's room in the morning.  She was standing in her crib looking at her pacie on the floor.  I picked it up and found that it was split in half.  I knew those teeth were sharp!  Talk about instant weening, poor Isabelle!!!  The first nap, going to sleep at night and long car ride were tough, but since then she has done really well.