A little Butternut squash

I get weekly emails from BabyCenter.com telling me how my pregnancy is progressing. Today we are week 29 and it said:
Your baby is growing rapidly now. This week she weighs about 2 1/2 pounds (like a butternut squash) and is a tad over 15 inches long from head to heel.

I immediately wondered what Isabella would think about that butternut squash reference. I'd better not tell her or she'll end up disliking the baby!

I don't know where Isabella is coming up with 1/2 the things she does. She went to her Thomas the train book yesterday, opened it up, put her hand to the side of her mouth and called out "All Aboard!" It really cracked Jeff and I up.

Proof of our hockey fanatic

Again on Sat we went to the Children's Museum. Isabella was excited to see the Zamboni machine on the ice rink outside, but still was happy to walk into the museum. She did some shopping in the grocery store, attempted to make a pizza (but lost interest really quickly - it was really busy there) and then when we were back in the Airplane room she could see the ice rink and once she saw the Hawkeye Club Hockey team on the ice, she said "Hockey!" and quickly went running to find the exit. So, we left the museum and went and watched some hockey. It didn't keep her interested too long, so we were able to go back to the museum and play a little longer.

Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star

Yesterday when Jeff was changing Isabella's diaper she started singing "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" all by herself. I heard it from the other room and it was so cute. Normally she'll just kind of hum along to a song and then say the last word of a line, so we were surprised to hear her sing on her own. I got a video of it today.

Grover.... not Elmo!

For a while now, Isabella has been given a “pass” on referring to ‘Grover’ as ‘Elmo’. This is because every muppet that she sees she’ll say ‘Elmo’. Recently, she’s started calling other muppets by their correct names, ‘Zoe’, ‘Bert’, ’Ernie’, ’Big Bird’, but still ‘Grover’ is still ‘Elmo’. (occasionally ‘Blue Elmo’, but mostly just ‘Elmo’). So, now, she can no longer get away with it. We have lots and lots of Grover books and when she reads them it sounds something like this…

“Elmo… blah blah blah…” next page

“Elmo… blah blah blah..” next page

“Elmo… blah blah blah..” next page

So, once again, we continue to work on distinguishing between Grover and Elmo.

The ‘Zoe’ character is one of her new favorites. When she says “Zoe” it sounds just like “owie”. So, sometimes I hear her yelling “Owie! Owie! Owie!” from the other room and I go to she if she’s hurt and she’s just found a picture of Zoe.

She has other words that I have to determine the context to know what she is saying. All these works sounds exactly the same to me:

Rocket (the rocket from Little Einsteins)

Rocky (the dog next door)

Broccoli

One morning around 8 am Isabella and Jeff were watching TV and I thought she was yelling “Broccoli, broccoli” and I thought “She wants broccoli for breakfast? This is new…” I then realized they were watching “Little Einsteins” and she was excited because she saw Rocket.

Isabella’s vocabulary is always increasing. Lots of her words have to do with food. It cracks me up when she says blueberries, yogurt, cereal, etc, since I can barely understand it, but I know what she is saying. The sentence she says the most often is “I don’t want it!” The other day she was looking for a sticker she misplaced and I told her “I think you left it upstairs”. She looked at me and said “Papa has it!” and she ran upstairs.

I'll share a couple random photos - the first is her deciding which hat, mittens and boots she wanted to wear on a recent trip to the store - she looked kind of funny.

And a picture of a total couch potato. Photo doesn't show the crumbs all over her....

Little Hockey Fan????

It is really strange, but Isabella is a big hockey fan. I'm not quite sure why, mostly we have football or basketball on, occasionally hockey. More often when Uncle John is over or when we go over to his house, hockey is often on the tv. Lately, if there is football on tv, Isabella will say "hockey, hockey" until we turn it to a hockey game. The other day Jeff took her to the Children's Museum which has an ice rink right outside of it. There was a hockey practice going on and she actually wanted to leave the museum and sit and watch hockey. Odd. She also has a word book and one page has sports stuff on it and she always gets really excited and points to the hockey player and says "hockey!"

The Night Before Christmas

Here is a video of Isabella reading "The Night Before Christmas". Grandma Groves gave her this book when we were in Florida and it has a recording of Grandma reading it to Isabella. Isabella read this most nights during the Christmas season. She really likes the first page that says "Hello, Isabella". Unfortunately this video doesn't show the huge grin she would normally get on her face. It was also kind of funny if she would grab this book and start reading it before I realized what she was doing because all of a sudden I would hear my mom's voice coming from the other room and it would freak me out.

Update on the Pregnancy

We are in our 26th week of pregnancy and things are going fine. I'm feeling pretty big, lots bigger than I was with Isabella, but I went to the doctor today and I am still measuring small for my date. The 20 week ultrasound showed that I have a low-lying placenta. This means I'll need to have another ultrasound at 32 weeks. Hopefully the placenta will correct itself (like the majority do) and that ultrasound will confirm that. If not, it will need to be monitored as the due date gets closer and there is the possibly that I'd have to get a c-section (eek). That is not something that I want to happen, but I know that it is out of my hands and no planning when it comes to the birth of a child.

Funny Christmas Stuff

This mug that Jeff received as a gift really cracked me up. It was actually a legit gift - you couldn't see that it said "Marry Christmas" until you took it out of the box.


When I was decorating for Christmas and unpacking the Christmas stuff I came across our snowman family that Grandma Linda got us when Isabella was born. I thought we'd be short a snowman with a new baby along the way until I looked closer and there were actually 4 snowman there - and the children snowman are both little girls! I didn't remember there being 4, but I think maybe the 4th one came last year from Grandma Linda.

Christmas!

We had a fun Christmas here at home. Isabella woke up around her normal time and I tried to show her the crumbs Santa left on the cookie plate and all the new presents that were there and she didn't seem too impressed.

I told her she had to pose by the tree before she got breakfast, so this is the picture of her totally fake pose:




We spent the morning lazily sitting around and preparing lunch and Uncle John and Aunt Kristy came over around 12:30. We ate lunch - turkey, stuffing, green bean casserole, salads and pie and it was very good. We tried to get Isabella down for a nap after that, but she just wasn't having it. 1 day after turning two and she's already boycotting naps! We tried to bring her down for some quiet time while the rest of us opened gifts. She stayed awake and started opening gifts of her own and enjoying it. She got lots and lots of fun stuff, and was a little more into opening presents today.



Later, when it was dinnertime I put her in her chair to have some leftovers. I left the room for a few minutes and she threw a fit. I could tell she was tired, so I decided I would let her eat while sitting on my lap and pretty soon she was just out. It was only 5:30ish. Too early for bed! Still, we changed her into her pjs and just held her while she slept for a bit. She woke up about an hour later about as cranky as I've ever seen her. Finally, we got her to calm down and just lay on me for a bit. A little while later, she was up and about, so we let her stay up and just put her to bed around 10pm. Crazy!

Little Miss Cranky hanging out on me for bit