Pool Time

We got Isabella's pool out for the first time a couple weekends ago. She seemed to enjoy sitting in the inch of water we filled it up with and was splashing around a little tentatively. We had to find the only little bit of shade there was at that time of day and it was over on the east side of the house, which isn't an area of our lawn that we spend very much time in. We discovered that the tree over there has a nice birds nest and there is also a completely disgusting dead rabbit over there. (This is the 3rd one we've had to deal with now!) We just pretended the rabbit wasn't there and let her play in the pool. Hopefully as she gets a little bigger she'll start to enjoy the pool more. We're looking forward to taking her to the Coralville pool sometime soon - maybe this weekend. We have a little inner tube for her that we want to try out.




Isabella has also graduated from her infant tub to her duck tub. Unfortunately she's decided she doesn't like baths anymore (kind of odd because it isn't anything different than sitting in her pool outside) but hopefully that is just a phase she is going through. She hasn't completely mastered sitting up on her own yet, and I think once she does she'll enjoy sitting in her duck tub.

Adventures in Babysitting

Friday night we had Kevin and Maria babysit Isabella so we could go out for Diane's Birthday party. This is the first non-relative we have had babysit Isabella(besides daycare). We thought it would be an easy night since she would be sleeping the entire time they would be there. Isabella decided to make the evening a little more interesting for our babysitters. She decided she wanted to get up and needed to be changed and then had to be put into her swing so that she would fall asleep before they could put her back into her crib. We stayed out a little later than we had planned and we apologize to Kevin and Maria as we knew that had to get up early for their big marriage counseling retreat weekend. A big thank you for Kevin and Maria for watching her and enduring her crying session.

You can't handle the tooth

On Thursday night we noticed Isabella's first tooth! Jeff had his finger in her mouth and was quite surprised to feel a little razor(her tooth that is, not actually a razor). In case you were scoring at home the baby book tells us it is the lower right central incisor. Everyone had been asking us if Isabella is teething for the last few months since she puts everything she can get her hands on in her mouth, and now we can finally say yes. We would post photos, but you can barely see the tooth, we will post a picture as soon as possible.

Isabella gives peas a chance

We've started feeding Isabella some baby foods. She was pretty neutral about eating the rice cereal, but isn't too thrilled about the peas and carrots we have given her.

6 month birthday

Can you believe it?! Isabella turned 6 months on 6/24. We had a low key celebration, we opened up some of her toys that said 6+ months - as you know, we always follow the rules...

Her 6 month b-day also means that Christmas is only 6 months away --- wow!

We've created a new "Best of" Photo link for her 6-12 months. Our goal is to pick and choose a few of the hundreds of photos to put into the "Best of" and label and give a description for them, that way, not everyone needs to go through every single picture that we put on our Flickr site.

Happy 4th of July

Isabella would like to wish everyone a Happy 4th of July.

We went to the Coralville parade Friday morning and had a great time. Isabella seems to really like to be outside and watching people/events going on. Afterwards, we had lunch with the Lemkes and Davises. It was a beautiful day, so we played outside a little bit before heading downtown IC to check out the Jazz Festival. Although we would have loved to let Isabella watch the fireworks, we figured it was probably best to have her snuggled into her crib at the same time she has been used to, she'd had a pretty busy day. Jeff helped out with the Jaycees Iowa City fireworks and said she missed a pretty good show. Robin watched some of Coralville's from the living room. She was able to see a lot more of them than she thought she would, but it wasn't the same as being there.

Pink Eye

Our little girl has been infected with pink eye, most likely from daycare as there has been quite an outbreak there. On Tues, Jeff got a call from the daycare saying they suspected Isabella might have pink eye. He was able to get her into the doctor and they confirmed it and put her on antibiotic drops. Since Grandma Groves is in Iowa for the summer, she was able to come up on Wed and take care of Izzie so Jeff and Robin didn't have to take any time off work. Thanks Grandma!! They had lots of fun and Isabella was very good all day long. Since she had been on antibiotics for 24 hrs and it was only in the one eye, we thought we were in the clear, so Grandma went back home. Thurs morning we woke up and it had spread to the other eye! Poor thing. So Robin ended up taking a sick day so she could stay home with her. We've been very careful to keep washing our hands so we don't get it, but only time will tell....

During the day, Isabella seems to be in good spirits, despite the pink eye. What seems to be bothering her is the horrible diaper rash she has also developed, so we've been letting her have some diaper free time by spreading some towels on the kitchen floor for her to play on. It is a very odd feeling to have your infant not wearing any diapers....

It's been awhile

Hello Blog Readers,
We apologize for not keeping up with the blog very much lately. Lots has been happening, lots going on, lots of firsts for Isabella, but no time to write about it all. We will try our best to catch up!

We just got back from our trip to Ohio to visit Grandma and Grandpa Kellbach. On our way out we made a pit-stop in Indiana to visit Great-Grandma Groves and the Groves side of the family. Everyone came over for pizza and Bella was being on her best behavior. It was nice to visit with everyone and let them meet Isabella. That night, however, the Izzie side appeared. Maybe Isabella had slept too much in the car, or maybe her stuffed up nose was really bothering her, but that little girl could not get comfortable and did not want to sleep. We would rank it as one of the worst nights of sleep in a long time, it was like one of those nights where you feel like there is no way that you slept at all, but you must have fallen asleep at some point... right? Even when Isabella would fall asleep, her breathing was so heavy that Jeff said she sounded like a 'trucker'. She was sleeping in an antique crib that we are pretty sure would fail every crib standard today, but that was not the issue. The next morning Great Grandma watched Isabella so Jeff could go back to sleep and Robin could go for a morning jog. When Robin came back from her jog she found Great Grandma and Isabella sleeping, it was very cute. Here is the picture to prove it.

We then headed out to Ohio to visit Jeff's family. On Friday, Isabella was once again having a great day, Grandma and Grandpa really enjoyed watching Isabella play in her exersaucer. Friday night was unfortunately very similar to the night before, as Isabella was screaming at the top of her lungs, Grandma had to continuously hold and rock her so that she would calm down. This was the longest we have seen Isabella crying and screaming since the first two months of her existence (it was much louder now though). On Saturday we celebrated Grandma's Birthday by going out shopping for Isabella. We made a trip to one of Isabella's favorite stores, Babies R Us, so that Grandma could buy her a present, her own remote control. Isabella's face lights up when she first see it, but shortly after playing with it the smiles turn to tears as she has a knack for hitting herself in the head with the remote. She usually doesn't seemed to be bothered when she hits herself in the head the first time, but the subsequent blows she delivers to herself seem to do the trick. Saturday night was much better for everyone as Isabella seemed to be feeling much better and slept through the night only needing someone to give her a pacifier on a couple of occasions. The rest of the weekend was very nice as we had the opportunity to visit with Jeff's aunt , uncle, and cousins who Isabella had not met and we had not seen in awhile. Isabella also got introduced to one of her new toys, the stuffed tiger. Isabella seemed to love it, unfortunately we did not have room to bring it back to Iowa this trip. The trip home on Monday was long. It is normally about an 8 hour trip, but we needed to stop much more often to let her out of the carseat and to feed her. All in all it went very well, Isabella did pretty well in the car, especially when you consider how long she had to be in her seat for the weekend trip.

Flood Update

We thought we should update our out-of-town blog reader as to what is going on with the devastating flooding in our area. We live in Coralville, between the flooding that is occurring in Cedar Rapids and the flooding that is occurring in Iowa City. Our house, however, should not be affected. Thank goodness. Jeff has been sandbagging whenever possible and Robin was only able to help out while Isabella was at daycare last Friday. Today (Sunday) however, Coralville said to have volunteers take the day off, we were kind of wondering why because we were planning on doing more, but I guess they think they've done most all that they can. It is heartbreaking, though, because some of the sandbagging Jeff helped out with a week ago already have water going all around them. Robin works a little north of Cedar Rapids and because the interstate is closed, she will have to work from home until they open it back up. She did go into work last Thurs. only to leave at noon because the situation was getting worse. Driving over downtown Cedar Rapids on her way home, she couldn't believe all the water everywhere. We just heard that the Iowa river crested today, and it didn't get as high as they were anticipating. This is really good news.

Here is the Marriott where Jeff was sandbagging on Sat.



Here is a picture of the Coralville strip.

6 Month Appointment

Isabella had her 6 month MD appointment today. Everything went very well. Here are her measurements and the percentile she falls into:
Height 26 3/4 In. - 85%
Weight 15 1/2 Lbs. - 45%
Head 16 1/4 In. - 25%
Unfortunately she is taking after Dad with her small head size. The Doctor gave us the go ahead to start rice cereal(she actually gave us the go ahead at her 3 month) and see how she does with that before starting some baby food.
Isabella also had some more immunizations, she did very well with them.

This is a cute video of Isabella showing us how she likes to scratch the inside of her car seat. Sometimes it sounds a little like nails on a chalkboard. We keep trying to keep her nails short, but it is impossible. The other day she came home from day care with a scratch down the middle of her face.

Day care reported two days in a row that she was fussy, but she seems fine at home. She's still showing off how much she can roll, but has sort of stopped rolling from her front to her back. I think this is because she's learned how to pivot a little while on her stomach so the need to roll on to her back to see something closer isn't there any more.

Infants Invade Old Chicago

It has to be noted in the blog that we finally got all the Davis, Lemke and Kellbach kids together. Over Memorial Day weekend we met at Old Chicago for dinner. 4 infants and 1 toddler. It was quite a sight and took a little while to figure out seating arrangements. They didn't have enough carseat slings, but we made do. All the infants were born within approx. 10 weeks of each other.


We had to take a few extra pictures of Dustin because his spikey hair is so cute!