Challenges and meeting developmental milestones...

When you're a parent, you never know what a new day will hold. Everyone might wake up cheerful and happy, ready to greet the day, or you might have a household of grumps. If I'm having a good day, I have more tools to combat the "grumps" but on those days when I've been awake one too many times during the night, attempted to soothe a crying baby for one too many hours, well, things get rough around here and we do our best to survive. Usually survival at our house means a couple episodes of the narcoleptic Little Bear and when people are especially crabby, we turn up the music really really loud and dance...Isaac loves it. I'm sure Tony across the street gets quite the show.

Each age comes with it's particular challenges. I've found that some challenges are fun or funny and some are just downright annoying. Isabella is in one of those particularly annoying phases where she bosses us around, says almost everything in an angry voice, snatches toys from Isaac, and whines...incessently. Oh, and she's always hungry. I don't mind that she eats but her hunger always kicks in at the least opportune time. Like, when I'm talking with a doctor and she literally falls on the floor yelling in a high pitched voice, "my belly's growling...I need to eat...I'm really really hungry mommy...I need something to eat right now!" And she's always saying "mommy this...and mommy that" to the point that I wish I could change my name or have a volume control for her. But somehow, when I think she's just might push me to the point of insanity, she says something funny and outlandish.

Isaac has done really well in the last few days in terms of eating. He's made some big improvements and I'm just praying that we don't backtrack too much. He seems to consistently make progress and then take a step back so patience is the key. Probably the best news regarding Isaac, and the news that Jesse is especially happy about, is that his drooling has dramatically decreased. I know, that's probably not what you were expecting to hear! Aside from that, he's doing really well playing on his own and keeping himself occupied. This, I consider great success and I'm not having to sit on the floor with him nearly as much as I used to.


Isaac had a pretty miserable test done today. In simple terms, it was to test if he able to have a bowel movement on his own. Turns out everything down there is working the way it should. In that case, I wish the kid would poop on his own. 


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Last week Gisela convinced Isabella to dance around in our random patch of violets...

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Recently Isaac has started stacking blocks on top of each other (and knocking them down, that's his favorite part), pushing cars and trucks back and forth, he pretends animals and people walk on the floor, and he puts objects in boxes and takes them back out. 

Probably chewing on the car is his favorite part. FYI, I never would have let Isabella do this--obviously a chocking hazard.