We have liftoff...

It's official, my days of carefree parenting are over. No more leaving the room trusting Isabella to stay on her mat and play. After a week of scooting, squirming and slithering, Isabella finally started crawling today. She was so excited to discover things that seemed out of reach, no longer are out of reach. That's great for her, terrifying for me...

Dallas Arboretum

Today we met a Kim and Jordan (and Jordan's daddy Rob) from playgroup at the Dallas Arboretum to enjoy the one unusually warm day we've had in a while. Beth and Guy and their daughter Liat (also from playgroup) met up with us after a while. It was extremely windy when we first got there and thought we may have made a mistake, but them the wind died down and the sun came out - it was beautiful. We were there for a couple of hours, but only got a little over an hour of "good" Isabella. The rest of the time was either "hungry" Isabella or "sleepy" Isabella. We still had a great time. You'll see in the later pictures what "sleepy" Isabella looks like :)

Dinner with Ari and Ellen

We had dinner with two of Isabella's favorite people: Ari and Ellen Bond. We went out for sushi then came back to the house where Isabella opened a Chanukah present from them. She had a more success with the paper than she did with her first attempt in San Antonio. (That one was my fault though because I unknowingly picked the thickest possible paper to wrap her gift.) Here are some pictures from that as well as a couple from the amazing moon (and some of Izzy playing) on Friday night...

A Visit to Daddy's Office...

It's hard to believe it's taken 8 months for Isabella to visit David at work. After several requests from his coworkers, we finally arranged for her to visit today. She had a great time seeing all of the new faces. She even had her picture taken in her Daddy's chair...

Isabella is 8 mo. old...

Wow. It's even weird to say it. 8 months. Isabella can say da-da, ba-ba, ga-ga, ha-ha, and wa-wa. She's so close to knowing that "da-da" is her daddy, so now we're working on MAMA! We're not even close, but it can't hurt to try. She can wave bye-bye (sort of). She has the finger curling part down, she just doesn't know she's supposed to raise her hand when she does it. She sort of waves down by her side. It's cute nonetheless. She can get up on all fours and rock (a little bit), but she has no interest in crawling at this point. She gets around by rolling back and forth or scooting backwards. She still doesn't have any more teeth other than the one she got a couple of days before Thanksgiving. You can still just see the top of it. I'm wondering if it's ever going to come all the way in. I think that's all I can update for now...I'll keep you posted if things change :)

Isabella isn't scheduled to go back to the Dr. until next month (for her 9 mo. check-up), but we ended up making a trip today to have her looked at. As it turns out, Isabella has her first ear infection. Fortunately, we caught it early so her discomfort is minimal at this point (at least as far as we can tell). I noticed she'd been pulling on her ear a couple of time in the last 48 hours, so I called the Dr. this morning to get her in. She's taking "yummy" bubble gum amoxicillin. Hopefully she'll be feeling much better in the next 24 hours or so.

Isabella was put on the scale with her clothes and diaper on (they only take them off for well-visits). She was 16 lbs. 1 oz. fully clothed. She's definitely gotten longer. She's a little over 27" it seems (I measured her at home, but I'm not sure how accurate that is), but we'll find out next month for sure.

Here are a few pictures we took on her 8 mo. birthday:

Too Funny...

I went in to Isabella's room to check on her while she was napping this afternoon. This is what I saw (I knew she loved her "Cuddles," but I had no idea how close they were):

Meeting A New Friend...

After a 6-hour drive home on Friday, we headed over to David Laves' parents' house to finally meet their new son! David Laves and my David were Fraternity Brothers in college. David and Kristina's son Austin is only 3 days older than Isabella. Its amazing how many babies were born last April...

Isabella was her usual "social" self and talked the entire visit. She admired the fact that Austin can crawl already. We're hoping she picked up a few pointers from him...