a little bit of a talker

It's taken twenty months, but the bitty-bun-baby is beginning to speak.  It's cute. It's exciting. And it's challenging for all parties involved.

"Isla, say 'blackhawk'. Blaaaaaaaak-haaaawwwwwwwwk. Say it. Say it, Isla. Say blackhawk."
"Mama, she won't say it," says her big sister.

"Ilawah!  Ilawah! Ilawah!" says the baby.  "Ilaaaaawaaaaaaaahhhh!"

"UGH!" says Mama.
...

The thing is, it takes us* so long to understand what it is she's trying to say that by the time we realize she's saying, "Isla walk", we've already carried her or strolled her through the entire outing.  And by the time she figures out how to say what she needs to convey in a manner we can understand, she's worn out with frustration and the whole incident usually ends in tears.  Most often hers, sometimes her mother's.

Still, she's talking.  If you're interested, (and how could it be possible that you aren't), her vocabulary includes the following:
Mama, Dadoo, Aowee, Rem, thank you, you're welcome, yeah, no (thanks to her big sister), applesauce, pasta, meow, woof, quack, I'm tall, bubble-bubble, I'm slow, Isla, walk, God, all things, amen, vroom, augh-guh (aircraft) and the aforementioned blaugh-guh (blackhawk).

*By us, I of course meant we-the-parents.  Her big sister has no trouble understanding exactly what it is Isla wants and has no hesitation about translating:

"She wants to give me her ice cream, Mama. She wants to share it with me."
"Isla says she wants to go to an eating store."
"Mama, Isla thinks we should have movie night."

tall as a perfect hand is high

Yup. You knew it was coming. But it's true. Isla is twenty-nine inches tall (link is here if you don't feel like working that one out yourself. It is Friday, after all). Twenty-nine is a lot of things, but the best of them is currently in her crib*, quietly sleeping off last night's three hour jam session.

Our girl le deuxième has been off her game just a bit over these last days, but it is to be expected after her last check-up. Thirteen months and ten days after she was born, Isla had her first and only 1-year-well-visit. It was an informative visit for the we-the-parents and an unhappy one for the poor girl who once again endured five needles in the short span of two minutes. She really, really screamed this time. Really.**

Despite the horror of those long needles (which appear to be long enough to actually go through her tiny legs), our sweet one year old is doing great, standing tall and weighing a slight nineteen pounds. Heavy enough to wear your arm out after a short hike but not quite heavy enough to flip that car seat around. ***

The pediatrician did say she is the cutest one year old Isla in the entire state of Georgia, though, and that's enough for us. Ok, she didn't really say that, but we-the-parents are certain she was thinking it. Because we sure are.

Cute: 189 ounces fuller (that's 11.7 pounds) and 9 inches higher than her debut.

Isla eating her first french fry. It came from Five Guys Burgers and she thought it (and all those she tasted after), was delicious.
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*crib ... get it?

**Random thoughts: How do they honestly expect a child to be calm when they are jamming so many sharp things, filled with burning liquid no less, into their little bodies? And it seems remiss not to somehow protest the sheer length of those things. The needles could honestly go straight through a baby's leg. Isn't some agency supervising this kind of thing? What do we pay our government for anyway?

***Of course we aren't dreaming of relieving this tiny girl from the terrible plight of facing backwards when everyone else in the car is seeing life from the other direction. Because, really, what kind of parents would we be if we were thinking of doing that. We wouldn't even ponder it for a moment, the recommendation, I mean, since it's not law or anything. We wouldn't. And that is totally because we are such great parents who never, ever, ever mind the blood-curdling screams coming from the back seat when we're driving somewhere tedious after a year of no sleep.

eleven months and one day old

And for the first time since her birth, she spent the night in her very own room. She's 'napped' in her crib for quite some time during the daylight hours, but last night she went solo and did a great job. She woke three times, but each time was able to soothe herself right back into slumber.

It was a strange night for we-the-parents, or at least it was for she-the-mother. It took Mama quite some time to drift off, and then, right on queue, her body awakened for that three a.m. feed ... only to find the baby didn't want it. Sleep was not easy for a body so used to waking and going without. Here's hoping this night is even better than the last.

Eleven months seems like an impossibility, especially considering that in only a few weeks, this baby will celebrate one full year of life outside the womb. She still feels like a bitty little baby to us, and it is hard to wrap our minds around the idea of counting her age in years instead of weeks and months.

She loves to play with her sister, and is almost always happy if she can sit near her and play with some of the big girl toys. Isla, like her older sis, loves dinosaurs and hotwheels. She likes to follow sister around, and especially loves crawling in and out of the forts that Mama makes in the living room.

Though she said a form of it long ago, she has near perfected the word "Mama" and adds to her vocabulary 'kih-kah' and 'ah-da', for 'kitty cat' and 'dadoo' respectively.

Here she is, cute'n it up outside Fort Adorable. Check out those teef.

on the move and on the edge

Growing, growing, growing, changing. That's the news on Isla. At eight months and a few weeks old, she's changing so quickly we find ourselves looking for a new skill almost daily.

Not long ago, at seven months, she could not sit unsupported. She could sit fine in her bumbo chair or in her booster seat at the dinner table. But put this little bit on the floor and her abdominal muscles could only hold her upright for a few seconds before letting her itty bitty body slump over to one side or the other. We-the-parents (or at least me-the-mama) feared it was due to not enough tummy time, or some other part of parenting we'd failed this second time around.

Thankfully, within a matter of weeks, our Bun-baby has mastered the art of sitting alone. She's also mastered the art of the tummy scoot. And she is f-a-s-t, fast, fast, fast. She can push herself up, and has recently started the typical rocking back and forth on hands and knees thing (seriously, how cute is that move?), and any moment now we expect her to start crawling full speed.

She's also eating 'real' food now, probably later than most babies, but still fine with us, since she gets nearly all her nutrition from milk. Like her sister before her, she skipped the cereal and went straight to the red stuff: sweet potatoes. Peas make her gag, and sometimes pears do, too, but she will almost always scarf down every bit of her bananas, though also like her sister, she has a strong dislike for carrots. She had her first sips of sweet tea (decaf, of course) just a few days ago from her mother's straw, and she loved it, but then, we kind of had an inkling she might.

In addition to her mad tummy-racing skills, our Isla likes to live life with an element of danger. This bitty girl moves fastest when she's headed toward something she doesn't need to get her hands (and subsequently, her mouth) on. Her tiny legs never inch up more quickly than when she's headed toward a box of choking hazards (read: big sister's toys) or any electrical cord.

Just last week she inched her twenty-seven-inch-long body right over to the bright orange carrot her sister left under the dining table, swiped it with her free hand and popped that baby right onto her tongue. Thankfully her big sister is very observant and even faster than the little sister and managed to race over herself and yank that carrot right out of the baby's mouth before the tiny daredevil choked. And even earlier that same morning, the wee one managed to work her way off the couch where she was cozily (and seemingly safely) sleeping and onto the floor. No bones were broken, no joints bruised, no tears shed, which is amazing considering the two foot drop. (Where's that baby's mother while all of this craziness is going on?)

She has one tiny tooth and she likes to run her tongue over it when she's bored. She also likes to use it to bite on baby wipes, but so far we are thankful to report that she is not a 'biter'. We pray things remain this way. There is nothing so bad in the world of infant relations as a biting child.

What does an eight-and-three-quarters-month-old-baby-isla look like??? Well, she looks like perfect sweetness. See for yourself ...

done with shots

for the next six months! Woo hoo!

Her six month - oh.man.six.month - check up went well. She tipped the scales at a perfect sixteen pounds, six ounces ... a whopping ten pounds more than she weighed when we brought her home. She is twenty-seven inches from head to heel which puts her in the 95th percentile for height.

Today's four-vaccine combo went over about as well as the last round. And after it was over, the band-aids wouldn't stick to her little legs, so she kept getting poked on the sore spots with more. Sniff. It was sad.

In other news, Isla's slept well for two nights in a row. We're holding our breath and saying our prayers that tonight is no different.

six months old

Six months ago, we were sitting in the Telfair family room, waiting for the floor manager to bring us to a room. Six months ago, sometime around now, I was posting one of the first few entries on this blog, sipping from both a bottle of water and a bottle of diet coke, and trying not to make a display of myself in front of the other families waiting as my contractions got stronger. Six months ago, I was only waiting to hear the crying that currently serves as background music to this post. Six months ago, I was so ready to meet Isla, and for her to be a part of our family.

Right now, Isla is standing in her exersaucer - the same one that used to belong to her big sister - and managing a menagerie of baby toys while she spins herself around. I'm watching her as she turns the pages of her 'peek-a-boo-baby' cloth book, and watching her fingers stretching and curling as she examines the different textiles of its pages. It's sweet and incredible - seeing her learn right in front of me and knowing that for her, something as small as the difference in satin and corduroy is amazing and full of newness.

Six months ago, Isla was born after what seemed like minutes compared to her sister's thirty-three hour labor. Just a few hours after her birth, her sweet Daddy went to get Mama the dinner she'd been craving ... tacos. This morning, that same sweet Daddy offered to take us all out for ... tacos. Wonder if he remembers ...

Here's our sweet six month old. As her big sis would say, 'Cute, huh? Yeah? Yes you are, Iwah! Yes you are!'

24 weeks old

It's been a big month so far, and we're only a couple weeks in. This month Isla had her first bottle. She also got her first cold, and had her first 'emergency' trip to the doctor's. And she narrowly survived her first attempted-escape from her bouncy seat. She's doing great, the aforementioned incidents not withstanding, and we-the-family continue to press on as a foursome.

Her last non-life-threatening visit to the pediatrician had her weighing in at a sweet fourteen pounds and measuring 26 inches long, head to heel. She took her shots in the same manner that would any sane person experiencing the quick stabs of four back-to-back injections (including the one the nurse precedes with, 'this is the one that really, really burns') - she took a deep, shocked breath in and let it out in screams that did not subside until her tiny face was completely crimson. And who would blame her?

The curious incident of the baby and her bouncy seat took place while her tired mother was attempting to get a fast shower. Bun-baby waited until her mother was good and sudsy and then somehow managed to propel/throw/stretch/otherwise maneuver herself over the side of her bouncy chair. Which would've been bad enough, but like all the instructions say, mama had strapped that baby into the chair with the 3 point harness. So the baby, though partially out of the chair she apparently detests, was not completely free. She was instead, dangling by that 3 point safety harness with her head either on or very near the hard, cold, tile floor.

Her mother is not sure if her head actually hit the floor, or if she was just dangling there, because when she poked her head out of the shower to see why the baby was crying, her first thought (and spoken word) was, 'oh, crap!' and she bounded out of the shower, soap and all to rescue the small, unhappy child. And who would blame her for crying, what with her top-heavy body hanging, rag doll like over the edge of the metal and plastic frame, and her own inability to lift/pull/stretch/ or otherwise maneuver herself back into the hated chair? Not to mention how awful the safety harness must've felt around her poor little abdomen.

All that, and the not-to-be-detailed blood spitting incident leads us to today, where the sweet, mostly happy Bun is learning to stand (entirely too early for the likings of we-the-parents). She loves her big sister, and is possibly cutting some teeth. She still loves music and loves being held. We-the-family love holding her.

ten eleven weeks old

Ten weeks and growing. At least she was when ten weeks old when this post was first started. Now, she's a growing eleven week old, full up on vaccines and ready to travel. First trip, Paris.**

Our bitty baby is now a sweet bundle of ten pounds, thirteen point five ounces. That's just a little bit more than two bags of sugar if you're counting by sweet, though the truth is, ten pounds of dixie crystals is nowhere near close enough to measure the sweetness that is this baby girl.

Isla is tall, or perhaps long is a better description. Her 9-week check-up measured her head-to-heel length at 23 and a quarter inches. Though the girth of her tiny little body still fits in newborn size clothes, her long torso and legs are stretching the limits of her 3-to-6-month-old sleepers. She is swallowed up in the extra fabric, but is, at least, able to stretch out her legs.

Her disposition is mild, though she requires much more attention in this infant stage than did her big sister. She is a good sleeper, snoozing nearly every night for five consecutive hours, though there are occasional mid-slumber awakenings for a snack to tide her over 'til dawn. She likes to be held, she hates to stay in a wet or dirty diaper for one second longer than it takes her to utilize it, and she adores her big sister, smiling for her almost every time she sees her.

She smiles now and laughs, and still makes those sweet little grunty noises (the same little grunty noises that had us and our night nurses slightly concerned the evening she was born) almost every moment that she breathes. She can hold her head up for a fairly good length of time, and has even started to roll from her tummy to her back.

She does not cry often (her sister may disagree on this point, and would probably, if asked, relate that her baby sis cries all the time), but when she does, she really, really does. This child will not starve or suffer from the smallest amount of discomfort, for her wails will summon anyone and everyone within hearing distance - and with her lung power, that's a lot of folks - to her aid without delay. We-the-parents rue any miscalculation in feeding times while driving as those last couple of blocks home are near unbearable with a hungry Isla riding in the back.

**We're not going to Paris. Not yet, anyway. Her first trip was to Jacksonville.

4 weeks, three days and eating

Bun-baby is officially a month old, whether you're counting by weeks or days. Fast, fast, super-fast, says Mama, as time flies by us again. It's incredible how quickly the days go. Except for those super slow parts when our Bee-baby-now-pre-schooler is out of sorts at the exact same moment our Bun-baby is screaming for food. Those parts do not fly by. They seem to linger, dissipating at an unbelievably sluggish pace.

The tiny baby sister is a sweet one, spending most of her daytime moments asleep and waking for conversation in the evenings while she enjoys (endless) hours of multi-course, specially prepared meals. She's cuddly, and soft, and growing. A lot.

Our girl came home from the hospital a bitty, teeny six pounds and eleven ounces. So small and wrinkly, with not a bit of baby-fat anywhere. Two weeks later, she was back to her birth weight, and a mere twelve days after that, she's surpassed her big sister's birth weight at 8lbs, 7oz. That's a big jump in the percentile chart, and some serious encouragement for a tired Mama who wasn't quite sure if her little Bun was getting enough to eat. Turns out, she totally is.

Not to let her height out-do her weight, Bun's head to toe statistics show an increase as well. She's up from her 20 inch birth length by 1.5 inches to a super-model tall 21 and a half inches.

Big sis accompanied her to this latest doctor's appointment, and was a model of perfect behavior and decorum. The baby sis was slightly less amiable, and graced the entire office with an operatic show of lung power. In the bitty one's defense, she was hungry (though she'd eaten but an hour earlier), and when she's hungry, well, she's just a tiny bit less than content.

Current family status:
Bun-baby: temporarily full, clean, and sleeping on Mama's bed.
Bee-baby: full, clean, dressed and playing with her Thomas, her bunny, her duck and the salt & pepper mills.
Dadoo: tired, @work, tired, still the cutest boy I ever saw.
Mama: tired, @(home)work, tired, tired, and thankful.
George Rémoulade: tired, frightened, hiding in the bathroom laundry.