Tumbling

While at Aunt Alysha's during mommy's weekend birthday celebration, Isabelle once again enjoyed her time there.

She learned to crawl up the stairs chasing after the cat. Since our home is one level, we don't have to worry about stairs. Unfortunately when no one was paying attention, Isabelle made it half way up the stairs and then tumbled all the way down. Good thing the stairs are carpeted. Except for being a little shook up, she was fine. Now there is a gate up when we visit to prevent that again.

Isabelle enjoyed playing in the backyard with the dump truck filling it with grass, leaves, and dirt.

Notice that she is driving the truck backwards but then decides carrying it is easier until the plane distracted her.

Sure hope to have many more fun times at Aunt Alysha's.

Celebrating Mommy's Birthday

Wow, so glad I jotted some notes down shortly after my birthday as it is now a month later when I am finally writing this. The weekend birthday celebration didn't get off to a great start as we headed to Aunt Alysha's and realized too late that Isabelle's overnight bag wasn't in the car but on the kitchen table at home. At least we didn't forget Isabelle. Between Target and Walmart we were able to get the necessities. Jon and I dropped Isabelle off at Aunt Alysha's and proceeded on down to Orlando to Medieval Times for dinner and a show.

I had been to it before but this was Jon's first time. We both enjoyed our time out even though our knight was unsuccessful in the tournament. This clip shows our knight fighting the bad guy. You may want to turn your volume down as the crowd really gets into the drama.

Love the sparks flying and how realistic the fight looks. I think my favorite event was the jousting with the splinting wood. Again, turn down the volume.

As I have mentioned in a previous post, we picked out a horse for Isabelle named Prince that has become one of her snuggle animals. I highly recommend attending one of these types of dinner and a show.

We returned that night to Aunt Alysha's with Isabelle already sleeping. The next day we lounged around getting spoiled with a breakfast of pancakes and triple chocolate cake after lunch. As a gift, Alysha sent home a pot of pink tulips that bloomed beautifully through my birthday. I am attempting to save the bulbs in hopes that they will bloom again.

We are so thankful that Alysha is close enough to have fun weekends like this occasionally. Even with the forgotten luggage, my weekend birthday celebration was great.

Tickle Me Isabelle

Isabelle loves to be chased, wrestled, tickled, and giggled to exhaustion (sometimes her, but usually us). Often she will even lay on the floor expecting someone to come tickle her. Occasionally she even resorts to crawling as she has seen mommy or daddy crawling to chase her.

Far more amusing to have our own Tickle Me Isabelle then Tickle Me Elmo, or in her case the Tickle Me Ernie she has.

Mommy's New Clothes

Isabelle displays typical girl qualities in loving clothes. While inspecting mommy's new clothes, she in particularly showed curiosity in the bra.
Though I know it will come too quickly, Isabelle has quite a few years before she needs to figure that out.

Laundry Training Part 2

I wanted to share this clip as well but it was too lengthy for the other post. Isabelle even hands her clothes to me to put them in the washer. This is easy for her to do as her hamper is collapsible.

Got to love how she hands me one sock at a time for quite a while. The concept of putting things away is also sinking in as she proceeds to put her hamper away in her room at the end. There will be more laundry training to come.

Laundry Training Part 1

Isabelle likes to help me with laundry in many ways. For a long time now she has been pushing the laundry cart between the laundry room and our closet with a little steering on my part. When heavily loaded, the cart is difficult for her to maneuver on carpet but rolls easier on tile. Here are some clips that show her pushing the cart for a short while before getting frustrated with the carpet and then parking it into the laundry room.

Isabelle also helps close the dryer door and even sometimes gets it latched. At the end of this clip you can hear her say "all done".

It is so nice to have my little helper make the almost daily tasks more fun.

Spoon Skills

Isabelle is becoming more independent. She has been taking her loaded eating utensil from us and feeding herself for some time now. This night she chose to do the loading too and I was brave enough to let her do it with such a messy item, yogurt. The mess has stayed confined to her tray and self so far.

I love how Isabelle uses both hands to work the spoon in this video. She feeds herself well with either hand once there is food on the utensil. Still don't know if she will be right handed, left handed, or ambidextrous. Her spoon skills have improved enough that she is eating cereal from a bowl with a tiny amount of milk. Often she resorts back to the hands especially when frustrated that things are not going the way she wants with her utensil or if she is too hungry to patiently use the utensil. That makes for even messier yogurt eating. Guess its about time to break out the finger painting projects!