Repeats

I just realized that all of those pics were repeats. Definitely not on the top of my game these days. I did want to post some pics of Isla and her cousins. She is so lucky to have 2 cousins exactly a year older. Susannah is Dave's brother Alex's daughter and Natalie is my sister's daughter. She had a chance to spend time with Natalie and my sister in Nantucket visiting my mom this summer. Susannah just moved to the Boston area as Charlotte is now teaching at Merrimac so Isla is pretty lucky to see her often these days. I loved growing up with my cousins, we had so much fun so it's awesome to see all these guys together!

It's been a while...

So I have been crazy busy in life and haven't had much time to update, so here goes...Our little girl turned one! She is officially a toddler. We had a tiny celebration with my sister and her family and Dave's brother and his family. We played in the kiddie pool, ate burgers and had cupcakes. Simple and perfect.

As soon as she turned one she developed such a personality. She is our little animal, she's wild. She started walking at around 11 months and hasn't stopped moving since. She is into everything, starting to talk. Da-da, Ca (car), bubba (milk), ta (up), duck and cak (quack). A few words but still mostly babbling. We have 9 teeth total (including a molar-that was fun). Her favorite "interactive" songs, where she does the hand movements are the Itsy-Bitsy Spider and Twinkle Twinkle. If I can figure out how to upload our videos I will shoot that, they are pretty cute. She is a little devil and it's awesome. She is fearless, falls off of the slide and giggles, throws herself around in the tub goes under water and just giggles, has 8,000 bruises on her head from crashing into things and yes she just giggles. She is so incredible. We are so lucky. I got to spend the entire day with her today which doesn't feel like it happens so often and I just kept looking at her thinking about how much I love her and how adorably awesome she really is. So enough of the proud mommy...enjoy the pics!!

Nantucket

We had an awesome weekend away (which Dave and I needed) in Nantucket. We stayed with my mom and had a blast. Isla was the funniest I have seen her yet. She has this new noise that is so hard to describe, but the only thing that comes close is Santa's jolly laugh. She sounds like an old man. So we had a ton of fun imitating her and laughing. She is obsessed with cruising around and taking things off of the table, so she cleared the magazines off the coffee table at least 100 times. But...we took her to the beach, she loved and ate the sand. We took her shopping, of course, she got her first pair of shoes. We did the swings, dinner, walks...everything you do on a little getaway. Dave and I also got a chance to go out. We went to this AMAZING restaurant. Hands down best meal I have ever had. I tried bone marrow-we have a pic to prove it. We sat ten feet from the ocean and sat next to John Kerry and family. I was much more impressed than Dave. Anyway...here are a few pics from the weekend.

Sunday Funday!

We had a little family day today. It was so much fun. Dave and I have so little time together because we work opposite schedules that it is so rare we are all in the same spot at once. We had a fun night, the Watters' came down overnight. We went to dinner and had a nice home cooked breakfast this morning. Isla was showing off all her tricks, come to find out Dave was a little monkey too, just as busy as Isla apparently. After Grandma and Grandpa left we headed up to Manchester for a walk and some swinging, then home to the bike. She has a little bike that my mom's friend got her and she loves it! Dave takes her for rides and she smiles and laughs the whole way. How many times can I mention how lucky I am before it gets annoying?

Aww Too Cute!

My little sister Kelly just sent me this pic of Isla and my dad. I love it...I have never seen my dad more happy than when he is with his grandkids!

Mmmm...

We tried tomato sauce for the first time tonight and SHOCKER...someone loved it! She is such a monkey these days, I am exhausted. She pulls herself up all the time and is now starting to move around while standing. She has learned how to do, "SO BIG" as you can see in her pic. She is such a wild little monkey. Yesterday was Mother's Day and I had such a great day! Dave made me breakfast in bed, amazing! Then he surprised me with a bunch of hydrangea plants that we planted. He THEN took down all of the shutters on our house, which I have been wanting to do forever. It was just an awesome day chilling with my loves. We ended the day with a nice dinner with my mom. Just a great day! Anyway here are some cute pics...

9 months!

Our little ham is growing up so fast...I feel like yesterday I was just on maternity leave (best three months of my life!). We had our 9 month visit the other day and she is plugging along rather well. She is almost 19.75lbs (75%) and 27.75 inches (50%). He was surprised that she was crawling and that she is! She is everywhere and into everything. She is starting to pull herself up and is playing with imitating words. We have "aahhhh done", not that she really knows what it means. She is clapping, waving bye and squinting her eyes when we ask where her eyes are. She is so awesome and it gets more fun everyday. She loves being outside, loves to eat, is so happy and just the loves of our lives. It's my very first Mother's Day this weekend. I have been waiting to celebrate this holiday for such a long time. She alone is the best gift ever. I feel so lucky. Here are just a few recent pics. I have a few fun videos to upload. OHH I almost forgot her dancing...ohhh her dancing...just wait.

8 Months!

Oldies But Goodies

We finally downloaded our videos to the computer. It's so fun going back and looking at how little she was and seeing her now...makes me want another! Ooops did I say that out loud?

Isla Crawling!

And so it begins...

Well we caught our little stinker officially crawling tonight. She is in the beginning stages so she isn't going far quite yet but she is definitely there. I was leaving the room and she started to follow me. They started as a few hops and scoots, then she got the groove. It's pretty cute and I will try to catch it on video tomorrow. In the mean time, here is my favorite recent pic of her. My friend gave me this snow outfit and it's really cute she looks like the kid from the Christmas Story. Ta-ta for now!

Before and After shots

Before lunch and...after lunch.

Ok, last post for today...

But I had to show off her adorable Easter dress...you can't really see it but this is the only one I got.

Boogie Woogie

I love this video...she is getting close to crawling so I was trying to catch it on my phone one day. Instead I caught her doing this boogie woogie dance. I thought it was cute so here it is!

Happy Easter!

We had such a fun time yesterday with Isla and her first Easter. I mean she was totally unaware but selfishly I had fun dressing her up and making her do an Easter egg hunt. I did a scavenger hunt around the house and yard for her and Dave and at the end was her basket. She had fun trying to stuff the plastic eggs in her mouth. We then spent the rest of the day with the Gibson family. My favorite holiday is Easter at my dads. We used to do a big hunt when we were kids and hopefully in a few years we can bring that back now that we all have little ones. It's just always fun and festive, the weather is usually nice and I just love it! So here are a few pics from Isla and her hunt. She is 8 months now. Where has the time gone? She is still the best little baby ever, rarely cries, usually smiling. We are truly blessed!

Cleveland Rocks!!

We just got back from our trip to Cleveland. Ohhh I miss it already. Who would have thought I would ever miss Cleveland Ohio so much. We had a blast. Isla and Natalie were so cute together. Natalie was such a good big cousin. She was always patting Isla's back, bending over to her level to make her smile and sometimes she let Isla play with her toys (that one was a stretch, she mostly took them away from Isla). They giggled and smiled together, they played on the swings and went on walks together, they made all of us laugh watching them together...it really was perfect. We got to do a little (and I stress little) sightseeing while we were there. We went to downtown Cleveland and checked out "The Flats" (a block of restaurants and bars), saw some cute towns, the football and baseball stadium. We ate at Michael Simon's burger joint and all got sick the next day, but come to find out we all had some GI bug-this is x2 for the Watters' Family this winter. Anyway, it was such a blast, here are some pics.
Notes on Isla: Not crawling forward yet, still rocking and pushing herself backwards. She looks like she will crawl anyday but it's been that way for a while. She is giving kisses-best reward in the world. Babbling up a storm "mamama, dadadad, nanana, bababab", her squealing of course remains. Always jumping, Erin jokes will be one of those standing long jumpers, she really gets those legs moving. Eats anything we give her with gusto. Two bottom teeth. I think that's it...here are some pics of our trip. Oh and YEAH TO HEALTH CARE REFORM!