Remember when?

When Izzy was first born, the hospital took some pictures of her (and tried to sell them to us). I scanned in the proofs, and here they are. I can't believe she was that small...and already throwing gang signs...

Izzy and Daddy

So, Izzy has become super vocal lately, and also has learned how to clap. She claps whenever she likes something. She also can do "High Five" with a little bit of initial prompting. She especially likes squealing at an extremely high pitch, and does it with glee. All in all, she's progressing into a teenager rather quickly.

Here she is with Chris. She LOVES it when she sees him, and gets so excited that her legs start kicking.


She also loves sitting on Chris's shoulders, and has recently learned that when she's up there, she can lick his hair!


Here she is in the morning with particularly bad hair. The day before, she and I had gone swimming, so after, I did a quick blowdry on her hair. It dried standing up everywhere, and the next morning, this is what it looked like.


And here she is Jumperoo-ing. She gets going so fast, and throws her head back with abandon. You can't really tell in this picture, but she jumps on the tops of her toes, which I figure has to be uncomfortable, but if it really hurt, she'd probably stop.


And this final picture is one of deep contemplation...the meaning of life...Kant's imperative...if she poops now, will it go up the front or the back?

New Car Seat!!! (And traveling Gear!!!)

After much indecision, I finally decided to get a Britax Marathon for Izzy. So, I went online, and found a good price, and was able to buy it through HipMonkey.com, which gives all of its net profits to a foundation that helps purchase car seats for children in need. And then, the next day, I changed my mind. Figures. So, I called HipMonkey a few times to try to cancel the order because if I wanted to get the Britax Boulevard, there was a much better price at a different site. So finally, I emailed HipMonkey, and was told that they were having telephone problems, but that they definitely could cancel the order and PRICE MATCH the Boulevard, so Yay! I got the one I wanted.

Not only that, but I have been planning out how to travel from Richmond to Milwaukee with Izzy, but not Chris, so I bought this thing called the Traveling Toddler, which attaches the car seat to a rolling carry on. I bought it through Amazon, which sent the order to HappyMothers. But then, Happy Mothers tried to send me the Tote a tot. So I called them and had it all fixed, but later realized that they were charging me for the Tote a tot, not the Traveling Toddler. So I called them again, and they said they would credit me the difference.

So I also needed a rolling carry on, and finally decided on the Eagle Creek ES Tarmac 22, partly because it got great reviews, AND partly because it has a No Haggle Lifetime warranty. So, I went to Backcountry.com, and used my 20% off coupon to get it. Then, days later, it went on sale for less than I paid, so I talked to them, and they credited me the difference.

All in all, it took a lot, but I am please not only with what I got, but also with the prices I paid for them. I hate feeling like I spent too much.

So, here are some pictures of the final products.

This is the car seat attached to the rolling carry on with the Traveling Toddler.


And here it is, tipped back, so you can see how it will roll.


Here is a top view.


And in this one, you can really see the Traveling Toddler. It's the black straps across the carry on.


And finally, here is the Britax Boulevard in Onyx.


It took me forever to get the car seat into the car, mostly because I couldn't decide if I wanted to use LATCH or the seat belt. In the end, I used both. Also, Britax uses a Versa-Tether system to anchor the car seat from the top, and I installed it per the instructions, but it didn't look right, so I went online to see what people said, and then re-installed it based on what they said. It looks fine, but I can't wait to use the seat forward facing.

So, now, I think I am ready to travel with Izzy...maybe...

Why you should try to keep your child as small as possible...

Okay, I don't really mean you should starve your child, or bind their feet, or anything like that. But if God should bless you with a petite baby, who doesn't grow very fast, but is in all ways healthy, you should give Him a big shout out. Because when I was first looking for stuff for Izzy, I was really excited to pick out her "gear" and finally settled on this awesome carseat made by Chicco. It is grey and green, and washes easily, and is generally cute. So I bought it and the matching stroller. Little did I know that Little Miss Chunky Butt would grow out of it in less than 8 months, and require a brand new car seat, and would never be able to use the old one again. So, now, not only do I have to buy a new car seat, but I have to get pregnant and have as many babies as I can in the next 4 years and 4 months (I read somewhere that car seats are only good for 5 years) so that I can get as much use out of this stinking infant car seat as I can. The stupid c-section means that I have to wait at least a year before getting pregnant, so I should just charge the obstetrician 1/5 of the cost of the infant seat, because he's cost me that much by cutting open my stomach. Anyways, so now I am trying to pick out a new car seat for Izzy, the Godzilla baby, and I have a confusing number of options. Should I get one that goes to 40 lbs, 65 lbs, or even 80 lbs? Do I need a "tummy pillow"? Should I pay the extra $30 so that to adjust it, I can just leave it in the car and turn a knob? Or should I buy that new sports bra instead, and wear it when I wrestle the car seat out of the car to move the harness straps around because Miss My-Feet-are-Clearly-an-Indicator-that-I-am -Going-to-be-Bigger-than-a -small-Whale has grown again?

After talking to many people (Thanks Jennifer and Emily), and doing lots of online research, I'm pretty sure that I am going to go with a Britax. I was set on the Marathon but after talking to Jennifer, who has the Boulevard
now, I don't know! But I definitely want it in this color scheme (onyx). The Boulevard is only different from the Marathon in that it has "True Side Impact Protection" which means extra padding on the sides, "Multi-Position Headrest height" which means that the side impact things are adjustable so that they can be moved to correspond to where your child's head sits, "No re-thread harness" which means that with the turn of a knob, the harness is adjusted to the proper height, and the Infant body pillow, which is just some extra pillow padding for smaller babies. Now, to get all that, it's just $30, and on top of the $230 for the Marathon, it barely seems like a stretch, but $260 looks like a lot more than $230. But hopefully, which ever one I get, it should last until she's like 6 years old, or if Little Miss Now-You-Have-to-buy-a-Chevy-Tahoe-and-get-rid-of-that-tiny-Hyundai keeps growing like she is, then in 2 years.
(Oh, and in the 20 minutes it took me to write this post, the Boulevard went up $22, so now it's $285...stupid Amazon.)

Oh, and here are some pictures of her from the past few weeks. She's started rolling around like crazy, and has recently shown that big girls CAN do the splits.

Catching up with Izzy

I recently realized that I have been falling behind on pictures, so here's a quick summary of her recent adventures.

Here is Izzy on Easter. We didn't buy her a brand new Easter outfit because we weren't going anywhere. So instead, we dressed her up like a bottle of Pepto Bismol and stuffed a bunny in her arms. She actually does like her bunny, so it all worked out. We added the hat because it was pink, not because she was having a bad hair day (aren't they all?) or because it was cold. Just because it went with the motif.


And this is Izzy with Kal, her GodMother. Kal was visiting a friend up in Phoenix, so she also stopped by to see us for a few days. I don't know if I've told blog readers, but Izzy has moved into the "If you're not Mom, I have no use for you" stage, so I was a little worried that she wouldn't be her usual charming self when Kal was here. But Praise God! Izzy loved Kal! She let Kal hold her even if I wasn't in the room. She let Kal change her diaper (and Kal actually did it SEVERAL times!). It was great! In the picture, Izzy is wearing the rattle booties that Kal brought. She loved them!


This is Izzy in the papasan chair, playing with Scottish Duck (he plays scottish music). The important thing to note is that Izzy is wearing a skirt. She doesn't wear them very often, but here she is. It's pretty cute! On a side note, recently, Izzy has stopped being so enamored with scottish duck, so she now sucks on her brush while in the papasan chair. Weird. I know.


And this last one is Izzy after I tried to get pictures of her gums. Wouldn't you know it, but she didn't like it when I tried to pry open her mouth and lift up her lips so that I could take pictures of her teeth under her gums. But as soon as I stopped touching her mouth, she smiled and tried to grab the camera. Oh well.

Rai and Eden Return

So, about a month ago (I'm behind), it got really cold and then it hailed. It was crazy! Not huge hail, but tons of it. So, of course, the dogs HAD to go investigate. They went outside and looked around, and then ate it. Because they eat everything they can get into their mouths. Rai often eats ice, even though it makes him so cold he is shivering while he does it. Dummy. But here they are, exploring the cold world of hail...

Eden looks like she's cold, but she's not. She's our "hulking beast" of a dog.


Rai looks cold, and he actually is cold. But he wouldn't come inside and miss out on all those yummy balls of ice.



Here they both are, eating as though they don't get fed. On the good side, we just went to the vet for their annual vaccinations, and Eden had lost 10 pounds since last year. The doctor said she was at her max weight right now, and looked good. (Rai was not overweight, and looked good also.)



In this picture, notice that both dogs are on the couch, a big no-no in the Pack house. I would love to be able to cuddle them on the couch, and they would love to be able to get on the couch, too, but they are both too big, and too hairy, and too dirty. Anyways, in this picture, they are on the couch because I scared them. I was deflating our big exercise ball, and was chasing them around the house with it while the air hissed out of the hole. It was pretty funny until they both jumped on the couch and TRIED TO HIDE BEHIND CHRIS. Now, I admit that Eden did it first, and Rai thought it was a good idea. But seriously...behind Chris? It's almost like they don't realize how big they are. Oh wait, they don't.

Eating Solids

Well, when Izzy turned 4 months, the doctor said to start her on solids, so I bought some rice cereal and tried that. It seems that though Izzy is half Korean, she did not like rice. For about 2 weeks, Chris and I tried really hard to get her to eat the cereal, and she tried really hard not to. So we gave up. At about 5 1/2 months, we tried again, this time skipping the cereal and moving on to other foods. First, I tried avocado. Mostly because that's what I had in the house. She didn't like those. Then we tried bananas, and applesauce. She didn't like those either, though I thought it was that she didn't understand eating yet. But when we started carrots, we learned that she did in fact understand the concept of eating, and liked to do it, but only when it was a food she liked. From there, we tried pears (no luck), but she LOVED sweet potatoes. She also loved prunes, and squash and corn. She didn't like the applesauce and strawberries. And the jury is still out on the Banana Peach Granola mix. She also has started eating Zwieback and Biter biscuits. She likes to gnaw on them, but mostly to throw them over the side of her high chair, and watch while the dogs eat them.

This is a picture of Izzy with her carrots. We think that she only likes orange or strongly colored foods.



And her she is with a cracker. Please notice that Izzy quickly learned how to levitate her cracker. I always wanted a magical child.



Here is Little Miss Cracker nose. It gets pretty much everywhere when she eats the crackers.



The dogs circle her while she is eating...they like to lick her hands and sniff her crotch for any fallen treasures. Here, after her cracker, we let them clean her up. She LOVES it when they get close enough for her to pet.



Recently, we tried Pear Blueberry mix with her. It's a bit tart, and she was coming off of Squash and corn, so she couldn't decide if she liked the bitter taste. We think she did like it because she ate a lot of it, but bites were often accompanied by funny faces, so who knows...



She may be a glutton for punishment, but here is another Pear Blueberry face. She gets her weirdness from Chris.