six month photos

Long time gone

I know it has been a long time since the last post. We have been quite busy. Memorial Day weekend, we had wonderful company. Howard and Gloria came out for about 5 days. Belle got lots of Grandparents loving time and Nick and I went on our first "date" since December!!! (Even though we waited until 10pm to go!! haha!) Well, we had a great visit. We went to Baltimore one day to go to the aquarium, but when we got there, it was 3:00 and the next admission time was 6:15!! so, we didn't want to wait around in the 80+ degree heat for 3 hours with the baby and then it's a 2 1/2 hour tour of the aquarium, so we didn't go in. We did, however, check out a little bit of stuff down at the Inner Harbor. It was nice. :) Then we (Gloria and I) went shopping one day and we also got Belle's 6 month photos done (I will post those separately).

Have to cut short - little Miss is waking up!
Sleeping upside-down in her crib. Silly girl...
Playing with her Pooh toy. And LOOK! Sitting on her own! :)
Loving up on Grandma.
Prune face.
Taking a bath in a little pink tub.

Cute Pics

What a nice, relaxing weekend we had! Much needed too! First, Friday, Belle fell asleep in the car on the way home from daycare (see picture below) and napped until 7... so obviously she decided she wasn't going to go to sleep at bedtime. She was up until 11:30 talking and giggling. It was quite hilarious (the talking and giggling - not the being awake until 11:30). So then we spent most of Saturday shopping. Walmart in the morning, and headed to Annapolis in the afternoon and got my car cleaned (finally!) and went to JoAnn's and got a bunch of fabric to make some lighter weight blankets for Belle for summer. So I finished her other flannel one that has been sitting on my sewing machine since about January and made one other one. I have fabric for 3 more, hopefully I'll get to those this week or next weekend. Nothing fancy, just a couple layers of fabric together. :) Today, I slept in until 11:30 - Nick got up with Belle (good Nick!). Did a lot of laundry and some cleaning and playing with my little sweetie - who by the way - is sitting!!! I had her sitting on the floor and I sat behind her incase she tipped over she would just fall on my legs instead of on the floor and she sat for probably 20 minutes, watching TV and playing with her toys. It was awesome! :) Everytime she would start to tip, she would catch herself and push off my leg and back up! I didn't get any pictures though because the camera was upstairs... Maybe I'll get some later this week! :)

Anyway, here are some pictures from this weekend. She just gets cuter and cuter! We are looking forward to Grandma and Grandpa Lumsden coming down Thursday!!!
In her carseat Friday after daycare. She's been falling asleep, still holding onto the toy in her seat! So cute! Eating her blocks - really she was trying to look in the little mirror on this one, but then it just found it's way to her mouth... I'm pretty sure she's teething. There's nothing we can feel at the surface yet, but she's drooling like a waterfall and chewing on everything she can get to her mouth!
This is one of my favorites! She finally found her toes about 2 weeks ago and now she constantly grabs them. She doesn't put them in her mouth (yet), but she loves to grab them and if I chew on her toes, she just laughs her little head off! It's so funny! :)

Well, I hope everyone has a good week... Don't work too hard and enjoy yourselves! :)

Video

Here is a little video of our chatty little lady... she just LOVES to talk! :) (and note the John Deer socks from Uncle Adam and Aunt Mandy!)

Mother's Day

Well, my first Mother's Day was wonderful. :) Belle got up at 7:30 (after staying up last night until 10:30 and finally ending up in bed with Mommy and Daddy). She got up, ate some breakfast, played a little, I did a little cleaning, then Belle cried and snuggled with me and fell asleep about 10. So, I put her back and bed and went and climbed back in bed myself. I was so exhausted (still am...). She woke up before 11 and Nick got up with her and let me sleep and I slept until 1:00! Ahhhh... Much needed rest! So, I finished vacuuming and we all went to lunch and then went to get my car cleaned... However, the car place must have closed at 3 because when we drove by at 3:15 they were taking all the trash cans in and had the driveways blocked off... so... still have a nasty stinky car, but hopefully I'll get over there next weekend to get it cleaned. So, we got home, played some and somehow it got to be 7:00 so I took Belle up for a bath and bed and once again, she decided she wasn't going to sleep... So three hours later... she is finally in bed and I am heading that way myself. Here are some pictures from today.Mommy and daughter on our first Mother's Day.
Sleepy head.
She's stylin' in her adorable little outfit and cute pink sandals! :)

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Mother's Day too!!

Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh

I broke out the Winnie the Pooh toy the other day. When she shakes the rattle, it dances... It makes the dogs crazy! She likes it! It didn't take her long to figure out how to work it either...Here's a little video. I know it's dark... We don't have nearly enough lights in here, but you get the idea... :)

Sitting

We're working on sitting with Belle. She's doing pretty good. She can go about 5-10 seconds before tipping over. And then she just laughs about it. She's such a good baby!!"Like this??"
"Look, Mom!"
"Whoooooooaaaaaaaaaa!!"
"That was fun! Let's do it again!"

Aunt Eva

Well, it has been a crazy couple weeks. As most of you know, my Aunt Eva passed away on April 28th so Belle and I had to fly back to Michigan for the funeral. While it's always a rough thing to go through, sometimes you just know it's best for your loved ones to move on to the next world where they are no longer in pain and where the other loved ones are waiting for them. Anyway, while reminiscing, as I generally do after the death of someone dear, I came across this video from Auntie Eva's 90th birthday party. These are some of her friends (or maybe other relatives??) from Finland singing to her in Fin.

Back to the blog

Finally getting back to posting a new blog. Well, let's start with news from this weekend... Saturday, Isabelle FINALLY learned how to roll over from her stomach to her back! Then she went rolling across the floor and I CAUGHT IT ON VIDEO!!! Amazing!!! Now I REALLY have to figure out how to get these videos off of my camcorder so I can post them on here... I have so many cute ones, but I really don't know what software I need to make it happen... I will try to figure it out this week - I promise (that I'll try, not that I will figure it out). Also, the poor little babe has been having a really hard time pooping since we started her on baby food. Well, this time she was REALLY constipated and the poor little darling hadn't gone poop since Thursday morning and by Saturday night, she was in so much pain and so miserable she was just screaming her little head off. I was bawling because I didn't know what to do for her to make her feel better. I gave her prunes both Friday and Saturday and gave her lots of apple juice saturday, but it didn't seem to help. I was doing the little bicycle thing with her legs and everything and nothing was working... So, she finally fell asleep about 12:30 last night (in bed with us) and woke up screaming at 3 am and I got her back to sleep finally and she slept until about 8 am. She seemed to be feeling much better this morning (though she still hadn't pooped) and she fell asleep around 10:30 or 11 when we were grocery shopping and so when we got home, I went to bed (that second trip home killed me... i have been completely screwed up and exhausted since last week). Anyway, I woke up around 4pm (yes, a MUCH needed 4 straight hours of sleep!!!) to Nick going "WOW!!! You made a mess in there!!! Do you feel better now??" closely followed by little giggles. She FINALLY pooped!!! Thank goodness!!! I was about to take her to Night Time Pediatrics to see what they could do for her... But she got a big one out and is apparently feeling better now. And we are going to be sticking with a dose of either prunes or prune juice every day. She goes to the doc for a follow up on that ear infection Tuesday so I'll ask him what else we can do for the little munchkin so she doesn't end up like that again. I'm thinking the culprit was banana's... I thought I would give her some because it was something new... just to find out later that night that banana's constipate little babies and you're NOT supposed to give it to them... so why do they make banana baby food?!!! Hello!!! If it wasn't for the internet, I never would have known... Although I'm not 100% certain that that is the problem since I gave them to her on Wednesday and the last poop was on Thursday, but what do I know??

Anyway, nothing else new to report here... It was rainy all day today. We were supposed to do a bunch of cleaning this weekend to prepare for Happy Hour here Friday, but we got right around zero cleaning done... we did get the dishes done and the laundry - everyday things. But no vacuuming happened and no dusting and I'll tell you - this place needs a serious dose of both of those things!!! I think we need to hire a maid... Nick is going to have to get a raise so we can do that... :)

So, I know you don't really care about my ramblings, so here are the pics that you REALLY came here to see!!! :)

Oh - we did go out to dinner last night with Ben and Julia. It was very nice. That is the first time we've gone out with Belle to dinner and she did great. :)She loves her little worm. She kept rolling over on top of it today and she looked like she had a little green tail! :)
This is the "would you QUIT with that flashing already???" face... She gets that about 3 pictures in...
Me, Uncle J and Belle.
Great pic of Grandma and Grandpa Hietikko and Belle.
Sleepy baby girl... I love this dress and headband!!! Nick doesn't like the headbands, but I say, too bad, so sad! What Mommy wants, Mommy gets! :)
Double fistin' her toys! :) She keeps smacking herself in the head with that giraffe, then looking around like "why did you do that?" It's realy quite cute.
Chewing on her block. The dogs try to run off with these blocks... along with most of her other toys...And finally - eating her prunes... Elwood kept getting in the way, so Nick couldn't get a really good shot of this, but her little face was COVERED in prunes... it was too funny. :)

Well, off to bed for us sleepy parents...