David is going to have little chicken hair, Julie says. Yes, he's losing his baby hair, and the hair that remains is small and fine. He doesn't have that peacock tail like Isabelle used to have. In fact, he looks like he just got a military haircut. The drool isn't very gentlemanly though.
Its so fun to hear him when he's playing with either one of his toys or with us. He gets a big smile on his face, and kinda squeals in a playful way.

Isabelle is getting pretty good with her ABC's and counting. I know, she's only two, she doesn't need to learn her ABC's yet, but almost every childrens video has them included. Along with a little song that gets stuck in your head all day. But the funny thing I wanted to share is her counting to 10. She hasn't quite got it all yet, and she has no idea what the numbers actually mean, but she's pretty good with 1-2-3-4 and 8-9-10. 5-6-7 get a little slured together. It's fun to hear, because of how she finishes. 8-9-10-great!

Isabelle loves to dance. Especially after bath time.
She really likes to run around before she gets dressed, but I haven't got any pictures of that for you. It is pretty funny to see though, as she has that little pooched belly two year olds have.

But after she gets dresed, she still has a grand old time. She incorporates hopping, and kicking, arm sways and some head wobbles. She's quite good at imitating me.

Of course, I have years of experience standing at the edge of the dancefloor, or hanging sure at the bar looking for courage in fancy glassware. And I have a few years just letting it all go and having a good time no matter what crazy move I might come up with, some of which work, so just look silly, but entertaining. I'm sure any of you that remember the wedding in Cabo know what I'm talking about. So sometimes I dance with her, and I try a crazy move, and she imitates it. She's getting pretty good. She'll be at Julliard

Wow, 3 weeks have gone by since the last post. And I think I have said that before too. These little ones don't leave us enough time to do these no critical projects. Sure, this update is critical for you, but for us, it has to fall below diaper changes and laundry.


David rolled over for the first time today. And today also happened to be his 5 month anniversary/birthday. Which is more appropriate for a baby of 5 months? Birthday just seems to mean a yearly anniversary to me, but then again, anniversary seems to be tied to marking accomplishment with respect to a project one initiates. OK, that was way too formal for a blog about kids.
Anyway, David rolled from his belly to his back today for the first time. A little milestone, but a milestone none the less.

Isabelle stumped me with her little speaking style as well. In fact, I needed to call Julie at work to ask her if she could translate. Here's the story, Isabelle came up to me and said, in her little girl voice, "march de celery?"
Of course, I know she didn't want to take celery out for a walk, nor did she want to watch the celery march, although I tried to figure out where she may have seen that sort of thing. Very puzzled, I asked her to repeat herself again, to which she replied, " Idabel march de celery?"

I literally asked her to repeat herself about half a dozen times, and most of the time, she repeated herself multiple times, for a total of about 30 requests, and I really couldn't make heads or tails of it, despite her persistence. Once, she even put her hands on my cheeks to make sure I was listening to her, and asked again. So I called Julie, since this was really something Isabelle needed. Fortunately, Isabelle was in a talkative mood, and didn't clam up when I put the phone to her. I asked her again what she wanted, and she said into the phone, (you know what don't you? Yep.) "march de celery?"

After about five more of those, Julie says, "Watch Cinderella?!?"
"Yeah!" says Isabelle.
"Oh," says me.

Then we watched Cinderella.

This last Sunday, my Mom, Susan, Greg and Joani came up for the second half of Christmas. We had a good visit, although always too short. Isabelle always has so much fun with everyone, after she warms up to them. I don't think she understood that they were coming by that day, until the door opened, and in walked four people with bags of presents. She just stood by the tree, where she was trying to get into trouble by playing with the glass ornaments.

After a few minutes, she started to talk about her morning, with the 'D' heavy vocabulary that no one could understand. Then she was running into her room to get a stuffed animal or two, and tell a story about it or hand it to someone to play with. Which they were glad to do, until it was their turn to hold David. And he was in a very playful mood, lots of smiling and laughing. And drooling. He's starting to teethe, so every now and then, the saliva starts, and he starts to chew on his knuckles. He's not really a thumb sucker, but he sure works the back of his hand.

Then the gift exchange began. Isabelle was a little overwhelmed. So many presents going in so many directions, and then there were the bows. She had fun ripping presents apart, of course, but she also had fun putting the bows on her sweater, then on my shirt, then on her butt/back. She's so funny the way she remembers things sometimes. Right in the middle of opening presents, she remembers playing A-B-C Horsey with Grandma Jeanne a few months ago, and runs over to Grandma and says, A-B-C? And she starts to climb onto grandma's lap.

This girl of ours is always entertaining us with her creativity, and general silliness. One of her
latest stunts was during dinner last night. After her main course, I offer her a little cup of pudding, which is one of her current favorites, and she starts to eat it as you would expect, with a big grin. Then she sees that I am still eating some chili, which I have crumbled up some crackers on top. She tells me she wants a cracker, so I give her one. Then she splits it in half, puts down her spoon, and scoops up some chocolate pudding. Mmmmm, saltines and chocolate pudding. She loved it.

David just had his 4 month check-up. He's doing well. He is up to 14 lbs 13oz (6719 grams) and 25.5 inches (64.75 cm) ! David is growing well for whichever age he should be. He is in the 25th percentile for four month olds, but since he should only be a two and a half month old, he's pretty big. His muscles are not as strong as they should be yet, however, as he really hasn't got control of his head. It's not flopping around or anything, but he's not lifting that melon as a four month old should. But he's probably lifting it just fine for a two and a half month old.

David has really started to talk a lot more now as well. Did I just write that last week? I can't remember. In any case, he is. He's doing more coos and laughs, with an occasional giggle and chortle.

Isabelle is also up to speaking often. However, most of her words are variations of 'da'
"Daddy, da da di durr da Idabell milk do dae?" Yes, she says her name as Idabell. I have a couple of stories about her, but I must postpone them until later tomorrow. My sisters and mom are coming by tomorrow morning for part two of Christmas, since we didn't get to see them on the actual holiday. And I still have stuff to do to get this place cleaned up a bit.

As you have all heard, a picture is worth a thousand words. Here are a few thousand.

Happy Christmas Everyone!

I think Isabelle had a pretty good morning. David, of course, has no idea that today is any different from any other day. But Isabelle woke up about 6:45, as usual, but was a little bit grumpy. Sometimes when she wakes up, she starts singing a song she's heard recently, or tell a story to her stuffed animals. Today she just sat in bed and cried, "Mmmmmoooommmmy." So I went in, which is just as good as mommy. I changed her as Santa placed a trail of candy canes from her door to the Christmas tree.

She wanted to bring two stuffed animals with her out of her room, White Bear and Superbear, so I took them out of her crib for her, and I went to the door. Keep in mind that these two bears have about the same mass as she does, so as she carried them, she couldn't really see the floor. As soon as we got out of the room, I told to her to look where she was going, and she stopped in her tracks! Didn't she just put all those candy canes on the tree last night? I mentioned they seemed to make a trail, and we should follow it. And she did! About half way by the couch, she dropped the bears, and then a few steps later, she saw the tree, all lite up with about half a dozen shinny, pretty boxes underneath, with her name on them! Ooooooooooo!



Well, we got her settled by the tree, and she went for the biggest box. After tearing apart the wrapping, she saw it was a new barnyard activity thing. Turns out, I didn't even get everything out of the box, and it was going to be a great day for Isabelle already. We had a hard time getting her to open another present after that. Other presents included a couple of books by Dr Seuss and Curious George, a stroller for her dolls/stuffed anmials, a sing-a-long with Elmo book, and a couple other little toys. Then we brought out one of the greatest things ever. We like it, 'cause it folds down flat to about 2" think, and about 14" round. And Isabelle just loves havinbg her own little fort/tent/hide-away.



She loves it so much, we had a little bit of a hard time getting her to come out to eat lunch. But now she's zonked out in her crib, getting ready for round two, with all these great new toys!

OK, we're back! Wow, four weeks have gone by. Thanks for checking back, as I will continue to update. And I hope it will be a more regular interval of just a few days.

So the first story is that we've moved. It took a lot longer then we had hoped. The actual moving day went by pretty well, thanks to the Brady Brothers moving team. But it took us a long time to get everything into boxes, thanks to a wonderfully curious little girl, who would either take things out of boxes (clearly getting ready for Christmas) or get in the boxes. That left us with a couple hours a night, depending on Davids activity. And again, the same on the other side. If you want to know our new address, email us.

After we were here, SBC didn't get us hooked up for a few days, and then almost a week for the DSL to be activated. So that delayed me from writing when I had a little bit of time. Then for the last three weeks, it seems that anytime I wasn't active with Isabelle, I was doing something for David. Not that I'm complaining, not at all, just giving a reason why I haven't updated any posts here.

But I do have a few stories for you Christmas enjoyment. The first is about the little man. One day I was changing him, and just as I had placed a new diaper on him he farted at me. I told him, "Hey, don't fart at me!" Then he did it again!. So I told him, " You save those up for you Mommy." Which, naturally, made Julie laugh. Then he did it again! That's my boy!

David also had an eye exam. At our last appointment with him, the Dr noticed a slight strabismus, so we scheduled an appointment with a opthamologist. He's neither cross eyed nor wall eyed, but his left eye is focusing just a little off center. It's pretty minor, as we didn't even notice. But it looks like it is due to some slow muscle development, and he shouldn't need any eyeware or corrective surgery anytime soon.

Which reminds me of the funniest T-shirt I've seen in quite a while: 'I put the sexy in dyslexia'

Tonite we finally had our Thanksgiving dinner! We've had most of the stuff, we just didn't have a complete kitchen, or a free weekend night. Yeah, when we got here, we had a stove from '73 that only had two working burners, and one that leaked gas. So I disconnected it and we had to wait a week for the new one to arrive.



Of course, I am writing this on Christmas Eve, so I have to tell you a little bit of a Christmas story. Nothing really fantastic, just a trip to get a tree. We used to have a living tree in a pot. But this last year, it shot a root out the bottom into the ground. I pulled it up as best as I could, but after a few days, it was evident I had done irreparable damage, as the tree was mostly brown needles, with a lovely outer shell of green. So we all went one afternoon to the Christmas tree lot behind Longs drugs. We have a nice 6 ft Noble pine. Isabelle was very eager to decorate the tree, which involved placing ornaments on the tree, the taking them off again to play with ( they make neat sounds when you bang them together ). She also likes to touch the lights, even though we keep reminding her that they can be hot. Apparently, I have told her not to touch the glass ball ornaments quite a few times, as she now points to them and says, "Daddy no touch."

We will have a quiet Christmas at home this year. Due to David's risks from the common cold, and too much driving with kids, we can't make it to the south bay this year. Thankfully, everyone understands, and they will be up after the new year, in one, two, or three groups. Happy Christmas, everyone. We now have presents to put under the tree, er, we have to make room for Santa.

Just a short note today. Sorry it's been such a long time, everyone. We will be moving this Thanksgiving weekend. Yes, less then desirable holiday activity, but it should be a good thing. Our current landlord will be selling this place, which is quite wise, 'cause these units are really overpriced. So we started to look around, and Julie found a unit in the same community which is available now, and the same rent. So we jumped on it.

This doesn't leave us any time for the usual fun stories, as we are packing and organizing in all our spare time. But here are a few things which I should write up later.

David is over 11 lbs!
Isabelle likes pickles!
Isabelle is also starting to befriend one of our cats, Mojo Jojo.
Davis is 3 months old! Yeah!
We had a great time down at Heather and mike's last weekend for a dual party baby shower, Heather and Amy will have children Feb-March!

In other news, we still don't sleep much.....

Isabelle has a good-night tape of the Bear in the Big Blue House... same one that has the Good-bye song. Bear talks and sings songs to the moon, whose name is Luna. Tonight Isabelle decided she needed to go outside to tell Luna 'night, night.' And so it started...Night, night Nina (her word for Luna). I say "No sweetie, Luna is sleeping, and you have to eat dinner and take a bath." All she hears is take a bath, so she takes off her pants! "But Isabelle we have to eat dinner." -- 'Eat, eat" she says and signs. So we sit down to eat. John and I eat. Isabelle repeats endlessly... "night, night Nina? night night Nina?"

After dinner, she's running around the house, still without pants on, remember. And she runs and grabs her shoes. She runs over to the front door, sits down, and tries to put them on. She hasn't quite got the knack for puting shoes on, as she still isn't yet two years old. And we ask her what she is doing, "night, night Nina? night night Nina?"

We say, "But you don't have any pants on, you can't go out without pants on."

She stops, and looks at us with those big eyes, as if to say, "Why?" We tell her it's too cold for little girls to be outside without pants on, since she doesn't care about fashion or social norms. And besides, it's time for a bath. OK, so she grabs a bear, and off to the bathroom we go.

After bath, she's back downstairs, and in her cozy pajama, drinking some milk. It seems she has forgotten all about the moon, and saying goodnight to it.

Until......
She wants to watch the Bear in the Big House video. She see's that moon in the sky puppet, and, well, I'm sure you know what happened. We actually did put a hat on her, and I carried her outside, and we looked at the moon, which was almost full, thankfully. She was very happy, then a little perplexed when the moon didn't say goodnight to her. But we said goodnight, and waved, and all was good.

Isabelle loves to dance. After dinner and bath tonight, she stood in the middle of the living room, jumped up and down, and said, 'da(n)se' So I put on some James Brown, and she was so happy! She jumped up and down, twirled, and ran around. She basically went crazy. She wanted me to dance with her too, and I did. When I squatted down to pick up some toys of the floor, she came over and grabbed my shirt sleeves, and said, "get up, da(n)se."

And it was good.


David is really starting to track us around more with his eyes, and he looks at us when we talk to him for much longer then he used to. David is also enjoying more time just sitting and looking around. He's always done that, but he's doing it more now. And he is making little baby noises more as well. He really does coo, and a kind of laugh-sigh combined. That's really the best description I can come up with. Cute cute cute!

I can't believe this week went by so fast. It was just a week that left us with something to do every night, and blogging never made the list. Grandma Jeanne came up for Halloween. We had a good visit, although I had to go to work on Monday, so it was mostly a girls only tea party during the day. The chamber of commerce coordinates with all the downtown businesses to have a trick or treat event for the kids. So we put Isabelle in a little bear suit, and went downtown around 4 pm. There must have been two hundred kids out in the streets. And parents. And police officers and volunteers at the intersections. It wasn't too bad though. All the kids had fun showing off their costumes and looking at all the other ones too. Isabelle had a Winnie-the-Pooh pumpkin head trick or treat bucket, and she got lots of candy. I don't think she really understood what was going on, but she had fun holding onto Grandma's hand and getting candy.

I'm sorry to say, I had the camera set for low light from the pumpkin shots the night before, and forgot to set it back to automatic, so all the photos of trick or treating were no good. Even if I tweak them in Photohsop, they either look like ghosts or cartoons. Fun Halloween though.

I think I'm gonna start calling David, 'Little spit-up.' I know, it's gross. I think he just has such a small esophagus, that burps just don't come up easy yet. I mean, we'll bounce him and pat his back for 30 minutes, and get one tiny little *blip*. Then we lay him down, and *BLORT*, he spits up. Then, of course, he's hungry again, now that he's made all that space. I think we must do about 3 loads of laundry a week, of his clothes, bibs, and burpies.

I never thought I would say burpies.

On a better note, he's really getting cute now. He's starting to look at us, and follow our heads with his eyes ( when we hold him )

Saturday was the day we carved our pumpkin. After dinner, I covered the dining table with junk mail flyers, as we do not subscribe to a newspaper. This being Halloween and all, I shall embellish this story appropriately. Please read with the voice of either Vincent Price or Alfred Hitchcock I drew out a bunch of shapes on a piece of paper, and asked Julie and Isabelle which shapes to use as eyes, nose, and mouth. Brought out the Sharpie, and made a stencil of the face we have created, then sunk the 6 inch paring knife into the soon to be forehead of the pumpkin. I encircled the pumpkin skull until the knife met the point of insertion. With the mouths of the girls open, I lifted the freed cap, revealing the tendrils inside. A brief tug created a few quiet, low pops from within the globe, and the cap was free. The knife quickly cleaned the top from any hangers on, and I set it aside.

I then grabbed a large but rather dull spoon, and went at clearing all the internals of our friend on the table, now named jack. The echo of the blunt instrument raking across the cavity wall was not a sound sweet Isabelle had heard before, and she took a step back. She knew to give me room to complete this evisceration. She then bean to chant in her own little way, "Eewe, eewe, eewe..."

The ceremony was well under way now. I turned to the face. Where to start? The eyes, of course. Again, the half foot of steel in my hand plunged into the face. These angles required a bit more finesse and skill, but presented no great challenge as I have done this before. A piece of the removed flesh fell to the kitchen floor, but even the cats left this alone. They knew this was no mere dinner scrap. Soon, I had two empty eyes looking up at me, and the nose began to take shape. The mouth, without a tongue, could say no words, but without any breath, the lack of a tongue was inconsequential. All that remained was a small notch in the skull, to allow for ventilation.

Like any proper ceremony, this one needed fire. A purple candle was placed in the head and brought Jack to life. On an opposite wall, the lighted figure of a face became visible, and we knew we had completed the creation our Jack O'Lantern.

Happy Halloween everyone!

I have a few moments, so I'll tell you about David's two month check-up on Thursday. Yeah, two months already! He's doing very well. David continues to grow, up to 22 inches ( 55.88cm) and 9 lbs 11 ounces ( 4395 grams). He's only in the 10-15 percentile at this time, as he's compared to other 3 week olds. Which, of course, he should be. By 6 months, he should be all caught up and growing as other 6 month olds. He can sleep with the best of them though.

This was also his first series of shots. Ouch! Yeah, he got 4 sticks in the thighs. DTaP, Hep B, Polio, and Prevnar. He was a trooper though. Didn't really complain more then a few minutes. And since we a coming into flu season, Isabelle got a unexpected shot too. And she really did great. She didn't like being held still, but after the shot, she didn't really care. She had things to investigate and point out to us.

Both Julie and I will get flu shots soon as well.

Isabelle was so happy yesterday, 'cause she got to hold onto David. He really wasn't in pain or suffering in any way. He just happened to be moving around, and the camera caught a funny pose.

Isabelle watches a little TV every now and then. Pretty much every morning, truth be told, for a couple of hours. And one of her favorite shows, is bear in the big blue house. This show happens to close every episode with a song called, "Goodbye Song" or something like that. I'm sure all you parents out there know what I'm talking about. Goodbye, goodbye, good friends goodbye.

She loves that song. In fact, that song isn't sung every morning any more, but we have a video tape, which is requested multiple times a day. We tend to play it once a day though, toward bedtime. But I digress. Isabelle not only loves the song, she is starting to sing it too us many times a day. Of course, she doesn't really enunciate very well yet ( she's only 21 months! ), so she mostly just yells, " BYE, BYE, TAY, TAY, BYE, BYE."

There are worse songs she could request, I suppose.

Here I was planning to post to the blog all week, and I'm just now getting to it. I guess I need to get up earlier or something. Well, here it goes.

Isabelle is really learning to care for David. Um, she knows how we care for him, and is imitating. She comes up to him when he is a blanket on the couch, or on the floor after we change him, and pats his belly very softly. She also caresses his head and kisses him on the top of his head too.

She still has a few moments in which she doesn't want to share things with him though. I think I've mentioned this before, but we have a little rocking chair for babies, which Isabelle doesn't care about, until we want to put David into it. And sometimes when Julie picks up David, Isabelle suddenly needs to be picked up too. But overall, she's very cute with him.

Let's see if this one works today. OK it does, let me explain the duplicate posts about David. I wrote on, got a failure message, so I wrote another, and got another failure message. So I haven't posted for a couple of days. Today I checked ( commercial between 12th and 13th innings) and Ta-Da. So now I'll have another post or to tomorrow.

Well, it has been a week since we all went to the pumpkin patch. And although we've been busy, it all has been mostly routine stuff.

David was having some bouts with congestion when we went to bed. OK, when HE went to bed, with us. We changed the sheets, washed 'em with an organic detergent, and dried without any fabric things. We did the same with his clothes. Same problem. I wondered if he just got congested when he was laying down, and he really did need to be carried all the timed! Julie had a thought, and stopped putting one of her moisturizers. Low-and-behold, he was clear. So it looks like he has an allergy to Isopropyl Palmitate or Methylparaben. Or sunflower oil. Who knows?

Isabelle and Julie made cupcakes today, which Isabelle enjoyed very much, making and eating! Naturally, she made a wonderful mess. David slept through the whole event.