Newest addition!

I am pleased to introduce the newest addition to our family: Jaedyn Diana Bartell, born Nov. 21, 2007. She weighed in at 6lbs 14oz and was 20-inches tall. She's a cutie!

Congratulations to new parents Rich & Tonya Bartell! We are so excited for you and hope to see you all soon!

9-months

It is amazing to me that Isabella turns 9-months old tomorrow. Where has the time gone? Seriously! Pregnancy is a fading memory...being pregnant felt like such a long process, however reflecting on that time now it seems as if it went by so fast. It is interesting how one's perspective changes with time.

I have so enjoyed watching Bella grow and change over the past 9-months. It is fun to see her little personality develop. It seems that she is learning something new everyday, we are amazed at how smart she is and how quick she learns. She brings us so much joy. She can easily maneuver where she wants to go and is improving her skill in walking next to furniture. She is getting pretty good at feeding herself finger foods, and can hold her own bottle and/or sippy cup although we still offer help.

Here are her 9-month stats:

Height: 29.5 inches (97th percentile)

Weight: 21 lbs. (85th percentile)

Her head is up to the 67th percentile...she's not a peanut head anymore!

So much to be thankful for!

That pretty much sums it up in a nutshell. We had a great Thanksgiving, I ate so much my stomach hurt...yet I still wanted more. Isabella had fun playing with her cousin Dylan and we enjoyed catching up with family.
We were all a bit down and out with a cold over the weekend...hmmm I wonder where that could have come from! (daycare) We did manage to accomplish a little Christmas shopping and crossed a few names off the list. While we were at the shopping mall Isabella learned how to drink from a straw. She LOVED the pomegranate smoothie from Orange Julius...I think she would have sucked down the entire drink if we would have let her.

Dadadadadadada...Mama?

Well all Isabella is saying these days is dadadadada...I keep asking her "What? Did you say mama?" She responds "dadadadada". Oh well, she'll get it eventually. Isabella is becoming a little dare devil. She loves to roll off the bed, or couch, or ottoman into waiting arms. I'll just warn you now that a future blog post may be titled "Bella rolls off bed, cracks open noggin" she loves it though and laughs and laughs. Bella is also climbing the entire flight of stairs after Rocco, it's good she has a playmate for tag (Rocco is always "it"). We are looking forward to Thanksgiving and a nice long weekend. The picture below was taken with Grandma and Grandpa Weber... I thought everyone would like it. It makes me chuckle - they are so cute (the grandparents I mean).

Isabella and I had a great weekend together. We had a little breakfast playdate with the Crandall's and the Kraemer's on Saturday. Isabella liked playing with the kids and their toys. I took myself out to dinner on Saturday night (thank you Applebees carside delivery), and Sunday was pretty low-key, we hit the grocery store in the morning and watched football in the afternoon.

Jason harvested two deer on Saturday and that completes his hunting season, he came home last night. (Thank you God for answering my prayers!)

After much practice Isabella can now clap and play Patty-Cake on her own. She has also started to wave, however this action does not coordinate with someone coming or going. We are cheering her own and waving back none-the-less. I also discovered (as did Bella) that she can climb stairs. Saturday night I left Bella downstairs while I went up to kitchen to make her bottle. I could hear that she must have crawled to the foot of the stairs but I was certainly NOT expecting to see her tackling step #3. Lesson learned: Do not underestimate this very determined girl.

BugaBOO!

We did not venture out for 'Tricks or Treats' last night but we did dress Isabella in her first Halloween costume. May I introduce our little piglet! (note the cute little tail!) The costume lasted all of about 20-minutes before Isabella became less than enthused. I didn't expect much more, she usually starts getting a little testy from 6:00-7:00pm, a combination of tired and hungry.

We had our usual 10 trick-or-treaters and shut the lights off at 7:45pm. Jason came home for the evening from Camp Ripley, it was nice to see him. I think Isabella was missing him too because she started saying dada yesterday.

Happy belated Halloween to all of my faithful blog readers!!