Happy Birthday to Isabella Aubrey!

Isabella is officially 4 going on 14. She has been dying to be 4 for months now, and well, it has come and gone. Andrew and I were sick on her birthday, but she had a great day anyways! We had a visit from Grammy, and made her birthday cake and celebrated with Mimi and Paw Paw.



Here are some pictures from her big day!

Everyone was in on the party hats

And she shared a party with Jack a few weeks ago at Pump It Up...where else?! She was so excited to see so many friends!

There she goes!!!

Pretty sure this is against the rules:

Sara

Everyone was asking if Aaron was related because he looks like Andrew! So cute!

Happy girl!

Greg and sweet Hannah (no, they are not related!)

Playgroup love :)

Sweet Andrew Bean

Not gonna lie; its a really fun slide:)

Kim was so sweet to come out with Hunt, in the rain, when she had a 3 week old at home! Doesn't she look great?!

Daddy and his babies

Phil and Mia

Mimi and Grammy with their granddaughters

Me and my baby...sniff, sniff

Some love from Uncle Steve

Izzie and Evie

Ethan and Ray

Group Shot

Izzie had Hello Kitty theme...

while Jack had Star Wars. Gotta keep everyone happy!

The birthday kids

He just kept staring at her. I think the hood was throwing him off.

Opening presents at home

Such a lucky girl!

Some things to note about Isabella at 4 years old:

-She is suddenly afraid of things :( she sleeps with her door open now because of this, but a BIG step is that she will now get out of bed on her own to come downstairs or go to the bathroom

-She dropped naps a few months ago- the plus, she goes to bed at 7:30 now, the downside, she's dropped naps. She will take a nap every week or two. I will realize it is quiet in her room and find her in bed, fast asleep with the light on!

- She still loves school and is always upset if she doesn't have a job each day. She adores her teachers and is always asking what they are doing. If we are eating dinner, "Momma, is Ms. Pam eating dinner?", etc. She talks about school all day once she's home.

-She is working on writing her name. While she seems to be naturally left handed, I sometimes see her trying with her right. She is very stubborn about how she holds a pencil, so I feel like we have a lot of work to do.

-She wants her hair styled daily. Over the summer, it was double French braids, but now she wants her hair curled everyday, just like Taylor "Slipped". I know this sounds high maintenance, but I really don't mind because it only takes a few minutes and she looks so cute with her hair curled :)

-She is a great helper- picking up toys, putting things away and getting things for me. But, when I ask her to change Andrew's diaper, she refuses.

-She is an actress more than ever- literally acting out scenes she remembers, or just being plain dramatic :)

-She loves to sing.

-She really loves playing with Andrew. She wants me to wake him up from naps to play and if she asks me for something special, she usually asks for one for him too.

-She still sucks her thumb. She doesn't do it at school, but she does it a home occasionally and ALWAYS when she is tired or sleeping. It's a tough battle, but one day, she'll stop!

-She still adores Daddy and can't wait for him to get home.

-Still loves to dress up and changes several times a day among her dress up clothes. She even wants me to dress up her stuffed animals.

-She is kind and caring. She is good about apologizing.

-She is starting to wear 4T, but only tops and some of those are too big. She needs a 3T pant with an adjustable waist still. She wears a size 9 shoe (and the shoes usually have sparkles)

-She is so creative and I love watching her play with dolls and listening to how she has them talk to each other. Her Daddy is very kind about playing Ken these days.

-She loves to play tea party and make me "food" and she will bring me something wrapped in a blanket and tell me its a present from her.

-She loves Lucky, but does not want him kissing her.

-If I ask her for a kiss, she will tell me "Just one, Momma." I guess I've been going overboard :)

-She is still not a good eater. I wish we could switch eating habits.

I'm sure I could go on for ages. Isabella has made me better just by being herself. As I say every year, she has truly taught me patience, courage and love. She amazing me every day and life would just be so boring with my sweet little buddy.

Rainy Day

With the weather being so gross today, or all week rather, I decided it was a good day to do some sewing projects that I've been wanting to do.

First up: ruffle scarf! It was kind of hard to get a picture of, but you get the idea. I think it turned out pretty cute. Isabella even asked if I would make her a little one- so if the fashionista likes it, it must be a winner!

And I'd really been wanting to make a new camera strap with a pocket for the lens cover. Here's the inside with pocket:

And outside with ruffles :)

And while I'm blogging about crafts, I thought I would include my alphabet wall so you out of towners could see it. Joe went on a long hunting trip, so each night after I put the kiddos to bed, I rented a chickflick and went to town creating.

After living in this house for a year with nothing on the walls, I finally decided to get to it. I had always planned to go to an educational store and buy something teacher like, but then I joined pintrest and was so inspired, that I decided to just use up some materials that I had left over from other projects.

I bought the wood letters from Hobby Lobby and just mixed paint to get the colors I wanted- just really had the primary colors. I also had to buy the apple, elephant, lion and jellybeans :) Everything else, I already had on hand.

And I used a lot of scrap book paper. I keep meaning to find a pencil and glue it on there with the paper for P.

It was a really fun project to work on and kept a loney weekend busy. And thanks to my sis for helping me come up with some ideas :)

Thanksgiving

Let me begin with our Thanksgiving Eve ER visit...It was about 6:30 and we were getting ready for bath and bed time, and Joe and I both noticed that Isabella was passing some gas, so we told her to go sit on the potty and go. She went into the bathroom and started screaming, so I followed her in and asked her if she needed to go #2. I was thinking that she was having a hard time going since she has had her fair share of these issues in the past. She then started crying and saying that she just wanted to go to bed. It was early and I didn't want her going to bed without going to the bathroom. So we headed upstairs. She continued to cry and whine, so I put her on the potty upstairs and she just lost it. She was screaming so loud and so frantically that she was really scaring us. She kept trying to get off the potty, but her knees were buckling and she couldn't even stand up. She just kept screaming that she just wanted to go to bed. At this point we didn't know if it was serious constipation, appendicitis, or what. So I grabbed my shoes and took her to the ER.

Thank goodness the hospital is literally 5 minutes from our house. She screamed at the top of her lungs the whole time in the car :( They saw us right away and I told them I suspected constipation. While we were waiting for the doctor, she fell asleep in my lap which is highly, highly unlike her- which scared me even more. The doctor came in and said that with her history, she felt like it was pointless to keep her in pain for an hour while they did an x-ray and waited for results, so they went ahead and did an enema. She was in so much pain that she didn't protest; she just let them do what they had to do. About 8 minutes later, she asked to go to the bathroom, so we ran over there and got her on the potty- except she didn't go #2, but instead she passed a serious, serious amount of gas. As soon as she was done, she was like a new child, "Mommy, I feel better now!"- it was seriously amazing. The doctor checked in with us and I told her what happened. She said that she wasn't surprised, that people come with appendicitis and a dull pain, but when they have trapped gas, they come in screaming. The doc kept comparing trapped gas pain to labor pain and explained that her passing out/knee buckling was all due to how much pain she was in :( My poor baby.

If I hadn't witnessed her behavior and how much pain she was in, I would have never believed how painful that can be. So all was well, and we were just so thankful that it wasn't anything else. Joe Bass put it best, "That's a $1000 fart right there." Hopefully, it won't end up being quite that much, but we didn't have a choice! We kept her up a little later than usual to make sure she was all done. She went to bed fine and woke up fine:)

And on to Thanksgiving! We started at my parents' house for lunch.

These 3 wouldn't even look up for a picture!

Sweet boy thinks he is so big:)

Saying hi to Nonna

Mia needed a little cuddle

Lisa and Sara- Sara was baptized just two days later and Lisa is her godmother :)

Does she look like she was at the ER the night before?

Jason and Andrew

Big kid table

Hiding out

One sock and one shoe...check!

Papi and Jack building a domino tower

Innocent Papi decides to let Andrew help out and add a domino...

Ha ha, Papi! I knocked them down instead!!

Later at Mimi and Paw Paw's

Life is good for these two!

Ummm....yummy!

And here is where I found Isabella...In Mimi and Paw Paw's bed, reading Black Friday ads. Not gonna lie, I totally joined her! It was a great, but very long day :)