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Now, we have taken more video, but I hate dealing with getting them online, so they will have to wait for Nashon to have time and motivation.  But I do have some still photos of her from this month.  We have been spending a lot of time outside recently, including daily walks around our neighborhood, the park, and nearby areas.  We ventured out this past weekend to the Strawberry Festival in Bellevue, where we didn’t find much to do other than people watch (an activity that Isabell very much enjoys), and eating strawberry shortcake.  Last night we also decided to press our luck, and took Isabell to the nearby drive in movie theater to see Transformers 2, which we got to mostly enjoy!  She was a super rock star!  She played with us for the 2 hours before bed time (we let her stay up an extra hour since we were all at the drive in for 3 hours before the movie started), and then we had a big walk around the lot to calm down, and she was asleep before the movie started!  She was a good baby, and even with all the shoot em up scenes in this movie, she STAYED ASLEEP for most of it!  She woke up for the last 20 mintues or so, but didn’t cry or scream.  She wanted to sit in my lap (always my lap, no one else’s right now…our other challenge when it comes to me getting things done with her around) and play with her toys.  So I missed parts of the ending as I had a monkey in my lap, but otherwise it was a very enjoyable experience, and we’ll do it again soon!

Other points of interest in the past few weeks:

– Isabell has mastered her walker, and can go forward and backward, as well as over rugs and threshholds now.  She follow Ammie and mommy around like a little puppy during the days.

– Isabell is still working on crawling.  She can get up on all fours, is rocking, and can scoot herself backwards.  She is scooting in a circle when sitting on her bum, and is able to roll like a champion.  She is mostly mobile to explore now, and we have begun to find the things that need baby proofing, or special eyes on when she’s off on her adventures.

– Nashon had his front tooth implant removed on Friday the 26th, and we are now back to square one.  He will have a follow up in a few weeks to see how he’s healing, and then we can talk about next steps to re-starting the implant process.

For Father’s Day this year we had a big celebration at our house.  We packed up our little princess into the car and took a four hour drive over the mountains to Chelan.  Ammie and Abby have a house on the Columbia river where we played in the water on the seadoos, and waved to all the people on the boats.  Isabell got her first step into the fridged  water that is the northwest, but didn’t seem to mind it too much!  She preferred when her Abby got her a “bicket” of warm water to put her tootsies into.  We discovered that the makers of Luvs diapers are amazing, and the amount of water a single diaper can hold under a litle girl’s swimsuit was pretty fantastic!  Isabell also got to spend some time out of her diaper, where she was sure to tinkle on her daddy’s lap a bit (he was less than amused).  Here are some pictures of our fun weekend, and we can’t wait to go back!!  Please notice that once again, ALL pictures have Isabell in them.  It seems that she is the center of our world!  Her presents to her dad this year were a book called “I love my Daddy”, and we are going to take pictures of her doing each of the things in the book with her own Daddy.  She also gave him a pocket watch with a message, her name, and the year engraved inside.  What a thoughtful little girl!

I was planning on writing a post about how my daughter has perfect aim and timing.  She is only 7 months old and she knows exactly where to spit up on her dad to get the most bang for her chuck.  Instead of writing some humorous tale about her sitting on my shoulders and then immediately spitting up onto my poor head, I have a better story.

Isabell has a very regular schedule.  8pm she starts getting ready for bed.  A diaper change, a book read to her, a bottle with whoevers turn it is that night.  When she gets tired of being up, she will spit out the bottle and thats our cue to take her upstairs to bed.  Jamie and I alternate nights putting her down.  Whoever feeds her puts her down and takes the first two whines afterward if they are needed.  Tonight was my turn.  After going to bed very nicely and being quiet for 5 minutes, she started complaining and I was up to put the bottle back and make sure she wasnt too rolled up in the blankets.  She wanted nothing to do with the bottle and there was no bubble to get out of her.  All she wanted was to be cuddled and stare at me.  Thats it.  She rarely sits still so this was a wonderful treat.  She used one hand to hold my cheek and just relaxed for another five minutes.  Once she was done, it was back in the crib and instantly she was out.   I have a fantastic daughter.

Isabell has been a pretty good baby when it comes to sleeping.  With only a few exceptions, she has been sleeping through the night since she was 2.5 months old, a skill her father and I both enjoy.  With the hot weather this past week, we have finally stopped putting her in the swaddle blanket or “cuddle me”, and have mostly been putting her to sleep in a onsie or just a diaper.  The other downside to this heat is that she doesn’t want to be sleeping, and instead just complains when she’s in bed.  She wants to sleep, but wants to be awake.  Now that she can sit up on her own, she just gets up after we leave her in her room.  Last night after the second or third trip upstairs to re-put her down and give her some water in her crib, she fussed a bit and then got quiet.   About an hour and a half later we went to check on her as we were headed to bed, and we laughed so hard at what we saw that we almost wet out pants!  Isabell had sat herself up, and then fallen asleep while sitting!  She was just slumped over with her head hanging down, totally asleep!  I would have  taken a picture to show everyone, but Nashon giggled too loudly and she woke up.  Oh my goodness, it sure was funny!!

Nashon was trying to nap on the floor this afternoon, and I had to startle him awake so that he could watch Isabell.  What did she do, you ask?  She was finally successful with a pull to stand at the coffee table.  Now, our table is metal and stone, and not the most baby approved item, but there is a bar at just the right height that she can easily reach and pull on.  She has been pulling with her upper body for some time now, and has gotten her bum off the floor, but hasn’t gotten to her feet before today!  She did, however, still smack her face on the rounded corner of the stone table, but only fussed a little.

Not to worry, we’ve already ordered a new bench that is nice and padded so that she won’t be smacking her face on stone much longer!

We have  spent a lot of time this month outside, as the weather has been absolutely wondeful!  We have started going on daily walks around the neighborhood or up to the park.  It started as a way to get us out of the house, but it turned into Isabell’s way of decreasing crankiness just before bedtime.  So Isabell loves being outside, and has really enjoyed the park and the swings.  Here are a few pictures of the park!

The wife of a friend from work, works for Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center had a pair of extra tickets to their yearly Chefs Dinner benefit.  Of course Jamie and I jumped at the chance to dress up and eat fantastic food along with fantastic local wines.  So Sunday night we get spiffed up, drop the bambino off at my sister-in-laws house, and head off for the big city.  On arrival we’re given wine glasses and ushered into the wine tasting fray.  Six local wineries have tables showcasing their best wines.  A “Wine Pull” was set up in the middle.  This is a sort of lotto system.  Put $25 in and grab a wrapped bottle off the table.  All the bottles are worth at least $25, with a few of them valued at well over $250.  No jackpot for us, but what we did get is a nice red wine.

Our table had 11 people from the 300 people attending.  Everyone was nice, next to us was a programmer and his wife from Fred Hutch.  They were quite traveled and we had a great time exchanging vacation tips with them.  One of the vintners from the dinner was also at our table along with his wife.  My co-worker finally introduced me to his wife (I thought maybe he made her up) and we had a good time talking iPhones and all the bad things I could think of about her husband.

Dinner is a 6 course extravaganza.  Each course was prepared by a local premier chef.  When I saw the first course I thought Jamie was doomed to a hunt and peck night to find edible items.  The first course was raw halibut and Jamie is known far and wide for her dislike of seafood.  Much to my surprise (and im sure anyone who knows her) she ate most of it!  She was quite proud of herself.  The 5 glasses of wine before dinner may have given her some liquid courage however.  Each course was paired with a different wine.   Before dinner had even started there were 4 wine glasses and a water goblet for each person at our table.  That makes for a very busy place setting.   The subsequent courses were much more in Jamies style.   A stinging nettle soup, fried rabbit, spare ribs, and a second seafood course of lightly warmed tuna.  Yes, she even ate the tuna without much comment.

Before dessert, there was a live auction for various experiences.  John Curly of Evening Magazine fame was the auctioneer, and a very enthusiastic one as well.  He does one or two auctions a week for various charities and businesses in Washington, because of this he is quite good at it.  I very much wish money grew on trees around here.  A particular auction was for a 12 person dinner out in Anacortes on a bluff overlooking the sound.   A tented dining area with an entertaining chef and plenty of fine wine.  It ended up going for over $6000.  Some other items were a complete package of all the wine served and tasted at the dinner, an 8 person meal at a house on Lake Union served by one of the chefs at the benefit, a collection of 8 champagne magnums, weightless zero-g flight on a NASA training airplane.

All-in-all it was a great evening.  The food was amazing and Jamie left with a list of restaurants that im on the hook for taking her out to in the coming months.  Adult conversation was wonderful. None of it revolved around spit-up or diapers or the best stain fighting detergent for baby poo.  It also doesn’t hurt to be dressed up and looking good.  Jamie bought a new dress just for the night and hopefully will be wearing it again soon. She looked very pretty.

I rarely get sick.  Once every couple years.  I’m a baby about it too.  Jamie on the other hand, gets anything going around.  Shes been better about it this year but her first 2 years at Kindering were awful.  She caught anything any kid had.   She got used to being sick.  She handles it better than I do.  I never caught anything from her.  Last week Jamie has brought an uninvited guest home.  Sore throat, runny nose, nothing special.  I feel like crawling into bed and never coming out.  Jamie says im a big wuss, but if it weren’t for her I would be just fine.  I think this means she should wait on me hand and foot until I feel better.

Isabell decided to choose last night just before bed to start babbling!!!  Nashon has determined that her first word is now “Dadadadadadadada…” and isn’t willing to believe that it’s not a word.  At any rate, she is babbling with “d” and “b” now, and we are just tickled pink by it.  It’s pretty cute, and fun to see how proud of herself she gets.

Next comes rolling and crawling and generally getting into EVERYTHING!!

Well, these pictures were intended to be posted with her 6-month old statistics, but Nashon was too eager to put the numbers up earlier this week.  🙂  So here they are!  Our appointment was running late, because they were busy, and Isabell was not very happy about it.  So we were impressed with how many smiles and how much cuteness she was able to give.  Family pictures had to wait a week, and they’ll be back at the end of the month.  Happy picture looking!!