Sip-N-See

My mom's good friends, Carol and Sue, recently threw Izzy a Sip'N'See! Let me tell you...this is my kind of party! What do you do..."sip" on alcoholic beverages all while "seeing" my baby girl! Seriously, brilliant! Truthfully, I think you are really supposed to sip on tea...lame!

Carol and Sue with the Grandma of the Day!

Everyone generously brought a book for Grandma Nancy's library for Isabel...and future grandbabies! Wow...we might have to have story time at Grandma Nancy's frequently...such good books and so little time!

Can you believe there is a series of books called "Fancy Nancy"?

Izzy giving me the look asking "Where is my drink?"

My little bug a boo... Isn't this dress the most precious?! Thanks Aunt Kathy for the princess dress...Izzy loves it!

Boys Boys Boys

We took another road trip up to Chicago to visit my friend Staci and her newborn baby, Aidan. Aidan is almost 3 weeks older than Isabel. So it was so fun to get the kiddos together to "play"!

Check out this little guys smile...

How funny is this picture?? Clearly the kids are just thrilled with our little photo shoot!

Our other friend Katie also joined in on the festivities on her day off of work. Her little man was a little over ten months at this point and he was loads of fun to watch. He was also loads of work. Staci and I looked at each other with a little relief that our babies can't move yet :)

How handsome is Jack?!

The impossible shot...this kids were probably seeing dots for 10 minutes after these photos...3 mom's with cameras = tons of flashes! In fact, some of my outtakes show the red-eye reduction from either Katie or Staci's camera :)

Here is Jack trying to feel Aidan's mohawk...or fighting over Izzy perhaps?!

I got the look of concern (the norm) after taking so many pictures of the boys.

Two

Isabel's second month was so much fun. We finally started figuring things out this month. There are two things to note this month and I can't decide which is best... First, Izzy started sleeping in her crib HOORAY/sniff sniff. My dear friend Rachel was the ultimate winner at convincing me of breaking the habit of holding Izzy when she sleeps...after spending the night with the Wiegman's I came home with the motivation to get Isabel to like her crib. I put her in it and after maybe two minutes of whimpering (not crying) she was asleep! She didn't sleep through the night or anything crazy...but a night without my baby girl in my bed was restful for me. Though it is bittersweet as those moments of listening to her breath, watching her smile and drifting off to sleep are missed.

The other major accomplishment of the month is Izzy's SMILE! She has learned how to make our hearts melt. My favorite smiles are usually at 3 in the morning when I feed her. It's just the two of us and I think she knows I need the encouragement. Seriously, with smiles like hers, I would stay up all night to feed her!

At her two month check up, Dr. Emm said that Isabel was a "healthy" (not fat) child. She weighed 12 lbs 1 oz, 75th percentile and was 22.5 inches long, 50th percentile. Her chubby cheeks are my daily indicator that she is getting enough to eat! What do you think?

Here is a link to all of Izzy's second month of pictures. Lots of similar photos...I just couldn't decide which expression was my favorite :)

Here is a two month photo outtake...I love the smile...I just can't get her to do that for the camera!

This is the look right after she spits her entire dinner up on Daddy because he thought it would be cute to play "airplane"!

Doesn't it melt your heart? It melts Daddy's wallet :)

Eat em up Redbirds

So obviously I'm a little behind in blogging...these pictures are a dead giveaway...sunny and no jackets! Don't worry...it was a beautiful fall day. Luckily the wonderful weather landed on a weekend when the redbirds were in town. We joined Grandma and Grandpa K and tailgated before the Redbird football game!

Grandma and Izzy match in their redbird red!

Izzy signing the fight song!

Isabel plays with Christian

One of Izzy's first "play dates" was with Christian and his mom Sara. I met Sara and her husband, Frank, through our church. They got married two weeks before we did...and then surprisingly got pregnant right around the same time that we did! Christian was due at the beginning of September and Izzy was due two weeks later. We were surprised when we met up in the hospital...Izzy was born on 9/10 and Christian on 9/11! Go figure!!

We had such a fun afternoon. We ate, babies ate, we ate, babies ate... These two are going to have so much fun growing up together in church. How ironic that they are only a day apart!

Checking out the camera

Can you tell that they are at the same stage...able to move the arms, but no control whatsoever!

And here they are just bored with the camera!

Trick or Treat

Isabel dressed up as a flower this past Halloween...she looked so precious! Halloween is a HUGE holiday with Great Grandpa Bill, so we visited with Great Grandpa on the same day that he dressed up for his competition at the senior center. He got first prize (per usual) for his scary costume.

Next we headed downtown to visit Grandpa at the office so he could show off. He just scoops Izzy out of the car seat and carries her around his office just like this to show her off. It's so fun to watch. I'm sure it will be a different story once tax season rolls around!

We also stopped into to visit with Wendy & John who bought Izzy this adorable costume. Izzy loved all the attention and I loved that her Halloween costume was so warm and cuddly!

Next year she will be ready for an abbreviated version of Trick or Treat...this year we were limited to Trick or Boob :)

Brave

About half way through my maternity leave, I woke up with the realization that my time was running out and I had all of these ambitions. One of them was to visit my two best friends in Chicago. We first set out to Glenview to visit the Korman Family. Izzy slept the whole way up to Chicago which was awesome since I was brave enough to try this trip on my own. We spent the afternoon playing with Ella and Adelaide and trying to talk with Brittany. I learned that it may be a long while before Brittany and I have an adult conversation again. It was chaos...but a good lesson was learned...wait a couple more years before expanding our family further :)

Ella has turned into quite the 3.5 year old. She is old enough to understand what you are talking about and asks quite forward questions for her age. At one point I went in the other room to pump, but I told Ella that I was just going to use the restroom. She was very observant and noticed the door to the bathroom was open and asked her mom why I didn't want any privacy while I was going to the bathroom. Yeah...pretty smart little girl. Addie has gown into such a little girl. At ten months she was almost walking. She liked looking at baby Izzy, but really wanted to grab at her. We had a great time, but let me tell you how exhausting the afternoon was!

Here is a semi-decent picture of the girls. Ella was supervising by sitting in the middle! Note that this picture was blurry as the girls were all on the move...

Next we drove to Lake Zurich to visit Auntie Rachel and her little girl Mya! We got to their house after Mya had already gone to bed, so it was much more clam. Rachel and I had a chance to eat dinner and enjoy a glass of wine before going to bed. Izzy slept pretty well at Rachel's...but only because I held her all night! The next day we headed out for shopping at Deer Park and had a ton of fun. Izzy was a good little shopper and so I had to reward her with a couple cute little outfits :)

Mya is almost exactly a year older than Izzy! She was really interested in looking at the "baby", but would also poke or grab at her if we wouldn't have been watching. Let's hope for the sake of any other Wiegman babies that she grows out of this stage! Here is an adorable picture of Mya scoping out Isabel.

Shop til you drop

Izzy had her first shopping trip when she was only 5 weeks old. She was a champ! We went down to Godfrey, Illinois (just outside of St. Louis) to a boutique and tearoom called Josephines. We went with my mom and Jacki Semelka and had a great day! It was a really good test to see how Izzy does with long car rides. She slept almost the whole way there and back and was pretty content in the Baby Bjorn while I shopped. If this trip is any indication of what is to come...my daughter could end up costing me quite a bit of money :)

The crew: Jacki Semelka, Marge Bogart, Me, Isabel, Grandma (Fancy) Nancy

Busy

We have been busy over the past month! I have started getting more comfortable taking Izzy out of the house and around town (future blog posts to come about some of our adventures). I'm still a flu freak, but I carry a bottle of GermX with me and I try and keep Izzy covered under a blanked for the most part! Hopefully my neurotic behavior will spare her this flu season! The reality of my maternity leave running out has set in :( I can't bear the thought of not spending 24/7 with my baby girl. Come on...she just started giving me the cutest looks! Any ideas how to strike it rich in 3 weeks?! Here are some of Izzy's sweet faces to tide over those that have been stalking me to blog!

Excessive

After only a month...I have two million pictures of my darling little girl. I can't imagine life before digital cameras with a newborn. Some of these pictures may be repeats of her first couple days...but I'm planning to organize her pictures for the first couple years into month by month. I'm finding that there are just too many digital means for sharing pictures. Between blogging, online photo websites, facebook and then having pictures in my purse in the event that Izzy isn't with me...I just can't keep up! Plus, I can't decide which photo website I like the best these days...Kodak, Shutterfly, Snapfish, MPIX, Picaboo, Picasa.... Any advice? How can I streamline all of my photo sharing so that I actually get it done?!

Anyways, here is a link for the Kodak album of Isabel's pictures from the first month. I'll warn you that you may need a little time to go through the slide show...I've narrowed it down to 300 photos! I hope you enjoy some of her expressions...she is constantly cracking us up with the looks she gives us. Here is one of my favorites!

As a side note, someone generously sent us a mug from Kodak with Isabel's photo on it...yet Kodak forgot to tell us who you were. If you sent the picture mug, will you let us know?!!

Post Season

This is slightly out of date...but I had to share Isabel's wardrobe for her first year of post-season Cardinals baseball! Izzy got a couple adorable Cardinal onesies and a Cardinals cheerleading outfit. The cheerleading outfit was a little too big for the games against the Dogers, so we got her all dressed up in one of her pink onesies. Ben and Izzy are already reading up on transactions expected for the off season...Let's go Cardinals!

Hurry up and take my picture Mom, I'm watching the game!

Oh no, this doesn't look like a good game!

Isabel and Daddy both yelled like this when Matt Holiday dropped the last out of the game!

Splish Splash

I gave Izzy her first real bath a couple of weeks ago and she absolutely loved it! She made all kinds of noises while I splashed water on her...it was so much fun. I've since learned to have everything all ready to go BEFORE you take the bath. It seems that open air before/after the bath makes her want to go to potty :)

Say Cheese

My little Pooh Bear

One

Wow, I can't believe my baby girl is already ONE MONTH old! Where does time go? She is getting so big. We unofficially weighed her on the scale and she now weighs 10 lbs 6 oz! She is much more alert these days. She follows toys or people and holds her head up pretty well. Oddly, she has always shown a lot of neck strength from the beginning (I don't know if that is the norm or not). At one point when she was upset with the doctor, she lifted her head and glared at him. We are pretty certain she was saying "I know who you are and what you just did...and I'm not going to forget it". Just wait until she gets her shots...that person is going to get an evil glare.

Here are some of our "benchmark" photos. A couple of my friends have taken these types of pictures each month and I have loved looking back at how much they change. I couldn't decide which location I liked better...so here are a couple shots to show comparison with a bunny and the tree in the nursery.

Meet the Parents

Isabel is the first grandchild on both sides of the family...and the first great-grandchild on my Grandpa's side. Needless to say, all the grandparents have been on cloud nine since her arrival. They have all been wonderful...showering us with meals, baby clothes and lots of love for Izzy! Here are a couple pictures of the doting Grandparents! Thank you to all of you for taking such good care of us!!

Grandma Nancy reading me bible verses while I was in labor! (Photo taken by Katie Zeller)

This picture is so touching...my Dad stopped by the hospital around 10ish at night to check on my labor, but was then going to go home and wait for the news... Katie captured this picture on his way out!

Three generations of Funks!

Grandma Nancy

Papa

Meema & Papa

Proud Grandpa Danny showing off at his office.

Great Oma

Great Grandpa Jensik

Four generations

Great Grandma Funk

Cuddling with Meema