Bye, Bye, Bottle

For some time now we've known that we're supposed to wean Isabel completely off the bottle. Our pediatrician has been making the recommendation that we make the switch around Isabel's first birthday, and now that's come and gone! She only drinks from sippy cups during the day, but first thing in the morning and last thing at night, there's nothing she likes more than her bottle. However, tonight was the first night that she went to bed without it.

She threw a HUGE tantrum - wailing, flailing, throwing herself to the ground in agony. We distracted her and then I sat her down on my lap with a big stack of books and a sippy cup with milk. Eventually, she took a few sips of milk and seemed to forget about the bottle. We read together, then Kyle played quietly with her for a while, and then he put her to bed without a fuss.

I should be pleased, but instead I feel regretful and a little sad. Our Isa is an active kid and 10 seconds of snuggling at a time is the most we get. She'd rather be crawling, investigating, climbing... not sitting still for hugs and kisses. Feeding her a bottle at night was the one time I could hold her and get my daily, unadulterated dose of baby love, and I have to say I'm going to miss it. I'm not even sure what the reasons are for the bottle cutoff, but as paranoid first-time parents we will, of course, do anything our pediatrician tells us. Maybe that's why you have more than one baby... by that point you know that your kids will turn out fine and you can go on babying them as long as it makes all of you happy.

Valentine's Day

Happy Valentine's Day! Ours was snowy and had to be delayed a day because of the road conditions - couldn't get to our Valentine's dinner! Stupid jet stream! However, Isabel was very cute in her v-day outfit and was a delight that day, all smiles and laughs. We were lucky enough to stay home with her, due to the weather.

Here's the new facial expression she's been experimenting with recently. She's not actually surprised here, she's just giving it a test drive.



We had to tie up her dress in the back because she kept getting caught on it when she tried to crawl. I'm sure all the designers will be stealing this look come spring.

What's the Word?

Isabel is a champion babbler. She can rattle off a dizzying array of "mamas", "dadas", "gigis", and spitting sounds. But as far as we could tell, none of this had any meaning. You wouldn't have called them "words". That is, until Sunday. We were looking at a photo album together. I like to name the people we're looking at so she can associate names with faces. She was interested but quiet, until we got to a picture of her and Kyle at the Virginia state line. Then she matter-of-factly pointed at Kyle's head and said, "Dada".

That's right, Dada. But I'm so excited that she said something I don't even care it wasn't Mama!

Poop. In. The. Tub.

The less said, the better.