Isabel, 12 weeks!

Sorry that I have not posted in awhile. Life has really been busy. As Isabel grows up, she needs more attention and interaction during the day. Couple that with the fact that she isn't sleeping well at night, and there's an excuse somewhere I believe. I honestly feel horrible that I don't have more time. More time to cuddle Iz and savor the last baby of mine I will cradle, more time to play, more time to take pictures of her growing up...she changes every day!

She is becoming much more interactive. Her favorite thing is to look at herself in the mirror. We can actually get a belly laugh from her if she's in the right mood. We have also discovered a ticklish chin. She has the sweetest personality. Content and happy to just sit back an observe the world around her, she is a lot like her daddy!

She is much bigger than sister Emma was at this age. She already weighs over 12 pounds and Emma only weighed 11 1/2 at her 4 month visit!!!! This week I packed away my little girl newborn clothes and some 0-3 month things forever....it was bittersweet.

We are still having issues with reflux and colic, but they are slowly giving way to a very happy baby. She is definitely a mama's girl. Mommy is actually having a hard time getting time to herself since she absolutely refuses a bottle. When you force her to take one she makes choking noises and pulls away. She went 6 hours on Saturday without eating because she was with her Godparents for awhile.

Last night B and I snapped these pictures after her bath. The other two were sound asleep so we had some one on one time. They were the last pics I had taken in awhile. I hope to be better at preserving her precious memories in the weeks to come.

Prayers for Dad

Today my dad is having surgery, again, to check for cancer. He apparently has atypical cells that are consistent with a diagnosis of cancer, but they can't find the C as of yet. I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Anyway, the surgery is at 1 pm Central today. Prayers are appreciated. Thanks for the support!

Guess who?

Pulled these out from the vault. Can you guess?

1. E 2. Iz 3. Iz 4. E

The greatest sound in the world

I realize this is probably too dark to see much of anything, but it is music to my ears.

Juggling act

When hearing how close our babies are, people often ask me how I do it? Honestly I don't know. Some days I don't do anything but lay around in my pajamas. Other days seem like a breeze and I feel nothing but pure bliss. You know those moments where you look towards Heaven and just smile back at God? Yesterday I was nursing Isabel and Emma decided she needed mommy to give her a bottle at the same time. I'll admit, at first, I was annoyed. But as we rocked in the chair I found myself having one of those great moments again.

Jammie time

Some pics of the girls in their jammies....

Ladies and gentlemen...my son

J has been fascinated with photography lately. I usually don't let him use my camera, but here is what I found on it yesterday. It made me smile! Lookout GQ models!

I love my sister!

Lately Emma has really started noticing Isabel and trying to play with her. We have to stay very close to her when she is "playing" since she tends to start out sweet with kisses and end up hitting or scratching the poor baby. She doesn't mean to, she just doesn't understand what is going on yet. Another new thing she started is carrying a babydoll or stuffed animal around on her shoulder. I think she is mimicking me holding Iz. She makes a great mommy! Speaking of mommy....when I am rocking the baby, E feels she needs to be in my lap as well. I love having both girls in my arms. It's a crowd, but I feel so special having them both curl up next to me craving my attention.
Yesterday I was trying desperately to snap a picture of E smooching Iz....to no avail. Here is what I did come up with!

First I got Iz ready for the photo by placing her in the bouncy seat

Big sister deciding she may want to play. Notice B's hands nearby...

we stay that close in case we need to take her away if she plays too rough.

She started to kiss her but then noticed the flash going off and turned her head
Mom, why do you keep flashing that light at me?

This is something she has also started doing. She likes to sit on the edge of the bouncy seat while Iz is in there. I love that she wants to be close to her!
Later in the evening J decided he needed pictures with her too...We tried to get a pic of all three together,

but E was in no mood as she was about to go to bed....

1 hour later than usual.

A day at the soccer fields

Yesterday the soccer season kicked off with Jacob's first game. The heat index was 99 degrees. It was miserable! As I mentioned before, J's team is comprised of two different teams that lost half of their players. Since they stayed with the name "Titans" the team decided to keep the uniform of that team. Which means I am buying J's third soccer uniform in as many years. However, the coach didn't get the uniforms ordered in time so half of the team showed up in blue T-shirts and had their numbers taped in masking tape to their backs. It was high-class! I guess it could have been worse, the boys team on the field behind us was playing shirtless since their uniforms didn't come in in time either.

J played well. He generally plays forward and has to do a lot of running since they only play 4 on 4. He complained about the other team kicking it out of bounds every time he got close to scoring. "Mom, they are just scared", is what he kept telling me. Pretty funny. He has never been all that competitive.

Papa and cousin Hannah were part of the fan club

Mommy can we go home? It's hot out here!

The navy shirts v.s. the blue shirts. That's J. The tall one with the blonde hair.

Isabel at her first soccer game. She's thrilled....can't you tell??

Here's J next to a ref, getting ready to line up for a kick-off

Here is what their uniforms will look like

Just to try...

I thought I would try something new in honr of Isabel turning 2 months this week. Hope it works!

Coincidence???

B called my attention to something on the news today. It seemed bizarre so I started looking it up on the Internet. Sure enough, I found tons of news sites displaying the new findings of a biological study. You can read for yourself below...courtesy of the Washington Post. I honestly don't think it has anything to do with us having girls...but it's fun to tease about it! :)

Perfect 10s and the Odds of a Pink Nursery
By Richard Morin

Wednesday, August 2, 2006; Page A02
It's no surprise to evolutionary psychologist Satoshi Kanazawa that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie recently gave birth to a daughter, or that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes also are proud parents of a beautiful baby girl. Good-looking parents are 36 percent more likely to give birth to a girl than less-attractive couples -- which also explains why women are, on average, better looking than men, argues Kanazawa, a professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science, in a forthcoming article in the Journal of Theoretical Biology.
Kanazawa based his conclusion on data collected during in-home interviews with 2,972 randomly selected young adults in 2001 and 2002. All were parents 18 to 28 years old, and they participated in the ongoing National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As part of the study, the interviewer rated the respondent's physical attractiveness on a five-point scale that ranged from "very unattractive" to "very attractive." Kanazawa compared the percentage of boys and girls born to study participants who were very attractive with the sex ratio of babies born to everyone else. He found that 56 percent of babies born to beautiful parents were girls. For parents in each of the other categories, fewer than half of the babies -- 48 percent -- were girls.
But why are beautiful people more likely to have girls? Kanazawa says
scientists studying humans and other species have found that parents who possess any heritable trait that increases male reproductive success at a greater rate than female reproductive success will have more males than female babies, and vice versa.
Because men value physical attractiveness more than women do when
looking for a mate, good looks increase the reproductive success of daughters much more than that of sons. So attractive people should have more daughters -- which is exactly what Kanazawa found.
His theory also suggests that, over time, women should have become more attractive than men. These data confirmed
his hunch. More than half of all women in the sample -- 52 percent -- were rated as "attractive" or "very attractive," compared with 42 percent of the men.

My first pizza!

YUM!

Wow...

I am a terrible parent. I even screwed up. #1 is actually Emma and #9 is also Emma. Ooops!