We have been spending our last weekend in Atlanta hanging out with some of our best friends Brad and Bridget and their kids Nathan and Andrew. Yesterday they came over and we watched the Olympics some, played the Wii and ate hamburgers and chips and dips. We had so much fun! There is nothing better than good friends and good food! We will miss them so much! Isabella and Nathan have been playing since Isabella was a little over a year and Nathan wasn't quite a year old. Now they are both 2 years old and it has been so fun to watch their friendship develop. You can tell they really like each other. Did I mention how much we will miss them?
I kept trying so hard to get a good picture of Nathan and Isabella together and they did not make it easy for me.
They hid under the table, ran as fast as they could in the opposite direction, and seemed to switch off making silly faces. But I managed to get a few cute ones.
Andrew slept most of the time he was here. He is almost 12 weeks old. He looked so sweet.
Jack just hung out like usual. He enjoyed watching big sister play. It was a fun day!
Today Jack turned 6 months old!! He is such a sweet little guy! I wish I had his six month stats, but we are all messed up with our doctor's appts. My guess is that he is around 20 or 21 lbs. Jack is still working on sitting up on his own. He does a good job if I help him a little, but he is still wobbly. I don't think he gets as much "floor time" as Isabella did. We are always so busy doing things that we don't spend as much time just hanging around the house. He is also starting to hold himself up when we give him something to hold on to, but again, nothing like Isabella was doing at this age. He is definitely his own person. He is so much more cuddly than Isabella ever was. He likes to snuggle and gives lots of hugs and kisses. Well here is our cutie pie on his first Valentine's Day and the day he turns 6 months old.
I think about all I see on Facebook right now is people's posts of how much snow they have gotten or their pictures or videos, well we even got some snow down here in Georgia yesterday. We got about 4 inches. It was lovely. It is already melting and will probably be completely gone by tonight. It was just enough snow to be fun. Isabella was very excited when it started and couldn't wait for daddy to get home so they could play in it. I went outside with her a little bit, but Jack didn't really want to be out in the snow (surprise, surprise), so we waited for daddy to get home.
Here are a couple cute pictures from yesterday.
This is when the snow first started around 1:30pm Jack didn't know what to think of it.After naptime Isabella woke to this. She was quite excited!
Then daddy got home and the fun began!Here is our porch around 4:30. We got another inch or 2 after that.
Here is a video from New Year's Eve. Nonna and Pop-pop got lobsters for dinner and brought the bag in and let Isabella see them. She took it a step further and got her "guys" and started playing with them. I was the only one concerned for the lobsters well being so don't blame me! :)
Here is one from the other day. Isabella is dancing with her prince Jack. I think Jack's face is priceless. This gives you some idea of just how enamored he is with her.
Jack finally rolled from his back to his belly today!! I have been waiting for this because he kept looking like he was trying, but it just wasn't happening. Then today he was laying on his back on the floor because I had just finished changing him and I was doing something with Isabella and next thing I know I look over and he is laying on his belly. I had a moment where I thought "Did I leave him on his belly?" So I flipped him back over and grabbed the camera. He wanted those wipes badly!!
Well Jack has been a busy boy lately. I can tell he is trying to meet all his milestones these days. He is trying to sit up on his own, although he is still a little wobbly. He pushes up quite well and he his working very hard on improving his cuteness...although that is very difficult since he is already so stinkin cute!
He is very good at rolling from his belly to his back but continues to struggle with getting all the way over from his back to his belly. We also tried food recently...he didn't like it. I am going to try it again soon. We will see if he takes to it eventually. I think it would help if he was able to sit up better on his own. Jack is also growing increasingly enamored with his big sister. As long as she is in view he is pretty happy and even happier if she talks to him or plays with him at all.
We have also recently made an important discovery. Jack wants to sleep on his back. I will admit he was sleeping on his tummy for some time because I was unable to get him to sleep any other way. Then when he started rolling he kept rolling from his belly to his back and waking up crying and then I would spend all night rolling him back over. Recently I realized if I just left him on his back he would snuggle his lovey and fall back to sleep...no wonder he was so mad, he just wanted to be left alone. He must have had a chat with the doctor when I wasn't looking and knew he was supposed to be "back to sleep."
We also discovered he would rather sleep in his pack n play than his crib. He slept pretty well in FL and then when we got back he slept terribly for two nights. He kept wiggling around in his crib and finding himself with his legs and arms outside the bars which made him less than happy. So after two nights of that we tried letting him sleep in his pack n play and he slept 13 hours the first night and 12 hours the second making it quite clear he would rather be there than in his crib. This works well for us since we are moving to Nonna and Pop Pop's house in three weeks. Jack has also shown that he really likes his "lovey" and puts himself back to sleep with it instead of using a pacifier. So we hope he will keep up this behavior and mommy and daddy will get a lot more sleep. ****The post after this one is also new.
So we have been living a life of "princesses and pirate ships and the seven dwarfs" to pull a line from Taylor Swifts song "Best Day." Isabella has exploded into the princess scene with amazing dedication. She wants to watch and be Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Belle, Ariel, or Jasmine each and every day. She has the Cinderella, Ariel and Tinkerbell costumes so she enjoys being those girls and I would be lying if I said Nick and I weren't having a blast being a part of her new fantasy world. She also enjoys Peter Pan and made our living room and ocean the other day where our chairs were pirate ships and the crocodile was coming for us. It is just so much fun!!
Swimming like Ariel...
Last week we drove down to FL to visit our friends down there. We were able to see Yentz and Col Nardo and Christine Clark, all former teachers of Nick. Isabella had so much fun seeing each of them. We are so blessed to have friends who were able to get us in to Disney World for free so we went the the Magic Kingdom while we were there and had a ball with the kiddos. Isabella was over the moon. I think it was so much to even take in for her. Around lunchtime we realized it was time for lunch so she could take some time to process all she had done and seen. We went to the park at 9 o'clock when it opened and we rode Snow White, the teacups, and Dumbo and then waited to get in to Toontown so we could see the Princesses. We did get a glimpse of Cinderella's stepmother and stepsisters while we were waiting. We were second in line to see the princesses and Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and Belle were there. Isabella was so excited to meet them. My favorite was Cinderella, she was so sweet to Isabella.
Here we are after the Dumbo ride.
Then we went and met the princesses...
Here is the moment when Cinderella took Isabella out of the line and spun her around. We were second in line and waiting our turn. She was so sweet to Isabella. As you can see Isabella was pretty interested in Sleeping Beauty over the others princesses.
And later in the day we caught up with Jasmine and Aladdin... She loved riding the carousel so we did that several times. She also loved the Jungle Cruise and the "Yo-Ho ride" also known as Pirates of the Caribbean. I wish we could go there every week...it was just so fun to go somewhere where we could all be kids and have fun. We will definitely be planning a trip in the future. At the end of a very wet but fun day... The rain kept people away and it was already during the least busy time of year, so it made no lines and we were able to ride all the rides and many of them 2 or 3 times in a row. We had a blast! Thank you so much to Mike and Robert for saving us the price of tickets!!
One of the main reasons we went to Florida was to meet the newest member of the Strobridge family. Ben and Lisa welcomed little Elizabeth Victoria Opal Strobridge to the world on January 18, 2010 at 7:21 pm. She was 8 lbs 1 oz and 21 inches. She is a sweet little baby. I think we heard a little cry once or twice but it was just to tell mommy she was hungry. And of course, I love her name! :)
She did a lot of sleeping of course... Watching Nick's funny face... Congratulations guys!!
Well this post is already long enough. I am going to do a separate one for Jack and everything he has been up to.
ran as fast as they could in the opposite direction,
and seemed to switch off making silly faces.
But I managed to get a few cute ones.
Jack just hung out like usual. He enjoyed watching big sister play.
It was a fun day!
After naptime Isabella woke to this. She was quite excited!
Here is our porch around 4:30. We got another inch or 2 after that.
He pushes up quite well
and he his working very hard on improving his cuteness...although that is very difficult since he is already so stinkin cute!
He is very good at rolling from his belly to his back but continues to struggle with getting all the way over from his back to his belly.
We also tried food recently...he didn't like it. I am going to try it again soon. We will see if he takes to it eventually. I think it would help if he was able to sit up better on his own.
Jack is also growing increasingly enamored with his big sister. As long as she is in view he is pretty happy and even happier if she talks to him or plays with him at all.
We have also recently made an important discovery. Jack wants to sleep on his back. I will admit he was sleeping on his tummy for some time because I was unable to get him to sleep any other way. Then when he started rolling he kept rolling from his belly to his back and waking up crying and then I would spend all night rolling him back over. Recently I realized if I just left him on his back he would snuggle his lovey and fall back to sleep...no wonder he was so mad, he just wanted to be left alone. He must have had a chat with the doctor when I wasn't looking and knew he was supposed to be "back to sleep."
Then we went and met the princesses...
She loved riding the carousel so we did that several times. She also loved the Jungle Cruise and the "Yo-Ho ride" also known as Pirates of the Caribbean. I wish we could go there every week...it was just so fun to go somewhere where we could all be kids and have fun. We will definitely be planning a trip in the future.
At the end of a very wet but fun day...
Congratulations guys!!
