Isabella Grace-ious

Isabella Grace
The story of the girl who changes my life

Friday, June 18, 2010

"quite the good talker!"

okay so call me an overacheiver, but i have 3 kids under 4 all asleep at the same time. that N.E.V.E.R H.A.P.P.E.N.S.....and while there is SO much to get done (take the baby tub out of the sink, wipe the soaking wet counters and floors, clean up lunch...and breakfast...dishes, put laundry away, rinse out josephine's dirty onsie...) i am too afraid to wake one or all of them up so the quietest thing i can think of doing is adding a new blog post...

so yesterday nik took noah to his parents to pick up our rotatiller and i had a rare hour with just isabella. we needed a few basics so we headed over to dollar general (have i mentioned the love i have for that place?) we were meandering our way around the store, taking our time to point at everything we saw and talk about what we needed and wanted to buy when an employee came up to talk to isabella. the lady told her how beautiful her hair was (bells just says "yeah" now when someone says that...she's so used to it. that is just about the only time i have to remind her to say thank you!) the lady gave her a few more compliments and asked her a few questions before she continued to stock the shelf. as we walked away isabella says to me "who's dat mama? nice lady?" and i said "yeah she was a nice lady wasn't she? she works here" "say della (bella) nice hair huh mama?" "yes bell, she said you had nice hair." "she nice geel (girl) mama." typical bells. if someone thinks she's pretty and compliments her she is thier new best friend.

the best part of this story isn't even that cute little exchange between bella and i. we walked down the next aisle and as i'm searching the shelf for red raspberry jam i hear the employee in the next aisle over say to another employee "did you see that pretty little girl in here? the one with the long curly hair?" to which the other employee said "yeah she's a cutie". so then the first lady says "she is isn't she? and quite the good talker! she was talking a mile a minute and had so much to say!"

i almost started crying. QUITE THE GOOD TALKER!!! i remember at one point thinking she had apraxia and reading up on it and realizing that some kids NEVER talk. and i was convinced that she would be one of them. and here she is a year later. quite the good talker. and she is. but to hear someone else say it (and they didn't even KNOW i was listening) makes it so real as to how far she has come. it still totally shocks me when someone who doesn't really know her can understand what she says. i still think that we are the only ones who can understand her, and i always start to translate for people, but now they are starting to cut me off and tell ME what she said. and i let them, because is there anything better than realizing that one of your wishes has come true?

it is times like this that i don't mind updating her baby book. because even if she didn't meet that milestone on time, guess what? she's quite the good talker now.

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Busy busy busy

Seems like there is so much to write about and so little time to do it! The kids are keeping me super busy lately, wanting to play and eat and play and eat pretty much nonstop. Works out well, cuz those are two of my favorite things to do as well! And on top of two of my own keeping me busy, we recently started watching a 5 month old angel baby named Josephine:


Isabella loves her like crazy. I love how she says "baby josaseeen is heah!!" when she gets dropped off in the morning. And when I picked Bella up from her summer program at school yesterday instead of saying "my mommy's here!!" (as she usually does) she yelled "my baby's here!!" because I had Josephine in the stroller with me. Noah on the the other hand isn't as sure about her...he's curious, but not yet gentle...so I have been busy just trying to keep him at a safe distance.

We've also been busy with our usual activities of playing on the deck with friends and family. Serena comes about once a week (I think you are overdue this week for your visit tho sista!) and last week Jen and the kids came to splash in the pool. Hands down, my favorite activity right now is drinking virgin margaritas on the back porch with friends while our little monkeys play.













We had a FABULOUS time on our family get-away to amish country this weekend. We literally could have just stayed in the hotel room for 5 days straight and our kids would have kept themselves entertained. Noah was his usual self running into walls and smacking his head on tables every few minutes, but aside from the few tears shed because of this, he was so happy. Especially when he discovered the tissue dispenser in the bathroom!





My favorite part of the weekend, tho, was getting to sleep all night with Isabella. Until Noah was born, Bells and I slept (literally) intertwined every night, and although I got next to NO sleep for those two years, I have really really missed having her next to me. So Nik got Noah to sleep and I fell asleep with Bells while watching Toy Story 2, and it was heaven on earth feeling her warm breath on my back all night. And everytime she would roll over and briefly wake up, she would reach for me (just as she did every night for those first two years) and she would wrap an arm around my neck or tuck her legs between my knees and quickly fall back to dreamland. I loved it. So much that on Sunday night when I climbed into bed at home, I actually got back up, scooped my little love from her bed and plopped her in bed with me.

And then on monday we had a family night at Bella's school with activities and crafts and an ice cream social! Doesn't get much more fun than that!







As for other noteworthy updates, I had a rare opportunity to go to Cleveland to see my dad with both my brother AND my sister at the same time. It was the first time we were all together there in almost two years. It was a nice time, but also very sad as we were really there to visit my uncle Bob who is battling stage 4 cancer.


So we are busy! And getting busier by the day! Tomorrow we get to watch Madalyn and Kaitlin (our "girls" as Isabella calls them) and we always look forward to having them. Hard to believe that when I started watching them Kaitlin was just a little older than Isabella is now. Now she is going into first grade! Last week when they were over they were so excited to meet the new kittens that our neighbors next door just got... one of which almost went home with Jen later that week when she was leaving our playdate! (literally almost went home... she didn't realize it was in her van until she was a block away!)

















In between all the playing and socializing, Bella still has school, which is now 3 days a week instead of 2. Sooo, needless to say, all of this activity is totally exhausting, and by the end of the day the kids are totally zonked. Which is just fine with me. =)


So we rest until we wake up and the busy-ness starts all over again! So while we are busy busy busy, we are also happy, happy, happy!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Feeling Blue

Feeling a little melancholy this week... It's just about that time again where I start becoming hyper aware of all of the things Bella should be doing at this age. And my awareness of it this time around has nothing to do with what Isabella is or isn't doing. It's what everyone else is...

Got a card in the mail yesterday for my friend Sherry's daughter's 4th birthday party. Sherry and I met in kindergarten and have been lifelong friends since. How excited were we that we were pregnant with our first kids at the same time, and ended up both having girls?? We just assumed that they would grow up and be as good as friends as we are... Her daughter Kaitlyn was born 4 and 1/2 months before Isabella. And the two of them couldn't be more different. Where Bella is at least a year behind developmentally, Kaitlyn is at least 2 ahead. So to say the least, it has been pretty painful getting together with Sherry for play dates with Kaitlyn because she is one child that can make it painfully obvious at how late Isabella has been on reaching some of those damn milestones.

So back to the birthday invitation. I felt like I was punched in the gut even before I opened it. Because written on the back in that typical and adorable childlike scrawl was my daughter's name "Bella" with hearts all around it. Should have been cute. Instead I wanted to cry. Because here is Kaitlyn, writing and drawing and SPELLING, and then there is Bella who struggles to hold the crayon and who has trouble getting her weak muscles to press down on the paper hard enough to make much of a mark. We are just working on getting her to get beyond scribbling to draw lines down and across (and hopefully some day CIRCLES!!) and BAM, here comes another child who has once again blown her out of the water on her drawing and writing abilities.

And it wasn't just someone else's child this week who made me feel this way. It was one of my own. Noah has decided this week that it is time to start talking. In a major way. Last week he was saying "mama, dada,tantu (thank you) baba,cheese,all done, nite nite, and hi"...this week he has exploded and added "fan, shoe, nose, eyes, titer (sister), tuhta (tucker-our cat), kitty, byebye, more, tinty (stinky),no no no....." the list could go on and on. Because every time I say a word or make a sound, he imitates it. And what should be a proud mama moment where I call everyone I know and write it in his baby book is actually a sad mama moment where I mourn the fact that he is thisclose to by-passing what Isabella could say when she turned 3.

And it isn't just his language that is catching up. His gross and fine motor abilities have actually passed her by already. He is jumping and actually getting his feet to leave the ground some of the time. He is walking on his tip-toes. He is balancing on bricks while walking. He is opening doors by turning the handle and turning the cap of diaper rash cream to get it off. He is putting pegs in holes that are barely visible and getting them in there every time. He is feeding himself completely, and actually gets mad when I try to help him. He is blowing out candles. He is walking across the couch without holding on to anything and doesn't stumble or lose his balance once. And again, this list could go on and on...

This is all a double stab in the heart. Because I feel SO guilty that I can't have my fist reaction to seeing all of this be pride and happiness. I feel sad that Isabella is still not doing some of these things. How will this affect their relationship later on when Noah is more like the "big sibling" who has to help Isabella on the playground or at school? And here I was thinking Isabella was sooo close to catching up to where she "needs" to be when along comes a 17 month old who proves me totally wrong. I feel bad for Noah that we celebrate every TINY accomplishment that Isabella makes but act like Noah's development is just something to take for granted (just this week we were clapping and screaming excitedly when she took her own pull up off...but I actually said "nonono Noah" when he took his diaper off last month). It hurts to see how much Isabella has to work to accomplish something that comes so naturally to Noah that we don't even know when he actually started to do it.

Paradoxically, I am so grateful to have a child like Noah to help Isabella. There are so many things that she wasn't even attempting to do until she saw Noah do them. Like opening the sliding back door. Or climbing on the cedar chests to reach the light switches. Or bending her knees to attempt to jump. And it has been this way since Noah came along. Just a month after he was born she was trying harder to talk so she could sing to him. And the first time she ever attempted to open the butt cream tube was when Noah was a newborn and she was helping me change his diaper(without success yet but she still she tries).

I know I have so much to be thankful for. And as sad as it makes me some days, I am honestly actually thankful that Isabella is who she is because it really slows us all down and makes us appreciate the little but insanely beautiful things about life that would have normally passed us by unnoticed. To appreciate that learning how to run and speak and blow out a candle are all things that are amazing feats, not just something to check off in the baby book as "accomplished". I think I start to feel this way sometimes because even tho I know that Isabella has something different about her that makes her have to work harder at life, as the day to day routine comes and goes, I often find myself thinking that maybe she doesn't have anything wrong at all. Maybe one day we will look at her and say "wow, she is totally caught up! Maybe all her delays were just because she was so sick for the first two years of her life after all!" But then weeks like these come along and remind me of the truth. That Isabella has "special needs".

It helps to know that those same "special needs" that weaken her muscles so that she still drools when she is tired, and that make her run so awkwardly that she looks like Kramer from Seinfeld when he enters the room, or that make her work extra hard to do all those things in therapy that she happily chugs away at every time are the same "special needs" that make her the "sweetest child" her preschool aid has ever met. They are the reason she sees something funny in everything we do. They are the reason she learned to sing before she could even utter a recognizable word. They are the reason she doesn't quit trying because she is embarrassed that she still can't do things. They are the reason she wakes up every morning and climbs into my bed and squeezes my neck and says "hi mommy!" And when I sigh that unbelievably happy and content sigh she responds with "ohh mommy. I love you too"...because she knows how I feel by just hearing me sigh. This child of mine doesn't just need in a special way. She gives in a special way too.

So, while I'm feeling a little blue, I'm also feeling a little yellow and pink and purple (her favorite colors today, she says)...because today she said (without any prompting) "can you read me this book please, mommy?"....her first 8 word sentence that was spoken so clearly that ANYONE could have understood it. And it is moments like these that remind me that I'm the lucky one. I get her for my daughter, and all of those mommy's who have children that are "perfect" are missing out.