Isabel's cousins

This is Iz's first cousin, Indy (Uncle Jeff and Aunt Genna's bassett). things started out rough for them but now they are best friends. As you can see they like to scheme on how to get goodies :) At Grandma's, Iz sets out a plate on the floor with a raw hide on it for Indy when it's time to eat :)


Aunt Cecilee's dog, GiGi. She's one wild and crazy pup but Iz loves her. Everytime she goes to Nana's the first thing Iz says is, "GiGi, down...bad!" haha. The other night Iz had a dream about GiGi and woke up saying "bad." I asked her what was wrong and she said, "GiGi, down!" lol.


Iz and Aunt Verity's kittys. She likes to run around with the string and have the cats chase her. Her favorite is the black one, Cota, cause he plays fetch with her. They are surprisingly good with her. She carries them around, sometimes by their paws, and they don't scratch.

I would LOVE to get Iz a dog. She absolutely LOVES animals. Ryan swears that he will love a dog if we get a bulldog; but if anyone knows Ryan...well I think the only one who doesn't know Ryan doesn't like ANY dog (besides a stuffed one) is Ryan.

Just waiting....and waiting...and waiting...

5 more days! OMG it feels like this baby is never going to come out!! I actually get this feeling that she is completely content in my stomach and plans to stay there until something forces her out! Hopefully it will be my uterus squeezing her out :) Everytime I see someone they comment on how much I've dropped, even since the last time I saw them. I feel that I've dropped so much she should already have dropped out, hehe. It's not even my due date yet, so I'm not sure why I'm so anxious... I guess I just wanna meet her.
I had my last dr. appt. last Wednesday. I was a whopping 1 cm, woohoo! I was kind of excited cause I've never been a "1" before. (Iz was a c-section and I wasn't even close to starting any kind of labor...) Well we went back in on Sunday and I'm pretty sure the dr. said I had gone down to like a 1/2 :( didn't quite know that was possible, tear tear. It seems like Ryan might be right again and that my "walls of Jericho" will never come down, hehe.
Ryan is home now for his paternity leave, yay! He gets 3 weeks off. I'm glad he's here before Al comes to help me out with Iz. With all my meltdowns, especially lately, and "nesting" nagging I'm sure he's also looking forward to the arrival of the baby and end of my pregnancy. He's been a trooper.
We're anxious to see how Iz responds to the baby. She understands that Al's in mama's tummy- she even shares with my stomach :) But I wonder if she'll still think Al's in my stomach after she's born or if she'll know Al is the baby. We're not quite sure how she's going to handle not being the center of attention. We think she'll be excited at first but that might quickly wear off when she's not allowed to sleep with us anymore or she sees that she has to share her time with us with Al. (She isn't very good at sharing...)
We're trying to have Aly via VBAC; but if she goes past next Friday, my next dr. appt, then we will be scheduling a c-scetion. The bad thing about that is it probably won't be until that next week and Ryan's parents will be in Hawaii. It will also leave me with a harder recovery and less time with Ryan at home helping out since he'll have to go back to work soon after. So let's cross our fingers and hope our little nugget is ready to come out!

Christmas

So this Christmas was great! With Iz being older and able to understand so much more she was a blast to watch open presents and comprehend what was going on. As you can tell, compared to last year, she did SO much better with Santa :) We enjoyed the holidays with our families and are blessed to live close to both of them. We hope everyone else had a wonderful holiday season.