Six Months Already???

She’s already six months old….can you believe it?!? The first four months seemed like an eternity, but time has just flown by since she came home. Izzy is just fabulous, and she’s getting cuter by the minute! We are having so much fun making her smile and coo. Her personality is really beginning to shine, and it looks like we’ve got a lot of drama in our future!

Izzy recently had her 6-month check-up, which included 5 shots plus blood work. Poor baby, I felt so bad for her. She handled it really well though, only cried for a little bit, but oh, did she cry! She got an excellent report, and she weighs a hefty 12 pounds. Couldn’t ask for more!

We are going to Cook Children’s on Wednesday for a repeat swallow study. The first study was done while she was still in the NICU, and that’s how we found out she was aspirating and needed Simply Thick added to her milk. We’re hoping this study will show that she can swallow safely without the thickener. Keep your fingers crossed!

BFFs

Izzy and I met Hadley (Izzy’s NICU buddy) and her mommy, Becca, for lunch today. The girls were born 5 days apart and spent the first 4 months of their lives together in the hospital. Like Izzy, Hadley was also a twin. Her brother, Jack, is up in heaven with our little Lily, which I think is sweet since Jack and Lily were the twin names Griff and I picked out before we found out we were having two girls. These girls have such a special bond, and it’s going to be so cool to watch them grow up together. We tried to get Emily (Izzy’s other BFF) and her mommy, Crystal, to come with us, but Crystal went back to work this week. We will soon be scheduling a weekend lunch date so we can get pics of all three miracle babies together. How cool is it that these tiny little girls are responsible for so many great friendships (their own and their parents’) and they don’t even know it yet?!?

Izzy on the left, Hadley on the right. They even have the same car seat. Yes, people asked if they were twins. ;-)

Julie & Julia....& Jennifer???

Clearly I am no Julia Child, and I’m not about to attempt 524 recipes in 365 days like Julie Powell, but I did have a big day in the kitchen yesterday. Since Izzy has been home, our meals have included cereal (one of our favs!), Subway, Lean Cuisines, and the occasional grilled whatever-I-have-time-to-marinate-before-Griff-gets-home meat. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, as Seinfeld would say, and not that we won’t still eat those meals from time to time (sometimes you just want cereal for dinner), but I do like to eat a real meal every once in awhile. So…I got the genius idea to spend an entire day cooking meals to freeze ahead. I came up with 8 recipes, and made my shopping list. Mom was here on Thursday to watch Izzy, so off I went to the grocery store. I was trying to be thrifty, so I checked the sale flyer ahead of time and clipped coupons. Two stores and several hours later, I was finally finished shopping. I’m such an idiot; I made my list by recipe, not by item, so I was constantly flipping back and forth between pages…yes, I said pages. It was a beating to say the least.

Saturday morning came, and it was time to start marathon meal day. I was starting to think that like many of my ideas, this was another one that sounded much better in my head. Once I got started though, it really wasn’t that bad. I felt so accomplished with each meal I added to the deep freezer. Most recipes made more than the two of us need for a meal, so I froze smaller portions, and we actually have about 15 meals plus leftovers. Not too shabby! The worst part was all the dishes. I’m pretty sure I washed every dish in the house about 10 times. Ugh! It took me about 11 hours from start to finish, including many distractions, breaks, and time-outs to love on my baby girl. Griff was on full-time Daddy duty yesterday, which was very helpful.

So, I think I will do this again in a few months, but I might change a few things, like 1) Make my shopping list by ingredients in order of the store, duh! 2) Maybe cut it down to 5 or 6 meals – 8 is a lot for 1 day 3) hire an assistant to wash dishes so I don't have to stop to clean-up 4) build a bigger kitchen. Okay, so 3 and 4 may be a long shot, but whatever.

If any of you have any freezer-friendly recipes, I need some more ideas for the next round!

Lasagna

Chicken Enchiladas

Taco Soup

Turkey Burritos (that turned into enchiladas along the way)

Chicken and Black Bean Casserole

Chicken Stew

BBQ Pulled Pork

Patty's Chicken - we ended up eating this for dinner, but we have leftovers in the fridge!

What a BIG girl!

Izzy has really taken off lately. She’s getting to be so much fun, smiling and cooing all the time! Griff and I love seeing our baby girl smile, and pretty much make complete idiots out of ourselves in search for her next big grin. While she has learned to express happiness, she has also learned how to express her discontent in the form of a big ol’ frown. It’s so pitiful looking that I just can’t help but laugh…mean, I know.

She's already posing!

Something Nanny said must have been VERY funny!

Does she have pathetic down, or what???

In other news, it seems that Izzy is now….get this…overweight. Say whaaaaat???? Yep, that’s right my friends. My one-pound baby is now overweight. The dietician from ECI came out on Monday to weigh Little Miss, who now weighs a whopping 10 lbs 11 oz, and according to the weight-for-length chart, she’s at 95%, which puts her in the overweight category. Now, keep in mind that this is just weight for length. On the weight alone chart, she was 61% when compared to other 2-month old babies (which is her adjusted age), and 0.27% when compared to 5-month old babies (her actual age). The dietician wasn’t at all concerned, but she did suggest we cut her calories a little by adding less formula to her milk. I’m waiting on the pedi to call me back about this – I want to make sure he is in agreement with this decision. She’s definitely well on her way to catching up with all of the other 5-month-olds out there!

The Race is On

Griff and I have officially begun our training for a half-marathon in San Antonio this November. Griff ran this same race last year, but I’m a rookie, and I’m beginning to think it was a little over-ambitious of me to agree to it. As you can imagine, it’s not quite as easy as it once was to work out these days. We have to plan ahead since one of us has to stay home with Izzy. Luckily, my mom has been helping out a lot this summer, so she’s been watching Izzy a couple days a week so I can get to the gym, grocery shop, clean, etc. I joined 24-hour Fitness about a month ago, and they do offer childcare for babies 6 months and older, but I’m pretty sure that if I dropped Izzy off in a few weeks when she is 6 months old they would look at me like I’m crazy. She may look big to us, but she still looks like a newborn to everyone else. I’d be worried about taking her there for a while longer anyway. I’ve been slightly (ok, majorly) paranoid about germs since she left the hospital, so I might just have to wipe down the entire play area with my Clorox wipes and Germ-X if I were to take her there. Hopefully when the weather gets nicer, we can take Izzy out for runs together. For now, we just fit work-outs in where we can and hope for the best. Lord knows I need to squeeze in as much training as possible. At this point, 3.5 miles is the most I’ve ever run, and that was about a year ago, so I’m not sure what I was thinking when I signed up for this. If I can run 3 miles, I can run 13, right? Right??? I guess we’ll see… My current goal is to finish alive. If I can do that, I will be happy.

Rockin' and Rollin'

Big news: Izzy can officially roll over from her belly to back...YAY!!! A few days after we first brought her home, she performed that trick twice in a five-minute span, but we never saw it again, so we just figured it was a fluke. And she rolled over once at my mom's house, but she had a towel rolled up under her arms, so that was kind of cheating. So, today was her first legit roll-over, and I totally missed it. I had my eyes on her all day long. She had a gazillion opportunities to roll over for me, but nope, nothing, nada. About five minutes after Griff got home, they were playing in the floor, and I left the room for half a second, and that’s when she did it. She saved up her trick for her daddy….figures!

Another first: Izzy went swimming for the first time yesterday. At our last pedi appointment, I asked her doctor if she could go swimming, and he said, “Of course she can!” So, I went straight home and ordered the cutest little swimsuit I could find online! She looked so stinking adorable. The water was a little cooler than usual, so we didn’t leave her in for too long, but she loved it. She absolutely loves her baths, so we knew she would like the pool. Can’t wait to take her again!