Football Fanatics

We are huge football fans (we're from Pittsburgh, DUH).  This is Izzie's first football season and she's getting into it just like the rest of us.  The only difference is that she's the first one in our family to be born outside of Pittsburgh.  What does this mean?  Is she genetically a Steelers fan?  Or perhaps she's taken with her native Lions?  Only time will tell.  Since living in Detroit the first time three years ago, we've rooted for the Lions as long as they weren't playing the Steelers.  Their winning isn't very detrimental to the Steelers as they're on opposite sides of the league so it's not much of a conflict.  The Lions haven't been very good historically, but are starting to turn things around.  Two years ago they even went to the playoffs.  This year, their playoff hopes look good (and we're pulling for them since the Steelers are having a rare bad year).  As you can see above, both kids have Lions gear.

 

Izzie can't help but be cute in whichever team's gear, so she's usually all smiles.

This year, it's the coordinating headband, but next year we add the tutu.

Both kids rooting for the Steelers.

This past Sunday, the Steelers played the Lions (something that happens every five years or so).  The kids dressed in their hometown teams' apparel.  I love how Izzie is looking at Brady like, my team has a winning record, so why are you wearing a losing team's shirt?

Izzie is ready for her shot at football, she's always tackling Brady.

Brady still loves his sister, no matter which team she roots for.

Izzie glued to the game wearing her matching Lions headband.

The Lions looked good for most of the game, but the Steelers won in the end.  They're very inconsistent this year and tend to beat the teams they're not supposed to and lose to the even worse teams.  Go figure, since they have no playoff hopes and the Lions are trying hard to stay at the top of their division.

Three Months Old - Izzie B

Our big girl is three months old today!  The time is flying and we are trying hard to soak up every moment while she's still little.  With Brady around, we are faced with the reality of how quickly they grow each and every day.  Her sleep was doing great at 8-9 hours each night until about a week ago, but we hope it goes back to normal soon.  She consistently has one long nap each afternoon (usually coinciding with Brady's) and has started taking them upstairs.  Just this past weekend we moved her into her own room and we are working on getting her to sleep longer stretches in her crib.  She can still eat like a champ, but is still refusing to take a bottle.

We are in the middle of the Stanley Cup playoffs and Izzie is doing her part cheering on the Pens.  She's seen above with Andy Panda which I'd gotten for Andy at Build-A-Bear when we were first dating.

Tummy time is getting better and better each day.  I even managed to coax a smile out her even while holding the camera (usually she stares at the camera).

Brady is always involved with his baby sister.

We also broke out the bumbo which she also likes. 

Brady is still the best big brother.

This outfit was given to us by Andy's coworkers and it was so funny when I laid her down the first time while wearing it.  It was the exact same shade of pink and the polka dots were almost the same size.  I called it the disappearing baby.

She's always so bright eyed and watches everything around her.  This shot you can see that her eyes are still blue and we think they'll stay that way as Brady's were already brown at this age.  We now know I carry a blue-eyed gene and now have a 50/50 chance of either blue or brown-eyed children.

One of the biggest things this month was that Izzie got her ears pierced.  She was a champ about it and cried much less than when she got her shots.  They are light pink, but it's hard to tell in pictures.

She's gotten so big so fast and when the weather started getting warmer on a more consistent basis, I decided to wash a few of her 3-6 month clothes.  I was shocked when she fit in them!  She's still in size 1 diapers, but when our box runs out, we may move her up a size if they fit.  So now we have officially moved into all clothes that are 3-6 months.  In my mind, it's now a game of beat the clock before she outgrows them too.  I live for summer, so of course I'm in love with every outfit she has for summer.

She's found her hands in the last month and knows how to use them.  Her favorite thing to do is lift up her shirt.  She also loves to pet her own hair, which is hilarious to watch.

She's still trying very hard to sit up on her own.  I lay her in the boppy and she gets to this point all by herself.

Her fists are clenched with her effort to stay up.

She gets frustrated when she gets tired and needs to take a break.

This week the pool opened so I took the kids twice.

Brady was so sweet giving her "piggy" rides.  I would place her on his back and he'd swim around while I held her in place.  He really is the sweetest big brother and I have hopes that they'll stay close as they grow older.

Izzie won't have official weigh-in until next month at her next doctor's appointment, but I weighed myself and then her to get a rough idea of what she weighs at three months old.  I was taken aback when she was just shy of 14lbs!  No wonder the 3-6 clothes fit her well (meant for babies between 12.5lbs and 16.5lbs).  Brady was just over 14lbs at four months, so it looks like she might start to break away from his growth pattern.

This is one of her many adorable summer outfits.  The colors for summer work so well on her.

Her hands are constantly in her mouth.  Many nights she wants to use nursing as a pacifier and wakes up if I pull her off.  I never thought I'd say that I wish she'd figure out how to suck her thumb so she could soothe herself.

The last three months.  She's definitely getting chubbier!

Brady the Fish

It's very snowy outside and area schools are cancelled, which meant that Brady's swim lesson this morning was also cancelled.  That gave me the perfect opportunity to sit down and write about his swimming.  I was in the water as a baby and that progressed into my swimming competitively, so getting Brady swimming was high on my priority list (and will be for all of our other children).  He has pretty much taken to it like a natural, where other kids or babies are very scared to be in the water.

Brady's first pool experience in May 2010 (3 months old), in his cousins' pool.

Chillin floating on the water in June 2010 (4 months old).

Cooling off in the pool during our Myrtle Beach vacation in June 2010 (4 months old).

Most swim centers don't start lessons until babies are six months old.  We moved to Michigan the first time right around then, so I started searching for a place he could take lessons.  I found a great local place that started in Michigan, but is expanding to other states (one will even be opening soon in Pittsburgh).  It's called the Goldfish Swim School.  We took a trial class and I was sold.  The conditioned the babies to keep their mouths closed under water, to kick and scoop, and even climb out of the pool.  Sadly, we stopped lessons there when Brady was ten months old as we were headed South.

We kept pretty busy in our first few months in South Carolina, so I wasn't able to search a place to take Brady for swim lessons.  We went to Disney when Brady was 15 months old (five months since his last lesson) and while in the pool at the resort, he was automatically doing all the things he'd learned in his lessons (pictured above).  I knew right then that we had to get him back into swim lessons.

Around that same time, we'd joined the YMCA down the street from our house and they offered swim lessons.  They weren't up to par with what we'd had at the Goldfish Swim School, but it was better than nothing.  They also had an outdoor pool with a great play area for kids, which Brady loved (pictured above).

Brady continued to take swim lessons at the YMCA from June to December 2011 in South Carolina.  He even started to wear goggles which was so cute.  By 18 months, he was able to swim underwater to me.  He was still working on moving his arms enough to keep his head above water.  He was fearless when it came to jumping off the side of the pool into the water without me catching him.  He loved going to the pool and was always disappointed when we went to the YMCA for another reason.

Going to Germany threw the ultimate monkey wrench into Brady's swim training.  It took me a long time to find a public pool, and because we had to walk everywhere, we had to wait until the weather was nice.  I finally got him to the pool in April, but it was too late.  He was clingy and scared.  I was shocked because he'd gone five months without a pool when he was 1 and had no problems going right back into it like he'd never stopped.

When we got back to the States, Andy was renting an apartment with another Bosch employee and their complex had a pool.  One weekend Brady and I were visiting, so we decided to go to the pool as a family.  Brady was again terrified (but this time I wasn't surprised).  We went to the beach in August and he was scared to let go of us in the water even with his lifevest on.  He didn't even remember that he was supposed to keep his mouth closed and threw up quite a bit of sea water.

I knew that as soon as we were settled, he needed to be in lessons again, but I was scared he was going to scream the whole time.  I signed him up for classes at the local community center, but chose one a bit under his age group because I had no idea how he'd react.  It took a while, but he finally got the hang of it again.  After the first session, I moved him up to the one more for his age group.  It was more independent, which he liked a lot (the younger class provoked a lot of screaming from him as he wanted to do things by himself).  He took one session of the higher level in the fall and is currently in another session now.  We have to take a break due to Izzie B's arrival soon, but he will likely start up again in the late spring.
 

Andy had a Monday off before Christmas, so he was able to come watch Brady in action.  They start the class in the shallow end and have the kids get themselves wet and practice kicks and bubbles (as you can see Brady doing above).

So happy to be in the water.

Practicing back floats

Putting on a floating backpack so he can swim without my support.

I was so glad when he started swimming underwater again.  I was also bummed that we'd almost backtracked a full year with the move to Germany.  He loves to swim from the wall to me and back again.

A shot of him swimming underwater to me.

Practicing safety jumps

Since he has hardly any body fat, his lips turn blue and he starts shaking the minute he walks out of the water.  I wrap him up like a burrito to get him into the locker room.