Happy Birthday to Daisy!!!

Three years ago today Daisy became a part of our family. We call it her birthday since we don't really know her actual birthday. We are so lucky to have this sweet girl. She is the best dog in the world and these past three years have been wonderful! Happy Birthday to our first "baby"!!!



We're going to celebrate this weekend by taking her to the new Railroad Park and giving her some doggy ice cream. She's going to be so excited :)

BSC Homecoming

Yesterday Adam and I took Caroline to the Birmingham-Southern homecoming football game. BSC didn't have a football team until a few years ago, after we had already graduated. It was pretty hot outside and Caroline fell asleep so we left around half time. It was so fun to go back to campus and see how things have changed. I can't wait to take C back up there once it's a little cooler - which I would have thought that the END of October would have been!!!

The new football field and the gigantic team (as in there were a million players - and only about a third are actually in this picture)


This is what C was doing during the game

Five Months Old!!!

Five Months Old - October 23, 2010


Yesterday Caroline turned five months old! We are just one month away from HALF of a year! I just cannot believe how fast time is flying. Caroline is the sweetest baby. She smiles and laughs almost 100% of the time. She has her moments but they are certainly few and far between. She didn't have a pediatrician appointment this month, but she'll go next month. She's been eating rice cereal for a week and we're going to give her peas today. She's doing pretty good with eating. She manages to get some food into her tummy and the rest ends up on the counter, the floor, and me. She's wearing size 2 diapers and her clothing size is all over the place. She loves her jumper a lot!! She whines when we take her out of it. She's also teething like crazy! She hasn't had a tooth come up yet, but she's drooling a lot and chewing a lot. She sleeps through the night about half of the time and gets up around 4:00 the other half. She naps fairly well but lately she's been fighting it. She's still talking all the time. She rolls over so well and just wants to crawl so bad!!

Happy five months Caroline!! I love every minute that I spend with you, even when you're fussing. Your smile makes me melt. You are such a blessing to this family!! People kept telling me when I was pregnant that I would soon forget all about life before you. They were wrong. I remember exactly how life was. It was simple and wonderful. Your daddy and I had a beautiful life. What I did realize once you were born was how much BETTER life was with you in it. It's certainly not as simple. We don't get as much sleep or have as much time for each other, but we have you and that is even better. It's not that I don't remember life before you...it's that I don't want life without you anymore. These past five months have been the best ever!!! Daddy and I love you so so much!!!

Sneek Peek

On October 31, 2010 you will see the cutest little kangaroo there ever was. Here's a little peek at C's costume.


She was going to wear it to the Trinity Fall Festival yesterday, but since it was super hot we just went with the pumpkin hat...again.

New Toys

My mom came into town on Friday since I wasn't feeling well. We always love when she's in town. We have an extra pair of hands - and that is priceless! She also loves to spoil Caroline, which we allow (for now). :) Caroline got two new toys that she LOVES. She got a walker, which she doesn't quite know what to with yet. She also got a "jump and jive" which she's crazy about. It's one of those jumping things that you hang from the doorway, execpt it also has a little music pad that you can put under her feet and it makes music when she jumps. She is soooo adorable in it!!

While she hasn't figured out how to walk with the walker, she has figured out that she likes to chew on it.


Look how cool I am in my jumper.


Here I go

When she sees people she raises her hand. I think she's trying to wave. Genius.

My new toys are so cool!

Rice Cereal

On Saturday night we gave Caroline rice cereal for the first time!! We had decided to wait until she was at least five months old - and she was one week shy of that goal. We decided it was time when she kept trying to grab our food. She has also been mimicking our chewing. She loves food...what can I say? She didn't know what to do with it at first and kept spitting it out. I think we finally got some down though. We'll keep this up for a few days before we move on to fruits and veggies! I just cannot believe that almost five months has passed and that she's even old enough to be eating rice cereal!!! My sweet little girl is growing up :)

Bad things...

...hopefully don't happen in threes!! We've had some not so good luck the past couple of days!! On Wednesday my stomach started hurting. I assumed it was something I ate since I didn't feel any worse. I spent most of the night throwing up. I woke up and felt okay, like I had gotten it all out of my system. Then mid day hit and I went from okay to miserable! I went to the doctor and I tested positive for mycoplasma. That is the walking pneumonia bacteria, but get this...the infection is in my GI tract, not my lungs. That's good in that I'm not coughing these germs all over people and infecting them, but I feel pretty miserable. After two shots and three prescriptions I am feeling a whole lot better.

Our second bit of bad luck happened last night. My hard drive on my laptop crashed. While a lot of the pictures were backed up, many were not and we're facing the fact that they may be gone forever!! I am just devastated. We're taking it to the apple store this weekend. We may be laying out some big bucks for a new hard drive (since it's not that old of a computer) or we may be in the market for a new computer and a new back up system. Luckily we have Adam's computer and my camera works beautifully so there will still be pictures. And yes Adam, I did learn my lesson and I will certainly be more diligent about backing up. Thankfully we have this blog where I have most of my favorite pictures recorded, so we will have them forever!! Thank you Kelley for encouraging me to start a blog!!!!

Hopefully nothing else bad will happen! What a crazy past couple of days!

Finally!!

We have finally reached a really good point in our daily routine. Caroline is napping very well and I am able to get more stuff done around the house. It works best for her to have three 1 hour naps throughout the day. Sometimes that gets stretched to a few 1.5 hour naps, and that's okay too :)

Until recently, whenever she cried I would give her about five minutes before going to get her. My theory was that if she really wasn't tired, why should she stay in her crib? The end result was a VERY cranky baby and a big pile of laundry and a messy house. Needless to say, it wasn't working for any of us. Luckily I have a friend who has a little girl about a month older than Caroline. They have an amazing schedule worked out. She said that she puts her baby down for an hour nap and she can either sleep, cry, just lay there, or whatever but that is nap time. I decided that I would do the same. I know that Caroline needs to nap and I know that I have to get stuff done. I let her cry it out the first few times, but now she's sleeping so well!! As soon as I put her down she goes right to sleep!! I have accomplished so much today...and now I'm sitting here blogging before she wakes up. What a great thing!!

Pumpkin Patch

This Sunday we went to Old Baker Farm to their pumpkin patch. I had this planned for a while. I envisioned a beautiful fall day, a sweet little fall outfit, perfect pumpkins, perfect pictures... It was supposed to be wonderful. Too bad the fall weather took a weekend vacation and it was over 90 degrees!! (Beautiful FALL day - not so much). I had put her in an adorable little dress with appliqued pumpkins on it. It was perfect for the pumpkin patch, well..would have been perfect had it not been long sleeved!! (Sweet little fall outfit - check, temperature appropriate - not so much). Adam and I really did have a great time though. It's going to be a family tradition for sure, but next year we'll be sure to go on a cooler day!!

Looking out at the pastures


Adam picking cotton


We really wanted to go jump in all the cotton too...but it looked like it was just kids :)


Coming out of the corn (we couldn't stop doing the "if you build it, they will come" thing)


We got to see so many barn animals, here are just a couple of those pictures



Caroline's first hayride!! She didn't really know what to think of it!


Which one is Caroline an which one is the pumpkin? I had hoped that I would get a ton of adorable pics, but as you can see - she was hot, tired, and just ready to be done!


Thank goodness Daddy was there!!!


Once we got home, I gave her a mini pumpkin. It immediately went into her mouth...

Rolling Over...the other way!

This morning Caroline rolled over from back to stomach!!! I thought it was a fluke at first - but then she did it again this afternoon and twice when we put her in her crib this evening. It's so amazing to be able to watch her learn new things!! I'm so proud of my girl!

Wedding Weekend

This weekend Adam was in his friend Daniel's wedding. I love weddings. It's always fun to see friends, but I do enjoy the actual ceremony. It's always so sweet (as weddings should be). It makes me want to get married all over again!!! Both the ceremony and reception were at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church which is so beautiful!! I wish I had taken more pictures because it truly was a gorgeous ceremony and reception.

Adam and Daniel at the rehearsal dinner


Daniel sang some songs at the reception


Adam, Caroline, CT, and Daniel's dad

Such a daddy's girl

The other night C woke up at 5:00 ready to eat. I gave her a bottle and she was still crying, so I made another half bottle. After that she was STILL crying. I asked Adam to come and help over the monitor (I love that thing). When he got in her room I said that I think she's still hungry. About a half a second later, she calmed down. She was looking at Adam and just smiling. I gave her to him and she giggled for a minute before falling back to sleep. She just needed some daddy love!! It was so sweet and only a little sad that she didn't want her mommy :(



But seriously...how could you NOT love this guy?? By they way, the look that Caroline is giving me in that picture is how she looks at me every time she's with Adam. She totally gets annoyed that I'm interrupting their time together.

Daisy Love

I am sure that most of you are aware, but I am a little (or a lot) obsessed with our dog, Daisy. We've had her for almost three years. When I got pregnant I was so worried that she wouldn't like the baby or vice versa. I'm so incredibly thankful that they are best buddies!! Caroline smiles and laughs at Daisy now and it's so sweet. Since she's been working on grabbing things, Daisy's tail and ears are targets but Daisy doesn't seem to mind too much...

Please come see me Daisy


I just want to love on you


I'm so excited that I'm going to kick you!!



Good thing Daisy is such a good sport.

Blog Readers

I started this blog at the beginning of the year thinking that our family members and friends could see what we are doing. With a new baby, it's hard to travel to see everyone out of town often (and can also be hard to see friends in town!!). I also figured that if no one read the blog, it would be a great book one day for Caroline (you can turn your blog into a book). I thought that I would blog during the pregnancy and then for her first year. I'll probably keep going since I'll do this for all my other children as well. I really didn't think that many people would read it though!! We found this fun thing that you can put on the blog and it tells you where all your visitors came from and when and how. We have had readers from 7 different countries and all across the US!! From Washington and California to Florida and New York, the Israel Family blog certainly has a variety of readers! It's a neat thing to see, but it's also a little creepy. We have repeat visitors from small towns that we've never heard of. We have a reader that doesn't like either of us so I guess she's just being nosy. We can see when people google us and come across our blog. I love that so many people care about our family (or just love to blog stalk) but I'm finding that I also hate it...I almost want to close the blog to the public and just have the people that we invite able to read it. I don't really want to do that, but I also don't want real life stalkers knowing what we're doing. Anyway, if you are a reader of this blog we would love to know who you are!! Since so many people are visiting, I'll try to keep up with posting regularly. Thanks for being interested in our family!!