Isabelle Bentley

Izzie was finally able to climb onto Jack's chair.  She can also get down. She's VERY proud of herself.  BTW - I just ordered her chain so she can climb into that. 

Isabelle is clapping and giving high fives if you ask her too. She also is sitting up by herself form the floor and going from sitting to the floor neatly.  She's also feeding herself a lot. And likes to. Although she haaates holding her bottle. Refuses to do it. She eats the food we are eating and chunky baby food too. Not eating with spoons yet by herself but with hands.  If you help her, she will stand for a few seconds and she loves to jump. MUCH better at putting weight on her feet.  Babbling like crazy. Mostly saying "dada". And... drum roll please... we saw her take 4 crawl "steps" this weekend.  And so it begins.

Big sitting up girl. 

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! She can sit for a minute or two without falling over but she tends to want to throw herself backwards so you gotta keep something or someone behind her just in case. 

FINALLY found som eshoes that she doesn't automatically scrunch her toes up in. But they are size 1 and she is a size nb or 0. Oh well. Gotta start where.  EIT officially declared she is sitting up!

Izzie had a cardiology follow up today. So they've been watching two minor things that have happened since her surgery. One is an obstruction in her left ventricle. One is a leaky mitral valve. The left ventricle obstruction has stabilized and is unlikely to ever turn into anything. As with most things, anything is possible.  The mitral valve has gotten leakier. Only slightly. They're gonna watch her for awhile and make sure it doesn't get worse and they can't find a reason why it's leakier. He said it could just be one of those things where it's worse some days and we caught it on a bad day. There are several things that can cause it to be leakier, none of them were found in her.  Grandma Fuchs is down for a few days helping me since Scott is in Atlanta this week. Isabelle sat in the cart for the first time. She LOVED it. 

Part of her new physical therapy is to sit as often as possible including when eating. Big girl in her high chair!

We're in the final push - day 300!!! She is starting to sit unassisted for about 2-5 seconds which may seem like nothing but it's a pretty HUGE deal. It means she HOPEFULLY will be able to sit for a few minutes by her first birthday. Baby steps. We work on sitting every single day for as much as she can tolerate. And head control. And eating new foods. By the way - she LOVES green beans. It's her favorite. She gulps it down.  One bad thing - for the first time in the Bentley household (so this includes Jack) - a child fell off the couch because I assumed it wouldn't happen. Jack never rolled off the couch or bed or anything. She's totally fine but I felt terrible. I put her on the couch the wrong way (see the above picture) she doesn't ever roll on her right side from her back) but I put her facing the wrong direction and then got on the ground to help Jack find one of his Paw Patrol guys under the couch and before I knew it, she fell on top of me and then...

Happy girl practicing sitting.

Shopping after EIT. They want her sitting up as much as she can handle each day.

Such a happy girl. Practicing sitting with grandma. She ate 75% of this can! She fell asleep on the utv ride.

Every day I need to do physical therapy with Izzie for at least 30 minutes. One of the things we've been practicing lately is having her sit up from a laying down position. She's getting awesome at it and holding her head up on the way ip. 

I can't believe this nugget is turning 6 months old this week. It has flown by! This chair was recommended to us by many parents who have kids with DS. It helps strengthen her core to help her get used to sitting up and strengthening her muscles so she can by practicing sitting.