Isla Rose, 16 months old

I have been feeling overwhelmed by this blog post. There has been such an explosion in development and personality in the past 2 months, I don't know where to begin.
Duck, duck, duck! Isla can say "ma" "dad" "shoes" "duck" Cats say "Eee-ow" and Dogs say "arf" and "foof" "Hi" "hot" "baf" for bath "Uh-oh". Once Isla learned "up" she started coming up to us many times throughout the day, arms held up, with the request "up." While in Michigan, Isla got out a her rubber duckies and started shouting "duck" "duck" "duck!" over and over just because she was so proud she could.
She started signing a lot more too. She loves to watch the Baby Signing Time videos and can do "Grandma" "Grandpa" "boat" "book" "banana" "baby" milk" "juice" "water" "airplane" "train". Except, she's confused about what is a train, and uses the sign for other things, like her toy truck. Isla will open a book and babble out a whole story while turning the pages. She started to do a cute little dance bounce, and sometimes a leg shake/tap to music.
The above 3 photos are of Isla playing in the water. We have been doing this about every day of the summer- due to the record heat wave. Sometimes, we just let her go nakey.

Isla can sometimes accomplish stabbing food with a fork and inserting it into her mouth. She can climb into couches and chairs, and from there onto the table. She can go up and down one step in the upright position.
Isla loves when airplanes fly through the sky and when she spots one, she just stares and smiles. Isla has a funny way of asking "where" by turning both hands up, and has this questioning look on her face. She is just oozing personality these days, if you can't tell from these photos.

Trip to Michigan

We made a trip to Michigan for the first week in July for a family reunion with my mom's side. It was so wonderful to see all my cousins, big and small, that we don't see enough of! We had a nice relaxing week on Lake Michigan just south of the Little Sable Lighthouse. We arrived on the evening of my 32nd birthday. Everyone singing "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" to Isla just before singing Happy Birthday to me, sent me into a giggle fit. My sis Michelle was so on top of things, she baked me a cake in Peoria, and brought it up to Michigan for that evening.

The next morning we headed to the dairy farm for an Ice Cream Social. Here's the whole gang getting ready for our dairy tour.

Here we are, both 32. Jason's bday is 4 days before mine. Whenever I start to feel old, I like to remind myself one day I'll look back on "this picture" and think 'we look so young'.

Another fun thing we did was attend a fish boil at a farm in town. Isla thought that fish was yummy.

The swim across Lake Silver:

Earlier in 2011, my brother Joe proposed that he and I swim across Lake Silver while in Michigan together. So, I got myself back into the pool, after not really swimming for exercise since college, and started to train for the mile swim. After a couple months of swimming, I felt pretty good in the water again.

On the morning of Sunday July 3rd, we got our family to load up into Pontoon boat to follow/ guide us across the lake. We also had convinced my cousin Steve to swim with us. Standing out on that dock the morning of the big swim, the sand dunes on the other side looked so close. So, with confidence we took off.
About half way across, I was getting pretty frustrated with the swim, and internally smite those dunes, for they seemed to be getting farther away with each stroke. Luckily, every time I lifted my head from the murky water to make sure I was aimed in the right direction, I heard my little cousins Lucy and Abigail cheering "Go, Amanda, Go!" So I decided to buckle down and not look for awhile.
As I got very close to the dunes, the boat docked and my little cousins ran out onto the beach. They were running back and forth right in front of me, but I could not touch the bottom. I though I was hallucinating. But, there is just a steep drop off on that side of the lake about 4 feet from the shore. So, I did make it across, and accomplished this small feat of strength that my brother Joe concocted. Above I am grossed out at the green slime that was all over the inside of my swim suit.
On this trip we got to meet the newest member of the family, cousin Allison, who turned one in June.

Isla also got to meet her one and only Great Grandparent- Grandpa Ernie! Grandpa had a raging game of "which hand is it hiding in" going with Isla one evening.

From Michigan we headed for a brief visit to St. Louis to visit with Grandma and Grandpa Seats. We took Isla to Grants' Farm and she got to meet some baby goats. We also got together with some of our friends and saw the Melissa Ludwig Band of San Antonio play in their Midwest Tour in St. Louis.