Our new apartment

I''ve been meaning to post pictures of our new place and I'm finally getting around to doing it. We've been here for a month now and are really enjoying all the extra space. It's been great for Isabella to have her own room.

This is the hallway you walk in to when you enter our apartment. It's so wide that it's practically like another room. Immediately to the left is Isabella's bedroom, down the hall and to the left is the living room, straight ahead is the bathroom, immediatly to the right is our bedroom and down the hall to the right is the dining room/kitchen.

This is our bedroom and probably the room that is least childproofed. We keep our computer in here, though I didn't take a picture of that side of the wall. We also have two huge closest. The extra storage is really nice.

This is Isabella's room. This is probably the cleanest that it ever looks. Right now, she's really in to emptying all the toys off the shelves and throwing the pillows/stuffed animals from the little couch onto the floor. Bella's room from another angle.

Isabella's room also has two huge closets

Here is the living roomThe other side of the living room

Kitchen - notice the dishwahser! We've never had one of those!

Dining Room

New scrapbook pages

I had a chance to do some scrapbooking at the beginning of the week. Here's what I came up with.

Ten months old!

Do you like this cool 70's outfit. It was a hand-me-down from a woman at church. Just give her a red nose and wig and we have a little clown. Well, our little girl is ten months old. Overall, I'm doing pretty good with her getting older. I do get sentimental at times, but it also is fun and rewarding to watch her grow and learn new things. The other day, I observed her doing some problem solving. She was standing up on her bedroom floor and holding onto her crib. Her pacifier dropped to the ground. Isabella reached down to grab her paci and ended up grabbing the part that goes in her mouth. She kept trying to rotate it, but it was difficult to do one-handed (her other hand was busy holding onto the crib for balance). After a few attempts to rotate the paci, she sat down on the floor, used both hands to rotate her paci, put it back in her mouth, and proceeded to stand back up. I enjoyed watching her figure out something on her own.

We celebrated our four-year anniversary this past week. Rebecca, another student from the seminary, came over to watch Isabella so that we could go out. We decided to try an Italian restaurant that we'd never been to called Bucca di Beppo's. It was a pretty fun place. We were taken off guard when the greeter asked us if we wanted to be seated right away or take a tour of the restaurant. We've never been asked to tour a restaurant before. She showed us around the place. We even went through the kitchen where there was a family dinner table that people can reserve. The place was kind of a maze and every inch of the walls were covered with some picture/photograph. All of the meals are served family style and are meant for more than one person. We decided to split a dish and still had leftovers. Afterwards, we went to Borders and got a yummy blended caramel coffee drink. This was our first date night since we've been back here and we really enjoyed it.

Here's what Isabella has been up to this week:

She has become quite intrigued by the mirror on the bathroom door

Um, what is she doing?

Let's get a closer look - silly girl!

One of her favorite things to do is stand on the couch and reach for the plant behind it

Her other favorite thing is to pull up on our coffee table

I like this picture

She's really into grabbing our faces lately. We're trying to teach her to be more gentle.

All clean!

Another week in the Kilps house

The semester is fully underway now. The class giving Andy the most stress has been Greek. It's been a very time-consuming class for him and the language itself is not the easiest to learn. He's doing his best to be disciplined about studying as often as he can. Not easy.

We're back at the same church where Andy served as student pastor last year. It's been nice to return to a group of people that we already know and into an environment that we are familiar with. This has made things much more easygoing and relaxed. The transition back has been very smooth.

There was a Celtic Festival in town (practially in our backyard) this weekend, so we attended that with some other folks from the seminary. Lots of bagpipes and men in kilts. I do like the sound of bagpipes.

One of my coworkers gave us a toy that her boys used to play with. Isabella thought it was pretty cool!

"What is this?"

"Look, I'm walking."

"It's even more fun to ride it."

"How big is Bella?" "So BIG!"

Somebody got into the paper recycling.

Baby or puppy?

On The Move

I was going to add this yesterday, but the picture uploader was moving so slow. It went super fast today.

Journaling reads: "The day you said hello to crawling, you said goodbye to sitting still. You are all over the place! I turned my back on you for five seconds and when I turned around again, you were gone. . . hiding in a closet. You sure keep me on my toes!"

Keepin' going. . .

Isabella is definitely on the move. It's been hard to get some good pictures of her. She's always moving. When she's not moving, I'll try to get her attention for a picture, but as soon as she sees me/the camera, she's on her way over because she is fascinated with the camera. I've reverted to taking her picture when:

1) she's not looking
2) she's contained in something (i.e. her high chair)
3) she's on the move (sometimes turning out blurry or just silly)

I guess, though, that these pictures are somewhat reflective of the stage that we are in.

In other news, we are pretty much settled in our new place - just have a few things to hang on the walls. It feels good to have most of the unpacking done. Isabella is eating her table food very well. She will often feed herself, which has been nice for us. She still needs help with her sippy cup and some slippery foods, but she is doing great!

Pulling up more and more these days

Playing with her toys

Funny face
Always going somewhere

Everyday Stuff

Playing the piano

She often crawls over to the mirror
Ready to eat!

Aren't spoons the greatest!

The best shot so far of her two little teeth
She's coming to get me!

We moved!

With Isabella's ever-increasing mobility, we began to realize that our one bedroom apartment was just too small for this little lady who is on the move. Mary, a student from Tanzania, moved in down the hall to an apartment that was very large. Graciously, she agreed to switch with us. We spent all day Saturday moving items from one apartment to another. We still have a lot of work to do in the new place, but there is much more space. Isabella has her own room now, which is pretty exciting for all of us.

Isabella has been doing wonderful this week and has gotten past her icky cold. We are all sleeping better. Isabella has been sleeping in her pack 'n play for the past few days since Andy walked in after a nap to find her standing up in the crib. We haven't had a chance to lower it all the way yet, so we have her in the P'nP. She really seems to like sleeping in there. When it's time for her to go to sleep, she usually fusses for a few minutes before drifting off. Since she's been in the P'nP, she's been going down without a peep, or she'll just "talk" to herself until she's asleep. It's been really nice. We'll see how long it lasts!

We have a few pictures from this past week, but I can't find the camera. It's probably buried somewhere in the new place. Once we finish unpacking, I'll upload some pictures. In the mean time, you can look at a couple more scrapbook pages I did. I went back to the early days - I'm sure feeling sentimental these days.

Journaling reads: "I will never forget my first moment holding you. It was amazing to me that this precious angel is my arms was the very same being who was in my belly a short time ago. Right after you were born, the nurses took you to the NICU to monitor your heart, which was beating erratically. My heart was sad as I kissed you hello and goodbye before they whisked you away. After a long night of dreaming about you and trying to remember what you looked like from the few glimpses I had of you, I was able to visit you in the NICU and hold you for the very first time. The moment they placed you in my arms, the feelings of love were so intense and overwhelming that my body could not contain it. Tears filled my eyes. It is a moment that I will cherish always."

Nine months old (a few days late)

Isabella turned nine months old almost a week ago now. We took her to the doctor on Friday and here are her stats. . .
weight: 18 lbs. 15 oz. (50th percentile)
length: 28.5 in. (75th percentile)
head circumference: 17.75 in. (76th percentile)

She's slowing down in the height department, but, based on her parents' height, I didn't think she could stay in the 90th percentile for too much longer. I guess her head must have gotten bigger too - all those brains I guess! She's on the tail end of her cold now and is sleeping much better again. Thank you God! This past week has been exhausting! Poor Andy has now caught the cold. Fortunately, it's not waking him up in the middle of the night, and if it is, I don't have to help him get back to sleep. We've started Isabella on more table food. She now wants nothing to do with her cereal. If we offer it to her, she just shakes her head in protest. We've given her Cheerios, graham crackers, bread, bananas, peaches, pears, carrots (steamed and chopped), yogurt, cottage cheese, sliced turkey. . . hmmmm, that's all I can think of. She's eating really well - such a big girl now!

Life so far. . .

The booming train whistle, the chimes from the bell tower on the church across the street (that echo throughout the night), the sirens from the police station down the road, and the marching band rehearsing outside our window are all the sounds that remind us we are back in our apartment in PA. We traded the sounds of barking dogs at my parents house to all these random sounds out here. Life continues to move at a pretty fast pace. We dove right back into things as soon as we arrived here, and I have to say it has been somewhat stressful. The adjustment here has been a little more difficult than anticipated. I'm much more homesick than I imagined I'd be (though it does get a little better each day), Isabella's schedule is all wacky from the travels as well as from her cold, and we are just trying to figure out how each day should work with Andy being back in class and me being back at work. It's all a big juggling act that we are still working through. Fortunately, we had this long weekend to regain our bearings. We're not quite there yet, but I know we're getting there. Here are some pictures from our week. . .

Isabella claps her hand when she's happy

Now that she's crawling, she's into everything. I'm glad we have the exersauce to keep her contained once in a while.
Loads of fun in the tub
Trying to see how she'll look with hair Bella's had a lot of naked time lately as we're trying to air out her butt that has a little rash on it.