Isabelle is a very happy baby with one of the most cheerful dispositions (so we have been told) that a 14 month old could ever have but that disposition has been leaning more towards Bi Polar the past few days...ever since those molars of hers decided to officially cut through and show themselves.
Since we were all blessed with Isabelle having a pain free teething process for her first 8 teeth, three days ago we did not think that she was hmmm lets call it "moody", because she was cutting her molars. Now she had been drooling quite a bit but she wasn't gnawing on her hands, furniture, her dog, sidewalks, trees or anything else that really triggered us to think that this is what it was. If anything we thought that her ear infection and cold she had 2 weeks ago might be coming back!
On Tuesday she hadn't eaten much all day but again, that didn't ring any bells since she is not that big of an eater to begin with. She was sort of clingy, playing with her ears a bit and was getting easily frustrated when her toys wouldn't "work" for her. Later that evening I noticed that she felt really warm so I took her temp; 102.6 in one ear and 101.9 in the other so immediately I started pumping Tylenol in her. That night we could have sworn we were back to having a newborn in the house. I put her down just before 8pm and she was up every hour to two hours just sobbing. We would give her more Tylenol as soon as 6 hours passed, and even tried Triaminic in case it was a cold, but still nothing seemed to soothe her. I would be rocking her in her room with lullaby music playing and she would be crying with her eyes closed, tossing and turning in my arms just trying to get comfortable to go back to sleep. Michael and I felt completely helpless and just wanted our baby girl to feel better. After a 2:30am wake up, she finally went down and stayed down until 6am. Since I was already up getting ready for work, I got her and put her in bed with Michael. So with a bottle to fill her belly and her Papa at her side, she fell asleep for another 3 hours and woke up as her usual chipper self....like that night of pain never even happened.
The next morning I called and got her a doctors appointment just in case it was more than just her teeth. In a very good mood, Isabelle went to daycare for a few hours and when Michael picked her up to take her to the doctor's, she had eaten, took a good nap and didn't fuss once. The doctor gave her a clean bill of health and off we went. That night she was in bed at 8:00pm and slept till 8:30am the next morning...right back to her old routine :)
Now when you get a really big laugh out of her, you can see three out of the four newest editions to her mouth. Did you all get that? Three out of four...yes, we still have one more of that set to go plus whenever the other molars and her eyeteeth decide to come in! OUCH!
My Mother's Day weekend started on Friday at 2:30pm when Isabelle and Michael came to the office and kidnapped me for the rest of the afternoon. They took me for a drive up to Ventura so we could reenact Michael and Isabelle's "week before an Opening Weekend at the theatre" routine. The two of them will drive down to Ventura in the morning and drop off the theatre's postcards at our mail house for the show that is opening the following weekend.
From there, they drive out to the pier and have lunch at a restaurant called Erik Erickson's where Isabelle just loves their bread and rice (go carbs!) and her Papa orders jalapeno fish and chips. We did a little bit of strolling on the pier. It was windy overcast and chilly but it didn't matter since we were together as a family. Isabelle was enthralled with the seagulls and the fisherman so I grabbed my camera and started snapping away. 
At dinner, I tried the jalapeno fish and chips and they were to die for! I can't wait to share that "routine" with them again :) We had such a nice family afternoon together and Michael took the evening off (double bonus) so we got to just hang out, which we haven't been able to do in quite sometime. This was the best start to a great weekend.
Like I mentioned, it was a 2.5-3 hour drive. Um yeah....for those of you who have toddlers, especially ones who are walking, I am sure you can imagine how our drive went. Isabelle was fine for the first hour and a half with looking at books, dancing in her car seat to her kids songs, listening to Mom and I talking and listening to us when we were talking to her. But then...boredom set in. She wanted nothing to do with the car seat anymore and she wasn't going to nap like we thought she would. She was fussing a bit, wiggling around and pointing at things that we thought she wanted and when we gave them to her she didn't want them anymore. So we stopped for about 5-10 minutes at a rest area and let her wander around, check out the dogs and of course, check out all of the flowers and plants (our little nature granola girl). With a little over an hour left to go, we plopped her back into her car seat and low and behold, her books became interesting again and about 20 minutes before we got to Avila Beach, she fell asleep...nice timing. 
The spa was beautiful all tucked away back in the mountains. Mom stayed with sleeping Isabelle while Tara and I went and had our massages...our well deserved massages. When we got out, Tara literally ran out to the parking lot to get her "Macho Nacho" and to let Mom go in for her massage, since our room was not ready yet (everyone was busy with the VIP guests-"The Girls Next Door" were filming an episode while we were there). So Isabelle, for her second time, Tara and I went walking around to check out the grounds. We played chase on the grass, looked at all of the flowers and leaves and had a little snack while we waited.
When we finally got the keys to our room, we loaded up a golf cart with all of our stuff and were driven out over a bridge, that is over the main road, and into the boonies to our suite. This was definitely a Natural Spa! We were staying in "Mellow" or Suite 11...one of the handful of prefabricated houses on stilts! It was crazy! The guy driving us to our room told us that they had a flood about 4 years ago and a river was running right where we were driving. I guess in that case, stilted rooms are a good idea. At least they can stay open during a flood or bad rainstorm and they wont get shut down for flood repairs!
We unpacked, played with Isabelle and waited for Mom to get back then schlepped ourselves out to dinner in Avila Beach on a pier (yes, another pier) at a restaurant called Olde Port Inn (
Isabelle was so excited to see this big ol' sea lion and didn't want to leave but the shopping Outlets were calling our names! We did a little shopping there and then decided to head back so we could get Isabelle to bed and chill for the rest of the evening. The next morning we got up, played around with Isabelle on the bed, got ready, packed up and were on the road by 11. Mom and I stopped at Coco's for breakfast where we all, including Isabelle, had a good breakfast which almost lasted us the entire way home. About 40 minutes after we left Coco's, Isabelle fell asleep for a little over an hour. When she woke up she seemed fine but then starting to get fussy again. Mom tried playing with her, reading to her and then all of a sudden, up came breakfast! Needless to say, a 30 minute pit stop was in order. We got her and her car seat all cleaned up (except the smell-yuck) and continued home. She was back to her old self after that!
