Izabella Tovar: 2015

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

Dusting off the blog!

Hey there! It's been awhile. I keep telling myself I am going to blog more regularly. Then I put it off until tomorrow and then the next day and the next day. Anyway, I felt it was time for an update and reintroduction! We just got our pictures taken by Lori Romney Photography and I love to post cute pictures so I figured what better way to reintroduce my family to you then with some family photos?

Okay so just incase you're new here, I'm Izabella. I have two beautiful children, Henry and Anastazia. Henry recently turned five and Anastazia recently turned one. I am engaged to their father, Jairo. Technically we have been engaged for over five years, but hey who's counting? We really aren't sure when we're getting married. It's not that we don't want to. Life just goes by so quickly that we keep putting it off. Jairo works full time and I do daycare with my mom. I am also a full time student at the University of Utah where I am majoring in Psychology and planning to apply for medical school in the near future. We live in the mountains of Utah and love it here. Henry is in pre-K 4 this year and is loving it. Anastazia is growing up so fast. She says about 10 words right now but she doesn't walk yet. Our doctor always says "early talker, late walker." If you follow me on Instagram you probably know all this, but I hope you enjoyed the update anyways. Another fun fact about me, I love shopping small. Most of the clothes and toys I buy for my kids and our friends are from Instagram shops. I plan to shop small this Christmas again, so if you have any suggestions or if you have a shop you want me to know about, let me know!

If you have any other questions or comments, leave a comment below. Thanks for reading! And please don't steal my photos. All photo credit goes to: Lori Romney Photography

Photo Credit: Lori Romney Photography

Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Henry's 1st Birthday Party

In honor of Henry Week I thought I would post some pictures of Henry's previous birthday parties. This post is dedicated to his first birthday party which was a red and blue circus/carnival party. This is the only party I don't have nice pictures of because it was before I had a nice camera and I had friends and families with nice cameras. So unfortunately I only have a few cellphone camera pictures with watermarks (taken from my Facebook page) to share for this party! But I promise the other three parties have much nicer pictures. ;)

Here is a letter I wrote to my baby on his first birthday. Keep reading to see photos!

Dear Enrique,

Today is your first birthday. I honestly can't believe that you are one year old already! Where does the time go?

You have changed so much in this past year it is unbelievable. You are now independent, you don't sleep 20 out of 24 hours a day, you love to dance to music, you babble all the time, you crawl all over the place and are just so much fun to be around! I must admit though, part of me misses when you were a newborn and I could just sit and snuggle you all day long! But, you are so much fun to play with now.

People say that babies get easier as they grow up, but those people clearly don't have kids. You were definitely a lot easier as a newborn, you hardly every cried and mostly slept all day. Now you keep us all on our toes, we don't know what you will get into next, and you are constantly busy! But, I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Anyways, your birthday happened to land on a Saturday this year, which was perfect for your party! I started planning your party in June and it turned out so well! It was a carnival theme. We rented a bouncy house/ slide and the cutest cotton candy machine, popcorn machine, and snow cone machine. We also reserved a balloon animal maker and a face painter, but they ended up not coming because they got lost. Then we got 100 gold fish from the pet store and put them in your baby pool, then we got little fish nets for guests to fish out their own goldfish to take home. Mama even put together the cutest little fish bowls for people to take home with them. She also made favor bags by putting a giant lollipop and other small goodies in thick popcorn bags. They were super cute! Just to make sure that no one went home empty handed, we even had giant licorice ropes in a box labeled "lion tamer whips".

For food we had pretzels, nachos and cheese and hot dogs with buns (true carnival food). We also specially ordered these really neat coke, diet coke, and sprite bottles because I liked the look of them. We made 72 red velvet cupcakes and Mormor made you a red velvet cake and frosted it herself. We ended up with probably 40 left over cupcakes! Oh well, they are delicious. I think everyone really enjoyed your party, you included! You especially loved opening your presents. The funny thing is that you wouldn't even touch your cake unless it was on a spoon! You have such great little manners already.

I love you so much Enrique, and so do daddy, mama, papa, and Tio Sebastian.

Love,
Mommy

Friday, May 22, 2015

Anastazia Eats

Henry was never a good eater. He never liked baby food and he was really picky about what foods he would eat. He is still a picky eater to this day. Which is why it is such a new experience for me to have a child that loves to eat. Anastazia really loves food. I give her little bites of everything I'm eating and she always reaches for my plate. So I really wanted to try baby food. I read all these bad things online about store bought baby food (of course I know you can't believe things you read on the internet) so I decided to make my own baby food. I always wanted to with Henry but he never ate it.

Making your own baby food sounds easy enough but it's actually pretty intimidating. I guess we don't always realize how convenient it is to have a jar of baby food to just pop open when your baby is hungry. But I'm here to tell you that if you are just a little organized it can make a world of difference. So, making the food. I just steam fruits and veggies in our rice cooker, or on the stove. Then I use a Baby Bullet to blend her food which I bought at Buy Buy Baby. It's great because it comes with several blender attachments as well as jars and a freezer tray for storage. If you just take one day out of the week to blend up a couple of meals and put them in the freezer it's much easier.

The two main concerns I had when it came to DIY baby food (aside from how am I going to make it) were: "What am I going to make? and How am I going to defrost it?" If you have asked yourselves these questions I am going to save you a lot of research time right now and answer them for you. I found my two favorite products that are the solution to these questions.

To answer the first question: "What am I going to make?" I present to you this amazing baby food cook book by Annabel Karmel "Quick and Easy Weaning: All you need to know on feeding your baby in the first year". This little cookbook is amazing. It has an abundance of recipes and it is also a guide on how, when, and why to wean your baby. It's very helpful for understanding the process of weaning and is organized in a way to help you figure out what foods to present to your baby and when. Plus some of her recipes are even yummy for the whole family. It is definitely a must have if you are weaning your baby. Plus Annabel Karmel is an expert on all things food for you and your family. Check out her website here: http://www.annabelkarmel.com/us/

Okay now for my second question: "How am I going to defrost it?" I really didn't want to microwave her food because I think that kind of defeats the purpose of making her healthy food because the microwave can decrease the nutritional value of the food. Which is why I was so glad to discover Lillypots. Lillypots is an easy way to defrost different flavors of baby food at the same time while holding their nutritional value. I love it because it's easy to store, fits most standard size pots, and works quickly. Plus once it cools down it makes the perfect serving tray (as seen below). You can learn more about Lillypots and find a link to purchase here: http://lillypots.co.uk