Mothers Day Trip to the NC Zoo

This week in Ella's world

What a difference a week can make in the life of a toddler!

Ella is now able to go up small steps by herself, kick a soccer ball all over the place, and put together her wooden puzzles in a matter of seconds.

Last night at dinner, she put her finger up to her mouth and went, "SHHHH" to Steve (he was talking to me at the time), then she went, "SHHHH, quiet" to me!  What a little impersonator (probably picked this up from me at church)!  We were just shocked that she could say, "quiet" so clearly.

Other new words are "robot", "mouse", "amazing", and "I made a mess!"  Yesterday at track practice, Ella took some orange cones that we were using for practice and stacked 3 of them together.  I asked her to count them and she said, "one, two, three, amazing!" (the amazing was that they were all stacked together).

She likes to take her toys, dump them on the ground, declare, "I made a mess!" and then she tries to clean it up and put her toys away.

Of course, with the highs come the lows, and Ella seems to have reached the terrible twos a bit early as she throws tantrums all the time now when she doesn't get what she wants.  This morning she cried for 10 minutes straight because I refused to give her a twizzler for breakfast (she saw the bag and that was all she wanted).  Finally, she calmed down and ate her small bagel and cereal.

Today we plan to go to story time at the library, then go for a run and if it stops raining, I'll let Ella play at the playground for a little bit before coming home for lunch and a nap (for Ella, not me).

Ella's 18 months old!

At Ella's 18 1/2 month appointment on 4/14/10, she was 24 lb. 11.5 oz and 33 inches tall!

Her newest things are her vocabulary!  She is REALLY talking a lot now!  She says "I see it" and "I don't see it", "for me, for daddy, for mommy" - when she's got food or crayons and she shares them with us.  She also now doesn't just say "bye" - she goes, "bye, see you, mmmuh!" (at the end she blows a kiss).

She loves water and splashing in it!  We went to Lowes and I was looking at the flowers when she found a puddle and went over to splash in it.  A worker at Lowes smiled and said "I just love that age!"  She "helps" me water the flowers and has figured out how to turn the water outside on and off.  We spend a lot of the day outside now that the weather has gotten nice.

EASTER

Ella loves to dress up

Spring is here in NC!

Ella is a Big Girl now...

My little girl thinks she is all grown up. No more little kid bowls or plates. I'd better not try to give her little kid forks or spoons. And forget that soupy applesauce she used to love - it needs to be thick and chunky.

What worries me is that she is only 17 months old. Just in the last week, I've had to really put the discipline down. She is testing everything. I'm trying so hard to teach her how to act in certain situations, usually resulting in classic toddler tantrums - but isn't this supposed to wait until 2 years old?

But with the tantrums comes all new fun, too. Ella now initiates hugs with me. She just runs up to me and gives me a huge hug. I'm still trying to show her how to give kisses - which she has not initiated yet - but give her time.

We can now count to 6 on our fingers, too. I know my Aunt Diane would be proud. The goal is up to 10 in the next 2 weeks. She understands the concept, but can't always pronounce all the words. However, her vocabulary is remarkable for her age. Last night she kept repeating a sentence over and over until we got it... "I see green beans" - sounded like "I see nee nee" at first so it took us a while to understand, but once we figured it out, she was so excited - we had chicken pot pie last night with green beans in it and she was pointing out the green beans (her favorite vegetable).

We are still working on her motor skills. She was a late crawler and a late walker, but now she is just running everywhere. Her biggest thing to master is the stairs now. She insists on holding my hand and trying to go up and down them over and over. Luckily, we don't have any stairs in our house - they are just out on the deck and in the garage.

And that's the Ella update this week.

What a Day!

I should have known when the day started that it would be crazy.

It began with my daughter, Ella, opening a bottom drawer in the kitchen that she always plays in, but for some reason, today she slipped and fell right into the corner of the drawer! OUCH!!! She began to sob, so I picked her up and realized that she was bleeding. Poor thing... she caught her little mouth right on that corner and cut herself. I ran and got her a cold washcloth, which seemed to help and she stopped crying enough for me to see that it wasn't an emergency room hit - just a fat lip. After about 5 minutes, she was back to playing and almost forgot about the incident.

Then we packed up and headed to Southpoint Mall to meet an old friend, Krista, who was in town. Ella had a blast playing in the kids area, where they have tunnels to run through, slides, and fun things to climb while Krista and I caught up on our lives - both of us having gone from teachers to stay at home mothers. Krista had to leave to meet another friend after a bit, so Ella and I decided to walk the mall until Ella discovered the escalators. We went up and down and up and down and up and down until it was time to go home for lunch. However, Ella didn't seem to care about lunch as much as the escalators and she threw a HUGE TANTRUM all the way out the door (She's not even a year and a half and she's acting like she's hit the terrible twos)!

A very tired Mommy and Ella headed home for lunch and a nap (only Mommy got to clean the house instead of take a nap).

Video of giggling Ella

Finished Cloth Taggie Book

Well, I finally finished my cloth taggie book for Ella and am delighted that she seems to love it! We've placed it in her crib and it seems to be doing the trick - she will look at it until she falls asleep for her nap and sometimes after her nap, we will go in to find her looking at it (and talking in her own language - which is mostly just her pretending to read the book to herself).

Here are some photos of the finished product:

Book Project for Ella

Here is my book project I'm working on for Ella. I have about 1/2 of the pages complete. Then I plan to sew them together and bind them all. What you can't see from the photos is all the different things I am using for different textures. I thought of adding these cute fish buttons to the river page, but this is supposed to be a SOFT, blanket like book for Ella so nothing hard.

This is the inside of the cover and back. I made it to resemble the Taggie books.
This is the front of the cover.
Here are the pages.

I must be in Cicely, Alaska

Lately I feel like Chris (from Northern Exposure) when that creative/artistic bug hits. I just can't get enough!!! Completing Ella's pajamas and my first ever sewing machine project inspired something inside me. The last week I've been working like crazy to improve my sewing techniques and this bug just hit me!
I was rocking Ella to sleep for her afternoon nap thinking to myself that I would love to have a nice, soft book for Ella to use to help put herself to sleep for her nap. She does great at night to put herself to sleep, but nap time she still insists that I rock her to sleep. We go through this routine of reading 2-3 books, then we rock with her soft bunny blanket until she's asleep and I carefully lay her in her crib and go about with my chores around the house. I was thinking if she could just put herself to sleep with a book and her blanket, I would have another 30 minutes to my day to get some things done (in theory).
Thus came the BIG IDEA... there are these nice, soft, blanket like books called Taggies Books. Well, they are $13-15 each and I was not thrilled with the so-called stories in them. They consisted of a few words on each page and I just thought Ella would like something more to play with. So I decided to MAKE MY OWN!!!
Well, this idea just got bigger and bigger... I decided I didn't want to make a sleepy time book (we have a ton of those) or a numbers, colors, animal sounds, etc. books - plenty of all of these! What don't we have? A camping book! We keep telling Ella that we will take her camping once the temperature doesn't drop below 50 at night (se we have a while to wait), but she probably doesn't even know what camping is!
I plan to take photos of my book as it progresses so check back here for updates of my own Tagged blanket book. I've already made the cover and back and the first 3 pages. I'm so excited about how it's turning out that I can't put it down!!! Tonight was the first night in a couple of nights that Steve made me put down the material, pins, and thread...

Nature Paper!

Steve just got the word today around noon that his paper he submitted to Nature over a year ago has finally been accepted for publication!!! This is after a TON of revisions and work! YOU ROCK, DR. ROBERTS!!!

Ella's pajamas!

I finally finished Ella's pajamas! This was the first thing I have sewn on my mother-in-law's old sewing machine (which is now my sewing machine) and I am very excited to have them done! They did turn out pretty cute (except the top seems to fit just right and the bottoms are way too big)... but it took me a long time because I had to re-do the neckline 5 times, then they wouldn't fit over Ella's head so I had to rip it out, cut a bigger neckline and I had to re-do that neckline twice. Maybe I should look for a simpler pattern next time. :)

Snow in North Carolina!

Steve used a lid from an old plastic storage container to make a sled for Ella (since we didn't have one). He drilled two holes in it and tied rope to pull her and a little bit for her to hold on to. She really enjoyed the sledding, but wasn't too excited to try to walk in the snow - it was just too deep for her.

Walking Mania!

Well, the day is here that I was waiting for (and kind of dreading)... Ella is officially WALKING everywhere! This past week she has gone from 4-6 steps to the other night walking about 12 steps on her own at a time, but today was the day. We went to the store to get some items we might need for our impending ice/snow storm this weekend. Ella usually walks next to me as I hold her hand, but today she pulled her little hand right out of mine and went walking up and down almost every aisle in the store, laughing and talking the entire time. She is obviously very excited about her new found independence.

Learning to Walk

Why I Love Being a Mother

Well, I've mostly used my blog to post photos lately and I've gotten away from the updates I used to post, and now I'm trying to get back to it.

When I woke up this morning, I was dreading today's events because they included Ella's final swine flu shot. Now, if you didn't hear, Ella started to realize at 12 months that doctors and nurses were not to be trusted and would scream and cry the entire time we would go - even if it was just a routine check up without shots. She is going to be 16 months in a week now and every day she shows me that she really understands everything we say. Man, we are going to have to watch ourselves.

This morning as we sat eating breakfast, I reminded Steve that I had to take Ella to get her shot - and right away I saw Ella's little eyes light up as she said "no" to me. She knew what I said. Dang it.

The fit began when I put on her coat. No, no, no, no, no... as I put her shoes on, grabbed our bags, and headed to the van. Once in the van, she became happier and seemed to forget about where we were going as she listened to Laurie Berkner songs on CD.

The amazing thing that happened was that once we were in the doctors' waiting room, Ella had forgotten what we were doing and so when we were called back, I grabbed her little hand and she walked next to me all the way to the examining room without a problem. But that was as far as we got. As soon as I tried to turn her into the room, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!!!" echoed down the hall and she tried to get out of my grasp to run away from the room. I grabbed her and got her into the room. The nurse and I just tried to get it over with fast because she was so upset, but as soon as the fit started, it stopped when we walked out of the room.

Now, you are probably wondering where this story turns from the title of my post. I decided to go over to BabiesRUs before heading home since I had a coupon and wanted to buy a training toilet (yes, I know she's only 16 months, but I want her to have it there when she's ready and I have two 3 year olds at my house enough to warrant the need). While there, I told Ella she could pick out a book. We looked over the really cool touch and feel, flip the flap, and push and pull books before deciding that she wanted the Curious George Learns to Count book (of course the math teacher in me was beaming!). The thing I love about this book is it has an abacus in the book - and that seems to be Ella's favorite part, too.

Then we went over to Southpoint Mall (since it's cold and rainy) where they have a toddler play zone, which was totally overrun with kids today. Ella had a blast! She crawled through tunnels, climbed the boat, steered the helicopter, and crawled through more tunnels! It was great seeing her play with other kids her age and older.

Both our moods were improved as we headed home for lunch. A gloomy, rainy day with promises of shots became a fun filled day with new friends and new books to read and explore.

Hanging Rock Hike

We decided to take advantage of some mild weather we were having in January and we drove 1.5 hours up to Hanging Rock State Park. We wanted to hike a 4 mile route, but when we began, Ella was completely against riding in the backpack that she's always loved to ride in on hikes! Apparently, she wanted to hike up Hanging Rock herself... so we went on a 2 mile hike instead with Ella hiking a little over a mile of it herself! She is not walking independently yet, but walking very well holding on to one of our hands.