Fishing

Having spent my summers in New Jersey growing up, fishing on Alloway lake is one of my fond memories. It's strange, too, because I don't know that I like fishing. But I have lots of memories of hours on the lake with my grandfather, sitting on the hot metal bench seats of the boat in my swimsuit, fishing. And somehow I always thought that my daughter would have those same sorts of memories. But we don't have a family vacation spot along the lake to retreat to every summer, and Leif doesn't fish, so I figured there would be no fishing memories for my little girl.

But I was wrong!

Lucky for us there is a pond in the middle of our subdivision that is perfect for daddies to take their kids. And lucky for us our friend and neighbor Neal DOES fish. So when he called to invite Leif and Ellie to join him in taking his kids (ages 1 and 2) fishing, I was pretty excited. I didn't go with, but as far as I can tell they had a good time. They did catch a fish, though no one was actually holding onto the rod when it was hooked, so they claim to share the victory. I'm sure there will be more evening fishing trips with the Richters. As for now, here are pictures of Eliana's very first fishing trip...

A dress from Uncle Robert...

Last week Eliana received a package in the mail... It was a cute little pink and white dress from Uncle Robert! It went with a hat he had made and sent up earlier this summer. She wore the ensemble to church on Sunday, along with a collar (or "necklace" as she calls it) that I crocheted. (which really did fit and follow the neckline when we took her to church. These photos were taken AFTER and she wasn't in the mood to let me fix it! Or to look at the camera...)

Flower Girl...

Eliana has really taken to watering the garden this summer, which is great for me! She does a very good job with it and loves to feel like she's helping me. Not to mention that she's cute when she's doing it... =D

Eliana's New Slide

Another something that happened during the blogging lapse... Poppy added a SLIDE to Ellie's swingset! As you can imagine, she is thrilled with it and loves to play on it! And right after she mastered sliding down it, she mastered.... yup! Climbing UP it! Crazy girl.

Camping with Eliana

Last weekend we decided to do something we've been dreading doing... taking Eliana camping for the first time. Leif and I have enjoyed camping and backpacking since we moved to Montana, but haven't been since Ellie was born. Now that Eliana is two and is able to sleep in a "big people" bed without the restraints of rails, we plunged headfirst into the adventure and took Ellie camping.

Really, though, it wasn't so much our drive to camp that spurred us to such adventure last weekend. It was the RightNow development family picnic and weekend camping trip that encouraged us to give it a go. And as we are not really car campers, we borrowed a tent from Carl and Liv and spent our night in the company of Leif's coworkers' families, also camping with children.

Camping with other families with kids is definitely the way to go.

We were on a site with Carl and Liv, whose son Cale (1 year) is one of Ellies little play buddies. She and Cale had a GRAND time getting as dirty as possible. Seriously... how dirty can one child get? I'm pretty sure Ellie was trying to set a world record!

The other family camping on our site had 3 children: a 7 year old son, and 3 year old twins, a boy and a girl. And Ellie just decided to hang out with them while we camped! They ran around, played in the water, played with pinecones, took turns swinging in the hammock... The four of them were great together! They stayed within our (fairly large, given that it housed 3 tents and a luxury camper!) campsite and any time I realized neither Leif nor I were paying close attention to where she was I'd look up and find her playing with the other kids. It was great!

Then it came time to go to bed. This is the part we were afraid of. Once it got dark (about 10:00 at night) I took Ellie back to the tent and we got ready for bed. I got her all situated and she seemed to think it was funny that we were sleeping in a "triangle". So I tucked her in and told her it was time to go to sleep, and then the talking started. She just chatted and giggled and had a great time! For TWO hours! She seemed to think that it was a slumber party and that I was there to talk to! That's great, but other families were trying to sleep, too, and they could all hear her. Especially when she started looking at her flashcards. (Silly me, I thought they might get her to quiet down and rest, like reading a book before bed!) She was very excited and the next morning people gave us a hard time about our daughter reciting things like "Mayan Temple!" and "Tower of Pisa!" late at night. Whoops!

But all in all the night went so well that we decided to stay a second night with everyone else. The second night I was smarter, though, and put her to bed just before it got dark so she wouldn't be scared in a dark tent all alone and I could leave her there until she fell asleep. It worked like a charm! She didn't even wake up when we came in later to go to bed ourselves. Hooray!

So... it was a successful camping trip. And I think we'll even try it again once or twice this summer yet! Now we just have to find some friends to camp with so there are other children for Ellie to play with. Anyone want to come??

Hmm.... What did I miss?

Well, since Eliana hasn't been napping regularly any more, I'm finding it difficult to keep the blog updated. Mostly I find it difficult to get photos uploaded to Picasaweb so I can put them on the blog. The blogging I can do from pretty much anywhere via the laptop. The pictures, however, are on Leif's computer in the office, so when I'm in there Eliana tends to come after me and play with things she shouldn't and destroy stuff. So... without the safe haven of naptime I haven't quite figured out the best way to do that! But I will try to fill you all in on the highlights of July that I missed while we had visiting family and then napless days...

On July 12, a week before Eliana's birthday, I, Elizabeth, ran my first 5K! Leif ran with me (at my speed) as my moral support. And I am happy to report that I did indeed run the whole thing, and in 31 minutes. That is now checked off my list of things to do someday, though I hope to continue running. It's pretty good exercise!

One night a few days before Eliana's birthday she stepped on a bee in the pool and got stung. It was her first bee sting, so I guess we learned that she isn't allergic. She didn't even freak out about it. She just picked her foot up and said, "Ow, ow, ow, ow" until someone came to get her. All told it went way better than I expected it would! She was such a good girl and even let us pick at her foot with tweezers to get the rest of the stinger out.

I still have to scan in the picture, but the week before her 2nd birthday Eliana drew her first recognizeable picture!! It's a face and you can actually tell that by looking at it! She loves to draw and it's not uncommon to see her with her little magnetic doodle pad singing to herself, "One ear, another ear, one eye, another eye..." as she draws. And most of the time she is very sure to draw eyebrows, too.

I'm sure there are other things I missed along the way as I wasn't getting any blogging done. There will be larger posts detailing some of the bigger things that we've done recently, such as taking Eliana on her first camping trip, going to the Bite of Bozeman (you didn't think we'd skip blogging about the turkey leg this year, did you?), and the Sweet Pea Festival, which we're in the middle of right now. So there are posts and pictures coming. It's just taking a little longer than I expected. Bear with us and we promise to do our best to keep the bloggy goodness coming.

Frown.

Lately Eliana has been frowning at us when we tell her something she doesn't like. At this stage in the game we end up seeing that little frown a lot! This is a pretty good picture of her frown, taken on her birthday. Right after I told her she couldn't have any cupcakes until the party. Yeah, that warranted a frown.

Family Picture

Here's a picture I just found in my email. It was taken a few weeks ago when Elizabeth's Uncle Lyle and his wife Jan came through town. I just think Ellie looks like such a big girl in this picture I had to share!

Standing Akimbo

At some point recently Eliana learned how to stand akimbo. It's pretty funny when she does it!

Birthday Party!!

I can't believe Eliana's birthday party was 10 days ago and I haven't blogged it yet. My apologies to those of you who have been waiting for pictures!! I took advantage of the fact that Eliana's birthday is in hot July and planned an outdoor "splash" party. We put up a sun shelter to provide cover for the food and some shade and we let the kids have fun running around the yard! They played on the swingset (with new slide addition!) and in the pool, and in the sprinkler, and with bubbles. I decided that toddlers don't have the attention span for anything organized, and they appeared to have plenty of fun that way!

Here was the party setup... I decided cupcakes are MUCH easier to do than a cake, and you don't need utensils to eat them. We went with a beach theme (mostly because I found this cute beverage dispenser at Target for $6 and wanted to use it!) so the cupcakes were simple once I knew what I wanted to do!

This year Ellie got to blow out the candle on her own, which seemed to be exciting for her!

I also made some Martha Stewart ice cream balls on a stick. I probably won't do that again, given how difficult it ended up being, but the kids seemed to enjoy them. And given the blue frosting on the cupcakes and the sprinkles on the ice cream balls, can you guess what the party guests looked like for most of the time? Yes, much like this... (another good reason to hold the party outside!)

Ellie knew just what to do when it came time to open her gifts, though she wanted to play with the newly opened ones instead of opening the next. I suppose it's good that we didn't have 30 kids at the party or she never would have gotten through her gifts!!

One of the things she got from Grammee and Grandad was a $2 bill for her 2nd birthday. She pulled it out of the card and knew what it was immediately. "Money!" she said! It was pretty funny.

The party lasted pretty much exactly 2 hours, from 10-noon. It was a great party, judging from the kids' reactions. No real meltdowns (I'm guessing partly thanks to the party favors handed out just before the gift opening) and plenty for the kids to play with. Cleanup was a snap (no utensils or dishes to wash!!) and we enjoyed the rest of the weekend with Leif's family. So, late as this post is, I hope you enjoyed seeing a little of Eliana's celebration. She's finally two!

Well, there goes my chance to wear my teenage daughter's clothes!

Eliana had her 2 year well child appointment today and, as we suspected, she's doing great! =D I forgot to write down the exact measurements for weight and height, and the nurse never told me what they were for head circumference, so I'll have to call one day and find those out. But I DO remember where she falls on the charts, so I can give you that information...

weight: 75th percentile
height: 90th percentile

Okay... there goes my chance to wear my teenage daughter's clothes! I am about the same height as my mother, who is about the same height as her mother. And we are NOT in the 90th percentile for height! So... here's to the next few years she will still look up to me! Because by the time she's 8 she'll pass me by!

In other news, today was day 3 with no nap, and it's going well. There are still meltdowns. But she's going to bed and sleeping and that is good. Last night she slept from 7:15 to 8:30 this morning. And she now climbs into bed with me and snuggles a little more when she gets up. I haven't gotten that sort of treatment in ... about a year! So it looks like no naps are a good thing. To celebrate I took the crib down. It's out of her room. She's a big girl now. Just a toddler bed for her.

The Result....

Well, for the past few weeks we have been fighting and fighting and fighting with Eliana over naps and bedtime. She used to be very predictable... down for a nap around noon, sleep until 4:00, down for bed at 8, sleep until 8. It was great!

A few weeks ago, though, she started fighting us on naps. She hasn't been ready for a nap until about 3:00 or later, and she sleeps for 2 hours. Then she's not ready for bed until much later than 8. There are tantrums, she got out of bed repeatedly, she climbed out of the crib when we put here in there to contain her... it was not good.

So yesterday I did something I have not been looking forward to. I cut out her nap. She's just barely two, but she cannot keep the schedule she was on, with a two hour late afternoon nap followed by sleeping from about 10:30 (or later!) to 8. She was waking up grumpy from naps and in the morning and it was just wearing her (and us!) down. It called for desperate measures, and so we cut out her one and only nap.

The result? She was pretty tired yesterday around 3:30 (as usual) but instead of putting her down to sleep I just let her watch a movie. She curled up on my bed with a blanket and her milk and watched the movie. Though she was pretty drowsy, she didn't fall asleep. She had a couple hours of down time, and then she was up and running again! Leif put her to bed around 7:45 or so and she didn't fight him. And she slept until after 8 this morning! I don't actually know what time she got up, because she woke me up! But Leif left a little before 8 and she wasn't awake yet, so he just left her door open so she could come find me when she did wake up. And she came in at 8:20.

So that's what we have. A 2 year old who didn't take a nap and for the first day in several weeks, it went smoothly. There may still be days where she'll need a nap, especially if we're out and about and she gets worn out in the morning. But if she isn't asleep before 2:00 I'm not going to let her sleep. That was a miserable pattern. We'll wean her off the movies some other time, but for now it's the only way I can find for her to sit still for down time. And she definitely needs that down time still! But today was good. She had a couple freak-out tantrums (mostly when she was tired right before down time and bed), but those are pretty standard these days. She's 2. So we'll see how today goes and take it one nap-less day at a time.

A little Montanan...

Another 2 year picture that I just love...

Our little Montana girl...