The princess with the tattoo

FlickrDroid Upload, originally uploaded by elizabethwickland.

Eliana got a stick on tattoo from a friend and was very excited to wear it. That sucker lasted for over a week! She was very proud of it, and it cracked me up to see her wearing very girly, princess-y dresses (and a crown, in this picture!) with a tattoo peeking out her sleeve. Crazy girl.

Home Sweet Home

We'll see how everything works out, but it would be amazing if this becomes our new home sweet home...

We May Have a Winner

Elizabeth recounted the following to me. Ellie asked her why there wasn't snow on the ground any more. Eliz explained something about the seasons. Eliana responded that she missed the snow. She said she likes sunny days and snow, but she doesn't like rain. Considering that she lives in Bozeman, which had snow every month beside July last year (seriously, we had snow in August) and supposedly has 320 sunny days per year (more than Houston, TX, for example), that's a pretty happy state of affairs.

Ellie Skiing - Take Three

I actually got to go skiing with Eliana and Leif the last time they went, so I took it upon myself to be the photographer / videographer. =D Here are a few videos from the day...

In this first one, Eliana is the little pink bullet among the black-clad adults...

Here's how Eliana got started down the run most of the time...

And here's how she got back up the run... This might have been her favorite part! (We ran into our friend Zuzana on the hill, so she took a few runs with us while she waited for her party to come down the hill.) You can hear how windy it was that day!!

When Eliana was tired of skiing, we took a little break and did some of this...

There you have a little bit of our afternoon skiing with the 3 year old...

Spring!!!

We are SO EXCITED about the recent sunshine and melted snow! It got up into the 60's today and it's been nice for a few days now, so we've been enjoying the time outside! Ellie has had the opportunity to play with lots of neighbors, both at our house and at theirs. I love this time of year!!

Eliana has gotten to play with Zoe, Ella and Ashlynn, Zach and Kat, Riley, Lucy, and Allie and Noel this week! Lots of kids in the neighborhood!

Dinosaurs

On Friday the Museum of the Rockies had a free demonstration of the animatronic dinosaurs that are in a show in Billings. Since Eliana likes dinosaurs so much, I thought it would be fun to take her. The demonstration was much shorter than I expected, but interesting all the same. The only dinosaur that they could bring to the MOR was a baby T-Rex, since all the others were too big to fit in the museum foyer. This particular dinosaur was largely animatronic, but had a guy inside the suit running the dinosaur for the demonstration. It was eerily real looking, and had Ellie pretty scared! The kids were allowed to pet the dinosaur, but Ellie didn't want to. Observing from a distance was all she was up for!

Exploration Works!

From Helena with Ginny

While we were in Helena, we went to Exploration Works! too, because we got in free thanks to our Museum of the Rockies membership. =D It's a hands on children's museum and is pretty cool. There are all sorts of exhibits about sound and shape and the human ear and all sorts of stuff.

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

There were tuning forks to play with, which was kind of cool.

From Helena with Ginny

Leif and Eliana made music together with flip flops and pipes.

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

I think the favorite exhibit is the one where you could cut fins in paper cups and try to get them to hover over the blowing air.

From Helena with Ginny

The little kid's section of the museum was really cool. It was all gated off so parents didn't have to worry about their toddlers running off into the other sections of the museum. They cutely named it "Little Sky Country." I liked it.

From Helena with Ginny

So did Ellie.

From Helena with Ginny

There was even a section designed for infants where parents could sit and infants could roll around and look at colorful displays without being overrun by the 2 and 3 year olds.

From Helena with Ginny

All in all, a very cool place! If you're in Helena, check it out!!

Carousel Ride

A couple weeks ago we took a trip to Helena to see our friend and photographer, Ginny. She showed us around Helena, took some family pictures, and spent some time hanging out with us before taking us back to her house and making us dinner! It was fabulous! Ellie has decided Ginny is one of her favorite people in the world, and we have deemed her "Aunt Ginny", at least until Eliana has some real aunts of her own. We started our time in Helena at the carousel, and Eliana had so much fun! She got to ride it over and over, and loved it. I loved the colors and details of the carousel, and we got some fun pictures! I can't wait to see Ginny's pictures from the day, but here are a few we got...

From Helena with Ginny

Love the bright colors! They had rings for you to reach out and grab while you were riding around, and if you got the brass ring, you won a free ride! Here it is!!

From Helena with Ginny

The carousel went around fairly quickly, and the horses were pretty high off the platform, but there were belts on each horse to hold the kids on. At first I thought it was kind of strange, but then I was happy to let Eliana ride around without wondering if she was going to try to get off during the ride or not! She didn't mind the belts at all, and they held her pretty securely.

From Helena with Ginny

I loved her expressions as she rode! Sometimes she'd just be taking it all in, and other times she would see Ginny off to the side taking pictures and giggle delightedly. It was great!

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

From Helena with Ginny

I'm pretty glad this guy has gotten into photography, because it was fun to be able to trade off the camera and take turns taking pictures! He took most of the ones while she was riding the carousel, and then I took a break from going 'round and 'round and took a few pictures from the sidelines. Next up is printing the pictures, I think, and getting around to scrapbooking them! I love that our hobbies are so complementary! ;)

From Helena with Ginny

Alien sighting!

April Fools! It's just Eliana, being her usual goofy self!

Skiing with Eliana for the Second Time

I took Ellie skiing for the first time two weekends ago at Bridger Bowl. We had a really good time.

This past weekend, Elizabeth was gone to Seattle for 4 days, so I invited my folks out to help watch Eliana. One of those days, we headed up to Bridger again. I commissioned my dad to take pictures while we skied. Thanks, Dad!

(I'm including this just to freak out Mommom. Please observe the grip Ellie has on the bar.)

I really don't know how to teach a kid how to ski other than to take her to the top and tell her to point her skis down the hill. That's pretty much what we've done both times.

Ellie did pretty well, but she refused to snow plow. She was all about the going parallel down the hill and then screaming out for me to stop her when she felt uncomfortable. She really hasn't gotten the hang of turning yet, either. On the first few runs on the second day, she'd just spin around until she was going backwards and then she's do an excellent reverse snowplow to come to a stop. She told me she needed new skis that would go straight. It looked to me like the rental shop might've given her longer skis than she had on her first day up, so we went back to check. They said we had the shortest skis they carried, so we headed to the lodge's deck for some sun, food, and hot chocolate. Afterward, things went better. Ellie's favorite part of skiing so far has been the hula hoop set up on the bunny slope for kids to duck under.

(Pay no attention to the magically appearing goggles in the third frame. I'm sure those events occurred in exactly the sequence they're presented.)

While we were skiing, Ellie kept wanting to find some way to exert independence. She seemed to decide that the lift was the place to do it, so we routinely would have disagreements as we were trying to load the chair because she did not want to ride on the same chair. She wanted to ride it by herself. I laughingly mentioned that to the lifty, who told me that they'd let a kid ride by herself if the parent approved. I didn't see that coming.

What was particularly funny to me is that Ellie seems really old and tall compared to most of the kids on the bunny slope. Bozeman is such a ski crazy town that most of the kids Ellie's age are out there skiing by themselves, ripping it up. You basically can't find kids Ellie's age on the bunny slope unless they drop by to practice skiing backwards or to ski with their younger siblings.

This is a much more typical sample of what you'll find on the bunny slope at Bridger.

See, one of the great things about Bozeman is that I look distinctly non-crazy (in comparison) for teaching my 3.5 year old to ski. I could have been this guy:

POP

The other day Eliana was in the basement with me and she brought me her little doodle pad and showed it to me, saying, "Look, Mommy! This says 'Pop!'"

And so it does. I was impressed that (1) she wrote it, and (2) she knew what it said. I asked if she could write it again, and I videoed her writing...

Afterward she told me that POP starts off the words Poppy and Popcorn. Yes, yes, they it does. I think we are in a learning spurt again as she is coming up with this stuff more and more frequently, showing new skills and growing in her knowledge and understanding of the things around her. It's a fun stage!

Even if it is a crazy stage....

(Oh, and please ignore the remnants of cookie on her face! I don't often let her look like a ragamuffin, but this was apparently one of those days!)

Wheeee... Meow.. Meow...

These two silly kitties took to playing on our swingset late in February... Silly Kitties!

Bluey the Crawdad

Can you spot him?

Try again...

Ellie finds no end to the pleasure she gets from searching for him in the tank.

She has even taken to calling him "Bluey" for his blue claws. I don't know how many times in a trip to the Children's Museum she will go over to the tank looking for "Bluey," but I'd guess it's upwards of half a dozen. She is smitten with that little crawdad!

Drinks with Friends

The other morning Eliana got out two cups and told me she had one for herself and one for her best friend Josie. Two little cups for two little girls. She filled them with water and sprinkled some vitamin water flavoring into them, and set them out for when Josie came over. Then she decided to draw a picture of the two of them, drinking their drinks together. I love it!

Josie is on the right, with pigtails. The way Ellie draws pigtails cracks me up because they look like little horns! But she drew pigtails on Josie's head, and then braids (the squiggly lines) on her own head. And notice the little (or big, in Ellie's case!) cups in their hands. I love that she is starting to set herself up for future coffee dates with friends already! =D

Puzzle Time!

Eliana and I have stopped watching TV during the day and it has provided much more time for us to do things together. One of the things we have enjoyed doing is putting together puzzles! We have a couple large floor puzzles that Eliana particularly enjoys putting together with me. Here is Eliana with a completed puzzle, the first one she put together all by herself!