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Happy Birthday, Elizabeth

While Robert was visiting, we celebrated Elizabeth's birthday. I picked up an ice cream cake from our local, super-fatty, extra-yummy ice cream store. At the core the cake was chocolate candy laced coffee ice cream, which is glorious. The crust was an Oreo and something crumble. The frosting was...delicious.

It was better than it looked in the picture. It made her very happy.

Exciting Times!

Pardon me while I go meta for a moment. Five of the last six posts here have had exclamation points in their titles.

Fire Hot!

One night while I was making dinner, a sudden cry arose from our bedroom. It was definitely Ellie's cry and it wasn't a normal cry. It seemed more on the scared than the hurt end, so I washed my hands and went in to see what she was up to.

As I entered the room, she managed to get the phrase "fire hot!" out between sobs. I couldn't figure out what she'd done, as it was obvious nothing was burning. Since I couldn't see a problem, I quit looking and comforted Ellie instead. It was then that I noticed her sneak a peek at the electrical outlet. Following her gaze, this is what I saw.


I exclaimed rather loudly, and Ellie started crying again. I took the time to explain to Ellie that she'd done something wrong, which I suspect might've been redundant. Of course, the next step was to grab the camera. Afterward, I flipped the breaker, which surprisingly hadn't popped, got a pair of leather gloves, and pulled the tweezers out. They were pretty well jammed in and were still hot. They'd lost a non-trivial portion of their mass in the ordeal.
I was somewhat surprised she'd play with electricity after the Roomba incident, but it's understandable given that the outlet and the Roomba's charger don't look that similar.

ALL CLEAR!

The pinkeye, that is. We have passed the 24 hour quarantine period (and actually, we're past the 48 hour period at this point) and Ellie is still letting us put drops into her eye (still a few tears when we do it, I'm guessing because the medicine stings, but not the kicking and screaming that we started with yesterday morning) and hopefully will for the next 8 days, but the redness is all gone, she's not contagious any more, and we don't seem to have caught it.

And you never notice just how much your eyes itch in a given day until you are avoiding touching your eyes *just in case* and washing and sanitizing your hands at every turn. Turns out my eyes itch a lot in the course of a day! Nothing too bad, just a twitch here and there that I never think twice about except when I'm trying to avoid pinkeye and paranoid about getting it!

PINKEYE!!

Yes, Leif just called from the Dr. office. (Thank you, to Dr. Benda and his staff for staying late so we could see you!!) Eliana has pinkeye. Apparently, it's not a good idea to rub your runny nose up into your eye. Turns out that's how infections are born.

Poor girl.

It doesn't seem to be slowing her down any, though, which I suppose is good. Or bad, depending on what sort of respite I thought I was going to get by having a sick daughter. Guess she won't be sleeping this one off....

Here's what I spent my weekend doing....

Living Proof Live Billings Montana from Rich Kalonick on Vimeo.

I signed up to go to the Beth Moore conference in Billings a number of months ago, and I'm glad I did. It was a good conference, and I got to spend time getting to know the women of our church better. And Leif was wonderful to take Ellie for the two-day event so that I could go and have a break. I'm sure I have more to say on the subject, but I'll just sum it up with the verse we focused on over the weekend:

"The noble man makes noble plans and by noble deeds he stands." (Isaiah 32:8)

My, what a long name you have!

Ellie has a friend named Zach. As they run around playing wildly with each other, screaming and hooting like feral children, they address each other by their given names.  Imagine two two-year-olds tearing around saying:

"Zachary? Zachary? Where are you?"
"I'm here, Eliana."

It's funny. All the funnier to me was that Ellie has younger friend who attempted to say Ellie's name. It kept coming out as "Anna." Her mother tried to teach her that it was "Eliana" at which point Ellie piped up and said, "Don't say it like that. My name is Ellie."

Choking Hazard...

Ellie has been very good about not putting things in her mouth for some time now. But recently she has started putting things in her mouth and chewing on them again, most likely as a result of her incoming molars. The other day when we were in the car I looked back and saw that she was chewing on something that she shouldn't be. I asked what she had in her mouth and she showed me. I told her to take it out of her mouth, that it wasn't food, so it didn't belong there, that she could choke on it. And so I began teaching her about choking hazards.

The next night I was relaying the story to Leif, so that he would know that I taught her what a choking hazard was and that she should know not to put anything that is not food in her mouth. And as I was relaying the story, here's what transpired:

Elizabeth: I taught Ellie what a choking hazard is yesterday.
Leif: That's good. What did you tell her?
Elizabeth: I told her that "If it's not food, and it's in your mouth, it's a choking hazard." (I was pretty proud of this definition, too, because I'd taken the time to think it through.)
Ellie: (With a fork hanging out of her mouth and a big ol' grin on her face) This fork is a choking hazard!

We cracked up immediately, which she didn't appreciate since she thought we were laughing at her. She responded by exclaiming, "Stop being funny, guys! Stop being funny!" and eventually we stifled the laughter.

So much for my well thought out definition, and so much for talking around Ellie without her taking note of what we're saying....

The blanket bandit...

If ever you see a giggling pile of blankets at our house...

From Ellie and Robert

It's sure to contain an Ellie!

From Ellie and Robert

This is one of her favorite pastimes these days... covering up completely with a blanket and waiting to be discovered. She seems to get a big kick out of it and giggles like a maniac while she is hidden. Then she giggles even more when she is found!

The alarm clock

This is Ellie playing with Robert's alarm clock one morning. He taught her to push the big button on the top to make the face light up and she was tickled that she got to play with it! Here she's using it as a phone and talking to it...

From Ellie and Robert

... and Robert breaking the news to her that it wasn't a phone after all, but an alarm clock...

From Ellie and Robert

... "Oh," said the little girl upon learning that her phone was not what it seemed...

From Ellie and Robert

... and off to see what Uncle Robert is doing!...

From Ellie and Robert

... "What are you looking at, Robert?"...

From Ellie and Robert

... Oh, the busy mind of a 2 year old...

These shoes were made for walking...

... and Robert wasn't walking in them, so Ellie took it upon herself to!

From Ellie and Robert

From Ellie and Robert

From Ellie and Robert

I'm pretty sure every child has a picture of them in a diaper wearing adult shoes, so I'm adding Ellie to the list! Somewhere my parents have a picture of me in training pants wearing Kevin Stoltzfutz's boots, so I guess Ellie's just following in my footsteps!

She adores him.

From Ellie and Robert

This is the look Ellie gets in her eyes when she sees Robert. She adores him. She watches everything he does and is careful to notice all the little details about him, down to which teeny tiny animal is embroidered on his polo shirt. In the morning she inquires after him and stands by his door calling his name, hoping to find him awake and ready to play with her. She is very picky about the people she likes, but Robert passes the test. And she not only likes him, she adores him.

He's Here!

From Ellie and Robert

Sorry for the blog silence so far this week... I have a good excuse, though.... Robert's here! It's been 4 years since his last visit so we've been spending time with him! I will try to give you a few updates on Ellie in the next couple days, though, so stay tuned for the exciting adventures of Ellie and Robert!

More funny Ellie quotes...

"Ellie, would you like spaghetti for dinner?"
"No."
"Well, what would you like for dinner?"
"Skateboard. I want to ride a skateboard."
"Silly girl! That's not food! What would you like to eat for dinner?"
"I want to go on a skateboard ride."

We had spaghetti.

My baby

Ellie snuggled up beside me this morning and we had this little conversation:

"Are you my sweetie pie?"
"Baby."
"You're my baby?"
"Yeah."

It's conversations like that that make my heart melt, especially when she tells me more often than not that she's a big girl, and not a baby anymore. It's nice to know that sometimes she is still my baby.

How does the weather KNOW?

How does the weather KNOW that it's September? Last week we were in the 90's. Hot. Dry. August. Yesterday was September 1st and, like magic, the weather changed. I think our high yesterday was 49 and it was full on fall weather. Cool. Misty. Crazy! And as if to announce that fall is officially here, in calendar and weather, look what greeted us this morning!

Yes, that would be the first snow of the year! All of our mountains have snow on them... Bridgers, Hyalite, Spanish Peaks, Tobacco Roots... Hello Fall!

Mismatched Sock Fun

I cleaned out my sock bin yesterday and found a few socks missing their mates. They've been missing for a while, so I was going to throw them out. They were fun, colorful socks, though, so I decided to keep them a little while longer, just in case I found a use for them. Well, today I found a good use for socks without matches...

Who knew a silly old sock could keep Ellie busy for so long? =D (There are more videos of the sock puppet fun coming...)

I said I wouldn't be that mom...

You know, that mom that lets her kids run around in the yard in just a diaper, looking like little ragamuffins? Yeah, I always said I wouldn't be that mom, yet here's my daughter in the August heat a couple weeks ago...

I guess I am that mom now, huh?

(to my credit, let me just say that she does wear clothes about 90% of the time, and her hair is done just about every day... she just pulls out her cute hair and complains that her clothes are too tight (though they're not! she says this about loose dresses, even!) and so I sometimes give up and let her look like this at the end of the day. but you should know that I didn't CHOOSE this look for her!)