New 'do

Okay... here's today's try on the braids.

And a few favorite pictures I got while I was trying to get pictures of the braids. =D This is her new sweatshirt, too.

(She gives me this look sometimes and I don't really know what it means. I love it, though, because it's so HER.)

(And this is her being silly because I asked her to take the sippy cup out of her mouth.)

And we leave you with a smile from Ellie! Have a great day!

Blizzards, Braids, and Baby duds

Well, I was planning on going into town today to meet someone for lunch and do a little shopping. But I'm looking out the window right now and it's blizzarding. I can't see the road in front of our house, and I can't see our back fence. So I don't think I'll be going into town at all. We'll just stay all snuggled up in our warm little house and enjoy walking around without frozen ice crystals pelting us at high speeds in subzero temperatures. Today might call for some hot chocolate.

The blustery weather also called for Ellie to wear her new sweatshirt today. Yesterday I went to Old Navy because I had too many people tell me I *had* to check out the amazing sale they were having. I'm glad I did! It was a pretty amazing sale (I think it's still going on, too, if you haven't been yet) and I got several things for Ellie and even something for myself! 50% off of the stuff already marked 50% off! I got an ADORABLE cream corduroy dress for Ellie (it has pink stitching details on it, but is in size 3T so I will have to wait to see her in it!) as well as a brown tank top and pink shirt for this summer and the aforementioned cream sweatshirt with little front pocket. She's been putting her hands in that little pocket this morning and running around - she thinks it's funny! I have to agree with her...

For myself I got a brown peacoat. I love it!! It was originally $78 and I got it for $18. Woohooo! I've been wanting a shorter winter coat. Living in Texas I never thought you'd need a variety of coats, but you really do! I have my ski coat, which I wear most of the winter since it is warm and keeps the wind out. Then I have my dress coat - a knee length black wool coat. I also have a light blue fleece to wear on days that I don't need a heavy coat or windbreaker. But I needed something to wear with jeans that looks nice, that isn't too dressy and isn't a full blown parka, but is warm enough to wear on cold days like today. That's my new brown peacoat!

And as for the braids... all of my years practicing braiding those tiny troll dolls' hair (do you remember those little troll dolls that used to be so popular?) has finally paid off. Last night Ellie was sitting in my lap drinking her milk before bed and I got the brilliant idea to try to braid her hair now that it's getting longer. Her hair is SO FINE, but I was able to braid it! Now, I probably won't braid it like this to go out in public... I'll have to wait until I find a suitable way to braid her hair, but we had to take pictures of her first braids!

Chattin' the night away...

Ellie loves to talk on the phone. Unfortunately, she also loves to push the buttons on the phone, so chances are that if you're talking to her, she'll hang up on you. It's sad, but true. If you're lucky, though, she'll push the right button and call you back. That's been known to happen, too.

These pictures were taken last night while Ellie was having a chat fest with the grandparents. Daddy is usually responsible for such calls, and is also responsible for the visual record of them.

Bath Time Routine

As of last week sometime, bath time has been added to Ellie's ever-changing bedtime routine. She loves baths, and thinks it's great to spend time splashing around with her "friends," which she can name pretty well. They're little foam sea creature shapes that stick to the bathtub wall. There's "turtle," "ray," (That's a manta- or stingray) "squid" (or 'quid as she calls it), "octopus," "'horse" (because she doesn't quite get the concept that a seahorse and a real horse are different. They both say "nay" after all!), "stars" (the good ol' starfish) and "crab." She loves them. She also loves her rubber ducky and gives him kisses! Lucky duck.

He gets a bath, too. As she is learning how to wash herself, she is washing him off, too!

(Notice the ear scrubbing going on in that last photo?)

It's wonderful that she loves baths so much. And it's something she looks forward to, so that makes the going to bed routine that much more fun.

Control

Currently, Ellie seems to value being in control of a situation over receiving a positive outcome. Case in point, when she takes a bath, she would much rather be in control of the cup which dumps water on her hair than allow me to pour the water. Of course, when she controls the cup, much more water runs into her face and eyes, but that doesn't seem to matter. She lifted the cup. She dumped the water. She cheers at her accomplishment through clenched eyes. I certainly encourage the cheering because she is managing to get her hair washed, somewhat, and because she's overcoming her fear of getting water in her face.

She's also taken to climbing into her crib when it's time for bed. I taught her to use my hands as footholds as she shimmied up the bars. It was great fun, which of course was a good enticement to climb into bed. It was also interesting because it was another chapter in the ever morphing going-to-bed ritual. Once crib climbing was discovered, pushing the CD player's play button lost its luster and closing the door and turning out the light were long forgotten. Of course, going to bed became a less contentious process once she decided that climbing in was her idea and that she chose to scale the bars.

The last few nights, however, climbing into bed hasn't worked so well; she's decided that she needs to do it by herself. No footholds provided by dad will be accepted. She's tried piling things to create a starting point from which to shimmy up, but to no avail. She can't get in on her own, yet. Eventually, she or I get tired of her attempts; she'll wander off to something more interesting in the room and/or I'll just pick her up and drop her into the crib. Then she gives me a sort of "You didn't do the ritual right, so I don't have to go to sleep" look and proceeds to bounce around her crib, rather than lay down to get tucked in. It's a bummer because I don't get a good night kiss and she doesn't seem to fall asleep for an hour or two.

The going-to-bed ritual has also picked up running off to give Mommy a kiss. I used to suggest it to her and she'd go find Elizabeth, or more likely, try to find Elizabeth and get distracted on the way, at which point Elizabeth would hear her getting into something, find her, and ask her if it was time for a kiss. Now she'll decide it's that time, say something about "kiss," and go running off to find Mom, without prompting.

In other news she seems to moving out of the peek-a-boo phase into the ring-around-the-rosy phase. Great squeals of joy follow every song ending "down!" which she will merrily interject at any point beginning with "ashes, ashes." She's now working on the phrase "play again" to tell me it's time to get up and restart singing and dancing. In case you're wondering, the song's title seems to be "Ashes, Ashes" according to Ellie.

11 Socks.

What's that you say? 11 socks? Oh. Here. Let me finish the list:

11 socks
5 hair bows
2 tubes Orajel

That's what I found behind Ellie's crib today.

When I went in to get her from her nap, she'd stuffed Star Bear and Duck behind the crib, with their little heads peeking out over the top as if watching her. She stood on her tippy toes, trying to peer over the back of the crib saying, "Bunny! Bunny!" So I climbed under the crib and reached WAAAAAY back and grabbed the bunny she'd thrown back there. It was then that I thought it might be a good idea to actually move the crib (without her added 25 lbs, of course) and see what else was back there. And that's when I found 11 socks, 5 hair bows, and 2 tubes Orajel.

So you see, sometimes it's not the washing machine that eats the socks. It's the crib.

Let's just get one thing straight...

...Ellie is CUTE.

And now that we've established that, here are a few more pictures for you:

She also seems to be thoroughly engrossed in Sesame Street this morning.

18 month checkup

Do I look frazzled?

... Because Ellie didn't take a nap today. Not even a little bit. Not even at all. She was no where ready to go down for her nap around 1, when she normally does. And she was still running around like a wild thing when Taylor dropped Corinne for a bit this afternoon. Of course, they had a grand time and played and played and played, but it means I've been paying for it this evening. No nap = whiny Ellie. She'll be going to bed early tonight.

But other than the general sleep deprived crankiness, Ellie was just plain adorable today. She said or did several funny things, as is customary lately. She is saying many more sentences lately, including things like "Where'd it go?" and "That's a shoe." as well as long babbly strings of things that we're pretty sure she intends to have meaning, but don't. One of the cute things Ellie did today was to run up to Corinne and stop right in front of her face and say, "Hi Corinne!" She enunciated it very well and it was pretty cute. She did it several times and, thankfully, Corinne didn't seem to mind. Also in the lineup of cute things Ellie said today was "shadow" while she pointed to her shadow on the wall at the doctor's office. It's amazing how many words she seems to know that we don't realize.

Speaking of the doctor's office, Ellie had her 18 month appointment today. She is doing very well and is above average in everything, and perfectly proportioned, according to Doctor Benda. I learned today, though, that Ellie is remembering things. Not just routine things that happen every day, but things like her last doctor appointment. 5 shots. Not a nice memory. So when we reached the door to the doctor office, she wouldn't go in. When I carried her in, she was fine until we talked to the lady at the window. Then there were tears. The tears were soon abated by the slide and other toys in the waiting room. She had lots of fun sliding and playing with blocks and cars until we were called back. As soon as she saw Dr. Benda's nurse (who administers the shots) she started crying uncontrollably. She did NOT want to be there! Now, this is the first time we've seen anything like this from her at the doctors. Usually it is no problem at all! But Dr. Benda said she is probably remembering things much better now, so he's not surprised she responded that way. Poor girl! The good news is that she didn't have to get any shots today and we don't go back for 6 months. So hopefully she'll remember this visit as a good one! Here are her stats:

height: 2 ft 9 inches (75th percentile)
weight: 25 lbs 4 oz (65th percentile)
head circumference: 18.5 inches (65th percentile)

So she's doing well! After the doctor appointment we headed to Walmart, since we only had time for one stop before naptime. If I'd known she wasn't going to take a nap I would have gotten the rest of my shopping done, too! Oh well - tomorrow then. But while we were at Walmart we got Ellie a new diaper bag. Here it is!

Yep, it's a little pink backpack just for Ellie! We're down to carrying a couple diapers, wipes, and a change of clothes and leaving the big diaper bag in the car. So it's time for a little bag! Friends of ours in Iowa had their son carrying his stuff in a little backpack and I've always thought that was a brilliant idea. So we're going to try it. So far Ellie LOVES her backpack and she wore it around the house a good part of the afternoon. I think it's adorable. And I love that it's pink. (Never thought I'd hear myself say THAT!!)

All right... the wee one is in bed asleep now, so I'm going to go spend some time with Leif. It's been a long day and I need some relaxing! Goodnight!

Happy Birthday (and a half) To You!

Terry and Eric share a birthday, so to celebrate we drove out to Billings for lunch. We ate at the Texas Roadhouse and the whole family was there!

Pictured from left to right:
Elizabeth, Eliana, Gayle, Rolan, Wenda, Terry, Eric, and Leif

There was, of course, singing for the birthday boys, and even a few gifts. We had more food than we could comfortably eat, but it was all delicious. Even Ellie thought so.

Of course, her idea of delicious is a finger dipped in barbecue sauce, but she enjoyed it none the less. Despite it being well past her nap time, she handled herself well and was cheerful. She even gave kisses all around and told Grandad and Eric happy birthday. Well, 'birthday' at least, since she hasn't quite mastered the two together yet.

Ellie's cutest moment by far, though, was when she very seriously handed the waiter her sippy cup and said "Water!" after he came by and brought us new drinks. She doesn't miss anything!

So Happy Birthday, Terry and Eric. (And a happy belated birthday to my Dad, whose birthday was last Saturday!) and a happy half birthday to you, too, Eliana. The last 18 months have been much cuter thanks to you.

Little Cutie

I found this priceless picture among Leif's practice shots using two flashes. She got to be his test subject and, apparently, decided that "test subject" meant she got to make faces at the camera. I wish I could say that 1) I've never seen her make this face before, or 2) I don't know where she gets it from, but this next picture proves otherwise. It was taken a few months ago:



Here is another "test subject" picture showing her doing one of my favorite things: reading. While playing by herself, she is often content to sit down and "read" books to herself. I love it.

Her love of books extends beyond reading them, too, and includes sitting on them. Here she is, IN a box of magazines, watching TV. Sit on the soft, comfy bed? No. Sit in the window seat? No. Sit in the Pack-n-Play? No. But give her a box of magazines to sit in and she is content.

Yes, we're still alive...

... We just haven't been taking many pictures of Ellie lately. Not much has been going on, I guess. And so, it's been a week since we've blogged. Eeek! I know, I know... it's completely unacceptable. So to make it up to you, here is a little video of Ellie singing "Old MacDonald":



This is her favorite song lately. She comes into the room and says, "Donald E-I-E-I" when she wants to sing it. So far we really only do the duck, cow, and cat, but it's fun anyway.

In other news, Ellie can now go up and down the steps all by herself. She still does it on her hands and knees for the most part, but is very good at it. She's very careful about it, too.

She has also gotten quite proficient at talking on the phone. She carries the phone around nodding and pointing and talking about the things she sees around the house. She also babbles long strings of "words" very seriously! Unfortunately for the person on the other end, it's hard to know what she's talking about unless you can see what it is that she's pointing to. The other day she told Mommom all about the bunny, moon, trees, and cars she could see outside. Then when I asked if I could talk to Mommom, Ellie told me, "No." and continued to babble at Mommom. I think she had a 30 minute conversation all by herself!! She did NOT want to share the phone and threw quite a tantrum when I insisted that the conversation was over.

And yes, we have landed ourselves squarely in the middle of tantrum-ville. Ellie thinks she's two, with all of the kicking, screaming, and "No!" outbursts that come with it. Thankfully she is delightful much more often than not, and we enjoy most of our time with her, making the tantrums a little easier to live through.

I did take a couple pictures today of the types of things Ellie is doing lately, but I have to pull them off the camera still, so I'll save that for a little later. In the meantime, enjoy the video and I'll try not to wait so long to post again!!

Ellie's New Dress

On Sunday Eliana wore the new dress Uncle Robert made her for Christmas. When I pulled it out of the closet, she looked at it and exclaimed, "Robert! Robert!" I was pretty amazed that she remembered it was from him, especially since I'm not very good at reminding her of people we don't get to see very often. But she did remember! After lunch (when we'd taken the dress off her so it wouldn't become a mac-n-cheese victim) she brought the dress to me again saying, "Robert!" So here she is in her Sunday finery:

When I was trying to get her picture, she wouldn't stand still, so I had to sit her in the chair. Then she sat just fine, but wouldn't look at the camera. So I finally resorted to the age old trick of having her say "CHEESE!" It worked! Sort of... The picture above is cute, but the one below is pretty exemplary of the face I got in most of the pictures.

I did not get a picture of the back of the dress, but I will sometime. The engineer in my brother comes out in the most delightful ways and the back of this dress is one of them. He designed it in such a way that you don't have to fight with a toddler to hold still to get the perfectly tied bow in the back. In fact, the bow is fixed (and perfect, at that) and to tighten it all you have to do is pull the streamers to cinch the dress. It's ingenious! And beautiful... Thank you, Uncle Robert!

New Years Hike

This year, for the first time since the 70's, the powers that be plowed the road up to Hyalite. So on New Years Day we took advantage of the plowed road and decided to go for a hike. Amazingly, it was CROWDED up at the reservoir! We had a hard time finding a place to park in the lot. There were people everywhere enjoying the beautiful day and the snow. And we joined them. We put Ellie in her sled and wrapped her up cozy:

Then we set off down the trail with her in tow. We took the trail that winds along the edge of the reservoir. I remembered it being fairly level. I was wrong. It starts out level enough, but soon there were little hills that made the way more difficult. It wouldn't have been so bad, really, except for the fact that on the downside of one such hill Ellie's sled caught Leif's foot and overturned, tossing her into the snow. She didn't much like that and require that we carry her the rest of the way. Every time we suggested she get back in the sled she'd cry, "No sled! No!" Poor girl. As we were pushing naptime, we decided to take the straight and level way back and walk on the lake. It was frozen solid (solid enough for plenty of other people to be out on it!) so I wasn't worried. We made our way off the trail and waded through hip deep snow to reach the ice. It was at this point that I wondered why I hadn't bothered to wear snow pants. We started trekking across the lake and I felt my feet getting wet. I looked down and found myself standing in a couple inches of water and freaked out. To me, a puddle of water on a very deep frozen lake couldn't be a good sign. But Leif assured me that it was just the snow on top the ice melting, so I quickly scurried to the packed down ski and snowmobile trails a few feet away. But as I trudged through the water to get to the packed down snow, I did wonder why I hadn't bothered to put on my snow boots, either...

As we got closer to the boat ramp and parking lot, we saw more and more people. Crazy people. I know many of you reading this think we are crazy for going on a hike in sub-freezing temperatures in the mountains, but I assure you that we were on the sane end of the spectrum. In addition to the other people we saw walking and cross country skiing, there were...

ice fishermen



snowmobilers
(I know the lake is frozen and all, but really?)

And my personal favorite and the winner of the Craziest of the Crazy award...

Scuba Divers!!!

So there you have it. We aren't so crazy after all. Do you see the blocks of ice those people are sitting on?? That confirms that the lake was definitely frozen through. But scuba diving? In the cold? At the beginning of January? UNDER THE ICE??? That, my friends, is crazy.

And so we went back to our car, with Ellie crying to go "nigh night" and headed back down the mountain. We passed the sledders on our way down and were glad they plowed the road this year. It was definitely a good way to start off 2008.

Picture Book

Ellie is not so interested in having books read to her lately. She really wants to sit down and look at the pictures. She wants to name the things she sees. And she loves it when you do this with her. The other day I was looking at a book with Ellie when Leif caught us with the video camera. So here is Ellie demonstrating her mastery of the picture book: (It's over 4 minutes long, so it might take a while to load)

Ellie's New Boots

For Christmas Eliana got these kitty rain boots from Mommom and Poppy. She loves them and she has now mastered putting them on:

New Years

We had a New Years party this year. There were lots of, well, toddlers:

It seems that we are, indeed, in the toddler phase of life and so are all our friends. So because we figured none of them were going to a New Years party any more than we were, we decided to have a toddler-friendly party. What does that mean, you might ask? Well, really it means that our party lasted from about 5-8pm. And then we all went our separate ways so the kiddos could get to bed.

Still, Ellie thought it was great. She thought the party was just so she could play with her friends, and she and Zack ran and shrieked. It was mass chaos, but it was fun. The menfolk stood around and discussed geekery, and the womenfolk caught up on life. And the kids... well, the kids made a giant mess by pulling out *all* off Ellie's toys. But it was fun.

And this, well, this is the last picture that was taken of us in the year 2007:

After we put Ellie in bed we listened to the crazy neighbors shooting off fireworks. And we listened in disgust as the debris rolled down our roof because our neighbor was shooting them off directly over our house from his driveway. Ergh. But the house did not catch fire, so I guess all is well. We watched a movie and saw in the new year before dozing off to sleep for the first time in 2008.

Happy New Year!!

A day in the life of me.

This comic is a lot of what living with Leif is like. Especially when he has his wife-canceling earphones on...

Reading to Ellie

Because one of her favorite things in the world
is when Daddy reads to her.

Things you can't very well take pictures of

• Ellie seems to need time by herself. It seems like she needs more of it on days when Elizabeth and I are both home. This morning she went to her room saying "night, night." I followed her in and asked if she needed to go to bed. She said, "No, bye." I headed out of the room and closed the door a bit. She ran over and closed it the rest of the way. About an hour later she knocked on the door to let us know she was ready to get out.
• Last Friday night when I when I got home from work, Ellie and I were playing in the living room. Elizabeth came over and hugged me from behind. Ellie got quite jealous. Often times when Elizabeth and I hug or snuggle, Ellie comes over, joins in, and sighs happily. Not this time. She whined profusely apparently trying to tell Elizabeth that it was her time with daddy. To emphasize the point, she pushed Elizabeth away saying, "Bye."
  
• Eliana's learned a few new words of note: tiger, empty, clouds, stars, earth, planet, sun, moon, pizza, and Merry Christmas. She seems to understand and apply the concept of empty well, which is entirely useful when it comes to milk. She's not quite so clear on stars. On a cloudy night she'll often call street lights stars. She's more accurate on a clear night. She doesn't actually eat pizza; crust perhaps.
  
• Last night I was reading books to Ellie before bed. Each time we finished a book, I'd tell her to put the book away and go get another one. After the fourth book, she refused my imperative, saying "No. Night, night." She went to bed and to sleep without a fuss. Although she may appear angelic on the blog, she historically didn't go to sleep quite so easily. Lately, though, she has rather been more pleasant to put to bed. Once she's said "night, night," she'll usually go down fairly easily.
• As previously noted, Eric gave Ellie a stuffed kitty for Christmas. While it's not displaced starduck as her favorite bedtime stuffed animal, it is her favorite during the day. Stereotypically, she totes it about by the arm. The cat is definitely preferred to the baby doll Elizabeth and I gave her for Christmas and is much more likely to go in her new toy stroller.
• As previously noted, Ellie surreptitiously picked the peas out of the pasta Elizabeth gave her. A few nights ago, Elizabeth and I were eating chicken with a side of peas. I gave Ellie some chicken. She wouldn't eat it, but she readily sucked down all the peas I would give her.
  
• Yesterday we took Ellie to the clinic to get the second part of her flu shot. The anticipation was much worse than the actual stick, which was not the case for the first shot back in October. The lollipop was a more than adequate salve. She was even willing to say thank you for it despite the pain in her leg. The girl likes her sweets.
• Ellie's phone conversation skills are a bit lacking. Her end of the call consists of "Hello...Yeah...Yeah...Bye."
• Cheesy scrambled eggs remain a favorite food.
  

Christmas Videos

Eliana opening her present from Mommom and Poppy:



Ellie and Daddy having fun in the wrapping paper mess: