3 months old!

My baby girl is 3 months old!! So hard to believe. I can hardly even remember my life before Ella. Life is just so much more fulfilling now! The only sad thing about this 3 month mark is that it also marks the point of my maternity leave being over and going back to work. I have 1 more full week with Ella and then we'll be getting used to our new schedule with me working Mondays and Tuesdays. I know I'm SO blessed to be able to work just 2 days a week so I'm not complaining. But it will be hard to be away from her for those 2 days! I have so much respect for the moms who have to work 5 days a week. I have lots of friends in that situation and I always sympathized with them but I now truely can feel how their hearts break at having to be away that much. The timing of this change in our schedule isn't great because Ella is in the process of going to a 4 hour schedule and we haven't quite gotten the hang of it. She's definitely not hungry before 4 hours between feedings, but she is still wanting to nap after the same amount of time but then wakes up before its time for her to eat again, so that messes things up a little. But overall she's still doing really well. She's been waking up a little earlier in the morning than before but I heard that is common around 3 months since that is a growth spurt time. She still sleeps about 7-8 solid hours before waking up so I'm happy with that!

We had a very good Christmas. It was really relaxing. Rusty got a wii for Christmas so we spent the majority of the day playing that. So fun! Ella did great for her first Christmas. She was a happy girl all day.

Saturday we had some friends over since we had some friends in from out of town. The boys played games while the girls talked and caught up. Here's us girls...

Mandy, Anya, me, Jenny
Here is Ella's 3 month picture!! I need to put her newborn, 1, 2 and 3 month pics up all side by side to see how much she's grown!

Rusty and I will Ella on Christmas day.

Ella on Christmas morning :)

I love this picture of Ella! She looks so cute in hats but she normally gets pretty mad after a few minutes of wearing one.

The Monday before Christmas, Rusty and I went to the Trans-siberian Orchestra concert. If you've never been to one, you are missing out!! It was amazing. The musicians get very into their music, to say the least. Here is one of the violinists.

Hope everyone has a great New Year's Eve! Not sure what our plans are yet but I'm excited to be ringing in the New Year for the first time ever with my husband and daughter. God has brought us through a lot in 2008, can't wait for 2009. Oh, and a shout out to my good friend Amber who had her baby, Kennedy, on Tuesday and got to bring her home on Christmas day!! Congrats Amber, Nathan and Keegan!

Fun week ahead...

I'm so excited for this week! My little sister Rachel is coming into town and will be staying with us for the whole week! That hasn't happened in a long time! Other than hanging with my sisters, I'll be seeing friends who I haven't seen in awhile, having my mom stay with us for 3 days and get to enjoy Rusty being home Thursday and Friday. I decided this year for Christmas I'm just making a roast in the crock pot rather than spending all day in the kitchen like I did for Thanksgiving. I'd much rather play games, watch Christmas movies and play with Ella than be cooking all day! I'm hoping to make some new traditions this year with Ella. I feel like my family doesn't have a lot of holiday traditions and I'd really like Ella to grow up having that. Does anyone have any fun family traditions that you'd like to share?

Tonight was the Christmas program and dinner at our church! Here is a pic of Rusty, Rusty's dad Mike, me and Ella :)

A Family picture of the 3 of us...

We tried for quite awhile to get some good pics with Ella in front of our tree. She is so squirmy that almost all of them came out blurry! This one is a little blurry but I still like it!

And, last but not least, Ella in her princess crown robe that my friend Michelle sent me before she was born. She finally fits into it! She looked SO cute!!

What a sweet, adorable little girl I have! I feel so blessed to have her. Every day I just love her more and more, its amazing. This year for my Christmas present to her, I'm going to give her a journal. I'm going to write in it to tell her about her life so far in the past 12 weeks. I'm going to keep recording in it, hopefully at least a few times a week to just tell her what she is doing new each week, record special memories, milestones, etc. I'd like to keep this up through out at least her first year but hopefully for longer and then I'll give it to her again for Christmas many years to come so she can read all about her life and about how much I love her!

Finally, if you are still reading this mushy post, here is a video of my sister Sarah playing with her Saturday morning. Its pretty cute!! Ella loves her Aunt Sarah!

Better late than Never!

I should definitely be doing about a million other things than blogging but I'd so much rather blog than clean! Although, I do like to clean. Weird, I know. I especially like to clean my kitchen! You can always count on that being the one room of my house that is clean, even if every other room is a disaster. Anyways...Ella has been changing so much in the past week! I feel like she looks different every day and is doing new things constantly! Her newest things right now are sucking on her hands (or sleeves, blanket, anything near by...), squealing (both when she is happy and mad!), and laughing/smiling/cooing. She's been smiling for quite awhile but now she smiles much more often and she's started the big open mouth smile. A few days ago I tried to do a little photo shoot with her in her fancy Christmas dress. I tried for about 30 minutes and could not get ONE single smile out of that girl! Of course, as soon as the dress was off (and my camera not out)...all smiles.

Daddy and Ella time on the couch!

This pic is kinda out of order, but this is when I tried the dress on her the first time to make sure it fit after I bought it.

And finally....better late than never....our master bathroom remodel is FINALLY finished!! Well, pretty much. Its been usable for quite some time (since before Ella was born), but there were lots of finishing touches that needed done. There are still a few things that need to be done (painting the trim, touching up around the ceiling, putting carpet in the closet), but its basically done. Here are the before and after pics! Sorry, the after pics somehow ended up first. I still haven't figured out how to upload my pics so they are in the right order...

Angry Angel

15 days until Christmas! How can that be! I'm so excited for Christmas this year with Ella. She's at such a fun age right now! Now that the first 9 weeks have past I think I can say that she's just now starting to be a lot of fun and not as much "work", I guess. She's such a sweet and happy baby! She had her 2 month appointment last Monday. Her stats are as follows...

*Weight 11 lb 8 oz (61st percentile)
*Height 23 inches (65th percentile)

I'm actually doubting both of those numbers. I weigh her weekly at my breastfeeding support group and 6 days prior to her 2 month appointment she weighed 10 lb 5 oz. I find it hard to believe that she gained 19 oz in 6 days and if she did, then we are cutting back on feedings! I weighed her at support group yesterday and she weighed 11 lb 9 oz. I'm sure she gained more than 1 oz since her dr appointment 8 days prior, so I think my dr's scale weighs heavy (by a lot!). I've heard that from other mom's too...that the dr.'s scale always weighs much heavier. But either way, I'm just so proud of how far we've come!! It seems like yesterday that she was the tiny baby in the 20th percentile and we were supplementing 5 feedings a day, WOW. Praise God!

Ella had 3 total vaccinations-2 shots and 1 oral. She did pretty well. The nurse was really good and did them so quickly and then immediately handed her off to me to nurse her for a minute so she would calm down quicker. She was asleep within about 60 seconds, poor girl! She was really fussy that night, I think her legs were hurting, but she slept normally that night and was like normal the next morning! Speaking of sleeping-she is basically sleeping through the night, yay!!! She sleeps 10pm-5am pretty consistantly now. Now and then she'll wake up at 3-4am but then I just feed her and she goes right back to sleep. Her final wake up time is 8am and then we start our day.

I can't believe that almost 3 months have gone by. I go back to work on Jan 5th. I'll just be working from home on Mondays and Tuesdays (10 hrs each day) and then off the rest of the week, I'm so blessed to be able to do that. It'll be hard to be away from Ella for most of the day on those days though! I'm glad Rusty's Mom will be watching her, that will make it a little easier! I'm sure I'll be calling lots at first though to see how my sweet girl is doing! I'm glad that I can get through the holidays without worrying about going to work yet. I know that once I go back to work, time will start flying by even faster! Right now it seems like my week goes by SO fast, I can't imagine how it will be starting in January.

Here are a few pics. This first one is of Ella in her cow outfit that her Aunt Melissa bought her. She looked so cute in it!!
And here is the reason for the title of this post. Yesterday at breastfeeding group they had props set up to take angel pics of the babies so people could use them for Christmas cards or whatever. I didn't get any good enough for a card, but here are a few that I took. This is one I took AFTER I fed her...

But this is one I took BEFORE I fed her, what was I thinking? HA!

Now here are a few videos. They are kinda boring but this is pretty much what Ella does all day long now! She loves to hear the sound of her own voice, its so sweet! Sorry they're kinda pixalated (is that how you spell that??), and sorry for the vomit at the end of the second one! :)