18 months!

Today my sweet little girl is 1 1/2. This picture totally describes her personality. Fun, silly and full of life!! She is such a joy to me and I can't belive how much she is changing! She makes me laugh constantly and I can say that I really enjoy her company! Every day I feel like she can communicate with me more and more and that is so nice. I know I will probably say this at every stage-but this stage is my favorite so far! There are definitely days when I'll be looking at baby pictures of her and get sad that she's not a baby anymore, but this stage is just so much fun. Here's some things about Ella at 18 months.

*She's a pretty good eater. She'll try anything once. Now that she's completely off dairy, I'm having to introduce new things and that's been a little tricky. She LOVED mac & cheese which now she can't have unless I make it with soy cheese. A typical breakfast for her is soy yogurt with toast or waffles. Lunch is usually some sort of lunch meat or turkey hot dog with fruit and then dinner is just whatever we're having. She really likes spaghetti and this girl loves bread and carbs! She also really likes graham crackers and teddy grahams, which is her normal snack. She used to eat lots of goldfish crackers but now she can't have that because of the cheese. I need to be better about giving her veggies. She doesn't like veggies very well so I try to hide them in with other things when she eats. Sometimes she'll have butternut squash with hot dogs all mixed together. Sounds gross but she loves it!

*She's back to 2 naps a day. I'm gonna stretch the 2 naps out for as long as possible! We went to 1 nap for awhile but it just wasn't working-she was getting tired by around 10:30 or 11 and then would only sleep an hour and wouldn't take a 2nd nap. So now we do a morning nap at around 9:30 and afternoon nap around 3. She goes to bed around 7:45 and is up usually around 6:30.

*Her favorite activity right now is drawing! She also loves to go outside and just RUN! We've gone to this inflatable jump place called Monkey Joe's a few times lately and she really enjoys that. She also loves being at the Children's Museum. Her favorite shows to watch are Agent Oso, Handy Manny and Mickey Mouse Club House. Whenever I get my laptop out she runs over and says "Hot Dog!!" so I can play the Hot Dog song for her on youtube :)

*She is a total mommy's girl, although she definitely loves her daddy. She's had quite a bit of daddy time lately and I can tell she's much more attached to him than she used to be. She also is starting to recognize people more that she doesn't see very often.

*Her vocabulary grows daily and she's putting more words together (all done, all gone, i get you, let's go, etc.). she still hasn't said "I love you" and I can't wait for her to learn that one!

*She still isn't thrilled about bath time but we've seen some improvement. She's still in her infant tub. I'm thinking the issue was part fear of the water and part pain in her ears. As her ears have started getting better, her fear of baths has decreased. We're not too worried about it right now.

*I bought her a potty chair this week. I don't think she's at all ready to be potty trained but I just wanted to introduce it to her. We practiced sitting on it a few times but she just didn't get it-but she does like sitting on it!

*EAR UPDATE!! I took her to her pediatrician this week for an ear check. The chiropractor had said to get her checked after 2 weeks to make sure there was no infection and that the fluid hadn't increased. After looking in her ears, the dr. said one ear was slightly pink but nothing that she would even prescribe an antibiotic for. She said both ears still contained fluid but that was totally normaly. She said fluid can stay in their ears for up to 3 months after an ear infection. I was a little worried about how my pediatrician would react to the fact that I'd gone the natural route and not done tubes. She was actually very supportive of it! She said that as long as her hearing was fine (which it is-we had that tested) she saw no reason for tubes at this time. She said to continue what we've been doing and she would continue to check Ella's ears. She said that in May we should just schedule an appointment with the ENT to do a pressure test and make sure that everything was back to normal. So, we're continuing to just give this to God and pray that her ears will heal and not require tubes! We've seen a HUGE improvement in her disposition in the past few weeks that I can only assume is because she's starting to feel better!

Well, for anyone who's still reading this long post, thanks for reading and being interested! :) It's a joy to share our life with you!

Rachel and Tabitha's DAY OF FUN!!

Friends' reference, anyone? (Joey and Janice's DAY OF FUN! Joey: does it have to be a whole day? Janice: YES, because that's how long it takes to love me!). oh how I love Friends.

Anyways, I got to have a special day of fun with my sister Rachel last week! It was so awesome! We both randomly just said several times through out the day "I'm having so much fun!" It was really the first whole day I was without Ella ever! I was away from her overnight once for a woman's retreat, but never did she leave early in the morning (Rusty took her to his mom's) and then I just have a day of relaxation. We were blessed with awesome weather that day too so it was just perfect!

After Rusty left with Ella, I went back to bed and slept for another hour! It was great! Then Rachel and I got up and made these carrot cake pancakes that I'd seen on PW's Tasty Kitchen website. If you look at the picture of the ones on her website, they look great-the perfect consistency. These were ours. I'm not really sure where we went wrong but they were definitely not light and fluffy. They were just ok.

After breakfast, we got ready and headed out. First stop: Starbucks!

They have this new drink called Dark Cherry Mocha. Oh my, it was so good! We got it iced. If you like dark chocolate and cherry, you will love this drink!

Our next stop was JoAnns! I love that store and could spend hours looking around-it's a pretty dangerous place for me actually! I limited myself to this one purchase. I love this fabric! I got 5 yds of it I think. My initial thought was to make a tablecloth but now I keep thinking of lots of other things I want to make! I might re-cover the seats of my kitchen chairs with it...? I'm sure I'll come up with something!

After JoAnn's we went several places but I got too excited about being out and about, baby-free, and I forgot to take pics! We did go to Old Navy where I got some awesome deals and also to this cute store called Details over in the Keystone at the Crossing area.

Our next stop was the Fashion Mall! We did some looking around at Crate & Barrel and then headed to Cheesecake Factory for lunch!

Our lunch was so yummy!

After lunch, we just browsed around the Fashion Mall. Of course we made a stop at the best store there! Anthropology of course!

Rach and I trying on some super cool glasses.

It was the perfect day! Great company, great food, great shopping and great weather! Love ya Rach!

Best purchase ever!

We've been making good use of our Children's Museum Pass the past few weeks! Ella loves it there! We got to go last weekend with our good friends. This is seriously the only picture I have of Ella and her buddy Hudson where it's not a big blur. Those 2 were on the move constantly! They were so cute together. Hudson's mom Lindsay and I were laughing because as we were walking from the dinosaur exhibit, some guy stopped us and asked if they were twins! Uhm-nope! haha.


Ok-I had to include this picture. It's of Ella on the runway at the Barbie exhibit. She got ahold of my camera tonight and was pushing buttons like crazy. When I got it back from her, I found this picture-somehow Ella had added the word "Congratulations" to this picture! HA! Didn't even know my camera could do that!


I've been looking around for a flower girl dress for Ella-she's going to be the flower girl in Sarah's wedding in May. Should be interesting! So, flower girl dresses are like $60 at David's Bridal-no way am I paying that! I looked around on Craig's List and Ebay but didn't find anything. Then last week I was wandering through the kids section at Target and saw this dress with the Easter Dresses.

I think this could totally pass for a flower girl dress! And it was only $18-I can handle that :) Ella may insist on wearing the hat down the aisle too, not sure. She LOVES to wear this hat!

Now this is my best purchase ever-this little table & chairs set I got Ella! My original plan was to wait for garage sale season and get one. I looked around at goodwill but never came across one. I finally caved in and just bought one at Babies R Us with my 20% off coupon. I'm so glad I didn't wait another 2 months to buy this! To say Ella loves this would be a huge understatement. Since the moment I put it together, she's been sitting at it. Tonight she sat there and colored for over an hour! She never does one thing for that long! Money well spent!

The only sad thing is that now yet another room of my house has been overtaken by kid stuff-I guess it was bound to happen! Last week I bought Ella a kitchen set off Craig's List and I had no place to put it except our front room. So, if you come to my house, the first thing you now see when you come in the door is a lovely plastic kitchen. Oh well!

Ear update

Just thought I would write about the latest update with Ella's ears if anyone's interested!

I took Ella to the chiropractor (a christian guy who was recommended to me by a friend) on Wednesday. I felt comfortable with him the moment I met him! And Ella actually was really comfortable with him which is very unusual for her-especially lately. We talked for quite awhile about her history with ear infections, how antibiotics weren't working, and her visit with the ENT. Her ENT appt was last week and I was not impressed with the dr. at all. I left feeling flustered and confused. He, of course, recommended that she get tubes put in. That recommendation was based off the fact that she had fluid in her ears and the pressure test came back very high. Thankfully, her hearing test came back totally normal. I initially told the dr. I'd go ahead and schedule the tubes appt. But after watching the video and talking to the nurse, I started feeling very uneasy. I said I'd like to think about it before making the final decision. I did ask the ENT dr. about chiropractic treatment for ear infections. He was immediately very defensive and made me feel like an idiot for even asking about it!

So...anyways, back to the chiropractor appt. The reason I went in the first place was just so that I would know I'd researched every option before letting them poke holes in my baby's ears! Dr. Zimmer (the chiropractor), felt Ella's neck to make sure nothing was "locked" that was preventing the fluid from draining. Her neck was fine. Now-I didn't quite understand everything he told me but it went something like this. Her first ear infection was a result of switching her from breastfeeding to regular milk. I'd already concluded this myself about 6 weeks ago. I'd seen a direct correlation between dairy and her ears getting infected. She was on dairy for most of the time that she had her ear infections because I just didn't realize that was the problem. Switching her to soy got rid of the ear infection but the fluid in her ears were still there. According to Dr. Zimmer, the number of antibiotics she was on (5 or 6, I forget) contributed to the fluid in her ears because (this is where it gets fuzzy for me) her immune and digestive systems were harmed from all the anitbiotics. He explained several times how the immune system being down caused the fluid but I just wasn't getting it. But I trust him on that. The fluid in the ears causes the pressure. Once the fluid leaves, the pressure leaves also. His recommendation is to hit her hard with probiotics and immune boosters. I have a regimen to follow for the next 2 weeks. He said after 2 weeks to take her to my pediatrician for them to check the fluid in her ears. He thinks it will be either gone or greatly reduced. He said to then just periodically schedule ear checks to make sure that fluid is gone. She also needs to be taken off all dairy. There is a chance that she will still need tubes. But he said that this has proven to be very successful and he's done this with lots of kids, including his own.

So, if you're still reading...sorry that was long and boring! But, hopefully it might be a help to someone else whose child is struggling with ear infections! I'm definitely not saying tubes are wrong to get, but for us, this was just what I felt was best for Ella.

I'll keep everyone posted on whether or not this works! Oh, and the kicker was that Dr. Zimmer didn't even end up charging us for our appt. which was so nice!