Big News!

I thought I had pics to attach to this post but I'm not sure where they went! BUT, just wanted to finally announce our big news-Ella's going to be a big sister!! My due date is June 14th. We're very excited! We've had 1 ultrasound and today I heard the heartbeat again so I felt comfortable announcing it. It was hard to wait this long! We had a bit of a hard road getting here, again-not as hard as with Ella but it still wasn't easy. We lost a pregnancy about a year ago and then it just took a little while to conceive again-so we're just very happy and excited! I'll try to post some pics soon!

Major Catch Up

Is anyone still reading my sad little blog? It has been so neglected! I have nothing to say for myself other than I have been really lacking motivation! I feel like we've been in survival mode a little bit for the past month or so. Ella's been battling another ear infection (JUST when we thought we were rid of those pesky things!), so sleep has been hard to come by. If I can manage to take a shower, get Ella dressed and get dinner on the table, I feel like my day has been a success!

But in the midst of lack of sleep and sickness, we've been doing great and have been enjoying Fall! Yay for Fall.

Doesn't Ella look so OLD in this picture? I have really no reason for posting it other than that. And because she's cute!

I'm going to try and recap our last month or so! We had the Fall birthday celebration at Rusty's grandma's house so Ella got to have another birthday party! Here are some shots with her great granny, who she calls "Baga"-you can tell she loves her a lot!

A few weeks ago we went to Zoo Boo for the first time. It was fun but I think Ella was a little too young to enjoy it as much as the older kids did. She did love the candy and especially the safari animals since her favorite movie is The Lion King right now! Here she is with her friend Ally! In case you can't tell, Ella was wonder woman and Ally was a strawberry :)

Super Ella!

Ella is very shy to strangers and is extremely clingy to me right now, so it always surprises me that she isn't scared of these giant animals! She likes the big dinosaur that walks around The Childrens Museum too.

I've been trying to be better about staying at home and finding things (other than watching TV) to do. So a few weeks ago I made my own play-dough for the first time. It was a hit! Its so much softer and easier to work with than store bought play-dough! I'll definitely make it again. Here's a link to the recipe I used in case anyone wants to try it: Play-dough recipe

Ella doesn't look super excited about it in this picture, but she really does love it! I got out all my cookie cutters and she cut out lots of fun shapes. At the last garage sale I went to, I got a ton of play-dough equipment for $1! So she's been having lots of fun with that too.

I was so excited to take Ella trick or treating this year! Unfortunately, I took her to the dr. on the Friday before Halloween and she had a pretty yucky double ear infection. I decided to go ahead and do 1 round of antibiotics to see if we could just get rid of it that way since I'd already tried my natural approach a few weeks ago and it didn't seem to work. They put her on omnicef, which I know she had last winter. For some reason this time around, her system just did not handle it well and it resulted in some unpleasant side effects. They hit hard on Sunday after church and we decided to forgo trick or treating. I was so bummed! Her costume was just too hard to get off and on and we were having to do very frequent diaper changes at that point. So instead, she put on her tutu and fairy wings and helped Daddy hand out candy. Every time the door bell rang, she ran to the door and said "more friends are at our door!" At some point we'll have to tell her that not everyone who comes to our door is a friend, but at this point, it's the only thing that makes her not scared of people coming over! Here she is, looking pretty happy considering the rough day she had!

The other new thing we've been doing is the sensory tub. I'd seen it on a few blogs and had wanted to try it for awhile but just never got around to it. It is a HUGE hit! I would say she has spent at least 2 hours a day off and on since I put this out. The idea is to change it up every once in awhile with different textures and items. I know some girls do it seasonally. I also have seem them ranging in sizes to big ones that kids can sit in, to pretty small ones. I had originally wanted to use dry beans but couldn't find any cheap ones. Then I saw one girl who had used oatmeal so I decided to do that. I just used bowls and scoops from her kitchen and a few other things and tossed it all in. I can't tell you how much she loves it! If anyone tries this, I will warn you, using oatmeal is messy! It starts to break down pretty quickly and leaves a powdery dust. But it does clean up really quickly. I also made the mistake of turning my back for quite awhile the first time Ella used this. Here is how it went.

Started off pretty great!

She figured out after about 20 minutes that she could fit inside it!

It kind of went down hill from there-notice the oatmeal, everywhere!

Oh well. It took all of 5 minutes to clean up. And she told me about 100 times "mommy, I having FUN!", so that made it worth it! Now its the first thing she asks for when she wakes up. And she's gotten much better about keeping the oatmeal in the tub and she hasn't gotten back in it since that first time. I think i will try beans next time just for something new and hopefully a little less messy.

Last Saturday we went to have some family pics taken! We've actually never gone anywhere to do family pics, and I haven't done any professional (well, Target) pics with Ella since her 1st bday! Its just always such a hassle to coordinate, plus Ella just has never done well with getting her pics taken by someone other than me. But my friend Erin just started her own photography business and she had this really pretty location that she used. So I figured with it being outside, Ella might do a little better. So we scheduled but, but unfortunately it was only 42 degrees out when we did these pictures! We were only outside for about 30 minutes and I was hugging and warming Ella up between pics. She wasn't a very happy girl. She really wanted to explore and play but it was just too cold. But despite her unhappy mood, I think Erin got some good shots and I was happy overall with how they turned out! One little smile from Ella would have been nice, but oh well. Maybe next time! Here are a few (for anyone who hasn't seen them on facebook).

Ok, I think I'm caught up! Whew! I'm going to try hard to have more regular posts from now on!

2 years ago...

Two years ago today, I was in the hospital, getting ready to have a baby! Hard to believe it's been 2 years. Best 2 years of my life for sure!

Ella's bday party was yesterday. We just ended up doing a family party and that worked out great. Ella was a little overwhelmed by all the presents! She just wanted to stop and play with each thing. Overall she did great and got lots of fun new toys! Minnie Mouse was definitely the theme of the day-I certainly hope she loves Minnie for a LONG time!

Here was her Minnie cake...I did NOT leave myself enough time to make this! I'm not sure what I was thinking-I didn't start icing it until about 2 hours before the party. It was much harder to do than I thought it would be and I didn't even ice the edges. Oh well! It definitely wasn't perfect but I don't think Ella cared :) One mistake I made was showing her the cake at the beginning of the party instead of right before we were about to eat. All she wanted to do was eat that cake! I ended up putting her in time out at her own party because she was just out of control!


Looking at her gift pile, ready to dive in!


I was so excited to find this-its a Minnie Mouse oven mitt! She loves to "borrow" mine and pretend to bake. This also came with a little mini cupcake pan, spatula and decorating kit. Cute!

Aunt Rachel got her these dress up Minnie Shoes! They are so cute! Today all she wanted to do was twirl around in her Minnie Shoes :)

This was probably her favorite present of the day-a Minnie Mouse and Car from Uncle Chris and Aunt Sarah. We were able to skype them in during present time! (oh, if you are wondering about that bump on her head...she had a little run in with a brick fireplace-so sad)

Time for Cake!

This was about the best family picture we got-Ella was NOT in the mood all day!

Reading her new book with Aunt Rachel

Much happier after her nap!

Here are some things about Ella at 2 years old...

*she's still mostly a mommy's girl, but has gotten MUCH more attached to daddy

*not a great eater lately-her favorite meal is cheese in a tortilla and grapes

*talks so well! her favorite phrase is "oh goodness!" and "I'm Ok Mommy!"

*sleeps from about 8pm-6:30am, 1 nap a day, usually around an hour

*loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, Agent Oso, Pooh Movies, Finding Nemo and Cars

*Loves reading-her favorites are Pokey Little Puppy, Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I love you, and her "Alice book"-a pop up Alice in Wonderland book

*talks on her play phone a lot-mostly to Aunt "Fra" (Sarah)

*Has gotten much better about recognizing people and going to them, much to the delight of the grandparents

*In mostly 2T clothes but some of her 18 and even 12 month clothes still fit!

*Giving kisses is probably her favorite thing to do-she probably kisses me at least 50 times a day-love it!

I'll probably go back and edit when I think of more things but my mind is going blank! She's just a fun loving and sweet little girl. She's so affectionate and sweet-most of the time! We can tell she's transitioning into the phase where she will really be testing her boundaries and seeing what she can get away with. So far she is very responsive to time outs and the occasional spanking. We have not had to spank her too many times but I can already tell she is staring to work the system with the time outs, so spankings may be happening more often in our house. I'm thankful for her sweet spirit and look forward to seeing her personality develop more and more!

I was catching up on some of my regular blogs today and realized what a post slacker I've been! So here is my attempt to catch up!

I realized I hadn't even posted 4th of July pics, oops! So here are a few. Here is Ella with her Uncle Chris, who (whom?) she loves dearly. She'll be so sad to see him and Aunt Sarah leave in just a few weeks-they are moving to Texas!

Ella's obsession with Mickey Mouse continues.

Jen-this one's for you! We had a play date a few weeks ago and one of the little boys, Tyler, had this cool Mickey Mouse sippy cup. Ella just fell in love with it! So a few days after they left, I found a 3 pack at Walmart. I intended to give them to her one at a time, every once in awhile. But she saw them before I could put them away and just got SO excited that I just let her have them all :) She is pretty much always with these things!

Since it's been so hot here, we've been going to the Children's Museum a lot. Ella loves these wooden bears in the PlayScape area. She loves to hug them.

A few weekends ago we went to my Aunt's to celebrate my cousin's 19th bday.

I think Ella is saying "why are you taking pictures when we could be eating cake?"

Practicing her moves

Visiting my aunt always makes me want to move to the country! They have lots of wide open space and just built this beautiful wrap around porch, which Ella loves to run on!

Next up-State Fair! Hopefully we can go a few times this week as long as we can handle the heat!

A Little Update

I just had to jot down some of the stuff Ella has been up to. She is just so stinkin FUN! When Ella was a baby-probably around 3 months old-I remember being a little bummed. She just wasn't that FUN. She was cute and sweet and I loved her a ton, but I just didn't have as much fun with her as I thought I would. Is that horrible to say? Then a friend of mine said that she was much more of a "toddler person" than a "baby person". At the time, I thought "No way, I am totally a baby person. I love babies!" But now that I have a toddler...I SO am a "toddler person". Not that I didn't love the baby stage and often miss holding, rocking and nursing Ella, but I have to say I just enjoy the stage she's in right now so much! Rusty and I were talking the other night about starting to think about baby #2, if God blesses us with another one, and Rusty said "I wish they could just be born at like, 6 months old." :)

Ella is just such a joy to us. She talks up a storm and it is so funny! It's amazing how much her vocabulary has expanded, just in the past few weeks. She knows pretty much all her colors-she is consistent with orange, yellow, pink, purple and black. She's been doing better with green and red, but blue is still iffy. She can say her numbers 1-10 but not always in the right order :) She knows most of her animals but we need to work on the animal sounds, I've been slacking in that area!

Her interest in drawing/coloring has gone down a lot but she loves to play with play-doh. She also loves to just sit and read books or do puzzles. She's also discovered her shopping cart, which she's had for months but hasn't shown much interest in until now. I line some of her play food on my lowest pantry shelf and let her "shop" out of mommy's pantry. That will keep her busy for the longest time! She also has started pretending and its so cute to watch. Most of the time I'm not really sure what she is pretending to do but she gets really into it! She loves to pretend to be asleep, play hide and seek, and build a "house" out of couch cushions. She loves to touch the ceiling when Rusty holds her up high and she loves to climb up me with her feet and then flip over.

One of her newest sayings right now is "Oh gosh!"-I'm not so happy about this one. I try not to say "gosh"-I'm not really offended by it, but I'd just rather her not say it. She heard it on Mickey Mouse of all places, he says it all the time. She's also gotten really into watching the movie "Cars". Cute movie, but they say "idiot and moron"-why? So far she hasn't picked these words up. I don't want to be the super overprotective mom that doesn't let her kids watch anything, but I don't want to wait until she starts saying those words to address the issue. Not really sure what to do!

As far as her vocabulary goes, I feel like she really knows most common household words and can communicate what she wants pretty clearly. It does usually just come out as a bunch of babble with just a few recognizable words but it gets the point across at least! Her sentences are short and missing words but I think she does really well! Her memory is also starting to develop more. She retained a lot of what we did this week and has continued talking about it for days after! She remembered going to Monkey Joes and the Childrens Museum. Today we hung out at my sisters's apartment and Ella remembered exactly the spot where she had found a rock the last time we were there-probably 3 weeks ago now!

This Friday, Rusty and I are celebrating our anniversary by going to Kings Island and IKEA! Yippeee! My sister is watching Ella for us all day-I will definitely be missing her but it will be so nice to get away for a day!

Summer Days

We are having such a great summer. I can't remember the last time I enjoyed summer so much! Normallly I'm not the biggest fan of summer but this summer is different. Ella (like all kids I guess) LOVES being outside. On most days, we're outside more than we're inside. Even 90 degree weather hasn't bothered me like it usually does which is a blessing! Here's a little of what we've been up to the past few weeks.

Ella loves running down the hill in our back yard. Actually, it's really just a small slope. But to her, it's like climbing Everest! The angle of this pic does make it look pretty steep but it really isn't. She likes to climb to the top and then run down, saying "WEEEEE!" Then she says "Fun! Again!"

Ella also loves taking her babies for walks in their stroller. This usually ends badly, with her getting tired of walking and wanting me to carry her (and the stroller and the baby) home.

Last week we went to the zoo-probably for the last time this summer. Ella was surprisingly not into the animals and wanted to just run. Everywhere. She didn't even like the dolphin show, which surprised me. She kept saying "all done!" Stinker.

And...most of our afternoons are spent like this. Outside, playing in the water and taking a break to eat a popsicle.

After Rusty gets home from work, Ella likes to help him water the flowers (please ignore our totally dead hanging plants that died while we were in FL. We are trying hard to bring them back to life but I think it's a hopeless cause).

Guess that's about it! Hope your summer is going as great as ours!

Our Disney Vacation!!

We've been back for over a week and I'm just now getting to blog about this! It's hard getting back in the swing of things!

We had such a great vacation! God is so good and really answered a lot of prayers! Things went very smoothly for the most part, we were all healthy (HUGE answer to prayer) and the weather was-well, good enough I guess :) The next time we go (definitely going back when Ella's a little older), it might be a good idea to go in the spring or fall when it's not so hot! It was in the mid 90's and so so humid every day! Luckily there are lots of air conditioned little shops to duck into and spend lots of money at!

We left on a Tuesday night. Rusty, Rachel and I left our house around 5:30 and headed to Rusty's Mom's to pick up Ella. We got on the road around 6:20. Here's Ella-ready for the long road trip! Other than hitting some bad weather, the drive to FL went pretty well. Ella fell asleep around 10 and slept until 2:30 when we stopped for gas. She didn't fall back asleep until 4ish and then slept until we stopped for breakfast at 7. We got to Disney around 11:30.

Once we got all checked in, we all took naps and then headed out to Magic Kingdom! As you can see, Ella is just super excited to be here! :)

We didn't do much that afternoon. Rusty and Rachel went out to ride some rides while I stayed with Ella and rode some kiddie rides. She really liked the Pooh ride although it did scare her a little.

The next day (Thursday), we went to Epcot. Despite the horrible heat, Ella managed to fall asleep for over an hour. (she's holding on tight to the pooh and Eeyore we got her at magic kingdom-she held on those and played with them every day!)

While Ella was napping, we walked through a lot of the different countries. And we had a Snow White spotting!

Once Ella woke up, I decided to go ahead and wait in line to get pics taken with all the Mickey's Clubhouse characters. We had to wait for about an hour but I'm glad we got the pics! Here's Ella waiting in line. She was pretty good!

She doesn't look it in this picture, but she was actually VERY excited about seeing Mickey Mouse! She saw him while we were waiting in line and had a mini meltdown because she wanted to run to him and give him "pats"-which is what she does to show love, it's very sweet! More on that later...

I didn't put the rest of the pics but we also got pics with Donald, Daisy, Pluto and Goofy (who she was scared of).

Next day was Hollywood Studios, which we all really liked. Tower of Terror was a really good ride! We also got pics taken with Handy Manny! I really wanted to ask him what his intentions are with Kelly but I didn't :)-everytime Rusty and I watch this show we wonder if him and Kelly will ever get together. Ha!

Ella's favorite part of the whole trip was probably seeing a live playhouse disney! it was so well done. They had Mickey's Clubhouse, Little Einsteins, Tigger & Pooh and Handy Manny. It was basically a big puppet show but it was really cute and Ella was just glued the whole time.

After the show, Rachel and I went to ride Tower of Terror while Rusty took Ella around.

We went to Downtown Disney in the evening on Friday. Here is Rusty and I in front of the "Jenny" from Forrest Gump!

Ella exploring some of the statues and giving them "pats"

Rachel and I trying to cool off!

I don't have any great pics from Animal Kingdom but we did go there! That is where we went Saturday and it was just so busy and so hot. Rachel and I rode the water ride first thing and we got so wet that I just felt disgusting the rest of the day and neither of us felt like being in any pics!

Saturday night, Rachel watched Ella so Rusty and I could head back to Downtown Disney for a date night! Despite it pouring down rain, we had a great time! We ate at this amazing Irish place, wish we had it here! I wanted to try everything on the menu!

Sunday, Rusty stayed with Ella and Rachel and I headed back to Magic Kingdom, just the 2 of us. I felt so free! I loved having Ella there of course, but it was so nice to just walk around and do what we wanted without having to worry about stopping for diaper changes, snacks, etc. We met up with Rusty around 1pm and headed back for our LONG drive home! That was not fun! It was WAY better to drive at night than during the day! But, we made it!

So, that is our trip in a nutshell! Lots of fun memories. We LOVED the place we stayed-we stayed at Fort Wilderness Cabins. It was a great setup-it was basically just like a little apartment with a bedroom, kitchen, living room, etc. It would even be fine for 2 families to share since there are 2 double beds, bunk beds, and then they have pack n plays to let you borrow! We also learned for next time we go that we need to bring umbrellas/ponchos everyday-that would've been super helpful because we got wet every day we were there and I guess that is pretty common! We also found out that its much easier to drive than to take their transportation. It's nice to have if you don't have a car but be prepared to spend lots of time on the shuttle. We also had to remind ourselves to just not stress about things. We saw SO many people arguing with each other and yelling at their kids. Its so easy to do, especially when its hot.

Since we've been home, Ella has just been fiestier than ever! One little story to leave you with. The other night I put her on her time out bench and she was NOT happy about it. She sat on her bench, looked up at me and said "Mommy NO PATS!" It took me a minute to figure out what she said but once I figured it out, I was shocked! Of course it hurt my feelings that she was basically telling me that she didn't love me at that moment, but I was also pretty shocked that she had figured out a way to communicate that using the things she knew how to say!