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!