Wrapping up 2009

Picture Overload!!! :)

Okay, so i got too busy (or too distracted) to sit down and blog about the fun things that ella and i did to wrap up 2009 and close off her second year of life. it had some pretty difficult moments for the both of us. ella has really been figuring out how to behave during her terrible two's and my first trimester of this pregnancy really kicked my butt. so it was a bad combo! but we still managed to have a BLAST in between all of those fits. there is nothing else in this world that i treasure as much as her. she is my heart. so here are some (okay, a lot) of pictures to sum up the end of 2009. and have i mentioned before how much i love working part time and getting to be home with her so much? i wouldn't trade those days for the world!

OCTOBER!


at the sea center in lake jackson. ella loved "finding nemo" in the fish tanks :)

and here is PROOF that she really did LOVE the big bouncy bus. just not at her own party...


we went to the pumpkin patch in october. she picked out her own two little pumpkins. her favorite part was me pulling her in the wagon.



Ella was too sick to go to school on halloween for her halloween party. so we went trick-or-treating at the courthouse instead. that girl racked up so much candy, it was crazy. she was also very good at going up to people and saying "chick or cheat". i love her.


NOVEMBER!

ella got her very first black eye! she fell down at mimi and grandad's house and her eye met the corner of a concrete step. she only cried for a minute. she's so tough. also, here is where we currently stand on the potty training front. the potty is a place to store her dollies...not to pee.


wild hair days!


DECEMBER!

we always have so much fun at mimi and grandad's house. grandad taught her what a piece of straw is REALLY for. and the ever fun hay bail shot!


This picture is my absolute favorite. Just look at how much fun those kids are having! I love action shots!


We had Christmas Eve at Nonnie's house and boy that was fun. With three grandkids all in their two's, it was a madhouse! I love watching all those kids play! Alley, Jeff, and Wade are so good to the little kids.


And finally, Christmas morning! We had a wonderful Christmas and ella was very excited about santa this year. I have a feeling we're going to have to be a lot sneakier next year :)

moments and opportunities...and sheep

Wow, the Christmas season is busy! In the midst of all of the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, I've found myself taking a few quiet moments to reflect on all of the blessings in my life. I have been thanking God that I am still around to experience the exciting and the mundane known as my life. Each breath I take is a gift. Each moment that I experience is an opportunity. I have found myself not taking advantage of those opportunities in a way I wish I would. But as soon as one opportunity ends in failure, there's sure to be a second chance right around the corner. The death of our friend Jon has really made me think about life and what God offers me daily. I don't keep in touch with friends nearly as much as I should and I find myself putting off important phone calls for another day (and another and another). But I know exactly where Jon would be if he were given another day on this earth. He would be holding his wife and daughter. I want to make sure and give as much of myself to my family that I can, while I can. While I hate to say that other people and things sit on the back burners until they've become somewhat crispy, I am enjoying the moments and opportunities in my life right now. I am cherishing the last few months of it just being the three of us. I know that our second child will bring a whole new dimension and dynamic to our lives that will be amazing and I'll cherish every moment of that as well. I think back to the last few months before Ella was born while Josh and I were anticipating the birth of our first child and cherishing our last moments as husband and wife with no children. It was special.


Laurie had this scripture on her blog the other day and it struck a chord in me. It might have something to do with shepherds, sheep, and a savior being pounded into my brain for several months. While I tend to leave a lot out of my day to day life and overlook a lot of the small yet important things, God always has the time to come get me. Over and over and over again. He really is the good shepherd and I'm a shaggy, smelly sheep.



I am Your servant,
but I have wandered away like a lost sheep.
Please come after me,
because I have not forgotten Your teachings.
Psalm 119:176

I realize that I have randomly rambled long enough. The holidays make me extremely sentimental. So do the pregnancy hormones.

I miss you Jon. Merry Christmas, my friend.

my baby is no longer a baby...

as in previous posts, ella is growing up so much lately. she's taking big steps to becoming a big girl. she's going to preschool, she sleeps in a big girl bed, she talks non-stop. the list just goes on. well yesterday i picked ella up from school and asked the teacher how she's been sleeping. she told me that she sleeps great and always sleeps the whole nap time and that they don't even give her the pacifier anymore. i've been putting off taking it away because i didn't want to make the teachers' lives miserable. but i've learned that people who work at daycares and preschools are not scared to try anything! i mean, to them, what's the worst that could happen? last night we figured we might as well see what happens and take it away. as josh and i were lying in bed about to go to sleep i told him "i'm going to give in tonight. i'm just too tired to fight." ella went to sleep at 8 and is still asleep now at 7am. so apparently she didn't need it anyway. i told my mom last night that once we take away the paci, we have given up that last thing that made her my little baby.

i guess we've still got to tackle diapers, but that's a whole different battle!

my kids

so i found out i was pregnant on september 11th. i was ecstatic! we had been trying for over a year and it finally happened (with a little help from some clomid). i can't believe i'm finally pregnant! we've waited so long and not always patiently. but i've finally made it to my second trimester and my morning sickness is really starting to ease up. my clothes are too tight and i'm battling some serious headaches, but at least the nausea is getting better! i have to say that when i was pregnant with ella, i thought about being pregnant ALL the time. it was constantly on my mind and this time is so much different. i'm too busy to think about it! between work, chasing ella around two days a week, and all the other things to do around the house there's not much time to sit here and relish over my pregnancy. i can already see how the second baby just doesn't get as much attention. it's still in the womb and it's already happening. i hope and pray that i'll find some balance by the time he/she gets here.

well, here's a picture of my two kids. i absolutely cannot wait for may 18th when josh, ella, and i get to meet this new baby. i love mommyhood!




Here's hoping ella gets a little more excited by the time the baby gets here! :)

growing up

well october turned into a lot of growing up for miss ella. in my previous post, i mentioned that ella was starting preschool at little hands academy. let me just say that i absolutely love that school and i love the people who work there. she has wonderful teachers and i know that she is being cared for very well.

with that said, monday went very well. we dropped her off and snuck out while she was playing. the teachers told me that she whined a little for mommy when the other kids' parents dropped them off, but other than that she was great. then for naptime, they gave ella her paci and she went right to sleep and slept for two hours! i'm impressed. so i went to pick her up and she was so happy to see me. she has NEVER been that happy to see me! so all in all, it was a great first day of school. which brings me to today....oh my gosh, it was horrible! as soon as we got there, she would not let me put her down because she knew if she took her eyes off of me, i was going to sneak out. so we sat down and played with toys for a few minutes, but she was not going to let me out of there. so, i handed her over to the teacher as she was screaming hysterically for me. I had to walk out of the room with her watching me and screaming "No Mommy, no! I wanna go bye-bye with you. Mommy NOOOOOOO!" Traumatizing...for the both of us. I walked out of there practically sobbing and cried all the way to work, which let to a horrific headache that lasted the rest of the day. I called at 10am and they said she was doing great. Since I work with my mom, I shared my sad story with her and she was sad too. So at 5, we both went to Little Hands to see her. She was so happy to see me. She had tears in her eyes as she ran up to me saying "It's Mommy, It's my mommy, Hi mommy!" I love her so much. It broke my heart today, but I know that she's going to adjust and she'll make friends and learn how to be much more flexible throughout this process. I did, however, tell Josh that he would take her to school from now on. I can't go through that again.

In order to get Ella prepared for sleeping on the mat, we moved her over to her big girl bed on Saturday night. Let me just say that I was expecting the worst and she has done awesome! I think the fact that she doesn't use a night light and it's pitch black in her room helps a lot. If she got up, she wouldn't be able to see her toys or books anyway, so what's the point? The first night at 2:30am, she accidentally got out of her bed and couldn't see how to get back in. So I heard her through the monitor saying "I wanna go night night, I wanna go night night". So i went in there and placed her back in bed under the covers and she went right back to sleep. The second night, she fell out of her bed and I heard her crying. I ran in there and she told me "Mommy, I f-f-f-ell d-d-d-down". It was so sweet. So I put her back in bed again, and right to sleep she went. Since then, she's done perfectly. She took a 3 hour nap on Tuesday and has just been awesome at it. I attribute it to all of the hard work we did when she was a baby, teaching her how to put herself to sleep and making it known that night time is for sleeping not for playing. That and the fact that I think she's amazing at anything she tries. Now i do have a feeling that once she gets used to things, she's going to test us and get out of bed just to see what we do, but for now we are enjoying an easy transition.

Here are some pictures of my grown-up little girl.

Ella's first day of school:

Ella's 2nd day of school:

And here's Ella and Avery doing some super cheeses:

preschool!

i'm one of those crazy people who doesn't like vaccinations. i stopped vaccinating ella at six months because i started educating myself and decided that our children get way too many vaccinations before they are two years old. now, i'm not so hard core as to think that vaccinations aren't good at all, i just think that they are pushed too hard and given too many. i decided over a year ago that when she turned two, i would start catching her up slowly....on my schedule, not my doctor's. i feel like it's the parent's responsibility to know and have an opinion on their child's healthcare. and BE EDUCATED!!! doctor's don't always know what's best. i'm not saying that they are harmful to children, but i'm also not saying that they aren't. What I'm saying is PROVE to me that they are safe! Let's see some (unbiased) research!

okay, now that i'm off my soapbox.....i had to take ella to get her MMR and varicella vaccination this morning. now, i said i was going to wait until she was two to start catching her up but ella is starting preschool on Monday. I cried while she got her shots and watched as they pumped those viruses into her precious little leg and I cried all the way home and prayed that God would take care of her body and give her an amazingly strong immune system. It was really traumatic for me.

Ella's original day to start school was January 5th, but due to some recent health issues with our current arrangements we had to bump that up. I happened to call Little Hands yesterday, which is so hard to get into, and they had an opening for their 18-month MWF class. I happened to call on a whim, hoping they'd have an opening and they did. I just wasn't expecting her to say that she could start on Monday. While it's obviously better timing for us, Mommy is not ready for Ella to start preschool. Luckily Little Hands is on Josh's way to work, not mine. I'd cry every day for the rest of the year if I had to drop her off. We'll both take her on Monday, so a few prayers would be appreciated. It's hard to know that for her first (almost) two years of her life, she was loved on continually and cared for by Josh and myself primarily, and for the past two months her Nonnie watched her once or twice a week. So this is hard for me to let a stranger take care of my child. Are they going to kiss her every bump and bruise when she walks up and asks them to? Will she feel like she can ask her teacher to kiss her bo-bos? Are they going to give lots of hugs? Will she feel secure? There are so many things running through my head and I just hope that she adjusts well. I take comfort in knowing that if she absolutely hates it or Mommy feels like it's not time yet, I can always take her out and try again another time. She's also got to learn how to sleep on a mat. So you might say a few prayers for her teachers too :)

Here's to my beautiful little girl, who is growing up so fast right before my very eyes. I love you Ellabell and I hope you have so much fun at school.

avery comes to visit!

I had the pleasure of getting to babysit Avery this morning. Ella and Avery had so much fun playing together. We watched some Baby Einstein and played with blocks, puzzles, and every toy in Ella's toybox. Although I did hear the word "mine" way more than usual, they played so nicely together. We also watched The Last Unicorn (well the first 30 minutes of it). I don't know if anyone else remembers that movie, but it was my favorite when I was a kid. Watching it now is a little disturbing, but I went ahead and passed it along to my daughter anyway! :) The things you could get away with in the 70s and 80s!

Thanks for coming over to play and come back again soon, Avery!

And I've decided that when I have my second child, I wouldn't mind if it came out a two year old :)

This one was funny because they both wanted to sit in the chair. Whoever was sitting in the chair wouldn't get up because as soon as she would the other one would take her seat. It was so funny! Every once in a while one of them would see something worth getting up and losing the seat over. :)