18 Months

Erin discovered that Ella will eat yogurt IF you let her feed it to herself. As you can see, this is quite messy. Shortly after this picture, she smeared a big glob of yogurt into her hair... awesome. I'm not sure how much of the yogurt she's actually eating.

Ella "helping" Mommy vacuum.

Mikki, Vera, and Ella. They joined us for dinner Saturday night. We split a CSA share with them, so we got together to try some dishes made from our veggies. Everything turned out wonderfully. It helps when you have two real chefs in the kitchen.

Vera and Ella played outside pretty much the whole evening. They were covered head to toe with dirt. At one point they had both taken their shoes off and were using them to scoop up dirt and pour it onto themselves.

Needless to say, they were in need of a bath. We haven't given Ella a bath (she always takes showers) in many months because I couldn't get her to stay sitting down and I was paranoid she was going to fall. She's been really good about sitting in the shower, so I've been meaning to try the bath again. Erin ended up needing to give her a bath before her nap one day last week and reported that Ella absolutely loved it. I gave her a bath again the next day and not only was she in heaven, but she was very well behaved and only tried to stand up once. Friday morning, the first thing she said when she woke up was "Bath? Bath?". She still loves her showers, but I see a lot more baths in our future.

We started swim lessons again this week, but unfortunately I forgot the camera. Ella had so much fun! She seemed a little skeptical when we were first getting into the water, but once we were in, she turned into a little fishy. She picked up on everything so quickly. One of the things we worked on was sitting the babies on the side of the pool and making them wait until we said ok to come in. So I would plop her up there and then put my hand in front of her and tell her to wait. After the second time of me doing that, as soon as I would sit her on the side she would put her hand up and say "wait, wait". It was so cute and obviously she got the idea. I can't wait to go again this week and hopefully I'll remember the camera this time.

My big girl! 18 months, I can't believe it. For the most part, I'm really loving this age. She's learning so much every day and it's great being able to communicate with her. I'm surprised all the time by how much she can understand. I can tell her complicated things like "If you throw the phone over the baby gate again Mommy isn't going to get it for you" and she understands and doesn't do it. Some times her desire to do what she wants out weighs her desire to do what I want, but usually she's pretty good. We do have some intense tantrums occasionally and she has gotten pretty possessive of her things, but I think that's pretty normal for her age. One game she likes to play (which drives me insane!!!!) is to ask for something like a banana or eggs, and when I get it she says no. So I'll put it down and she'll ask for it again- repeat ad nauseum. Such a little stinker!

Busy, busy!

Ella and Alicia on our patio.

Friday we spent the whole day (minus lunch and a nap) outside. It was overcast, but not raining and nice and cool. I figured we better take advantage of this weather while we can. Ella is much happier when she's outside. She's less prone to temper tantrums (of which there are many...) and just generally in a better mood.

Back at music class.

Ella and Daddy. I love this picture.

This month has been so crazy busy! We've had something to do almost every day, some fun stuff, some not so much. I've been trying to take Ella to the zoo once a week before it gets too hot. We have so much fun, I'm so glad we got a membership. It took us three visits to be able to see everything, but I think we did it. She definitely has her favorites and now that we've seen everything I'm sure we'll be returning to those frequently. She likes the otters, elephants, kangaroos, primates, and fish the best. She was very unimpressed with the amphibians and reptiles, which is fine with me!

Easter

Walking the puppy at Memaw's house. When I was a kid my absolute favorite place to go Easter egg hunting was my Memaw's backyard. She has a huge garden and lots of trees, flowers and bushes, so it's just the perfect place to hide eggs. I've been excited to do Easter there with Ella and Maggie.

Easter egg hunt! I didn't think Ella would be into it, but she really was. We had to help her find the eggs and she insisted on Memaw carrying her basket most of the time, but I think she got the idea. She also wanted me to immediately open the eggs so she could see what was in them. Some times it was hard to get her to move on from whatever was inside the egg, but eventually she did.

Looking to see what's inside.

A really big egg!

I made a few confetti eggs as well. I didn't think Ella would be interested in them, but I thought Maggie would like them. It turned out to be the other way around. Ella was obsessed with the confetti and wanted "more! more!". We must have picked up handfuls of it a hundred times for her to throw again.

After our Easter egg hunt we went to get our CSA stuff from our friends Mikki and Brian. We ended up getting there at dinner time, so they invited us to stay. (We didn't do it on purpose, but it was so good we might have to "accidentally" show up at dinner time more often!) The girls were a little crazy playing together, this is Ella trying to tickle Vera.

The Easter Bunny came! He didn't bring all this stuff though. I got her a bunny and a few new books. Some of the stuff is from Aunt Carrie and the rest are all the bunnies, lambs, and ducks she already had.

I love that with all of that stuff the first thing she went for was the book. The other book I got her is about potty training. I can't believe we're thinking about this already, but she's been showing a lot of interest in the potty and even tells us when she poops, so I figured I better take advantage of the opportunity.

My Easter Bunny.

Feeling Better

Jeff was teaching at Central Market one night so I got shower and bedtime duty. I was finishing getting myself ready for bed and looked over to see what Ella was doing and found her sitting in her rocking chair "reading" her bed time books. I guess she was ready!

More music class. Jeff said Ella apparently decided she didn't want to participate any more and took her ball and went to the far side of classroom by herself. She's usually so social, but I guess sometimes she's just not in the mood. Jeff says sometimes she's really into it and other times she just wants to sit in his lap and watch. That's hard for me to imagine...

Music Class, CSA, Sick Baby

Ella at her music class.

At the CSA picking up our veggies.

I'm so behind on my blogging, I'm trying to catch up from a couple of weeks ago...

Right after Michelle and Mia left we noticed that Ella was really grouchy and was sleeping a lot. While she's a much better sleeper than she used to be, any time she sleeps easily or extra, I know something is wrong. At first I just chalked it up to the let down of an exciting visit from her cousins, but by Thursday night/Friday morning, it was obvious she was sick. She started coughing in the night and it was a deep choking cough in her chest and she seemed like she couldn't catch her breath afterwards. By Friday afternoon she was very mopey and her temp was 101. We gave her some tylenol and ibuprofen, but that night I woke up about 3am and she was burning up. I got up and took her temp and it was 103.5! I called the oncall nurse and she said that we had to get some tylenol in her and recommended suppositories. She said if her temp got up to 105, take her to the ER. So at 3:30am I was driving to Walgreens to get baby tylenol suppositories. Fortunately the pharmacist working was awesome and had it waiting for me at the window after I called to make sure they had it.

So she continued to run the high fever over the weekend. Even with tylenol, the lowest it would go was 102 and at night it was right back up to 103 plus. She was coughing, not frequently, but when she did, it sounded awful. I called her pedi Monday and they said to bring her in Tuesday. Finally, Monday night the fever seemed to break and Ella perked up a bit. I almost canceled the pedi appointment Tuesday because she seemed to be feeling much better and her temp was back down to 101. We went anyway, just to be on the safe side, and all we really got from it was that her ears were fine,  and the flu and strep tests were negative. The NP said it was probably just a bad virus that hit her quickly and was hopefully moving on quickly as well.

It took Ella a few days to get back to normal. She would seem to get a burst of energy and play really hard for a while and then just crash and burn. Part of the problem, I'm sure, is that she refuses to eat or drink when she's sick and even after she gets to feeling better it takes days or weeks for her to fully get her appetite back. Thank goodness she still breastfeeds and often when she's sick, I can't imagine what would happen if she didn't have that.