21 Months

We just discovered this little park about five minutes from our house. It has a great splash area and the playground part is covered, which makes it bearable to be out there. We've been several times already and Ella loves it.

Ella sliding down the whale. She is such a little monkey- she figured out how to climb up that thing in about two minutes.

Ella loves the Arthur characters at the playground.

She finally figured out that sunglasses are great for keeping the "hot" out of her eyes.

Ella has definitely found her appetite since getting over her tummy bug. She actually let me clip her hair back for this picture and then left it there while she ate. So much better when you can see her eyes!

21 months. Getting ready to head to the park and then brunch with Nana, Gran, Aunt Carrie, and Maggie.

Cute cousins

Ella loves her Aunt Carrie!

I've been covering for the other Nurse Practitioner I job share with the last two weeks, so we've been crazy busy. There's not much new going on. I'll try to post a more detailed post when I have more time.

Bouncing Back

Ella has figured out how to climb up into her highchair all by herself. It's cute, but it makes me a little nervous. What a monkey!

Ella's Grandma got her some cute new sunglasses. She wouldn't leave them on long enough for me to get a picture, but insisted on putting them on her monkey.

It's amazing how fast kids bounce back from being sick! I had to work Friday, so Ella was with Erin. Erin said she slept in about an hour and a half later than usual and then woke up starving. She ate everything is sight for about an hour or so. I'm so glad she got her appetite back quickly this time. Usually it takes weeks for her to start eating normally again when she's been sick. She weighed less at her pedi visit on Tuesday than she did at her 18 month check up. That's not good. Hopefully we can keep up this trend of stuffing her face and get some weight back on her.

One way I can always tell when Ella is getting over being sick is that she reverts back to being a pain to get to sleep at night. Her newest thing is a one-woman comedy show at bedtime. As soon as the lights go out she starts doing everything she can think of to make me laugh. She starts with anything new that got a good reaction during the day and then moves on to the old standbys. I know it's bad, but sometimes it works. She's the funniest person I know! Usually though I just smile or laugh silently, I really do try not to encourage her. I'm not sure if this is just a phase or if we've got her schedule wrong or what, but these two hour bed times are a beating!

Long Weekend, Sick Baby

Ella, Avery, Aubry, and Brooke playing outside on 4th of July. We had dinner club and the girls had a blast playing "together". They don't really interact too much, just kind of play near each other and occasionally try to steal each others toys.

We went to BCS to visit Uncle Steve and attend a family BBQ. I wish I would have taken more pictures, but this is the only one I got. Uncle Steve got a Ella a couple of these little pools, one for outside to swim in and another to do a ball pit in the house. She loved them both.

We decided to come home from BCS Saturday night instead of Sunday morning and thank goodness we did! Ella ended up getting very sick.

Saturday while we were still in Bryan, I was trying to get Ella to take a nap and out of the blue she said "tummy hurts". She has never said those two words together before or for that matter, ever told me that anything hurt. I was surprised, but she seemed fine, so I let it go. I never could get her to nap that day and she hadn't slept well the whole time we were there, so we decided to head home after the BBQ that afternoon. Again, on the way home she said "tummy hurts" once or twice.

When we got home I took her in immediately to go to bed and she fell asleep right away. As soon as I laid her down though, she woke up and threw up all over the place. She threw up a few more times during the night and again in the morning. During the day Sunday she seemed to perk up a little. She didn't throw up any more, but she wouldn't eat much. She went to see Grandpa and Grandmo and play with Maggie that afternoon and they said she did fine, but she was pretty beat when she got home.

Monday during the day she seemed ok. She started having some diarrhea, but no more vomiting and only a low grade fever. I figured she had a little 24 hour bug and it had about run it's course. Ha, ha, ha! Monday night she started exploding from both ends. I lost count of how many times we got up to change sheets, diapers, clothes, etc. First thing Tuesday morning I called her pedi and they said to bring her in right away. Sally came with us just in case, but fortunately she didn't throw up again during the car ride or at the office. They checked for strep just to be on the safe side, but luckily it was negative. Most likely just a GI virus, perhaps rotavirus. They gave us a prescription for phenergan gel and ER instructions if she didn't have a least one wet diaper (from pee...) every 12 hours.

I gave her a small dose of the phenergan as soon as we got home and it seemed to help, but it knocked her out. (By the way, if I even meet the person who invented phenergan gel, I will give them a big hug and a kiss! Genius!) She was groggy for a good 24hrs from it, but it only stopped her from throwing up for about 8 and did nothing for the diarrhea. At this point she was refusing all food and liquids from a cup, but would nurse, as per her usual illness protocol. Tuesday we were getting close to the 12 hours without a wet diaper, so I called her pedi again. I was afraid to give her any more phenergan since it was making her so tired. They ended up calling in zofran for her. It was a little harder to get her to take it, but it only took one dose and she stopped throwing up. Finally, we were able to get her to drink some water and one hour short of her dead line, she peed 1oz.

She slept well and nursed a lot during the night and the next morning she had a fairly wet diaper. She had a few more episodes of diarrhea that day, but she was a different kid. She still didn't have much of an appetite for food, but she nursed, drank water, and nibbled on crackers and puffs. She would swing between laying curled up in my lap watching tv to bouncing off the walls from being pent up for four days. I'm always relieved (of course) when she starts to feel better from an illness, but man that day or two afterwards is tough!

So, that was our first adventure with a stomach bug. We survived, but I hope it's a long time before we do it again!

3rd of July

For some reason Mansfield decided to do their fireworks on July 3rd instead of the 4th this year. We had planned to go to the festivities, but by the time Jeff got home, it was late and neither Ella or I were ready to go, so we decided to stay home and play outside instead. Our neighbors were out playing in the sprinklers, so it was perfect.

Ella eating Alicia's hulahoop.

Ella and Alicia watching the fireworks. Ella had a very long and late nap that day, so when we realized we could see the fireworks from the end of our street, we decided to let her stay up to watch them. She was only mildly impressed.

RJ took this picture of all of us. Pretty good I think.

We had such a good time hanging out with Randy, Dahlia, Alicia and RJ. Even though they're our neighbors, we don't get to spend much time together any more. Ella loves the kids, of course. She had so much fun playing in the water, jumping rope, hulahooping, and running around with them. Dahlia got out the long jump rope and we all had a turn. Ella thought it was hilarious to see Jeff or me jumping. She would let out this huge belly laugh every time we did it. Yay for last minute change of plans!

Somebody!

Ella absolutely loves the song Somebody That I Use to Know. She asks us to play it over and over again for her. She can sing along to a lot of it and will stop whatever she's doing and come running if it comes on unexpectedly. When we're trying to get her to go to sleep she often sings this song to herself.

Ella enjoying some breakfast. She loves sitting at her little table and chairs and will rarely sit in her highchair to eat any more.

Ella is becoming quite the singer. She knows many of the words to several simple songs and loves to sing them. She's also really understanding how to put words together to get her point across.

Potty training is going very well. She's pretty much "house broken"- when we're home and she's diaper off, she almost never has an accident. She doesn't even tell us any more when she needs to go, just goes and does it. When she's finished, she claps and says "Yay!" and that's our cue to come running because she will pick up the little potty and try to dump it in the big potty herself. I'm not sure how to make the transition to being completely potty trained. If she has a diaper on, she won't usually tell us when she needs to go and if you ask her she always says no.  I think it's something that will just come with more maturity on her part.