Visitors at Mimi and Boppa's house

Today was a busy day at Mimi and Boppa's house! Aunt Sue Sue and Kendall are visiting from Mississippi this week and Aunt TT and Ty drove up from Virginia for the weekend. We enjoyed the gathering of family and had an early celebration of Aunt TT's 30th birthday. Ellie had such a good time, but was worn out from all the fun. She slept the entire way home and then cried from the minute we walked in our front door until we finally gave up after 30 minutes and put her to bed.

Aunt TT and Ellie playing outside

Ellie met great-aunt Sue Sue for the first time today

Ellie showing off her new school bag (a gift from Sue Sue and Kendall)

As she is during most visits, Ellie was Boppa's girl today!

The impatient toddler enjoying some appetizers before dinner. Buddy doesn't especially like Ellie, but he must have her in his sights at all times!

Aunt TT and Ty

Aunt Sue Sue and Kendall

Ellie sitting down for yet another meal! She wasn't too excited about her BBQ'd chicken and green beans until Mommy gave her a side dish of Heinz 57. She finished it off then!

Happy 30th Birthday, Aunt TT!

The attack of the ice cream cone

Update

(By JPC)

Sorry for the lack of posts recently! I am in the midst of studying for my board certification exams that I will take in August. It's been a little stressful and I'm trying to use every spare minute to review material, which is a little difficult with a toddler :-)

In other news, we're leaving in a few minutes to get our civil union license. We're hoping to do the actual civil union ceremony with our mayor next week but are awaiting confirmation from his office. We'll keep you updated and post pictures soon!

And little Ellie is of course doing very well and talking more every day :-)

New videos

(By JPC)

Here are two new vidoes of our cute girl. In the first one, we had left our friends' house after a long afternoon of outdoors fun and were on our way home. She was cracking us up by putting her sunglasses on upside down (or as she says "up down"). We also tried somewhat unsuccesfully to capture more of her singing. You'll hear at the end that we made a pit stop on the way home for some fruits and veggies. Ellie could eat tomatoes all day if we let her so we were thrilled to see that our local farmers' market had opened for the season that morning. If you've never had a fresh Jersey tomato, you don't know what you're missing!

In the second video, Ellie was trying very hard to delay her bed time that same evening even though she was exhausted. Ellie recently learned how to shrug her shoulders and say "I don't know", which we find hilarious. She has realized that if she's doing something cute, we forget what we were doing including trying to get her to go to bed. Sometimes we just can't stand the thought of missing one second with our precious girl!

And what we didn't catch on video is that when we tell her we love her, she now says that she loves us too. Worth every minute of lost sleep during the last 20 months!

I scream, you scream...

(By JPC)

Today Ellie enjoyed her first ice cream cone. She has soy ice cream every once in a while, but we thought we'd spice it up by adding a cone this time. In the second video you'll see that she quickly mastered the correct way to eat it!

(and yes, we do understand that no one finds this as interesting as her parents!)

Sick Days

(By JPC)

We haven't been online as much this week because we've been a little busy and a lot tired! When we picked up Ellie at daycare on Monday she had had a minor "incident" with a toy there that hurt her leg. When we got home we realized that she also had a fever, which explained her VERY dramatic reaction to the leg injury. Lori stayed home with Ellie on Tuesday and I stayed home with her on Wednesday. According to our human resources' rules, we are not allowed to take a sick day when it's your child who is actually ill so we have to use a vacation day - let me tell you, it's no vacation being home with your sick baby! Since Ellie had a febrile seizure last year we tend to worry a bit more about a fever and aggressively treat her every 3 hours alternating between Motrin and Tylenol. This makes for very long nights with multiple alarms set! Ellie sleeps right through the medication but her mommies don't do quite as well with the interrupted sleep.

She was feeling much better by Wednesday evening though and today we took her back to daycare. She was thrilled to leave the house this morning after being homebound for 2 full days. She ran down the sidewalk to the car and started kicking her feet with excitement when we were a block away from daycare. We hear she had a good day, but unfortunately was bit (again!) by one of the kids there. Although it bothers us that this is the second time (but different kid), there isn't too much that you can say - kids that age bite and next week it could be Ellie who bites someone!

The big development in our house this week though is the advent of two word phrases for Ellie! She started with "up babies" to wake up her babies Wednesday morning and during the day she said a few others like "hi babies". My favorite though was when we were looking at pictures on the fireplace mantel (it had been a long day with a sick child and I couldn't think of anything else to do!). I pointed to each picture and said who it was and when I got to a picture of Ellie with Lori, she pushed my hand away from the frame and said very emphatically "mine mommy". Lori was of course thrilled! Her other surpise was picking up a picture of her Aunt Barbie and clearly saying "aunt baba". She also has a few new favorites this week including Pedialyte popsicles, blueberries, pretzel rods, and her mommy :-)

"My temperature is over 102 and I do not feel well."

ABC

(By JPC)

Recently, Ellie has started to very softly sing some of the songs we sing to her most often. She loves to sing Itsy Bitsy Spider, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and, as you'll see in the video below, the alphabet. She doesn't quite get the words or letters right, but she sure knows the tune. What we can't quite capture on video is how sweet her voice really sounds. We could listen to her singing all day!

Morning with Mama

(By JPC)

This morning Lori went to work for a few hours so Ellie and I were left home without a car. Ellie seemed a little tired of the same old toys and Mama couldn't find way to make them exciting again so we headed outdoors. We walked to the CVS drugstore a few blocks away and looked at all the fascinating things they sell there (Ellie was enthralled by the baby aisle!). Since the pool wasn't open yet, we also spent a long time on the playground. I took lots of pictures of Ellie just having fun, which are posted below. We missed Mommy, but it was nice for us to spend a little time together. Ellie almost jumped out of her skin with excitement though when Mommy walked in the door this afternoon!

Mimi's vacation

Have a good trip, Mimi! Hurry home - I'll miss you!

Love,

Ellie

Happy 4th of July!

Although it was an overcast day, we had a great 4th of July! This morning we went to a parade in the next town over from us and met up with lots of friends. The parade was filled with fire trucks, ambulances, bands, bagpipes, dancers, veterans of war, farm animals, kids, and LOTS of candy. There were also a lot of sirens so it was very noisy, but Ellie loved it! She waved her hand or flag at every passing group. It was a nice community way to celebrate the holiday and we plan to go again next year. Because of the weather, we spent most of the afternoon indoors, but we were able to sneak in a quick, cold swim before the rain started this evening. We love any excuse to spend the day together as a family!

HAPPY 4TH OF JULY!

Ellie waiting for the parade to start in her patriotic outfit

The gang gathered early to get good seats!

The sign in the background is small and difficult to read, but we sat in front of the local funeral home at the advice of friends. They passed out coffee and snacks and allowed everyone to use their parking lot and restrooms. Convenient but a little strange to tell everyone to meet you for the parade in front of a funeral home!

Ellie, Lori, and our dear friend Kerry

Watching the parade

We're not sure if she's being patriotic or landing planes!

After a cool dip in the pool, Ellie warms up with our beach towels while waiting for mommy to finish swimming!

Trip to the park

(By JPC)

Last night was a long night - Ellie kept us awake for about 2 hours, crying for reasons we have yet to uncover. Although we were exhausted, Ellie seemed unaffected by the decreased sleeping time and was up early as usual. We awoke to a beautiful day, however, which made the early hour less painful! Since we were up anyway, we thought we'd take advantage of the beautiful morning and we left for the park before 8 am. Our town has a wonderful park about 3.5 miles from our house that sits right on a lake. The tennis and handball courts were crowded, but Ellie had the run of the playground and we were one of only a very few families enjoying the lake that early!

Ellie and Mommy peeking at Mama through a tunnel

By far, Ellie's favorite activity at any park is swinging!

Ellie usually goes down slides with ease but this morning she wasn't feeling very adventerous so I had to "help" :-)

This is a video of Ellie playing peek-a-boo with me

A view of the lake

Ellie feeding the ducks - she sacrificed her Goldfish crackers for the ducks and if you've ever spent more than a few days with Ellie, you know how much she loves those crackers! And in the video below, check out that arm - impressive for a 19-month old!

Ellie checking out the lily pads and, in the distance, a fishing boat