A quick glance at our summer:
Fun in the pool with Ella Rose & Ava
I grew a little strawberry!
It was very tasty.
Watching volleyball practice after a swim
Ice cream break
‘zOrz teams 1 & 2 @ the Town Trek. We had to figure out a list of clues that led us to different destinations around downtown & the Central West End. Other than one address mistake, we did an awesome job & finished in under 3 hours. We estimate that we ended up walking around 7 miles. They probably would have done it much more quickly if my pregnant self wasn’t slow. But it was a lot of fun & we hope to do it again next year!
Ella in her 4th of July tutu waiting for the Webster parade to start. She & Drew had fun watching the parade (once it finally arrived!) and collecting the little amount of candy they threw at these 2. Maybe they just look too little for candy? We all went to lunch soon afterward because it was too hot to sit in the sunshine for too long.
Ella’s first day of camp at her new school! She had such a great time & was a really good girl. She never cried, just went right on in to the classroom & started playing with toys! I’m guessing she’s going to have a lot of fun in the fall, too.
Dave & I (with some help from donations of bed, mattress & box springs) put together a “big girl bed” for Ella for her birthday. When she got home from school on her birthday, we let her go into her room & see her new bed! She loved it. She picked out the owl/nature theme…I just added the balloons to make it more exciting.
For her birthday dinner, Ella chose to have blueberry pancakes! Yum! A girl after my own heart…I love breakfast, too. She blew out her candle in her birthday pancake stack.
Ella & my brother Chris have birthdays quite close together, so we celebrated with a joint family party. They both got to blow out candles on the cake! Happy 3rd to Ella & happy 25th to Chris!
Our birthday picture tradition: taking a picture of Ella with her big bear (a gift from my Uncle Kevin).
Ella at 1 month:
Ella at 1 year:
Ella at 2 years:
Ella at 3 years:
She has grown so much, but that sweet little smile still melts my heart! I can’t believe she is 3 years old!
I have pictures from her birthday party at the Little Gym with her friends & other pictures from the summer (a visit to Kirksville, first dentist visit, etc) but I thought this would be enough for now.
We only have about 3 weeks until baby Beyonce is due to make her appearance! I hope to get all the pictures & blog posts up that I need to before she gets here…wish me luck!
Time is flying! The year is already half over! Time seems to go much more quickly as I get older, and the summer, hot & miserable though it has been this year so far, seems to get exponentially quicker! I remember when I was a kid & summer seemed to last forever. Now it creeps up on me, flies by, and then passes quickly into winter. Sometimes fall, but usually not for very long.
As I type, I have less than 50 days left in this pregnancy! It’s hard to believe that in about 7 weeks, little Beyonce will make her appearance. She is so wiggly & squirmy…I wonder if that personality will transfer to the outside world. Her 3D ultrasound pictures look somewhat like Ella’s, but not exactly. It is strange to think about having a child that will look different than my current child. I want them to look different, but it will be interesting to see what traits this little girl picks up that are different from the ones Ella has. I do hope she keeps the chubby leg trait, though…so cute!
Our busy summer continues. Dave & I celebrated our 5 year anniversary with a couples massage, dinner & a night in our own house by ourselves! Thanks to my parents for keeping Ella overnight. Ella will start camp on Monday! I am excited & nervous for her. I tell myself that it will be good for both of us. I hope that is true! We have loved going to the pool, it’s been a great way to wear Ella out without killing myself in this unbearable heat! She’s getting better & braver each time we swim.
And in about 3 weeks, Ella will turn 3! My tiny little baby. She is such an amazing little person. I tell her every day how much I love being her momma because she astounds me every day with how observant & thoughtful she is, how much she loves to learn, explore, discover, how she gets sweeter, smarter, bigger, stronger each day. She makes me laugh so much! She is a chatterbox…very verbal. And she loves to sing & dance. Her favorite songs right now are “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, “Yankee Doodle” & “Watermelon”. Though she sings so much, it’s hard to say that she even has a favorite. She is finally getting her 2 year molars (late, I know!) so we’ve been dealing with a bit of drama with that. But other than our bedtime struggles (which are getting better on some days with the use of a reward chart), Ella is truly an incredible little girl. I try to soak up every minute that I have with her because I know that in a few years, she won’t be such a mommy’s girl & she’ll be more independent, more into her friends. I’m jealous that I won’t be her favorite anymore, but I’m so excited to see where life takes her.
We’re trying to keep our August pretty low-key & unscheduled because you never know when this baby will decide to come out! Probably right on time or late. But you can’t be too sure.
Our pWnhACKzORz will celebrate our 5 year anniversary together in early August! 5 years of playing Halo together. Yes, we are nerdy, but it is great to have such awesome friends to share your life with.
I do have pictures to put up of my adventure with Annette, Sara & Jared at the Town Trek, belly pictures, pictures of Ella doing various things this summer. I’m trying to sort through them & get them uploaded in all the right places. But they will be up soon!
Finally…someone buy our house please.
I have been trying to be diligently active this pregnancy. I did the best I could when I was pregnant with Ella, but I was working so I had less scheduled time to exercise. I took a break for several weeks early in the pregnancy when I was feeling sick ALL THE TIME. Since I’ve been better, though, I’ve been going to the gym (or running outside…though that hasn’t happened since it’s been hot) 3 times a week. I probably get there 3 times a week 85% of the time, depending on our schedules & doctors appointments.
I had a trainer friend of mine make a pregnancy-friendly workout for me based on what I was doing before I was pregnant. I do 30 minutes of cardio, almost always on the elliptical now since my knees go dead quite quickly on the treadmill. I usually get in between 3-4 miles in that time, but I’ve found in the last week or so that I’m going to slow down quickly. It takes more energy to get my larger mass moving now-a-days! After my elliptical, I do some ab work (without laying flat on my back) and a few free weight exercises. I cannot do lunges anymore because my belly is in the way, but I figure the squats will do. I’m usually at the gym for about an hour or a bit less and that is plenty for me. I also chase after Ella all day & we go to the pool a couple of times a week. Sometimes I feel like I’m getting plenty of exercise & sometimes I feel like I should be doing more (maybe to make up for eating ice cream every day?). I’m hoping that by at least keeping up with what I’m doing, getting back into shape after Beyonce is born will be a bit easier.
So what is your exercise routine? Do you have a favorite exercise or set of exercises? Favorite classes? I hope to go back to yoga once I can stretch again. I know there’s prenatal yoga, but I’m too cheap to pay for it. Did you exercise a lot while pregnant? More or less than usual? Do you feel like you got back into shape after your pregnancy(ies)? Do you have any tips for me?? (Besides “stop eating ice cream” because I tried, & it’s not going to happen.)
We are prepared for a newborn sleeping schedule. Because our (almost) 3 year old doesn’t sleep anyway. There are “good” days & “bad” days, but a “good” day would be only fighting with her for half an hour before she will stay in bed, stop calling for us & go to sleep. And not throw herself into a fit of hysteria. Bad days are….exhausting. There have been nights where it will take 2 or more hours for Ella to stop getting out of bed, to stop calling for Mommy or Daddy to give her a hug/tuck her in/get her a drink/go potty, etc etc etc.
We have tried everything that has come to our minds to change this behavior, but it has been several months (some better, some worse) and nothing has seemed to work permanently. Every time we seem to make a bit of progress, within a few days, it’s back to the same old tricks. We’ve tried punishing her, reasoning with her, enticing her with rewards, reward charts, special night time only toys/books, encouraging big girl behavior & choices, threatening the “baby” bed…plus other stuff I probably can’t remember because I’m sleep deprived. She seems to understand what she NEEDS to do, what she’s SUPPOSED to do, but she won’t do it. She says she wants to make happy choices, stay in her big girl bed, go swimming, eat pancakes….but then she still gets out of bed, still calls/cries/screams for us, still won’t go to sleep. Once she does finally go to sleep, she wakes up every night somewhere between 12:30-2, gets up & calls for us to tuck her in/give her a hug/get her a drink. Then she wakes up in the morning between 5:30-6. Her clock is set to play at 7am, indicating that she can then get up, but inevitably, when she wakes up, she runs out of her room, into ours & starts crying. “I’m hungry!” “I need a huggy!” We put her back into bed, but she will only stay for maybe 5-10 minutes at a time before she wants something else & gets out of bed again.
If we ignore her at any point (and her gate is up so she can’t get out of her room) she just escalates into screaming & hysteria until she is trying to throw herself over or under the gate. I want her to go to bed, not hurt herself.
By the time she falls asleep at night, I am usually ready for bed. Not only am I pregnant & exhausted anyway, but I’m emotionally drained & stressed out from trying to figure out how to get her to stay in bed & go to sleep. And once she wakes up in the middle of the night & calls for me (because she HAS to have MOMMY do whatever it is), I can’t go back to sleep, usually for about 2 hours. So I end up with 5ish or less hours of sleep a night. Like I said…we’re ready for the newborn. Maybe she’ll sleep more!
I’ve googled sleep issues in 3 year olds & this seems to be a pretty common problem that has no real answer. She has a very consistent bedtime routine, she is definitely tired when we put her to bed. I’m out of ideas, so I welcome any suggestions people have.
Zzzzz…..
There comes a point when you become so overwhelmed with what to blog about, you just don’t blog at all. But here’s a recap of what’s been going on!
Our summer weekends are already filling up very quickly! We planned to go to Kirksville to visit Dave’s family over Memorial Day weekend, but ended up staying home because we all got colds. Boo to that! We’re hoping to make it up there perhaps the 2nd weekend in July, but we’ll have to see how huge & uncomfortable Beyonce is making me at that point. Our plans for June include family/maternity photos, the Komen Race, birthday parties, the St. Louis Twilight Town Trek, another week out of town for Dave, visiting with friends, Shakespeare in the Park & lots of pool time! Plus, I’m hoping to put Ella into swim lessons for a couple of weeks so she won’t FREAK OUT if she falls & puts her face in the water again. I want her to feel confident in the water. We’re also hoping to get a 3D ultrasound in the next couple of weeks so we can compare this little girl to Ella’s pics! I’m so curious to see if they look similar at all, if this baby has any hair, if she has Dave’s nose like Ella…it’s hard to wait so long to find out!
July will be busy too, with our anniversary, a wedding to go to, my Dad’s birthday, Fourth of July (that’s all in one weekend…), Ella’s camp, Ella’s birthday & possible travel. Whew! We are trying to keep August fairly clear since you never know when the baby will arrive. If she’s like her sister, she’ll be right on time, though. A very exciting summer ahead!
I am working on editing all the belly pictures I have to they can be posted. I have several other pictures from May, too, that I will load up soon!
Happy Summer!
While making a Mother’s Day video for Dave’s mom, we found another video of Ella from a year or so ago. She’s playing the Rock Band drums & it is SO CUTE.
So, while you wait for me to edit belly pics & get a good picture of my new haircut, you can enjoy this vintage Ella video!
Drums are awesome from David Morley on Vimeo.
Created with Admarket’s flickrSLiDR.
We’ve been through a rough couple of weeks with Ella. She was pretty sick for several days with a high fever & ensuing grouchiness. She missed most of Easter because she was so tired & feverish. A trip to the pediatrician & a day or so later & we were able to start her on antibiotics for a bacterial infection. Once her fever was gone, she went into meltdown mode. Screaming, disagreeing, freaking out at every little decision made in a day. If I wanted to go do laundry? Time to freak out. Want to go to Little Gym? First let’s have a complete meltdown including not wanting to wear underwear, pants or shoes, but socks on our hands. Would you like some juice? Yes! No! Yes! *SCREAM*!!!! It was very difficult for all of us, but luckily, the past couple of days have been much better.
In the mean time, I had to find little joys during the day. So when Ella would have a few moments of happiness, I logged them in my head. Here are 3 little glimpses of normal Ella during a rocky time:
1. While waiting in Walgreens for “15 minutes” (an hour) to get her prescription, we wandered the aisles. We picked up some sidewalk chalk so we could do something fun outside even if we couldn’t go to the park. As soon as we got home, Ella wanted to go outside to play with her “chalklates”. So funny!
2. Part of my nesting/needing to get the house ready to sell phase has been SUPER CLEANING. I’ve been going through every closet, drawer, etc to clean & organize. One morning, while cleaning the bathroom drawers, Ella asked me what a certain bottle was. “That’s perfume” I said. Ella’s response? “It’s perf-me!” Of course it is!
3. A water line break in the parking lot at the mall after Little Gym caused us to take a detour while leaving. The cautionary tape up around the puddles gave an insight into how kids see the world. “Look Mom, it’s the news!” Ella said, seeing the caution tape. I just love how little minds work!
Now that we have our sweet girl (mostly) back, we’re trying to rebuild our potty training skills that were lost during the sick days. Some days are better than others so we’re bracing ourselves to take it one day at a time. As long as those days are finished by August.
…until you become a parent.
1. You LOVE all the baby stuff! When you’re expecting a baby, or one of your friends is, it’s so much fun to go through all of the baby aisles looking at all of the cute baby stuff. And then, when you become a parent, it all accumulates. It goes from being “cute baby stuff” to being “crap cluttering your house”. It only gets worse as your child (or children) get older & accumulate more stuff that they can’t live without…for at least 5 minutes. Ella has innumerable little toys, trinkets, stickers, booklets, crayon pieces, etc that she really loves for maybe a couple of days. Suddenly, it starts accumulating in places (usually our coffee table) and it starts to eat us alive. We keep putting it back into the tubs in her room, but somehow it keeps escaping. So just beware, when you have kids, the cute baby stuff will eventually take over your house.
2. No matter what the personality of your family, your child will probably not always fall into that category. Especially at 2. Dave & I are pretty laid-back people. I am not particularly a “girly-girl” though I wouldn’t classify myself as a tomboy, either. But Ella is very much a girly-girl who loves to wear pink dresses, play with babies & dance around in tutus. And she is not very laid-back. She is high maintenance. At least for now. I’m hoping she grows out of this.
3. Sometime between becoming pregnant & your child becoming a toddler (at least for me) you start feeling old. Not like geriatric, need to use a Hover Round old, but like RESPONSIBLE old. And maybe a little “get off my lawn” old. I think that I get more angry at drivers every day. I’m starting to think that we should be retesting EVERYONE for their driver’s licenses every 5 years or something. Because between tail-gating teenagers & 90 year olds driving 20 in a 40, I’m probably going to have a coronary before my time. (I know that I’m generalizing here…I realize that not all teenagers & older folk are bad drivers. And there are PLENTY of people my own age who are not spectacular drivers. I’m friends with some of them. But they are not usually out driving during the weekday when I am, so I am not complaining about them at this time). I try very hard not to yell while I’m driving because I don’t want Ella to pick up any bad habits or anything, but I think she picks up on my stress instead.
4. Sometimes, pee & poop are appropriate dinner conversations. From curious newborn bowel movements to potty training successes and failures, my parent friends & I have definitely gone there during dinner. Without batting an eye. Because it’s just a part of daily life, something you are consumed with at the moment, and it just stops grossing you out. And when it’s just me & other mommies, the conversations have gotten even more gruesome. Pregnancy, laboring, birthing, nursing & parenting do some STRANGE things to your body & you just have to talk about them with your friends! Did this happen to you? Were you expecting that much bleeding? I never knew that hurt so much! etc.
5. You (usually) become much less judgmental towards other parents. Those kids that freak out in the toy or candy aisle in the store? Sympathy eyes instead of side-eyed glares. You have been or will be there & you know it sucks. A 4 year old with a pacifier? You don’t even look twice anymore. You choose your battles & sometimes that’s not the one worth fighting right now. Kids on leashes? It may look like the parent can’t or doesn’t want to control their kid, but let me tell you, kids are FAST. And when they don’t want you to hold their hand & go with you, they won’t. They will bolt the other way. And if you try to put them in a stroller? Forget it. They can maneuver out of the 5 point buckle & climb out of the stroller. Thus, leashes become not only a great choice, but sometimes your only option. So do a parent a favor sometime & if you see their non-leashed kid bolting, especially if it’s in an unsafe place like a parking lot or in front of the Zoo train, grab them. They will appreciate it. I’m sure when we add baby girl #2 in August, I will learn how to be a better parent & even less judgmental because I will have to chase after my crazy 3 year old while caring for a newborn. Yikes. Begin mind meltdown.
GIRL!!!
Despite all of the thought that it’d be a boy (familial pattern, different pregnancy/symptoms, etc), it’s definitely a healthy, active baby girl!
I’m so excited for Ella to have a sister! I do not have any sisters, so I can’t share any wisdom with her. But it will be so much fun to watch them grow up together & teach me about sisterhood. This is also beneficial to us because we already have all the girl stuff! We should be able to use most of Ella’s clothes & stuff since they are both summer babies. I’m sure we’ll get some new stuff for the new girl, too, but it’s great that we can reuse all of Ella’s cute outfits, too! Plus, Ella’s room is already pink, so if we don’t sell our house & they have to share for a while (TIGHT SQUEEZE!) at least we don’t have to redecorate!
It was also incredibly great to see that everything is going well in there with her. All of her parts are present & in working order. She’s measuring right on time, for an estimated due date of around August 20, 2010! (Ella’s was July 20, 2007. She was born on Saturday July 21. This year, August 20 & 21 are also a Friday & Saturday! How freaky). Her heartbeat was strong (157) & she was VERY WIGGLY! And not at all modest. We knew with the first ultrasound shot that she was a girl. It is so amazing to see all of their little bones & movements during the ultrasound. So tiny (6 oz) yet still a little person! Life is truly fantastic.
Ella has already decided to name her sister “Princess” or “Birthday”, which are 2 of her very favorite things, so we know they’ll be close.
I do have a couple of cool ultrasound pictures that I will post once I get a chance to scan them somewhere. For now, I’ll post a couple more pictures of my “outside” baby!
Ella & I went to Chesterfield Mall with Grandma one Friday to check out a new store called Crazy 8. It is very cute & had a ton of stuff I wanted to buy. We only left with 2 shirts & a pair of totally cute jean capris, but we have a coupon & will go back. While we were there, Ella rode the carousel with Grandma! They had a lot of fun! (Sorry for the picture quality…mall lighting is not great & trying to take moving pictures is also difficult)
We have also started a different music class. It’s the same teacher we had before, but in a different place. Ella has so much fun with Miss Michelle’s class & loves playing with her friends there!
This is Ella, Genevieve & Ally playing the piano. Ella’s friends Ava & Mary Margaret are also in our music class. She LOVES her friends!
Happy March & St. Patrick’s Day! Have a green beer for me.
