Part of what I love about the girls' names is that they were both popular 100 years ago and many people with those names are now great-grandmas. Both names evoke a vision for me of sweet old ladies rocking away together on a porch. I pray Ella and Sadie will live meaningful lives full of love and will be enjoying each other on a front porch somewhere many years from now.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Artsy-Craftsy

We've been rather crafty lately. We made necklaces at a new bead place in town today, puppets yesterday, and lots of play doh this week. I'm hoping to continue with this trend because we both really enjoy these projects so it's good bonding time.




A couple days ago when we were playing with play doh we were making animals and Ella was putting each one on a circle on the placemats we were using and calling it our "zoo." I just kept cranking out the animals and giving them to her until I noticed the zoo was getting smaller not larger. I asked her what she was doing and she explained that she was squishing all of the animals now to make dumplings. I had never heard her talk about dumplings before but I asked some questions and eventually found out that she learned how to make them from "Yeh-Yeh" (the grandpa) one of her favorite shows "NiHao Kai Lan." We talked about how Aunt Ping is from China just like Kai Lan and she agreed that Ping makes very good dumplings too. We spent about 30 minutes having our "dumpling party" with her play doh creations. That girl cracks me up!

Playdate at Jen's

I realized I've never blogged about our lovely playdates at Jen's house. Jen is one of those lovely people who is welcoming and generous and doesn't mind kids making messes or climbing all over her things (within reason). Jen has 2 beautiful little girls (L is Ella's age and C is 8 months) and they have mountains of toys that are different from ours (Jen is quite the creative toy buyer) so Ella always has a blast with L getting into everything. On this occasion Amy was sick so we took Hannah with us and the three girls played for HOURS with only a few fires for us to put out (figurative ones of course). Thanks for letting us come wreck your house Jen! We love you! (and we'll be there to do it again tomorrow!)

Jen and baby C

The girls snuck into C's crib and were in the midst of a full fledged game of "Animal Hospital" when we found them.

And of course with 3 little girls, dress up ensued.

My little disco princess diva in full costume. She walks shockingly well in heels. Oh teenage years...stay away...

Ella at 3

I really need to record what Ella is doing developmentally and what she's like at this age since I'm bound to forget. So, at 3 and 3months...here's the deal...

Physical:
*Ella is now in the 75th percentile for height and weight (first time she's been over 50!) at 34 lbs and 38 inches
*She is jumping and running with no problem but hasn't quite mastered walking up/down stairs alternating feet (possibly because we have no stairs in our house!)
*She has started to hold pens and crayons correctly rather than "fisting" them but still does both
*Ella has been completely day potty trained since about September but still wears a pull-up at night. I'm not really concerned about it. When her pull ups are dry in the morning she can switch to underwear. Or when she's too big for pull ups :-)
*Ella's "schedule" is much less stringent than when she was younger but basically she wakes up at 7:45 am (she almost always woke up about an hour later than that until she went into a big girl bed-weird) and has rest time (in her room with books and toys for an hour) mid afternoon and goes to sleep between 7pm and 8pm depending on the day/other commitments.

Social/Emotional
*Ella does get in skirmishes with kids when playing but it's never constant or serious. She doesn't always stop the first time I tell her to but she's much more likely to disobey me than hit/grab from another kid at this point in life. She tends to be motherly with other kids-hugging them, guiding them on the back as they walk, wanting to hold their hand, especially if they're younger than her.
*Ella easily identifies her emotions when we ask her-sad, mad, happy, or frustrated. When she's angry she tends to growl to herself-it's kind of funny and kind of disturbing.
*She's easily scared by "scary" looking or mean characters in books or on TV so we're very careful about what she sees.
*We can take her to a restaurant with about a 65% chance of it being without incident (this is MUCH better than 6 months or a year ago). She still really struggles to stay in her seat at meal times (because she doesn't care about food) so we're working on that a lot at home so hopefully it'll translate to when we're out.


Food
*Ella is still uber-picky. She will ALWAYS eat any kind of cracker or chip or bread or popcorn. And will ALWAY drink pretty much anything you offer her (especially milk). She usually eats pb&j sandwiches, pb & honey sandwiches, chicken (often in nugget form), green beans, olives, cheese, mandarin oranges, peaches, and peas pretty reliably. She will sometimes eat hot dogs, ground beef (like taco meat), broccoli, tomatoes, bananas. She is resistant to try anything new but we're trying to get her to at least try a bite of new things. She generally eats very small amounts but surprises us every now and then. Usually what she eats probably amounts to about 1 cup of food per meal or less. It's not unusual for her to eat a few bites of a sandwich and 3 green beans and be done. My latest plan has been to not let her snack so she'll eat more at her meals and it seems to help but she just has a very small stomach I guess!

Likes/Dislikes
*Ella is obsessed with pink (clothes, hair accessories, backpacks, shoes, everything) but recently said light blue is also her favorite color and has stuck with it for a couple weeks
*Ella is REALLY into Cinderella (it's the only appropriate Disney movie we own) and all princesses
*Ella loves to paint with watercolors but rarely is interested in drawing or coloring
*She still enjoys playdough and it usually turns into pretend play
*As much as I got excited about her interest in dress up clothes, she rarely plays with them lately :-(
*Ella's favorite possessions are 1)her enormous disney storybooks
2)her pink sparkly shoes
3)her light green "blankey"
4)videos
5)board games

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Snow Day at Aunt BooBoo's

Yesterday was Martin Luther King's Bday and we planned to meet Marissa at a museum downtown that was having kids stuff all day but then...IT SNOWED! I am obsessively in love with snow for anyone who doesn't know. OBESSESSSSSED. I was jumping around and screaming when it started and I'm still sad that it didn't stick at our house :-( Anyway, we ended up just going down to Marissa's house and hanging out for the afternoon because it was actually snowing HARD there and sticking. We had a great time-thanks for having us over Marissa!


Marissa got rid of her bed frame and now has this big loungey bed on the floor with lots of blankets and pillows. Ella was in heaven. She giggled uncontrollably and wanted to play in the bed for a LONG time. Gizmo, Marissa's roommate's dog got in on the action too.

Next we made cookies and matzo ball soup. Ella helped some and then watched some Curious George while we finished up.

Then we took Gizmo out on a walk and played around in the snow. See! It really snowed!

We warmed up with a wild game of Zingo which Ella promptly lost interest in as soon as she lost (I won!). Fun day!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

My Brave Day

Last week a friend needed a little help after some surgery so I offered to take her daughter out for the afternoon. I was excited to do it and Ella was thrilled to get to spend some time with Hanna. We had a good time but I'll admit having two 3 year olds in the mall was kind of stressful. I'm just not used to keeping track of two kids at once in an open space. Thankfully it went pretty well (my kid was the one who had fits and made it difficult, Hanna was easy). Anyway, my hat is off to those of you with two kids or three kids or four kids...Wow. As I sat and watched them play I kept reminding myself that when I have two kids, they won't both be three at the same time-that'll make a difference right? If not, don't tell me. I need the delusion if Ella's ever going to get a sibling.

A lady who worked at this store noticed the price tag where the girls were standing and asked me if I was advertising that they were for sale for free :-)

Enjoying a little MickeyD's

Chillin in the play area tunnel

Play Doh once we got home :-) Having two kids at my house is no problem at all, that I'm more used to. I was so excited that we made it home without losing or hurting anyone that I made them an entire play doh zoo and cracked them up by letting them name the animals and then singing a song about each one. Relieved mommies are fun mommies.

Fun Day with the girls!

Getting back in the swing of things...

I haven't blogged in a while and I've been trying to figure out why.

1) I think with the break from school I've been enjoying taking a break from all "work" on the computer.
2)Ella has had a bad behavior phase for the last 2 weeks or so and it's been harder to remember the cute moments and blog about them. Most of my musings about her have been about whether she's ever going to be a contributing member of society if she can't learn to obey me NOW. BECAUSE I SAID SO.
3)We haven't done anything super exciting lately.

So, for those of you who emailed and asked, yes we're all ok and yes, I intend to keep blogging. I have a BUSY semester ahead so not sure how frequent it'll be but I'll try to get back in the swing of things :-) I started my clinical internship today so maybe I'll even regale some of you faithful readers with stories from work-there are likely to be some wild ones (mental health issues are often sad but sometimes really funny). But, for now, here are some random pics from the last couple weeks.

reminiscent of Ella's early love of putting all of her barrettes in her hair at once

with the cousins downtown

Harley Girls!

Ella's first try at roller skating! It lasted about 5 minutes but was very cute.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

Hannukah

Because my dad's side of the family is Jewish, even though my parents are Christians, they decided to raise us celebrating Christmas as well as Hanukkah . Chris and I have decided to do the same with Ella. We want her to know about her Jewish heritage and the cool stories of what God did for the Jews long before Jesus came into the picture. We had a Hanukkah dinner at my parents house this year with my mom's Panamanian take on traditional foods like latkes with applesauce and lamb. My grandmother taught us a couple yiddish words and proclaimed the dinner the best Hanukkah dinner she's had in 90 years. Ella was really into it too-what three year old wouldn't love 8 presents and getting to play with fire? Hopefully in years to come the story of Hanukkah will sink in also :-)

Friday, January 2, 2009

Sudds Gone Crazy!

The other day when I wasn't looking Ella decided to add some more soap to the bathtub. I couldn't really tell at first and then we turned on the jacuzzi jets and the bubbles went insane! These pictures are AFTER I drained all the water out because the bathtub was overflowing. It was a FULL tub of bubbles. Ahhhh the fun of being 3 and carefree :-)






Pretending to take a nap

"Mom I'm cold now! Get me out!"

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Ella Talk

Me (in a funny voice while dancing around): I Love You!! I love you!! I love you!
Ella (in a scolding tone): Mom. You are being a little too crazy.


E (while we're in the car running errands): Mom can you take a shower when we get home?
Me: Why? I took a shower this morning.
E: Please? Please? Can you please take a shower?
Me: No Ella, I'll take one tomorrow morning.
(lots more begging and me getting frustrated)
Me: Why do you want me to take a shower? I'm clean!
E (quietly): ummm...so I can watch TV
Ahhh, it all comes together now. She had no concerns for my hygiene, it was just a new way to beg for TV time (the begging is the main reason she's been banned from TV lately).
Later she told me "Mom, I won't let it hurt my brain! I promise!" (Yes, I told her too much TV will hurt her brain.)


Ella: Mom? Did you know vegetables are good for my brain, and my tummy, and my poop! That's what they're good for!
Me: That's true! How about some broccoli at lunch? I love broccoli.
Ella: Nope. I don't like vegetables.
(TMI ALERT-she knows vegetables are good for her poop because she's been constipated for most of her life so it's kind of a mantra around here)


Ella: Mom, come look! Come! Now!
Me: What happened? Are you ok? What are you doing? (I come around the table to look and she's sitting there bouncing her leg up and down)
Ella: This is called the hopping leg. Do you like it?


(in the car, both sitting quietly and pull up to a light about a mile from the mall)
E: Oh! We're going to the Alumbia Mall!
Me: We are! How did you know the name of the mall? How do you know where we are??
E: Cause it's the Alumbia Mall! We're near Popeye and Abuela's house too.
Me (seriously incredulous): Wow Ella! You're right! I'm so impressed!
E (to a tune she made up, over and over and over): I'm right, I'm right, I'm totally right!


Me: Ella can you tell me about the Christmas Story?
Ella: Yes! It's about Disney World. There's Mickey and Princesses.