First Day of Preschool!!!!!

Tuesday was Ella's first day of school! She's only going two mornings a week but that doesn't mean I didn't cry Monday night and Tuesday morning. What a big milestone to put a backpack on your child and send them off, homework in hand (she really had homework!), to SCHOOL! I can't believe it. Ella is the ideal candidate for preschool though. She's so independent, so social, and SO ready to learn. I'm excited about this new environment for her to get some input that is different from what she gets at home. She did great on her first day. She was so excited to finally go to school-she's been talking about it since january so it was awesome to see her "dreams" fulfilled. She hardly hesitated at all when it was time to leave me and follow the line leader upstairs (exactly what I expected). Both of her teachers said she was "a joy" when I picked her up so I hope that continues. I think it'll be a good year!


All dressed and ready to go

VERY excited

Raleigh got in on the big walk to the car (Ella beaming, Chris taking pictures, me just being anxious)

Lining up with all the other kids. That's her teacher in red. She and Ella have the same hair!

My last glimpse of her as they went up the stairs to their classrooms. Yay Ella!

Mommy Jail

Mommy Jail is something my friends and I have joked about as the place we should all go for certain things we've done with our children that we regret. Things like not paying attention and they get hurt or pretending you don't notice when they eat something off the floor. How much we regret them varies based on the offense, how it actually turned out, and whether the offense was actually "wrong" or just deemed so by judgmental others. So, it's confession time. I've had various mommy-jail offenses in my 2+ years in this role but the one that has been hanging over my head for a long time is that I've let Ella go to bed (nap and night) with a bottle/sippy cup in her bed ever since I stopped nursing. This may not sound so bad but it was not water. It was milk. Yup, tooth-rotting, sugar-filled milk. I've known for a fact that she always finishes the entire thing, puts it down, rolls over and goes to sleep so I've comforted myself as I read horrifying articles about "bottle rot" that she never falls asleep with milk in her mouth. Either way, I knew it wasn't the best thing to send her to bed with milk. But, she goes to bed so easily (9.5/10 times) I was too scared to take it away for fear that I didn't actually have a kid who puts herself to sleep but a kid who has an addiction to milk as a comfort item to put her to sleep. Well, about a month ago, we decided if she was ever going to night potty train we'd have to do it. Plus, just because her teeth are healthy so far, the dentist agreed it's not the best plan to brush and then let her drink milk. So we did it. We took it away. We told her big girls don't need milk in their beds and just put her in her bed. And she rolled over and went to sleep. WHAT????? I was all prepped for screaming and crying and she did...nothing. I thought maybe it was just that first night but she has had NO reaction. She doesn't care. Who would have guessed? Not me. I feel liberated. No more ongoing "bad habits" I'm too scared to kick. Ahhh. Freedom!!!! Oh wait...that familiar mommy guilt feeling is reminding me how often I let her watch TV when I probably should just sit down and play with her....oy. Mommy Jail, here I come. Thank God that he is FULL of grace for all the places I fall short as a parent.

"But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.' Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. " 2 Cor 12:9 (NIV)

Cows and Chips

We had a great day trip on Saturday to a Dairy Farm and then explored downtown Frederick since we were out that way. We had a great time and the only problem was Ella eating stickers in the car on the way there and throwing up on her shirt. Who knows what possessed her to eat stickers (we thought she'd outgrown such things) but I think hurling turned her off to ever doing it again. Enjoy the pics!



We got there just in time to feed the baby cows which was our main goal. Those cows were HUNGRY in a big way and kinda aggressive! We had fun though :-)

The cows were either very affectionate or desperate to lick milk off of anything they could, including each others' faces.

Ella seems to be totally cured of her fear of touching animals! I'm SO glad!

After the farm we walked around in downtown Frederick which was quaint and fun at the same time. All three of us had a blast in a specialty toy store we found and Ella had her first encounter with a jack-in-the-box which cracked us up!

We had dinner outside at a yummy Mexican restaurant and Ella got very intense about her chips and I had to get out the camera and take a video :-)

After dinner we walked around this beautiful riverwalk area at sunset and Ella plopped herself down and stared contemplatively at this fountain for a long time. I wonder what you contemplate when you're 2?

I didn't realize Chris took this picture of me pretending to be sad because Ella wouldn't come sit with me but it's so funny!

She gave in and, as you can see, I'm much happier :-) It was a great Saturday!

Hopefully Helpful Hint....(basically a PSA for BlogReader)

This keeps coming up so I've decided to blog about it. Blogs are great. Mine is primarily my record of Ella's life/schedule/cuteness so I don't forget it and can access this info when I have future kids and have forgotten how to do everything. Other people's blogs are more audience focused and entertaining and intentionally well written (sorry folks, that's not my goal). Some are funny, some are touching, some give advice. Regardless, I'm enjoying this age of blogs mostly because I can keep up with the lives and kids of friends all over the world. But, it would be SUPER annoying to have to bookmark each blog and remember to check it, never knowing if they'll update four times this week or four times this month. So, some genius at google had the same problem (I'm guessing) and invented Blog Reader. It's SO smart. I've had it for over a year but I keep coming across people who don't know about the wonders of blog reader so I feel it is my duty to inform you. All you have to do is cut and paste the web address of the blogs you want to read and now, blog reader will put in bold the blogs that have new posts and tell you how many! AND you can read (most of) the posts right on the same page. Now I never miss a post, I only have to go to one page instead of 12 and my blog reading is so simple and quick! So, for all of you frustrated people trying to keep up with more than one blog, I highly recommend it. Just click here to get all set up.

At last...

So, Holly and I have been friends since high school and even met in middle school. We've been accountability partners for about 13 years (we spend a couple hours each week sharing about our lives and keeping each other accountable for our living out our faith in our daily lives). We've been through a lot and God has totally given us parallel lives: we both graduated from college early, got engaged 6 months apart, got married 6 months apart, married into the military, moved out west (CA and AZ), went through both husbands deployments to Iraq (2 weeks apart), got out of the military, moved back to Maryland and both were in the hospital for each other's baby girls being born. So, we thought we'd finished a lot of the hard parts and now could raise our girls together and both be stay at home moms at the same time. Well, I'm sad to report that for the first 15 months of Hope's life, our children were on completely opposite nap schedules and we could NEVER see each other during the day! There were no times between about 9:30am and 4:30pm when one kid wasn't in the process of napping. We had to start meeting for accountability early in the morning before the girls woke up and for a while it was almost the only time we saw each other. It was really hard to be moms at the same time but never be able to do things together because one of them was asleep or because they just can't do the same things (they're a year and half apart in age). However, almost out of the blue, it happened. Hope switched to one nap a day. It seemed like just another fun milestone and we were both kind of nonchalant about it but then we realized OH MY GOSH!!! We can be mom-friends now!!! We can actually play during the day! We can see each other without all kinds of complicated arrangements! I'm SO excited for this new phase! I get my Holly back during daytime hours-not only at night or the crack of dawn. Ahhhh. I'm so thankful for a WONDERFUL friend to add to our daytime playdate repertoire. YAY!!! Here are yesterday's pics from one of our first playdates with Holly and Hope :-)