Thanksgiving 2007

What a great Thanksgiving weekend! We got to spend time with family, watch a lot of football, and relax. It was a good time to do it since the Arctic Circle moved through the Metroplex on Wednesday afternoon. Burrr! We spent Thanksgiving Day at the Bright's house in Dallas. It's so nice that my parents are close enough so that both of our families can celebrate together. The Brights, the Rogers, and David and Lissa were all there for the feast. We had the traditional Greenburg turkey with all of the trimmings and watched the Cowboys go 10-1. While I was watching the game, I noticed it was snowing at the game and all of the sudden I realized that the Cowboys were playing a home game. I looked outside and sure enough, it was snowing. Not much, but a little. Ellie was so good all day. Even with her routine totally disrupted, she didn't cry of even get fussy once.

On Friday, Mike came over to watch his alma matter, Arkansas, beat #1 LSU and also to watch my Aggies beat Texas for the second year in a row. It got pretty rowdy at the Bright residence - partly because of all of the outstanding football and partly because a couple of wine bottles were opened. Then on Friday, Lee watched the Vols beat Kentucky in triple overtime and HP won their playoff game and my high school won their playoff game to go to the state finals. So we were very happy football fans this weekend.

I said I wasn't going go go shopping, but I wound up hitting Grapevine Mills with Beth on Saturday afternoon along with the rest of Dallas. Ellie already has two Christmas outfits, but Beth found two more party dresses that Ellie had to have. So now Ellie has four Christmas dresses. I'm going to have to find more parties to take her to so she can wear them all. We have our first party this weekend... now I just need to find something to wear! After the big shopping day, my parents baby sat so Lee and I could meet Elizabeth and Ned for dinner and watch No Country for Old Men. If you're looking for an uplifting magical holiday movie, this was pretty much the opposite of that. Lots of blood, but it was good. Javier Bardem wins the award for creepiest creepy guy.

Ellie has come a long way since last week when she adamantly opposed to the introduction of rice cereal. I fed her tonight and she actually opened her mouth every time she saw the spoon coming. I'd say she ate about 1/3 cup of cereal. I'm going to stick with the rice cereal for a few more days and then try out the peas I bought this weekend. I think all of these solid foods have done a number on her stomach because she's a little backed up right now. On the bright side, she didn't blow through an outfit at day care today. I won't go so far as to say that Ellie has said her first word, but she's started saying "ma-ma". Right now I think it's just babble but it's a start. And she so squirmy now. I really have to be careful because she jerks around to look at what a noise was or to grab something on her changing table. She's gotten very active and my prediction is that she'll be crawling by Christmas. Guess we need to start baby proofing!

Getting into the Spirit

Hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I'm still working on my latest blog from the long weekend. If you're a fan of Christmas music and you're stuck at a computer all day (like me), you may like the following site:

Mix 102.9 Christmas Music

It's free streaming Christmas music and they're playing some pretty good songs with no interruptions. Enjoy!

Rice Cereal and the 6 month checkup

If Ellie's first experience with rice cereal could best be expressed by one picture, it would be this:

She almost looks ticked off. As you can see, she's not a big fan of eating solid foods. We had quite the production on Saturday night. Lee was videotaping her first bites and simultaneously taking pictures while I tried to get Ellie to open her mouth so I could shove in a bite of cereal. She didn't eat that much and wound up throwing up at 4am. The next night she ate a little more, but woke up every hour. On Monday night, I switched to an organic rice cereal and she only woke up once so maybe she didn't like the Gerber. Tonight she ate the most that she's eaten so far, so we'll see what happens. She's started to figure out that after I put the food in her mouth, if she makes a raspberry sound, it'll fly out of her mouth and all over me. I can't wait until we start the green foods.

We went to the doctor today for her six month shots and Ellie received another good report card. Her growth is starting to slow a little, which is fine because for a while she was consistently in the 95th percentile for height and I thought she was going to wind up a WNBA player. Tall is good, but really tall makes you taller than all of the boys in eighth grade and nobody wants to ask you to dance because you make all of the guys feel like midgets so you're stuck dancing with that semi-tall guy from math class who who draws mythical creatures in the margins his paper all period. Not that that's ever happened to me. I'm just saying it could and I don't want it to happen to Ellie. Now Ellie is 15 pounds and 11 ounces (50th percentile) and 26.5 inches (75th percentile). She got all of the normal shots plus her flu shot. She's getting so much better when they give her the shots now. She only cried for about 10 seconds and then stopped. I only cried for about 3 seconds.

As for the rest of the weekend, my office had our annual Thanksgiving party on Friday so all of my co-workers got to see Ellie. I don't think they'd seen her since late August, so she had changed quite a bit. We went to another Highland Park game on Friday night. It was a little chilly so we had Ellie all bundled up. HP won against Frisco so they play again this weekend in Tyler. I think it must be the regional championship? We haven't decided it we'll go to that one. On Saturday, Ellie made our usual run to Target, watched the Vols almost loose to Vandy, and then hit a wine bar. Because that's how she rolls. On Sunday it was church, mall and then Cowboys game. I also finally got Ellie's closet in order.

I am SO excited that I have a four day weekend this weekend. We really don't have anything planned, but I can tell you right now, I'm not going to be at the mall. When we were there this past weekend, it wasn't that bad, but if I can do it and if I need to, I'm going to try to hit the mall after work instead of on the weekends. Christmas shopping is such a whip. I've already ordered some stuff on-line... maybe I'll get the rest there too. After all - free shipping. Who knows what the rest of the weekend holds, but I'm guessing I'll eat way too much on Thanksgiving. Last year was nice because I had my maternity pants on so there was a lot of give. Speaking of elastic waist bands... I had been slacking off on the Weight Watchers so I went back tonight. I thought I'd gained, but I had lost and I'm actually only 6 pounds away from my "WW" goal and nine pounds from my overall goal. I don't think I'm going to get there by Christmas, but I think I can get there by mid-February. I'm bringing the heat in the new year. Hope everyone has a great Turkey Day. Gobble till you wobble!

Happy six month birthday, Ellie!

Our little Ellie Belly is six months today! I can't believe it. Here she is today at daycare. It's been cold lately so I sent her to daycare in long pants and a long shirt. As you can see, she wasn't wearing that when I went to visit at lunch. She blew through that so they put her in a long-sleeved one piece outfit. But she's not wearing that either. She's in the backup backup outfit. Some days I don't even know why I put a diaper on her.

Holy Crap

This is getting ridiculous. People in my neighborhood have Christmas light up now. And it's not just that they're up... they're on. I am officially boycotting Christmas until the day after Thanksgiving. No more talk of it until then.

I had my first out-of-town trip today. I went to Tulsa and it went really well. I had to take my pump with me and to my surprise, the liquids ban is not in effect for nursing mothers. They didn't look at my pump or any of the liquids I had with me. I thought that was strange, but that's fine. I was a little nervous about leaving Ellie for the first time (even though it was a day trip), so to let me know she was okay with the whole situation, she threw up first thing in the morning. Of course. Because why wouldn't she vomit on the first day I have to go out of town? She went to daycare anyway and she was fine. Lee was such a help by taking her and picking her up. I pulled a Foldger's commercial on her today and secretly switched half of her breast milk with half formula and she would have none of it. Refused to eat. Great - now I have a breast milk junkie on my hands. Ellie - I'm giving you fair warning. this bar isn't staying open forever.

More on the title of this post at the end of the blog... in short, we had an Eileen-style "Code Brown" situation on Sunday night. But first - the weekend recap. We had quite a busy schedule. Lee took Ellie and me to our first Highland Park football game on Friday night. It was the last game of the season and the Scots kept their undefeated record intact by defeating West Mesquite and winning the district title. Ellie went to bed about an hour later than normal, but she was so great the entire game. So great, I thought the grandparents sitting in front of us were going to sneak out of the game with her. She loved watching the band, the drill team, and all of the people.

On Saturday morning, Ellie and I met some co-workers to help clean up the White Rock Lake shoreline and then we met up with a mother's group from our church and my friend Stephanie for a play date. Ellie was the youngest one there so she didn't really interact that much with the other children, but she had fun playing with all of their toys. It was really nice to meet some other mothers with similarly aged children.

When I got home, our friend Mike was there to watch the Tennessee-Arkansas game with Lee. After it ended, he and Lee went to the SMU game. I can't believe they've gone the whole season without winning one game. While they did that, I went to the mall to look for a Christmas outfit for Ellie because she had her Christmas portrait made on Sunday. It took me four hours to find something. Because according to many of the shop workers, you have to come in October to get the really good outfits. On Sunday, we went to the Christmas bazaar at my parent's church and took Ellie for her portrait.

After the long weekend, Ellie was really tired by bedtime on Sunday. We have started putting her in the high chair while we eat because she seems pretty happy there and neither of us has to try and eat while holding a baby. She started getting pretty fussy at 8:10, so I got her out of the high chair to get her ready for bed. I was carrying her with her butt in the crook of my left arm when all at one time, I heard something hitting the hardwood floor and realized there was something all over my arm. I looked down and my beautiful, sweet child had crapped all over herself and there was a line of poop from my armpit to my knee and down onto the floor. Let's just say if she was Chinese, her name would be Who Flung Poo. I stood there holding her out in disgust and shock and Lee ran over to help. He wiped up the floor and then started wiping me off, which pushed the poo deeper into my clothing. So. Freaking. Gross. She peed on Lee as he was getting her ready for her bath on Saturday night so I guess she thought it was my turn.

Ellie is turning six months on Friday (can you believe it?!) and we're going to try the rice cereal with her this weekend. I am sure next time you check, we will have some great picture of her "eating" her cereal for the first time. Let the solid food fun begin.

Happy Birthday, Aunt Elizabeth!

Halloween has come and gone and now it’s Christmastime? When did the holiday commercials start the day after Halloween? Poor Thanksgiving. It’s like everyone forgot about it. Sadly, all of this Christmas marketing is working on me because I’m already buying… or at least thinking about what I want to buy. I'm glad it’s starting to feel a little bit more like the season since a cold front blew through last night.

Ellie had a great first Halloween. She wasn’t scared of any of the costumes at all. Since it was so nice outside, Lee and I parked two chairs in the front yard, had a glass of wine, and passed out candy. One little boy about four years old came up and stared at Ellie for a minute and then said, “Can I touch it?”. I told him sure and he poked her jack-o-lantern on the front of her outfit. Maybe he thought she was part of our decorations? It was funny to watch the boys and girls trick-or-treating because they’re so different. Boys run up, grab as much candy as they can and then run off while girls will examine the candy bowl, make a decision, take one piece, and say thank you. We ran out of candy around 8:30 – about the same time the non-neighborhood kids started making the rounds so we called it a night and turned off the light.

Aunt Elizabeth turned 25 on Friday so Beth and Tee hosted a little get together for her at the Corner Bar. A lot of family friends who had never met Ellie were going to be there so we took her. That’s right – we took Ellie to a bar. And Lee wore her. It wasn’t smoky or anything because we had a private room and it was early so I really don’t think Ellie minded. For the record, everyone wants to talk to you if you’re wearing a baby so I think Lee was kicking himself all night for not wearing one to bars when he was in college. Maybe he’ll start wearing her to poker.

On Saturday, Mom, Ellie, and I went to the Chi-O Christmas Market for the first time. This is the Christmas market to end all Christmas markets. It’s so huge that they have it at the Dallas Convention Center. I think we wound up spending about 5 hours walking around and looking at everything we didn’t need. Mom actually did get some Christmas gifts and bought Ellie a little outfit. I bought an ornament with our names and the date on it and some other items. I am a sucker for those packaged soup mixes that you have to add water and a few other ingredients - so easy for weeknights. I think we’re going to have one I bought this week. Afterwards, Lee, Ellie and I met Beth at Patrizio’s for an early dinner and then went home to watch A&M loose. All I can do is hold onto memories of our glory days when I was still in school there. In seven years (keep in mind I stayed for grad school), I never missed a home game, but now I think I’d just stay home if I went there. Sad.

Lee had his last soccer game of the season on Sunday. That’s where my allergy problems all started and by that night, my sneezing was out of control. But now I don’t know if it’s allergy problems because I feel like it’s a head cold. I need to spend a week in a bubble and get well.


Ellie has a new toy. Actually, she got it a few weeks after she was born, but she's just now getting to the point where she can use it. Lee assembled it for her tonight and she seemed to enjoy it. I think it's like the jumperoo - she has to get used to it. It makes all sorts of different sounds and plays music. The top of it has the entire alphabet on it and when you push a letter, it says that letter so you can spell things. If you're my husband, that means you spell dirty words with it. When you're a guy, that's funny no matter if you're 7 or 37.

Sugar Plum tuckered out

I really need to remember my camera every day. When I went at lunch, she was back in her pile of toys and as you can see she was totally asleep. What a rough life Miss Bright leads. The words on her t-shirt say it all - "Sugar Plum".

Mine all mine!

It's another day of fun and laughs for Ellie! I like to take a picture on my camera phone while I'm there at lunch and send it to her daddy and grandmothers. She's sitting in the middle of a padded toy box and as you can see, she's really happy to have those toys all to herself. She should be fairly used to that by now. Are you starting to notice a trend with the past few pictures? I think this kiddo knows when a camera is on her. Little ham.

I am on hour 25 of an allergy attack. I have sneezed more in the past day than I have in the past 5 years. Not kidding. Hopefully more blogging tonight...

She's at it again

Here's a shot from daycare. It's off my camera phone so it's not very clear, but you get the point.

And after lunch:

Ellie had a fun first Halloween. More pictures to come.