Back to School

All the kids went back to school on Monday and football season is just around the corner.... ahhh, fall. The little girl who lives next to us started her freshman year in high school this week. I saw her on Sunday and she was trying to finish a report for her required summer reading (I remember those days). She said she was excited to start high school, but a little nervous because they had their first dance in two weeks. It made me remember the first day of school - when I had to have the perfect outfit (even though we had uniforms), and all of your books and folders were new and you felt like a total dumb ass because you couldn't get your combination lock to work right. I can't decide if I miss it or need therapy to purge it from my memory.

I have so much good news... where to begin?!! First off, Ellie has started a new line that she likes to call Diaperhead. It's very fashion forward.

Can you tell how I amuse myself during the day? That's right - I stick diapers on my kid's head! I know - I'm hilarious. Well, I'm about to have to find some other way to amuse myself because I found out yesterday that she got a spot in the daycare place I've been yearning for and had my name on the list at since September 2006. They left me a voice mail on Wednesday morning to tell me to she had a spot. I checked my messages as I was leaving the gym (at 9:15 AM trying to pretend I was a stay at home mom). I started jumping up and down in the street when I found out she had a spot, but then I got sad because I realized our weekday mornings of listening to Muse in the News on The Ticket and then reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear are about to come to a close. She starts Tuesday so that means that Grammie's days of Tuesday and Thursday babysitting ended today. She was sad too. So next week, I officially join the ranks of the "working mother". If I lost it when she had to get her first round of shots then I'll be interested to see how I react on Tuesday morning. I'm sure that will be an entire blog next week...

I haven't been talking about it much, but if everyone can remember, my goal was to loose 25 pounds by Labor Day. I weighed in a Weight Watchers last week and *drum roll*.... I've lost 25.8 pounds since May 26!!! Very exciting. I'm now back to the weight I was when I started Weight Watchers in 2005 so now I'm just regular fat again. Yea!! I'll be working to get "the rest" off by Christmas. I'll make another public goal... lose 10 pounds more pounds by Halloween (I know you're all thinking "good Lord fatty, how much did you gain?!?!). That not going to be that difficult since it's getting cooler so I can use our jogging stroller soon. Plus, I'm so busy at work, it's hard to find enough time to eat.

Ellie had her first big girl portrait made on Saturday afternoon in her Baptismal gown. It's the gown my mom wore and I wore and everyone else in between has worn. We got the proofs today and they're just okay. I'm still trying to decide if we're going to keep them or reshoot. Next weekend it the big weekend for the Baptism. Lots of out of town people are coming from Tennessee and we're really excited for them to meet Ellie! After the pictures, we came back to the house and a freak electrical storm blew out all of our power. We decided to go shopping since we had no AC, but before we did, Lee tried to cut Ellie's nails while she was sleeping. He got the middle and index finger nails okay, but then went for the left thumb and chopped the skin off the end of her finger. Poor kid. Poor dad too. Her thumb started bleeding, she started screaming, and Lee didn't know what to do. The good news is that it was just a little skin so she's no worse for the wear. That's her finding her feet on Sunday. As you can see, the blood-letting did no lasting damage.

I also joined a new group this week - the mother's association at our church (because apparently I think I need something else to do). It's going to be really nice to be around other moms with kids Ellie's age. They have playgroups, mother's night out, and holiday parties. And in keeping with the Catholic tradition, they serve alcohol at all of the functions! Very fun. I guess if there's one demographic that needs a booze break, it's new mommies.

Hope everyone has a great Labor Day. The next time I blog, I'll let you know how that day care thing went... Here's a picture of our little family out at dinner last weekend.

Ellie's new friends

I wish I could be as relaxed as Ellie. Here's our little Queen of Sheba looking like she owns the place in her yellow cow jumpsuit. Lee reminded me last night that I hadn't blogged in 10 days. Work is really amping up right now so when I'm at home most of my time is spent caring for Ellie and then immediately switching gears to buckle down and get things done for work. To let you know how busy I've been, I haven't looked at Perez Hilton in a week! Under normal circumstances I'm usually on there three times a day.

Ellie is doing some new things this week - she has discovered her feet so she grabs onto them and holds her toes. I need to get a picture of that. She also has discovered that she can make a new sound. She purses her lips together and blows making a raspberry sound. On Monday night, she wouldn't fall asleep so after 30 minutes, I went in there to rock her. I held her and gave her her pacifier. She spit it out and started with the "Pppppbbbt!! Pppppbbbt!! Pppppbbbt!!". That made me laugh so she started smiling. But then we had to get serious because it was 11:15 and mom seriously wanted to go to bed.

Speaking of pictures, I ordered 250 pictures from Shutterfly last week. I didn't think I had taken enough pictures of Ellie, but after ordering, I'm off to a good start. I can't remember the last time I had actual photographs printed out. Lee gave me my first digital camera for Christmas in 2002 and aside from our Honeymoon, I have no pictures. I have tons saved on the computer, but none printed out. I am promising myself I will print out pictures every three months. Now I just have to get all 250 of these bad boys in albums...

Ellie made some new friends last week. I had lunch with my friend Gina and she brought her her little boy, William. He was born 1 week after Ellie. Then on Sunday, we went to Hudson's baptism. She's Lauren and Brian's little girl, and Ellie is 11 days older than her. This is the first "interaction" Ellie has had with another baby. I'm putting interaction in quotes because I don't know that she actually realized there was another baby next to her. Of course we had to prop them up together and take their picture together.

Neither one of them has great core strength yet so they toppled over. Maybe some baby yoga will help. It was good to see high school friends and introduce Ellie to everyone. Ellie threw up while Aunt Katy was holding her during the baptism. Katy turned around to tell me, "She's barfing!!". Sorry Aunt Katy! Spit happens. That night our friends the Wheelocks were in town so we went out to dinner with them and Lee's family. I started to feel a achy during dinner and when I got home, I had a temperature of 100. I think I had mastitis (a.k.a. the "boob flu"), but it cleared itself up by Monday afternoon without me having to use antibiotics.

I left Ellie with her first non-family member to babysit yesterday. Our gym has a kids place so Ellie stayed there while I attended class. It was just next door to my class so the entire time I wanted to run over there and check on her, but I didn't. When I picked her up, she was asleep in one of the babysitter's arms. My class was pretty good - it was this weird yoga/dancing/kickboxing hybrid. During the first part, we did all yoga and I thought Lee might like it. Then we starting dancing and Jeff, the instructor, started yelling things like "Make it hard" and "Tight asses, everyone!" and I instantly knew my fifteen year old husband wouldn't be able to take it.

And finally - we uncorked some of our Chardonnay last night. It was... interesting. It wasn't bad - in fact, it was good for a first effort. It's sort of a weird color. Lee thinks it's because he oaked it for too long in our barrel. Yes, we have a barrel. He thinks that we should order grapes and crush them ourselves for our next batch of wine. I can see Fed Ex showing up at our house with 500 pounds of grapes. That may make us the talk of the neighborhood.

FP and the Dreamcatchers

I love this picture. I took after church this morning, and she is wearing a Feltman dress that I wore as a little girl. There are a couple of things that make her smile and laugh now - one of those things is to make a noise like a bee. BUUUZZZZZZ!! My mom figured that one out. So now when I take a picture, I don't tell her to smile, I just start buzzing.

Oh, where to begin. I have been going to a step class on Saturday mornings that's sort of weird. The instructor is a little Nazi-ish and the participants all know each other for some reason, so I feel like the outsider when I attend. The guy teaching the class is really into his choreography so there is no room for me to add my own flair. Example: We were doing this little number where you do a mambo, chasse, chasse around the bench. I replaced the last chasse with a little spin. It just worked better. So we're doing this in class and he's queuing "mambo, chasse, chasse". I mambo, chasse, spin. On the second time around, I hear him say it with with a little more meaning "Mambo, chasse, CHASSE!". I mambo, chasse, spin. Then I hear "MAMBO CHASSE CHASSE!!". I look over my shoulder to see what Fancy Pants has his knickers in a knot about and he's staring right at me! F.P. is calling me out because I am not doing his combination right. Are you kidding me? Listen Fred Astire, if I want to come in here and whip out a piece of cardboard and breakdance for an hour, I'm going to do it. And he's one of those instructors who has you do all of these weird arm things. If he starts in with the jazz hands, I'm out of there.

Then there are the participants. The first time I took this class was in March when I was still pregnant. I found it a little strange that four - FOUR - of the women were dressed alike in black spandex leggings, black sports bras and yellow tanks. They looked like an over 40 semi-competitive aerobics troupe. I secretly named them the Dreamcatchers (and don't tell me I'm crazy because crazy is wearing matching outfits to step class). I was hoping that it was just my pregnancy hormones making me read more into what was surely a strange coincidence. Nope. On Saturday, the ringleader/captain of the Dreamcatchers, Kim, chastised another member for not wearing the right outfit. "You didn't hear that we're wearing all black today?". Kim, baby we need to have a talk. If you have enough time to be the costume designer for your Saturday morning step class, the you have way too much time on your hands. The woman behind me was coincidentally dressed the same as me - black capri leggings and a green tank top. I thought about asking her to help me challenge the Dreamcatchers to a dance off, but didn't think she's understand what I was talking about.

Back to our weekend. On Saturday night, my parents came over to watch Ellie so we could have our second date night since she's been born. We went out to dinner and then to see the Bourne Ultimatum. It was really good, but I would have enjoyed it more if I had remembered what happened in the first two. But hands down, it was the best action movie I think I've ever seen. When we returned, Mom and Dad said she "cried a little". I think is grandparent code for "she screamed like a banshee for the three hours you were gone so we're going to remember our earplugs the next time we do this". Thanks Grammie and Grandi!

On Sunday, I assembled Ellie's Rainforest Jumperoo. It's the size of the space shuttle. No seriously, I bet someplace in Europe, they have a little one-seater car that's smaller than this thing. I don't think she knows quite what to make of it. It is designed so that she can move around 360 degrees, but she hasn't figured that out yet. When she jumps, the lights and music start going off (in the first 15 seconds of hearing it Lee asked me if it had a mute button). I think she likes bouncing up an down. I always wondered why parents have so much crap in their house... it's so they have a place to put their kid down so they can get their hands free. Just kidding - it's so they can learn. Or that's what the box said.

Rockin' Rockin' Rockin'

Ellie received a surprise gift from our friends Gina and Scott on Friday. It's the cutest little rocking chair I've ever seen. It's in all the colors of her nursery, it says "Time to Read" and has a little clock on the back. There's a spot on the side for her books. I absolutely adore it. She's still a little small for it now, but I know she'll love to rock and read in in a few more months.

Lee picked up a new case this past week that made the newspaper and television headlines, so he was interviewed and made the 5:00, 6:00 and 10:00 newscasts. Due to the public nature of the blog, I won't go into details, but e-mail me if you want the scoop! We Tivoed the newscasts and I think Lee has worn out the remote rewinding and rewatching. Here's how Wednesday night went: Play segment. "I look okay, right?" Yes honey. Rewind. Play segment. "Does that tie look okay?". Looks great. Rewind. Play segment. "Did I sound okay?" I was hanging on every word. The rinse, lather, and repeat went on for a while. I'm giving him a hard time, but he looked terrific and sounded even smarter than he is handsome. Ellie and I are very proud!

On Saturday, we went to the outlets in Allen. I'd never been there before, but they're pretty good. I got some "back to school" items for Ellie since she'll be starting day care soon and some "back to work" items for me. I'm focusing on items that I can still wear when I loose all of the weight, but I feel like it may be next spring before I'm fully back to old size. I hate buying fat girl clothes. After the shopping, we went to the house of a co-worker's who was having a party for the office. It was hot. It's finally beginning to feel like summer here - and if summer held off until August then I'll take it. I hope we don't have a delayed summer that lasts until November. That night, we watched 300 which was pretty good.

I bought a mirror for Ellie's crib and she loves it. I know she is mesmerized by the attractive baby staring back at her. She enjoys her mirror so much that I had to turn her around so she couldn't see herself anymore so she could fall asleep for a nap. I told her this is the only time in her life she was allowed to have a mirror hanging over her bed.