Easter Weekend 2009

I don't want to hear it. I know I've been a little... absent lately. I'm back with a lot of pictures from this weekend. On Saturday Ellie attended her first Easter Egg Hunt. My parents joined us at the annual Easter party was at Lakewood on Saturday morning and when Ellie first got there, she was hesitant because of all of the commotion. But when she got outside at the hunt she came to life and knew just what to do. The Easter egg hunt was at the driving range and her age category was 4 and under. We had to show her that she was supposed to pick up the eggs and put them in the basket, but she caught on really quickly and started picking them up.

After the hunt, Ellie spent some time at the bunny petting zoo and with the giant Peter Cotton Tail. Lee's parents joined all of us for a late lunch and then Ellie enjoyed a 2.5 hour nap.

We celebrated Easter by going to the 9AM service at our church with my parents. Ellie was really good the entire time which... was a change from the previous week. But in Ellie's defense, last weekend was Palm Sunday so the service lasted forever. Forever for a toddler is longer than 5 minutes especially when they're supposed to be sitting still and quiet. We came back to the house for a while after the service and then met the Brights at the Petroleum Club for brunch. I had one tired kiddo after all of that activity this weekend.

In other Ellie news, she can count to 12 and sign the entire ABC song without messing up. She learned it faster than I thought she would. Her biggest sentence is now "No, no Daddy. I don't like that." They teach them to say "I don't like that" at school so they can say it to another child instead of hauling off and hitting the other kid. My little genius also surprised me the other day when I was reading a book to her. It was an Easter book about hiding eggs and one egg was hidden in a bird's nest. I pointed at it and asked her what it was and she told me "a nest". Then I asked her what was in the nest and she said "a baby birdie". Kiddo already knows that baby birdies come from eggs. Genius. She's also all about getting the mail now. Every day when we get home, she runs to the stairs to see if the mailman has delivered anything. When there's not any down there she holds her hands up and shrugs and says "No mail?". I'm constantly amazed with the speed at which she learns things. Here she is saying "cheese".

Baby Emme

Ellie got to meet her new buddy this weekend, Emme Guerra. Emme was born to my friends Meg and Ruben on February 25 and she's so sweet. As I'm sitting here writing this, Ellie is in my lap pointing to the picture of Emme saying "Ellie's baby". So she must have liked her even though I think she has more fun with Ruben and the dogs. This is the best picture I could get of the two of them together...

We didn't do much the rest of the weekend. Since I'm going to be the Technology Chair for the Junior League next year, I met with the current chair and the new webmaster to start the transition. My parents kept Ellie again this weekend so Lee and I could go out on Saturday night. We saw Slumdog Millionaire, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture a few weeks ago. I was not as taken with it as I would have hoped, but it was still pretty good.

This last shot is one of Ellie on Friday night. She's getting to the point where she wants to have a little more say in what she wears. I don't know what she is going for with this look...

Chocolate Rain

I'm going to go ahead and tell you up front that I did not put Ellie down for a nap with a Jello chocolate pudding cup. While Ellie was supposed to be taking her nap, I was making our airline ticket reservations for Florida this summer. The ticket lady, Evelyn, was so nice and she started asking me all about Ellie and I said ," Oh, I hear in her her room now. She's supposed to be taking a nap, but she's started crying... let me check on her... OH MY GOD THERE IS CRAP EVERYWHERE! She has smeared poop everywhere!". And poor Evelyn was like ,"Oh no! Okay, honey. You go on and clean that up and call me back." So of course I hung up the phone and grabbed the camera. Most mothers would run to their child and start wiping, but not this mom. If Ellie smears poop all over the place, I am taking pictures of it and blogging about it. So now I have two confirmed pictures for her rehearsal dinner slide show: Ornament Boobs and Chocolate Rain. Keep it up, Ellie.

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday so we all got our ashes. Ellie could not figure out what was on our heads. I cannot wait until the weather warms up. It was sort of cold and windy around here this weekend so we stayed inside most of the time. That means finding indoor activities - like the mall. And apparently everyone else had that idea too because it was packed. We went so Ellie could watch the ducks and turtles at Northpark, but we wound up letting her make her own bear in the Build-A-Bear store. They have about 20 to choose from. She took her time evaluating all of her options and decided on a pink bear. They start out as unstuffed little shells and then you add everything. Ellie helped add the stuffing and then spent time playing in the accessories area. She did not let go of the bear for the next 24 hours so it created quite a lot of drama when Morgan decided to claim it as her own. Here she is stuffing the bear.

And here she is with the fully stuffed bear appropriately named "Pinky".

Ellie was so funny this morning. She grabbed her fingernail clippers, laid down on the changing table and held out her little hand with her fingers spread out as if I was her little Vietnamese manicure lady. And she's not even 2 yet. Ellie can now say the alphabet up to G and then she glosses over the other 19 letters and goes straight to "next time won't you sing with me". If you help her, she can do "QRSTUV". She can also count to 7. I hear her practicing in bed at night. We've been working on on teaching her who Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are, but I'm not sure she has all of the relationships straight. She knows that we go to church to see Jesus. As far as other religious teaching go, we're also teaching her how Obama is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's important to distinguish the sinners from the saints.

On a sad note, my parents had to put their dog, Abby, to sleep last Thursday. They adopted her 10 years ago and she was a wonderful dog, but developed diabetes a few months ago and it was just too much for her little body. Ellie called her "Abby dog" and we're all going to miss her. She and Trudie were such good dog pals. I imagine they're happy to see each other again.

Class Photo

We just got back Ellie's class photo. She's on the right and she's not smiling. Her teachers are Kelsey, on the left, and Irma, on the right. Irma is her main teacher and Ellie loves Irma. Her good friend is Georgia. She's third from the left in the glasses. She's tiny. Ellie is probably a full head taller than her. Ellie has to hug her when we leave every day and talks about her at home. A character in one of Ellie's books wears glasses and when get to that picture, Ellie says ," Georgia glasses!". The little boy in the overalls is Liam and he tries to steal Ellie's food at mealtimes. My mom dropped off something for Ellie last week and was there during snacktime. When Ellie turned around to look at my mom, Liam grabbed her snack off her plate. Georgia grabbed it from Liam and gave it back to Ellie. Don't mess with a girl's food.

Future Aerobics Instructor

Happy Ash Wednesday!

Ellie's House

The camera drama continued this week, but I think I've resolved everything. I hope. As it turns out, the previously owned camera that I was using didn't have a flash that was operating at 100%. The camera would work if I was outside, but if I wanted to use it inside, I was going to have to buy an accessory flash. I tried taking it to several places to figure out how to make it work, but it was going to have to be repaired. So I sent it back and luckily the lady I bought it from was nice enough to take it back. Sort of a bummer because I liked the camera a lot. That left me with no camera again. So on Saturday, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a brand new Canon EOS Rebel XS. I actually only had to purchase half of it because my parents were nice enough to pay for the other half as a late Christmas gift. So now I have my dream camera. And it works. And it takes the great pictures I've always wanted out of a camera. And I'm going to love it forever or at least until I leave it at the mall again. Just kidding, Lee. I won't do that.

After we got home from swimming lessons on Saturday, Ellie had a surprise waiting for her in the backyard. The sister-in-law of my co-worker, Jennifer, was looking to get rid of her daughter's play house so on Saturday, Lee and Jennifer's husband, Andy, picked up the play house and brought it over to our house. When we rounded the corner of the house and Ellie saw it, she sat in her stroller for a second speechless and then started screaming "Out! Out! Out!" for me to unbuckle her so she could play with it. She loves it. The only problem is that it's a bit hard to get her into the car in the morning because she sees it and wants to stay outside playing in "Ellie's house". That's what she calls it. I need to get her a little tea set so she can play house in it. Right now she runs in and out opening and closing the door and the windows.

My parents came over on Saturday and we went to the park to fly a kite. I bought a Sesame Street kite and was so excited about Ellie's first kite flying outing, but she was pretty uninterested. She was interested when the kite was on the ground and she liked the green tail attached to the end of it, but once it made its way into the air, she ran off. Out of sight, out of mind. So we made our way to the playground after about 5 minutes of kite flying. She is so over the little kid playground equipment and only wants to play on the park equipment that is designed for children five and older. This causes me anxiety, but she prefers the big slide much more now.

Saturday night my parents kept Ellie at their house while Lee and I went to Fort Worth to celebrate Katy's birthday at Cantina Laredo with about 14 other friends. Before dinner, Lee and I stopped at Wine Thief, the wine bar in the brand new Omni hotel. It was really nice and I had a great time at dinner catching up with everyone. Sunday we met one of Lee's high school friends from Chattanooga for lunch at Mi Cocina. She, her husband and her three kids were in town from Boston for a wedding. Ellie had her usual - a quesadilla - and surprised us when we asked her to say it and she could repeat it. It's funny hearing her little voice say "quesadilla". She can also put back on her shoes now... she's been taking them off for a while, but now in the mornings I get her all the way dressed except for her shoes and tell her to put them on. And she does it. I really like this picture I took on Saturday at the park - I think it's one of my favorites.

Valentine's Weekend 2009

I'm starting to think that 90% of good picture taking is having a good camera and the basic knowledge of how to use it. I snapped two pictures of Ellie at the park this weekend that are two of the better pictures I've taken of her in a while. Of course, it took me about 100 pictures to get these two, but I guess that's the beauty of digital photography. It's also nice to have a subject who is too young to scream, "Stop taking my picture, mom!".

Not much to report this weekend. It was Valentine's Day on Saturday. I'm not really a big celebrator of the holiday so we mostly stuck around the house. We had swimming lessons again on Saturday morning and my mom came to watch and she took some pictures. My dad was busy performing singing Valentine telegrams which he does every year with his singing group to raise money for Cooks Children's Hospital. Here's Ellie reaching for the stars - literally. You might not be able to tell, but she is kicking. I discovered a more advanced program taught by a private lady so I may start Ellie in those lessons this summer or even earlier. It would be nice if Ellie could swim to the side of the pool by herself.

That afternoon, I took Ellie to the park and then we stayed here for Valentine's Day dinner. Lee and I made a pact not to get each other gifts, but I went ahead and got a gift for both of us - Coldplay tickets. They're coming back in concert on July 21. The radio station Mix 102.9 was giving them away all week to the 20th caller, but I was every caller BUT the 20th. I was the 19th twice. This is the radio station that I won a ski trip from 4 years ago. It seems my luck for winning radio contests is slipping a bit.

In other Ellie news, she gave me her first unsolicited "thank you" this week. Since she started talking, I've been trying to teach her to say "please" and "thank you". Usually I have to prompt her for one or the other, but this week as we were getting ready for school, I handed her a cup of milk and she gave me a "sank ooh". Very cute.

My Best Friend

I was practicing with the settings on my new camera tonight and got some pictures of Ellie with her best friend...

Ellie LOVES the baby that I got her for her first birthday. She treats Baby like a real baby. As you can see, she blows her nose.

She reads to her.

Then she and Baby read to us.

Then she puts baby to bed.

She's already a good mom!

Our Grocery Getter

I got it!

Our blog is picture perfect again! I purchased a "new" camera this week. Actually, it's second hand, but that makes it new to me. I really wanted a super fancy new Canon Rebel SLR camera, but I decided that it would be a good idea for me to purchase a second hand one first for practice for a few years. And the one I got is perfect... it's just not the total latest and greatest technology. But that's okay. It's a great learning camera. I've always been really interested in photography, but have never made any steps to become a better photographer. Now I have and I'm really happy about it. I've got a book and I'm learning and I may even take a class once I exhaust the "SLR Camera for Dummies" book. So over the next year or so, you'll see my progression of photo skills... at least I hope that I progress!

The pictures I have on this blog are from a few nights ago when Ellie was feeding her fish. I really haven't had a chance to take many pictures outside of that lately. We started swimming lessons again this weekend, but I couldn't take pictures because I was in the water. Minor detail to taking pictures. Every time we go to the gym, Ellie has to go see the pool. I always have to keep one had on the back of her shirt just in case she has an immediate urge to swim. But I underestimated Ellie's excitement for the water. I got her dressed in her suit and walked her out to the pool, but once she realized that we were actually getting into the pool, she started screaming and squealing. Her favorite thing to do now is crawl out of the pool and jump back to me. Again and again. She gets these crazy eyes when she's about to jump so I was getting a kick out of watching her. I've never seen her so excited about something and I mean that. All of this excitement caused her to take a 2.5 hour nap.

I practice swimming strokes with her by throwing something out in front of her and then have her use her arms to pull it toward her. She's been putting together one or two words lately, but she's yet to make a full sentence. That changed on Saturday. I threw a football out in front of her and she grabbed it. I said, "did you get it?". She excitedly replied, "I got it!". I don't know if I was more happy that her swimming stokes were spot on or that she made a full sentence.

Other than the swimming lesson, we actually had a pretty busy weekend. I attended the Junior League's Volunteer fair this weekend and worked at a booth with my friend Elizabeth answering questions for a while. Then that night, we attended a wedding for our friends David and Amy. It was a beautiful wedding and instead of leaving the reception by the usual limo or classic car, the couple decided to leave the wedding via helicopter amidst fireworks. We weren't there to see it because the party wrapped up at midnight and we left around 11:00, but I heard it was spectacular.

It was also Ben's birthday last Wednesday, so we met for lunch at El Phoenix on Sunday to celebrate. Afterwards, we drove around looking at houses. We can't quite decide if we want to remodel the house we're in or move. Both are stressful decisions. I have to shut this down because I hear the tornado sirens going off. Hope we're not blown away!

Happy 2009!

Happy new year to everyone and yes, the sentiment is a full month late. If 2009 continues the way it's started, I'm going to buy a DeLorean, build a flux capacitor, and go back to 2008. I actually started this post 2 weeks ago, but just never got around to finishing it. And then the pressure built to write this enormous blog and I kept putting it off. But no more. I am back to blogging after this. One of the reasons I haven't been blogging is because I've been so busy but the other reason is because I lost my camera. We went to the Galleria about 3 weeks about to have dinner with the Hardemans and afterwards, we went to the third floor to the play area. As I was putting Ellie's shoes on to leave, I took the camera off my wrist and put in on the bench next to me. Ellie ran off and I jumped up to run after her and that was it. It was gone. I realized that I didn't have it on the way back to the house so I called the security office, but no. So all of the pictures in this post are courtesy of Stephanie since she did get some of Ellie that night. But the good news is that I bought another one so new pictures are on the way. Really and truly, I am back to blogging.

So what have we been doing... Ellie has two new pets. We are now the proud owners of two goldfish named Dorothy and NoNo. We bought a little 2-gallon aquarium for our new friends too. For those Sesame Street fans out there, you probably know that Elmo has a pet goldfish named Dorothy. So of course Ellie had to name one of the fish Dorothy. I have no clue why she named the other fish NoNo. I think she might have named it that in homage to her favorite word. She stands on her little stool and watches them swim and occasionally she tries to feed them a cracker through the glass.

She's been quite a character lately. About two weeks ago, we put Ellie to bed and I thought she had gone to sleep, but she started swalking after an hour. I went into her room to find her sans pajamas - but still in a diaper - thank goodness. I guess she's woken up and gotten undressed? We'll never know, but I was more than a little confused when I walked in the room and she handed me a pair of pajamas and I found a naked Ellie. We were a birthday party for Cooper, her school friend, last weekend and Ellie tried to jump in the pool. It was covered with a mesh leaf cover, but she still tried getting in. This resulted in a very wet Ellie since the pool cover only prohibited her from sinking and not from getting wet. I think she is very excited about swimming this summer because this afternoon I found her in her bathroom playing in her toilet (the real one) screaming "pool!!". If you know how much I am bothered by germs then you know how much this bothers me. We had to have the "potty is only for poo-poo and tee-tee" talk AGAIN. She's also learning new words exponentially and putting them together more. Like today I cut myself chopping onions so I put a bandage on my finger. She saw it and I told her that I was hurt and she pointed to my finger and said "mommy hurt". Or when I "forgot" to replace the batteries in her Elmo Live for a few days she would tell me "Elmo night-night". Yes, that's right, Ellie. Your very annoying talking animal is sleeping.

What else has happened... I hosted dual showers last weekend. A group of girls hosted a morning wedding shower at Meg's house for Bonnie and then in the evening we hosted a baby shower for Meg. I am learned that I am going to be on the Junior League's Leadership Council next year as the Technology Chair. Very excited about that one. I've been touring new schools for Ellie. I think where she is right now is okay but I may want to put her someplace else.

My good friend and college roommate Debbie had her second baby this week, a little girl named Sadie Scott. The delivery was fine, but Sadie was born with a genetic condition called Pfeiffer Syndrome that effects the appearance of her skull and eyes. She's going to have to have several surgeries, the first of which will be coming up in the next week or so. They've set up a site so that we can follow her progress. It's called Sadie's Site. I added it to my list of "Links" on the sidebar too. Debbie is such an amazing person and if God had told me he had a very special baby and asked me who should be her mother, I would have told him Debbie would be the best person for the job. I am asking that everyone pray for Sadie and for the Bono family.