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.