Footwear, Fresh Air, and a Flashback

Wow, another year over.  It really is true that once you have children the days are long, but the months are short.  In light of this, I choose to reflect this lovely, long day.  

After breakfast I noticed that my slippers (as well as my husband's) had disappeared.  I also happened to notice that our child was missing too.  Good news, I found them all together.

Apparently, Ellie was attempting to put them on.

Yup, it's as cute as you imagine.

She then decided to shoot for a (much) bigger target.

Success! (With a little help from Mommy)

My goodness, she's so adorable.  Just look at this cute little curl thing going on with her hair.  

Hmm, what should I do about it?  Oh, I know!  

Baby's 1st ponytail!!

Ahhh, adorable AND tolerant.  Love it!

It was such a gorgeous day that we spent a little time outside this afternoon.

I do believe it was the first time I've let her down to walk around and explore on the patio.  

Naturally, this meant eating soil.  Also naturally, that led to Mommy digging said soil out of her mouth.  Annnd naturally that led to a tantrum.

Lovely.

Oh well, it's just not a full day around here anymore without one.  :)

Even her tantrums remind me of just how far we've come in a year.  One thing we have held on to from a year ago?  This shirt!

This "shirt" is actually a 0-3 month dress.

Don't believe me?

Still don't believe me?

Here is Ellie on 12/4/10

and then she wore it again for her Half Birthday on 1/23/11.

Crazy, huh?

I just love it when clothes are stretchy enough and cut just the right way, so that they can have a longer life.    Perhaps, we should all aspire to be so flexible and strong in hopes of finding longevity.  That almost sounds like a resolution of some sort.

On that note, Happy New Year!

Back to "Normal"

Well, things are still a bit of a mystery around here.
Ellie is still waking up screaming a few times each night, but it isn't taking much to soothe her back to sleep (until the next episode, that is).  The overly clinginess has pretty much subsided and we've returned to our normal level of clinginess (with the added tantrum kicker.. phew, those things can be vicious and they come on so quickly and without provocation sometimes).  There are still no signs of teeth (other than increased finger chewing and the occasional dribble of drool) and no other signs of infection or malady (no cough, no fever, no snot).  I'm pretty much ready to just say that this has been "one of those things".
Thankfully, she's back to eating normally for the most part.  She's nursing consistently and is accepting foods again.  I may or may not have been banned from weighing her since I got a little over-concerned about it during her hunger strike, so instead I've focused my efforts on totally overfeeding the poor child.
My weapon of choice:

Ellie has (happily, mind you) eaten an entire avocado each day for the past 3 days straight.  I'm not embarassed to admit it will probably be on the menu tomorrow too.  Haha.  Now that she is accepting yogurt again, I'm giving her full fat Fage Greek yogurt too (which is ridiculously hard to find for some reason) as well as her old standby of whole milk cottage cheese.
Ellie has certainly been doing her part too.  When she pulled the bag of Kamut off of the dining room table I didn't really think anything of it (pulling things off the table is nothing new).. until she managed to get the clip off.

And dig into the bag.

I could see this spiraling quickly out of control (or at least being dumped all over the living room), so I poured a little into one of the mini loaf pans she has recently claimed as her own.

Ellie then proceeded to stuff all of it in her mouth at once.

Yeah, I'd say her appetite is back.

Silent Night?

Yeah, not so much.
She did at least get a decent first chunk of sleep (well, after the yelling for an hour and Tylenol incident).  However, around 2:45 Ellie woke up screaming much to the chagrin of her mommy and daddy (and grandma and grandpa... who came back for another short visit).  I nursed and rocked her for about 45 minutes (I may have dozed off in there somewhere).  I put her in her crib and went back to bed.  About 15 minutes later she was screaming again and after 15 more minutes of nursing and rocking I was back in my bed... for about 5 minutes.  This time she stopped screaming by the time I got my robe on and made it to her door.  I got back into bed and, well, yeah screaming.  I put my robe back on, stumbled back down the hall and she stopped yelling again just as I reached her door.  I finally plopped down on top of the bed in my robe, covered myself with a blanket and prepared for another wake-up call.  Blessedly, it didn't come until 7.
Ellie still isn't overly interested in eating, but she is nursing better than she has in a very long time.  She was also very clingy and snuggly today, but I will never complain that my baby still wants to cuddle with her mommy.  We spent a little quality time with Grandma and Grandpa before Ellie crashed for an early nap (Who could blame her?  She had a rough night too).

(She obviously feels well enough to be silly :) )
Her nap ended up lasting almost 2.5 hours and while she was still a little extra cuddly when she got up, she definitely seemed to be happy.

Ellie actually ate fairly well at dinner (almost an entire avocado and a decent amount of cottage cheese) and went to sleep tonight without a fight.  Maybe we're finally rounding the corner on whatever this is.  :)

Bubble Bursting

I failed to mention the wonderful present that Ellie gave me for Christmas (mainly because I didn't want to jinx it), on Christmas Eve night she slept 6 hours straight (much better than what we had been averaging for the past few weeks).  To top it off, Christmas night she slept over 8 hours straight!  Merry Christmas Mommy!  

Of course, tonight was a total disaster.  She seemed to feel and eat the best she has in days, but bedtime was a battle for some reason.  After over an hour of trying to rock and nurse and sway I finally gave up and we gave her some Tylenol on the theory that it's teething pain (as good a guess as any right now).  She quieted down shortly thereafter (be it from sheer exhaustion or otherwise).  

Talk about bursting Mommy's bubble.  : /  We'll see how the rest of the night goes.  

For now though, I want to share some pictures of literal bubble bursting from today.  :)

Ellie's 2nd Christmas!

My, we've had a festive (and interesting) weekend.  Ellie still hasn't been eating well and has been acting a little "off", but I think we managed to have quite a bit of fun nonetheless.  Prepare yourself for a glut of pictures and a bit of rambling!
Because of my mom's flight schedule this year, we did most of our celebrating on Christmas Eve.  This called for a special Christmas outfit.

This beautiful sweater was knit by hand by Gramma Nita!

It has a matching hat too.

Seriously, this set is gorgeous.  I just love it.

We played around with the idea of wearing a headband, but decided to go au natural.

We read some Christmas stories

and the dogs napped in the sun.

Once the whole family was gathered

we Skyped with Sab and Gary in Spain.

After that it was time for presents!

Ellie opened all of her presents from Mommy and Daddy and Grandma and Grandpa.
As always, stocking first!

Mommy helped her with the presents.

As usual, the best part was the wrapping.

Following a lovely dinner (even though my popovers didn't "pop" this year for some reason)

my parents headed back to their hotel since they had a 6am flight out the next morning.  It was a lovely, albeit brief, visit.

Christmas itself was spent just the 3 of us.

We made our traditional Christmas pancakes from scratch

and I got to use my new pancake flipper!

Ellie still wasn't feeling well and actually got a little sick during breakfast.  :(  She rebounded quickly enough though and at least played with her food (although she didn't really eat any of it).

She humored me and at least sat for her annual Christmas morning picture with Santa

(here is last year's as a reminder)

although she clearly didn't want to.   :(

She perked up a little when it was time to open her presents from Santa Claus and her "Auntie Clauses".

Stacking rings from Santa!

Nativity ducks from The Foleys!

Gaudi bib and memory cards from Aunt Sab and Uncle Gary!

Monday the Bullfrog from The Norrises!

Phew, gotta rest and have a few Cheerioes

and a quick game of hide-n-seek.

Abigail the Bunny from Aunt Rhonda!

A water table from Aunt Mary!

And finally, one last present from Santa Claus... a rocking horse!

That she wanted nothing to do with.

Seriously, that was as close as she would get at first.  Then she got close enough to glare at it.

Santa didn't mind riding it at least.

It was clear the little girl needed a nap.

After her nap she seemed to feel much better.

She ate,

posed with her "haul",

(oops forgot to put the latch board in there),

and even touched the horse.

We're really not sure what was wrong.

She spent the afternoon pushing things around (including the horse).

She even tried to help kickoff tearing down the decorations by taking out the tree with her pack 'n' play (I barely caught her).

Silly girl.

Overall, it was a lovely, laid-back day.

We had leftovers for dinner and didn't get out of our pajamas all day.
Thank you to all of the people who helped make it a special weekend for us and Ellie.  We love you!  And to everybody reading this, we hope you had a joyous Christmas!