Happy 18 months!

Hello strangers! Remember when I got pregnant and puked for 3 months and subsequently forgot I had a blog?   Yep, that happened.  But I’m getting finally feeling like myself, my bathrooms have been cleaned, I have dinner in the crock pot, and it’s time to resurrect the blog. :)  I may go back and do a few long overdue posts like Halloween and a fall summary so just warning ya.

First things first.  Happy 18 months to my darling daughter!  (technically, she’s almost 20 months now).   Umm, where did that year and a half go?  For this post, I’ll focus on some other “names” you could call this sweet girl.My Little Peanut:  Her height and head circumference are almost identical to Owen at this age, but she’s a full 3 pounds lighter.  Where Owen was wearing clothes about 3-6 months older than his age, she’s wearing exactly the 18-24 month size.
Height: 2 ft 7.9 in (57th percentile)
Weight: 21 lbs 13.2 oz (only the 15th percentile)
Head: 46.6 cm (52nd percentile – still a perfect head model size)
My Talker:
This is such a fun age.  She’s learning so much.  I feel bad comparing, but I feel like she’s learning at even more lightning speed than Owen did.  Maybe that’s a girl thing?  Or just a second born thing?  She has too many words to count and is already putting together small sentences.  She loves to sing Jesus Loves Me and the Wheels on the Bus.  She can do about 20 animals noises on request, can name most of her body parts, and loves to count:

My fashionista:  This little girl loves her some fashion.  I admit that I have totally fostered this in her and have no apologies for it.  haha  She doesn’t mind being all fancied up and now asks for a headband.  She LOVES shoes (random side note:  I adore kid shoes.  I’m not quite sure what my problem is because I’ve owned the same pair of about 10 shoes for years most from Target or Payless.  Read: cheap.  But oh my the kiddo shoes.  Our favorite brand by far is See Kai Run and thank goodness for scoring some awesome deals on ebay. /endsidenote). 

My mom helps to keep her well dressed and I love the hunt for a good deals, especially at All Things Kids, my favorite local consignment shop.

My mess maker:  Leave this girl alone for more than a minute and I promise that you will have a mess on your hands when you return.  Unlike Owen who really didn’t get into much more than his toys, Ellie gets into anything and everything: the toilet, the cat food, the crayons, and as pictured below my make up and other school room supplies.  At least she almost got the eyeliner in the right spot.

My adventurer : I need to get this girl in some gymnastics or dance classes stat.  If she can climb on it, she does.  She really has no fear and tackles most situations head-on.  We were bringing everything up from our basement and this cat stand was down there.  It wasn’t in front of the window for more than a few minutes before I looked over and saw this. My brother lover:  Haha terrible name title, but what can I say?  She loves that older brother of hers.  She asks for him the minute he gets up.  She follows him around and tries to copy whatever he does.  For the most part, they get along really well and seeing their relationship makes me less nervous for adding more siblings to the mix.  What could be better than more siblings right? :) My Picky Eater
I had no idea how easy I had it with Owen and his eating.  Sure, he didn’t eat enough vegetables, but overall he tried most things I put in front of him.  Not so much with his sister.  She won’t touch any form of meat, vegetables, or pretty much any food that’s mixed together (read: any of my dinners).  For the most part, she survives on oatmeal, toast, cheese, yogurt, milk, and fruit.  We try to add in new things everyday but so far no luck.  Hoping this gets better as she gets older.  As of two weeks ago, another big change in her diet is that we are done breastfeeding. (finally!)  I’ll write more on this in my pregnancy update.  As we’ve been trying to stop this for awhile, I wasn’t really sad at all when we were finished.
My Still Not Perfect Sleeper:
Ellie is definitely learning better sleep habits that was forced on her brother.  She takes one afternoon nap from about 12:30-2 (or sometimes 2:30).  She lays down in her bed and goes to sleep all on her own!  Bed time is equally as easy.  Books, Bible, songs, prayer and she points to her bed wanting to lay down.  The only thing we’re still working on is getting through the night with no wakes and not being ready to the day to start at 5am!(As you can also see from this picture, we didn’t quite make it to 2 years before turning her car seat around.  She is a much happier car rider now).Trying to get a few more minutes out of nap time with cuddles in the chair.

What else?  We’re going through a kinds hard time of her wanting to be held all the time which gets particularly hard during the dinner prep hour.  And she gets frustrated easily when she doesn’t have the right words for what she needs.  She loves her pacifiers to death and currently carries around 2 blankets everywhere she goes.

And that’s the current going-ons with Ms. Ellison Jakeh.  I just love her spunky little personality and can’t imagine our family without her!

"Fractured"

It was just another normal Friday.  Sam came over and decided to head to First Christian Church's indoor playground.  Owen was climbing on a low climber (think 1-2 ft off the ground) so I was helping Ellie climb on something else.  I looked over right as he fell...mind you onto a padded floor.  He of course cried, but I thought he was just scared.  We went over to the tables for a snack and to calm down.  I noticed he wasn't using his left arm very much.  He was moving it, but was holding the middle of his arm.  We packed up and when he couldn't get into his car seat like normal, I made the decision to stop at Convenient Care instead of going home.  All three kids were troopers through a VERY long appointment!

I wasn't able to to in the x-ray room with him because of being pregnant, but he was so brave and the nurses gave him lots of stickers to help.

The x-ray was a little inconclusive and the doctor (since he wasn't an orthopedic specialist) didn't want to make the official call. They were worried about this little bump towards his elbow:

They thought it could possibly be a stress fracture.  Or it could just be the way his bone was shaped.  So they decided to treat it like a fracture and send the x-rays to an orthopedic specialist.  So our little man had to get a wrap.  While it wasn't a full cast, it was hard and couldn't get  it wet. He was supposed to keep it in a sling but that only lasted about 2 days.

All in all, he did awesome for the almost 2 weeks that he had to wear it. He had sponge baths mixed with a few baths where we wrapped his arm good.  It made me very thankful it wasn't summer and swimming season!  His biggest complaint was that it was itchy!  On bad nights, a little Benadryl was helpful.

On Monday, December 2, we met with the orthopedic doctor.  It was a pretty confusing appointment.  The nurse came in and took the cast off.  But she was clear to not scratch too bad in case they needed to put another cast back on.  While we waited, I used the sink to give his arm a little "bath" and he did good just rubbing his arm gently and trying not to scratch.  It was really red!

When the doctor came in, he wasn't very clear about if it was ever fractured or not.  But the good news was he got to keep the wrap/cast off! 

    

We went and celebrated with an ice cream cone and then went home for a good long bath! :)

Turkey Day 2013

As far as family gatherings go, Thanksgiving for us was pretty low key this year and it was so nice!  The week before Sam and Owen helped me cut out and decorate their turkey shirts.  We gave Sam his at his birthday party the weekend before.I had already made Ellie a cute bow, so she got spared wearing a turkey.  We packed up and drove to Peoria Thursday morning bright and early.We got to hang out at my folk’s place and I whipped up my assigned sweet potato dish. (browned butter sweet potato casserole).  It was just us, my parents, and Philip and Kara so it felt a little lonely without Jenna and Casey.We got everyone dressed and headed over to my grandparent’s for a delicious meal! The rest of the weekend was super laid back and relaxing and I even got to sneak in a little Black Friday shopping for a couple things I was wanting for our school room.  Saturday night we helped Aunt Kara celebrate her birthday.  Owen assisted in the blowing out of the candles.Pretty boring Turkey Day report, but trying to catch up on my {very} neglected blog!

Halloween Recap

It was a fun fall week!  In school, we focused on the letter P and did all kinds of fall and pumpkin activities (and counting pennies below). We carved several pumpkins and saved one for when our buddy Sam came to play. We had 2 grasshoppers that seemed to enjoy our pumpkins on the front porch. We also learned about our bones made Mr. Skeleton.  I cut, he glued. :) We enjoyed the warmer than normal October weather a few days before Halloween. After last year’s amazing costumes, and with how lousy I was feeling, I decided to take it easy and do store bought costumes this year.  Wouldn’t you know that we got almost more compliments on my matching cows than the ones I (and my mom) spent hours sewing.  haha.  Owen wore Ellie’s costume from his first Halloween and I found his costume for $3 at a garage sale.  Score! We walked across the street to Prairie Fields to participate in their little parade around the neighborhood. It was a little drizzly, but the downpours we’d had all day stopped before we left and didn’t start again until we got home.  Perfect!  Owen totally got it this year and Ellie had no fear walking up, holding out her basket and saying “trick or treat.”They got quite a loot for how many houses we made it to.  I’m looking forward to helping them eat it. :)  Ellie had quite the fun time and was pretty tuckered out at the end of the evening!