Family Life, unplugged

First Pigtails

2010-01-23T22:39:00.001-05:00

Just when we thought she couldn't get any cuter...

(Sofia Francesca, 21 months)

Back Off!

2009-03-13T04:21:00.005-04:00

I read a good entry at Ask Moxie today -- thanks 'H' (friend), who has a link to it on her blog, I have been out of the blog-loop for a while, not doing as much online reading, and so I did not know about the moxie blog, it has some great parenting Q&A. So, I posted a way too long comment in response to the issue and realized it would be good to copy onto the family blog here, probably actually better as a post here than a comment on their site that no one wants to read, oh well, sometimes you just want to share with a bunch of cyber-strangers : )

Anyway, the original question was asking for help potty training and switching to a big kid bed while pregnant with a second child, hmmm, sound familiar to our family - YES! - except we had the added bonus of having daddy deployed - genius planning. You can read the whole entry here but this is an excerpt from moxie's answer that covers my discussion...

"You know that whole thing about how people want things cheap, fast, and quality? And you can have cheap and fast, cheap and quality, or fast and quality, but not all three? Well, I think in this situation you can have pregnancy, maybe bed-changing and pregnancy, or maybe potty training and pregnancy, but not bed-changing, potty training, and pregnancy all at the same time.

It's just too much. For him. And for you. You're all overloaded, and that's making him freak out, and you guys feel like it's super high-stakes. But it's not. I mean, what happens if he's not in a bed before the baby comes, but is back in a crib? Or what happens if he's still in diapers? There's no shame, and no medical reason for either one, so if this is causing you this much stress, then why on earth put all of you through it?

So. Pick either the bed, or the potty training, or maybe neither. If it were me, I'd back off both the bed and the potty training, because the pregnancy alone is probably causing enough anxiety for him. He's old enough that he knows something's going on with the baby coming, even if he doesn't understand that completely. Talk to him and tell him that you're going to go back to the way it was before in whichever area you choose. Talking to him and letting him know that you're giving him back whatever you were trying to change is going to help ease his stress...

...People don't usually talk about "backing off" as a valid parenting technique, but it's a huge tool in controlling the situation (instead of trying to control your child). It's the least sexy but potentially most effective way of dealing with change, especially for toddlers."

She totally hit the nail on the head. Unfortunately for our family it REALLY took me a long time to realize the 'backing off' strategy was very a real, valid, acceptable, and NECESSARY tool to use. I know now, that for Ella, I was asking too much of her to potty train while daddy was gone. We thought if we took it nice and slow we could do it, but by the end of the deployment she and I had developed a truly unfortunate dynamic in our relationship - a horrible battle of wills and control. I started yelling at her, I mean REALLY yelling at her, for the first time in our lives, and it was shocking for me. The feeling of complete rage and loss of control was so foreign to me and my surprise and shock over it usually translated to a really fun screaming a crying session. Ugh. I'm sure I'm not THE worst mother in the world, but I'd really like to put myself in the running for putting her through my anger & control issues, during that potty training time, and, well, ever since then.

I am only NOW just realizing that I need to finally work on my relationship with her in a more positive way. During the deployment and pregnancy I thought the problems were just that - daddy is away and I'm pregnant and full of hormonal mood swings, nothing to worry about, right? After every 'angry episode' we'd work past it, I'd apologize, we'd tackle whatever we'd gotten upset about. After daddy got home there was the new baby so any 'episodes' were chalked up to that - learning to share mommy with another kid is hard, I have post partum hormones and mood swings, still nothing to worry about, right? Well, now the baby is getting ready to turn 1 and daddy has been home almost a year so I'm running out of excuses. It seems like Ella and I are in a constant battle of wills over so many issues, and I'm starting to see that I may be forcing incorrect expections/constraints on her. I HATE how 'pokey' she is and we're constantly nagging her to finish up, come along, get in the car so we're not late, etc. So I'm thinking, you know what?, maybe she is just a 'slow' kid (surprise, surprise, MANY preschoolers are 'slow'), and um, last time I checked, I'm the grown-up (hah), so I guess maybe I should structure our days so that she can BE slow, if that's what she is.

Now, I'm not saying we should just let our kids 'be' whatever all the time, hey they'd be tearing our houses apart in no time, coloring on the walls, throwing toys, general anarchy. But I think I need to take a good look at my kid and figure out what her 'real' eccentricities are, the ones that she really can't change. I've always thought I could shape her to be more, I don't know, normal, if there was something I thought was just unacceptable. But I don't think I can really make her faster, when I rush and nag her, we just end up screaming and crying and I'm probably really stressing her out. Hell, I HATE being rushed, why the heck would I do that to her? It all seems so basic, I don't know why it's taken me so long to look at her this way. Poor kid, it really is hard being the first, your parents have to test out every new parenting theory on you, and, well, really fail on most of them. I can only hope that she still won't remember too much of this, but I think at 4, we are definitely entering the 'early memories' stage of her life, and god help me if her first memories of her mama are being screamed at for not finishing her breakfast fast enough so we can get to preschool on time...

Well, this week I'm on day #4 of what I like to call 'ABSOLUTELY NO YELLING AT ELLA!' and I've successfully mastered my total irritation with her several times, taking some nice deep breaths and talking to her in almost a whisper (I think that might be scaring her more than the yelling). I've managed to finally be the 'grown-up' and take responsibility for us getting places on time, and as a result I didn't have to angrily rush her to preschool either day this week, um, seriously people, that was a HUGE milestone for me. And all week I've just been saying to myself, 'just let her be Ella, let her be her' - when she dissapeared for over 30 minutes when asked to go wash her hands, when she stared out the window at lunch and only took 2 bites in 15 minutes, or when I discovered her having a tea party with a necklace, bracelet, earrings and crown on when I just asked her to go put on her shoes. I kept thinking she was a 'sluggish little space cadet who never listened to a thing I said' when I need to see that she's a 'dreamy, measured, ponderous, and imaginative princess who loves to daydream and is always ready to listen if I talk to her the right way'. (thanks Thesaurus.com)

So, if you want to read it, here's my full comment from Ask Moxie and, of course, some pictures of my favorite little daydreamer...

I have a 'backing off' story also related to pregnancy and potty training and, drumroll... daddy's deployment. You think too much for a 2 1/2 year old? Yep.

I got pregnant with our second and we said goodbye to daddy for a 6-month deployment. My eldest was 2 1/2 when he left and had actually been going poop in the potty since she was 2, she just got interested in the potty, got a potty seat and started going, but she had no interest in going pee and never seemed to tell us when she had to. I waited until after he was gone for a little while and tried a variety of rewards systems but she never initiated breaks I just had to make her go. Then about 2 months before he came home she started having poop accidents - yuck - I was furious and let her know - I know, I know, totally wrong, supposed to have NO emotion involved in potty training, but I couldn't help it, she'd been 'poop' trained for a year, I was SO dissapointed.

The original post talked about control and battle of wills, and we definitely had plenty of that, I really 'lost it' more times than I want to admit, it was a truly hard time for us. It was my mother (who is a psychologist, so, pretty smart about this stuff) who was the one to tell me to 'back off' and take a break from the potty training, but I had a really hard time accepting that. Both my husband and I couldn't believe that our exceptional (now) 3-year-old could NOT do something developmentally, I mean, she'd been able to do everything else, right? She'd passed all her big milestones with flying colors, she HAD to be able to potty train too! It didn't help that we kept hearing how early and easily girls potty train and she was 3 and not even close. But as my mother said, I had to come to the realization that she could not do this, could not handle this, was completely overwhelmed and this was how she was expressing it. It was SO hard for me to take a step back, but I put her back in diapers and had to also let her know that I was okay with that (took a while to convince myself and her, she knew when I didn't mean it!).

Daddy came home, we had the baby the next day, moved her into her 'big girl room' a few days later and then daddy wanted to tackle potty training again - WHAT?! I knew he was crazy but I had to let him come to the same understanding I did, and it didn't take him long. I'm proud to admit that we made it through this INSANE time in our lives, she is now a little over 4 and she IS potty trained. I let her take a few more months really slow, very little emphasis on the potty and then I tried the 'potty timer' method and it worked wonders for us. I set a timer every 20 min. and told her when the bell went ding it was potty time, and it wasn't mommy's decision, it was the timer. She went without a fuss at each bell ding and for several days she really had to go each time so I truly believe she had not figured out her bladder 'holding' muscles, etc., she was just always peeing and the timer method helped her finally figure out how to hold it. I know it also helped that it was the 'timer' and not me, we took the control battle between the two of us out of the potty equation, and it worked.

At 4, she and I still have a lot of control issues, battle of wills, etc., and I'm currently going through another phase of 'backing off' with a variety of issues - not taking an hour to do things (she is a pokey kid), feeding herself (she spaces out at the table), etc. It seemed like we were fighting a lot lately, so I'm trying to back off and just 'let her be her'. I think as parents, as the 'bosses' of the family we always do a little over-controlling, thinking we can make our kids do things the 'right way' all the time, and it's REALLY hard to realize that doing things THEIR way is okay too. She ate her breakfast this morning, I just had to spoon-feed her about half the bites so we could get to preschool on time, but I didn't spend all of breakfast nagging her to finish, didn't have to rush us into the car, and got to say goodbye to her with a hug and a smile instead of tears - definitely worth all the 'backing off' she needs. : )

Living in Babble-on

2009-03-08T12:06:00.003-04:00

Eleven whole months of Sofia (and Ella) to try to report on, hmmm... So we'll start with Sofia's fantastic babbling skills, hence the clever title of this post!

At eleven months Sofia is a masterful babbler, right on track with all babies, I'm sure, but we, of course, think she is masterfully smart : ) She has been saying 'dada' and 'mama' for some time now, but she seems to finally be figuring out which is which. She is currently mastering 'hi', which she loves to NOT say when you ask her to (in front of a friend, for example), and loves to say on and on repeatedly in the dark of her bedroom after we have put her to sleep - even the thick Italian stone walls do not stop that sweet little voice, I can hear her all the way down the hall as I type on the computer...

She is also currently working on her fabulous princess wave, but is still much better at her chubby little baby finger point, which she has been doing for at least a couple months. I don't know what it is about that little finger, and her sister must have done it too, but it is my favorite thing, especially if she points AT me and says 'mama' - hooray! (most of the time she points at a lot of who-knows-what and says a bunch of baby gobbledy gook - still pretty much the cutest thing ever).

So what else can I say? Eleven months has flown by, right? That's what everyone says, and it definitely goes fast, but I think we have paused to enjoy each stage, month, week and day with Sofia, just as we did with Ella, at least I know we've tried. The first 6 months seemed slower than the last five, maybe because all that early baby stuff (laying around, staring at the ceiling, eating, sleeping) is kind of tedius and slow. I definitely enjoyed just holding and cuddling her, probably more than I did with Ella because I wasn't worrying if I was doing it all right. I've been telling everyone I know who has only one kid to DEFINITELY have more, because it has been just so sweet and wonderful having a second. I mean, yes, I'm tired and sometimes pulled too many different ways, but I had NO idea how much I loved having a baby until I got to do it again, it has been a real gift...

Lately, I definitely feel busy and pulled a lot of different directions, probably because Sofia is SO mobile now. She's been crawling since the fall but now she really enjoys some serious playtime - aka, mommy can NOT leave her for more than a few seconds because she goes in the kitchen, opens up the cabinets and takes out all the applesauce containers!!! She is so much more active than big sister Ella was at this stage. Ella was a quiet studier, liked to really examine all the pages of her books, pieces of her toys, etc., all while sweetly sucking on her pacifier. Conversely, Sofia enjoys grabbing huge handfulls of toys out of the toy basket without barely a glance, pulling all the books off the bookshelf, all while giving each thing she has grabbed a quick slobbery chew because she is SO not interested in using a pacifier... you have no idea how many hours you can kill wiping baby saliva off of things : )

Life seems to be a little bit in fast-forward mode right now, we know we will be leaving Italy in a few short months to move back to the states so everything we do seems to be on some sort of count-down (i.e., better NOT buy that huge pack of toilet paper, we might not use it up in time!). But we're still making time for walks down to the gelato store so I'm still enjoying every moment with my girls. Well, the moment right now is up as I can hear someone's sweet little cries through these thick stone walls and I can't wait to go scoop her up and give her a cuddle...

Baby Sofia is HERE!

2008-04-10T15:39:00.003-04:00

Sofia Francesca arrived at 2pm Thursday, April 3rd, a mere 24 hours after daddy's return from Afghanistan - hooray Sofia! Hooray for our new family of FOUR!...

"Patiently" Waiting for Daddy

2008-03-28T15:46:00.005-04:00

Baby is due in 10 days, daddy is due in FIVE - who will appear first? It's anybody's guess at this point, but I think we can call the look on my face "READY!"...

The reinforcements have arrived in the form of grandma Penny, can't thank her enough for braving the long trip over to Italy and the harsh hormonal temperments of her daughter : ) This week I've lapsed into extreme fatigue and discomfort and am doing everything humanly possible to take it easy and make this baby wait for daddy, we will see just how obedient a little fetus can be...

More news to come SOON!
(will also post news at our online baby scrapbook, see link below)

Really more of a cat person but this is cute...

2008-03-11T12:11:00.000-04:00

For Christmas...

2007-12-30T14:18:00.001-05:00

...Santa gave me the most adorable little pink frosty queen : )

Merry Christmas to All!

* Special thanks to grandma for the beautiful dress, and my Aunt Christy for the fabulous accessories!!!

When Daddy's Away...

2007-12-30T14:11:00.000-05:00

...the girls break out all the fun barrettes!!!

Just look how much fun you can have with only a few inches of hair : )

Pretty Christmas Elf

2007-12-14T16:57:00.000-05:00

Just some cute shots of Ella posin' by the Christmas tree & momma and Ella at a holiday party...

It would have been so easy...

2007-12-07T16:18:00.000-05:00

I don't know why, but I find this hysterical:

The Onion: Single Parent

And no, I never even THINK about leaving my incredibly adorable child, I just liked the line, "It would have been so easy... I could just kick myself!"

Life with momma & the princess is going just fine for all those out there thinking about us. Thank you for all the kind wishes and 'hang in there'-s, now if you could just figure out a way to make her stop SCREAMING because it seems to be her new favorite past-time since daddy has left : ) That and becoming a rather demanding primadonna, example: "Put my drink on the TABLE!", "Get me a TISSUE!", "Fix my SLIPPER!" Everything has become a demand, and the addition of a sweet 'Please' only seems to come after being reminded. Where, or where did she get this from? Is that what I walk around sounding like? She had to hear it somewhere - yikes!

Love her so much, wouldn't trade her for the world. Well, maybe trade her in for an EXACT replica that just screams, whines, fusses & cries a little bit less : )

Happy Turkey Day

2007-11-22T05:14:00.000-05:00

We won't get a chance to talk to daddy today, so here's a quick Thanksgiving message just for him!...

1, 2, 3 Strikes You're Out!

2007-11-14T15:16:00.001-05:00

A very special rendition of 'Take Me Out to the Ballgame', as sung by our beautiful princess...

Puddle Jumpin'

2007-09-08T17:36:00.000-04:00

Ella absolutely LOVES splashing in puddles - here she is splashing and 'having fun' after a rain storm last week...

Hello Daddy! (week three)

2007-08-31T11:45:00.000-04:00

Ella's video message for daddy, week three of his trip...

Hello Daddy! (week two)

2007-08-23T16:46:00.000-04:00

Another message for daddy, week two of his training trip...

Hello Daddy!

2007-08-18T05:58:00.000-04:00

Daddy is away doing some training so we are posting some video messages to him, here's one for this week...

Terribly Awesome

2007-07-23T11:55:00.000-04:00

A totally fun picture of Ella...

...and an awesome excerpt from an article I read today on Fisher-Price.com - this list of 'typical' toddler behavior is hysterical if you are the parent of a toddler because it is like reading a journal of my little one's daily activities. I do, like the article says, feel SO much better after reading this, realizing that my child is not a total brat for doing some of this stuff, or a total OC-in training, which was my bigger concern with the constant arranging and lining up of toys, crayons, etc. Read on...

"Problem Child? Probably not." by Dr. Kenneth N. Condrell, Ph.D., Child Psychologist

...The fact of the matter is that perfectly normal 2- and 3-year-olds display a lot of seemingly strange behavior. To an inexperienced parent, this behavior often becomes cause for concern.

“Do you think she’s becoming a brat?” I’m often asked. “Maybe my son is developing an obsessive-compulsive disorder,” another parent wonders. If a child has temper tantrums, her parents worry that he’ll become violent down the road. Parents of a bossy little girl may fear that she’s getting out of control.

To help ease new parents’ concerns, I have compiled a list of typical behavior for 2- and 3-year-olds. As you read this I hope it reassures you that you’re not lacking as a parent—and that you’re not raising a future delinquent!

Children this age throw their parents for a loop when they:

– Melt down when you deny an unreasonable request, like eating ice cream before dinner, taking home a puppy from the pet store or putting spaghetti in their milk.

– Suddenly disappear in a store for an impromptu game of hide-and-seek, sending you on a frantic search.

– Insist on wearing a particular outfit that’s not appropriate for the weather or so mismatched that it looks ridiculous.

– Have to have everything just so. This child repeatedly and meticulously lines up toys, making parents concerned that he or she has an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
(TOTALLY ELLA!)

– Experience unpredictable mood swings. One minute he’s happy and cooperative; the next he’s belligerent and uncooperative.

– Start using bad words despite the fact that neither parent swears.
(um, yikes! hope we don't get to this one)

– Break rules they followed the day before.

– Start defying you with a smile. For example, you ask your child to stay close at the mall and she runs away while you frantically chase her.
(um, sadly, also Ella, seriously cute smile while being seriously disobedient is one of her new favorite things)

– Don’t anticipate the danger of walking into the street, climbing up on the cupboard or leaning back on a chair.

– Hit a playmate for no apparent reason.

– Become fearful and hysterical at the sight of a tiny bug, for example, or the prospect of getting in the bathtub.

– Ignore you and seem to go deaf when you give an order.
(ah, yes, the 'deaf' treatment, I often find myself saying, "hello, do you not speak english today?!", I guess to her it's a rhetorical question)

– Start crying hysterically over nothing and can’t be consoled—even after having a very pleasant, uneventful day.
(um, yeah, it happens, and we call it 'being 2', if I could get away with it I know I'd start crying hysterically for no reason some days, but sadly I have lost this priviledge)

– Become a very finicky eater, rejecting all but a select few foods at mealtime.
(yes - french fries, french fries, french fries!)
(and no, I do not let my child eat fast food all the time, but actually at the restaurants here in Italy they are always serving french fries, who knew it was their favorite side dish?)

Does anything sound familiar on this list? It probably does, as many young children behave like this. Of course, when it’s your child, you tend to feel like a failure, as if you’ve done something wrong as a parent. Or, you worry that something’s wrong with your child.

In all likelihood, neither scenario is true. At this age children exhibit a lot of unreasonable behavior, and it’s almost never a reflection on their parents’ parenting skills or some aberration in the child. If you’re a new parent, remember that your child is going through a phase that will soon pass. In the meantime, try not to become frustrated—and keep a cool head!

[End of article]

And I particularly like that last part about "it's almost never a reflection on their parents' parenting skills" - Hooray! I'm not a terrible mother!!!

Idea!

2007-07-05T13:00:00.000-04:00

Favorite quote of the week...

Driving in the car, returning home from errands... Quietly listening to music, no peep from the little one in several minutes... Suddenly, the silence is broken -

ELLA: Momma! I have an IDEA!
ME: Really? You have an idea?... What do you have an idea for?

[long thoughtful toddler pause, clearly wants to answer this correctly]

ELLA: I have..... an idea..... for CANDY!

Can't. Stop. Laughing.

Really, who knew 2-year-olds were this much fun. Even with all the screaming and time-outs, these have got to be the best days of my life. : )

You guys!

2007-05-30T10:55:00.000-04:00

Here's another place to check out pics of Ella and such, an online "scrapbook" site that we periodically update:

And my Ella quote of the week, upon facing night SIX without a pacifier, preparing to holler & shout, our little princess begins the whining tirade with a plaintive "No you guys! Don't go!" You guys? Really kid? Where did you get that one? Hmmm, what sort of TV have I been watching, that I didn't think she was paying attention to... Oh well, another generation has been molded and shaped by tv-aholic parents. Yep, I'm a slacker mother, I should be fired. And today we ran late and missed a big chunk of playgroup. I am so totally fired. Definitely fired. Maybe I can suck up to the boss? (Too bad I already kiss her cute little a$$)

Holy cow, two-year-olds are SO MUCH FUN!!!

Pretend

2007-03-14T12:56:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, walking into the BX with Ella, she stops and holds out hands like 'claws', squinches face up and says "RRRRRR!!"
ME: Ella, are you a lion?.... A bear?
ELLA: I'm makin' an ANGRY FACE!
ME: [holding sides, laughing so hard] Yes, honey, I guess you are.

(special thanks to friend Kelly, who gave us the wonderful, I-highly-recommend-book, "I Feel Silly" by Jamie Lee Curtis, because the little girl has an 'angry' day, and I quote, "Today I feel angry, you'd better stay clear, my face is all pinched and red ear-to-ear", and when we read it, we act out this page, complete with the angry claw hands and the now-made-public "RRRRRRRR!")

Today, on the way to the car, Ella adamantly refuses to hold 'hands', but instead agrees to hold my 'Thumbkin' (thanks, grandma, for teaching her the 'Thumbkin Song', it's all 'thumbkin', all day now).

After said hand-holding skirmish, walking along contentedly, Ella proclaims, out of nowhere (as in, absolutely no sign of a cow in the parking lot) -
"Moo, moo, MOO! I'm pretending to be a cow!"

Holy cow (excuse the pun), the kid understands 'pretend' now? She never ceases to amaze me.

And so we "moo, moo, moo-d, the whole way to the car.

What a great day : )

Ella's first hit video of the new year...

2007-01-07T09:18:00.000-05:00

Sorting through photos & video of Ella to get out to all our adoring fans, here's the first clip we came across that we wanted to share - Ella swinging in our Italian front yard this past fall, in one of our nice shade trees - yay! - we didn't have any shade trees in Texas so this is a treat, so excited we could finally have a tree swing!!! Just a quick 60 seconds or so, but fun to hear her, she knows AND can say mommy & daddy's names - hooray!...

Sorry, this seems really grainy, I'm working on the settings, try to have something better up soon...

Happy Holidays

2006-12-26T16:37:00.000-05:00

Happy Holidays to one & all! We've had a fun first Christmas on our own here in Italia, Ella had lots of great gifts to open and play with ALL day, great fun! Thanks to everyone for all the cards & gifts & holiday wishes, we miss all of you and wish we could be with you during this special time of year...

And on a non-holiday note, here's a little something I found through my friend Kori's site - thanks Kori! - a silly site that comes up with random peculiar royal titles for you with your name, really silly. Here's the titles given to myself and our little princess Ella, click on the link to go get a title of your own (and try it more than once if you don't like what they give you, it appears to be totally random):

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Her Most Serene Highness Lady Abigail the Talkative of Melbury Bubblewick
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Reverend Lady Ella Maria the Uncanny of Barton in the Beans
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Oooh, an almost funnier one for Ella the second time round...

My Peculiar Aristocratic Title is:
Honourable Lady Ella Maria the Eldritch of Biggleswade by Biscuit
Get your Peculiar Aristocratic Title

Aaaah, silly holiday times, you'd think if I have this kind of free time I could get off my lazy rump and get out some new pictures of Ella to all her deserving loved ones, right? They're coming, I promise, one of these days, along with belated holiday cards and thank you notes and flying pink candy fairies : )

Hope all our friends out there are having a fun & relaxing holiday. Lots of love & hugs to all...

Crazy busy holiday time

2006-12-13T08:47:00.000-05:00

Trying a quick post, they just updated the blog system here, we'll see if it's easier or faster to use now. Anyway, Ella & I have been trading germs back & forth since Thanksgiving, and we're both trying to get over the second bug as we speak, this one's a doozy, I think every sinus pore in my entire head is clogged up AND both ear tubes, I did not know I could possible make this much mucus... yum, right? On top of the colds we are crazy busy with holiday plans, just like everybody else the globe over. This weekend we are in charge of throwing a kid's Christmas party for daddy's whole squadron (all of civil engineering), so we're scrambling with all the final details since only two of our hundreds of spouses volunteered to help - yay : ) Let's just guess who will be refusing to head this up next year, hmmmm.

Well, hope to post more soon, just gotta get through this last big weekend and then we can relax and spend our time up till Christmas just baking lots of yummy holiday treats and then, well, eating them - hooray!

Here's a few OLD pictures of Ella from the last couple of months....

Sitting like a big girl at her new table & chairs -
Thanks Nana & Papa!!!

Our halloween lion, can you tell she's saying ROAR!

Ella's first halloween candy - what an awesome chocolate face!

A fuzzy, but cute pic of our little elf - Thanks for the outfit Grandma Penny! (we'll take more pics in this soon, I promise, but this fuzzy one was the best one I could catch in her first outing)

Ella's Greatest Hits (months 16 to 20)

2006-10-12T11:39:00.000-04:00

Oops, just noticed I haven't posted on the blog in a month, sorry fans! I...., well...., I've been busy, just like everybody else, with probably the same excuses as everybody else, so I'll just blame it on being in Italy - I'm just ooooh sooooo far away and things are just oooooh sooooo much slower here, okay? Feeling sorry for me yet? Yea, I didn't think so...

Anyway, we have gotten busy with lots of different activities here in Italy, which is good, it's helping pass the time and get us more settled in here, I think. I've taken on the role of 'organizer' for the spouses group for the CE (civil engineering) squadron here so I've been busy planning & hosting potlucks, booking Christmas events and organizing some Halloween stuff too - total soccer mom life - woo hoo! At least it's getting me out and meeting more people, although 20 new acquaintances still do not equal ONE good friend who I can really talk to, but I won't give up my search yet. Any great tips on making new friends, ladies, PLEASE pass them along : )

On to the good stuff, what about baby, right? Princess Ella is doing fabulously, reigning over her new Italian kingdom - and by kingdom I mean of course, mommy, daddy & both furry kitties. Yes, she is totally the boss of us, and with all the chasing and squealing at the kitties I think they have also come to accept her as their new, albeit crazy, leader. As our new, crazy (but cute) precocious leader, she has been taking great leaps and bounds through her toddler milestones and with all the MOVING ACROSS THE GLOBE TO ITALY, I haven't taken the time to talk about just her - a.k.a, I've been so busy with my little "I miss Target" pity party that I haven't adequately recognized my exceptional daughter's incredible achievements!!! She deserves at least TEN whole posts all about her fabulousness but for now, I'll see what I can cram in right here in a few paragraphs : )

Hard to believe our little princess is now 20 MONTHS OLD! That's only 4 months from the big TWO! She still seemed like such a little baby when we moved, just 16 months old, a developing toddler, talking a little, just getting into things. And now, just 4 short months later, she seems on her way to being such a big girl. When we first got here, I think she spent some time going through the transition, her own way. There were no new words for a while, her play habits were the same, she still fit the same clothes, etc. Then, once we were settled in the house, it's almost as if she knew it was time, it was okay to resume her development, and in a flurry of activity she started doing all sorts of new things! Her little brain became such a sponge, she started soaking up new words, alphabet, numbers, shapes, it was as if everything started clicking into place. I wonder if her body & brain were just as absorbed with the stress of the move as ours were, and there was just no room for her to explore and learn, but once she felt safe and settled, she was able to relax and let everything in again.

The first was the alphabet, she has always loved the alphabet song and has several sets of alphabet magnets, books, etc. One weekend she was playing with the magnets with daddy and he asked her what one of the letters was and she knew it, and then another, and another. He called me into the room and said mommy, Ella knows her letters, did you know that? I was completely ashamed because I didn't know, how did that slip by me? How and when did she absorb 26 new pieces of information? It's gotta be the Sesame Street : )

Next was numbers, she liked the Baby Einstein "Numbers Nursery" video we borrowed from the library so I bought it for her. Actually, I shouldn't say she liked it, as much as she was COMPLETELY OBSESSED with "Numbers! Numbers! NUMBERS!" from the first time she saw it, she would repeatedly ask, plead and shout for "Numbers!" whenever she saw the tv. Maybe a future as an accountant? Anyway, she seemed to know the numbers 1 to 5 that they taught in the video from the first time through, and although they don't teach 6 to 10, she seemed to know those as well - thank you Count Von Count, Sesame Street is truly the sole educator of my child.

While her brain feverishly memorized all the letters and numbers she also mastered her colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black & white (thank you Baby Colors book), as well as her shapes - circle, square, triangle & star (thank you shape sorter), still working on oval, rectangle and of course, dodecahedron : )

She is also becoming a master at crayons & coloring, something she was quite timid about for some time, as she would become unbelievably frustrated trying to use them because she would apply the pressure of a small ant and get no results, angrily wondering 'what the heck are these stinky waxy things and why does momma keep yelling when I put them in my mouth, chewing on them is clearly their only purpose!' We finally found her some larger, softer crayons (thank you grandma) and she finally figured out how to produce lovely scribbly colored marks. She is fond of coloring in a few old coloring books of mine (yes I've kept weird old childhood things like that), and she is even more fond of having you color with her, apparently coloring 'solo' is not very chic these days, but she is probably most fond of coloring right off the lines in the coloring book and onto the tile floor when mommy's not looking, eh, I think that'll come out, right? Whatever, we needed some decoration in here anyway.

Physically she runs circles round both me & daddy, literally, and of course, the cats. She has always been a typical girl, gentle & shy and not into raucous physical play but she is starting to break out of her shell a little with all the exposure to kids at the playgroups we've been attending on base. Before we moved here she had fallen in love with swings but not much else on the playground. Well, she clearly had just not met the right playground, I mean, hello mom, not all playgrounds are created equal. Those slides we'd taken her to in Texas could have been giant screaming toothy alligators the way she cried when we put her on them, but here in Italy all she has to do is catch sight of them on base and it's "Slide! SLIDE! SLIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIDE!" For a while we had to ride down them with her but in the last few weeks she has taken to braving them all by herself, confidently climbing up and announcing her fun with a hearty "Ready... Set... GOOOO!" (thank you daddy) as she zooms down. I love her shy sweet nature but I love even more watching her explore new things and become so confident and assertive, it makes me feel like she can conquer the world, well, at least the playground.

Perhaps the most exciting of all has been her explosion of vocabulary. Everyone we see comments on what a talker she is right now, repeating nearly everything (really time to watch our mouths) and using her words so well to accomplish things. She had a wonderful vocabulary at 16 months, right on track with all her single words. Then, after moving, her first step was to string two words together, adorable things like "mommy hug", "cookie please" and the accidental, but I-will-never-live-down phrase "poopy daddy". This may have been the first two word phrase and it was entirely accidental, but daddy believes to this day that I slaved away, training her to say those two unlikely words. In truth, she was blabbing about "poopy" during a diaper change and suddenly asked for "daddy" and my mistake was to laugh and repeat it, alas, "poopy daddy" was born. I am proud to say she no longer utters this unspeakable phrase, although daddy is still working hard to get her to say "poopy mommy", ever my little angel, she still adamantly refuses to soil her mother's good name : ) Since those first few word couplings she has burst into multi-word phrases and without knowing it has said several completely grammatically correct sentences - "I see daddy" "More milk please" as well as many more wonderful, without grammar - "Ella sit chair", "Daddy sit big girl", which means daddy sit up like a "big girl", and I'm sure we all know how much daddy must LOVE that Ella lacks the distinction that daddy is a big BOY, not a big girl, ah toddler talk is so entertaining.

Even in her single-word vocabulary, she knows the words for SO many objects now and I wonder where she learned them. So many things from everyday life that we must have been talking about and labeling all along, and suddenly she will access that information out of nowhere and point and say "bicycle" in the store, and I look, and by god, there is a bicycle, how did she know that? I know she's seen them in books, but to make the leap to identify them in real life somehow astonishes me. I guess I figured for so long that she wouldn't recognize similar things unless they looked EXACTLY like they did in the books, but she can name animals like fish, cows, lions, elephants, in all different books and in real life, even though all the versions are different. To me, it's an awesome new concept that she can take books/videos/etc. right into real life, and vice-versa, this meshing of everything around her, it's like accessing a whole new quadrant of her brain. Ah heck, let's just skip all that grade school and send her right to college, right? She's a genious!

I love watching her learn and make all these new connections in the world around her. With her language skills she can talk to me about so many more things now. She talks to her toys too, recently doing a lot of new "modeling" behavior (I think that's what it's called). Taking her baby doll and saying "baby lay down" as she lays the baby down, even trying to share her food with her baby or a bear "Bear banana?" she says as she squishes the mushy fruit into the poly fur - "How nice of you to share Ella" I say encouragingly as I de-hair her nicely offered fruit. She especially loves to play with the 'vintage' Fisher Price Sesame Street playhouse from my childhood (thank you, thank you, thank you grandma). Even though there is no Elmo (gasp) she loves to play with Ernie, Big Bird, & Cookie Monster in the beds, chairs and truck, saying "Big Bird lay down", "Ernie sit eat" and "Monster truck, zoom!" Maybe all of this sounds mundane to you, but you really gotta see it, to believe it, it is one of the cutest things in the world to watch them play in this little minitiarized world, acting out all the things they know, smiling with their great achievements, or maybe just because it's fun to be the big boss for a change : )

Well, she deserved all of this devoted blogging eons ago, but I hope this catch up will suffice, and adequately bore you with my writing so I won't have to return for another month, full of more excuses about my equally busy life. Again, love to all our friends and family, again, we still miss you all terribly and again, you are ALL welcome to come visit anytime. We've been working on capturing more Ella-in-action on video and have a new full tape for me to sort through so I will hopefully have some new clips to post soon, hopefully also actually displaying some of her new achievements so I've got some proof to back up all my blabbing. For now, here are some totally hysterical pictures of Ella walking down the hall in daddy's combat boots (literally, his military issue boots), in the last one she looks like she's doing a drunken frankenstein walk, it was hard to even take the pictures I was laughing so hard as she walked towards me saying "Daddy boots, Ella walk, daddy boots, Ella waaaaaaaaaalk!"...

Roaming Home from Rome

2006-09-11T13:44:00.000-04:00

A week home from our venture to Rome and we're almost all rested up and recovered, mostly because we all successively came down with a cold - starting with Ella - within minutes of our return, hurray!! Actually, we were insanely glad that she began the nasty hacking cough at HOME and not in Rome where we would have had the extra adventure of trying to find a doctor if things had gotten ugly, aah, too bad, sounds like vacation fun. As usual, though, she was a tough gal and wrung the cold out of her body in a few short days and has just had that cute lingering snotty nose ever since, re-initiating our family love-affair with the booger-snorker (if you don't know what this is, it's probably because all the people you know can blow their own nose, hurray for you). Aaah, just picture it, a lovely relaxing evening preparing for bedtime, filled with the sounds of baby screaming as we try to clean out her nose to HELP HER TO BREATHE - well, if you'd just go ahead and blow your own nose like a grown-up we'd happily skip this torture session, but nooooooo, she insists on being developmentally correct and not having the motor skills to complete such a simple task - oh well, have it your way princess, back to the arms-pinned down, purple-faced crying, snot wiping - hip, hip, hooray! Poor baby Ella : )

Aside from wading around in all of Ella's tears and boogers, we're settling back into our routine just fine and trying to sort through our pictures of our trip. We did really well overall - Ella learned to take naps in the backpack carrier and we got to see all the major sites in Rome, Naples, Pompeii, and Capri - not too shabby for our first big trip. By the end of the week Ella was definitely starting to miss her big naps in her crib and we were starting to miss not walking ALL day, so we were happy to be home when the week was over, but we didn't string ourselves out too bad, just bad enough for a little head cold.

We have some funny stories to tell about our travels but not the time to tell them right now this second, so, instead we shall regale you with a few minutes of Ella TV - that's right, I managed to download the most recent video of Ella onto the computer and get it all uploaded, right here, on the blog for your personal entertainment! The only problem is, when I rewound the camcorder I discovered we've only videotaped about TEN minutes of her since we've moved to Italy - ooops! So, I'm on a mission to capture some more amazing footage, but for the time being you can have these two one-minute clips of Ella saying hi & ciao, and of her reciting her ABC's, naked (after bath), which I'm hoping doesn't cause some weird child pornography issue, oh well, enjoy the cute dimply butt-shot. More to come soon... (not more butt shots)... (well, maybe, who knows?)

HI Ella!

Naked ABC's

When in Rome...

2006-08-26T16:54:00.000-04:00

You know the saying, right? So we will be able to finish that sentence sometime tomorrow afternoon when we will be IN ROME. Cool, huh? Yep, we are going on our first REAL trip, none of that pansy-wansy day-trip-to-Venice stuff, no sir-eee. And if any of us remembers my LOVELY post after our trip to Venice (see: hot, sweaty, yucky, ucky, tired) then you can only imagine how much I am truly looking forward to our WEEK-LONG trip to Rome and Naples. << sigh >>

But seriously, we are excited that daddy has finagled a week off from work, which would normally be some miracle act of god but in this case is because he has a week of leave he will lose by the end of September so he was forced to take it - thank you U.S. goverment for MAKING my hubby take a vacation : ) But since he IS so terribly busy I was left to stress over the plans for our vacation for the last several weeks, aahhh, no problem, right? A week of traveling in assorted foreign countries, train schedules, hotel reservations, woo-hoo! It'll take me five minutes, no problem...

Actually, we decided a week-long vacation would be good time to do a big trip, like England or Ireland, sooo, I looked online for flights, read through a bunch of travel books from the library, seriously researched hotels and then... those terrorist threats in the UK kindof made us think we should postpone the galavanting to England bit, um yeah. So hubby said, let's do a big Italy trip, like Naples, Pompeii, etc., and after another few weeks of intensive online research into trains and hotels and the like I caved and went to a travel agent in town, thank god. An hour or so later and they had the whole thing booked - hotels, an inclusive tour from Rome to Naples, even had the train tickets printed right there in there office, whew - and not a moment too soon, that was only two days ago < blink > < blink > Nothing like last minute plans, or a matching pair of hubby and wife procrastinators : )

So, wish us luck on our FIRST big family trip cross-country here in Italy. We're excited about the trip but totally nervous about how Ella will do on the 5+ hour train trip, hmmm, restless toddler + stuck in a seat for what seems like an eternity = FUN! Stay tuned - we'll report back here next week, same bat-time, same bat-channel...

Family life in Italy, no longer UNplugged

2006-08-09T08:42:00.000-04:00

Last night I futzed around with the internet settings on the computer and finally got our DSL modem here in Italy to work, that's right, you heard it first right here - WE ARE BACK ONLINE!!!

Aaaaaah, I relax and soak in the sumptuous sounds of Yahoo launching up, and the brilliant visions of fantastically gaudy pop-up ads. Who knew how much you could miss these wonderful electronic treasures, until you are stranded in a foreign country (cool and interesting, but still very foreign) without your precious wires to the world!

Our re-connection to the world comes none too soon as I have developed a two-month long list of all the things I daily discover that I can't find here in beautiful Italy. I crave for a Target-down-the-street like some kind of crazed shopping addict, and even occasionally dream of walking down the aisles at Kohl's, just a little creepy to say the least... Anyone?, anyone?, wanna trade some cool old castles and good wine for that 5-min drive to Walmart you take oh-so-for-granted?

So, thank god for all the online shopping that completely saturates the internet, I think I could lock myself inside the house for days now, holed up with my little DSL connected beauty until my eyes completely bugged out, but, Ella does occasionally need some sunshine, so I guess I'll just have to see what I can get done while she naps : )

In parting, we will tempt your visual taste buds with a quick glimpse of our lovely Italian house (yucky yard but give us time) and a snippet of Ella. More news and photos and maybe even video to come soon, now that we are happily "plugged in".

p.s. -- love to all our US fans, we miss you all TONS.....

Our little Italian "villa" (Ella acting as "Vanna" in the street)

Our one weekend excursion to Venice last month was disgustingly hot and muggy but we did capture a few choice pics of the little princess...

Even in the summer heat, Ella takes on Venice - with flair!

Ella enjoying a quiet "seedy" repose with Venice's natives

Ella and momma, squinting in the July sun

Ella hangin' out on the porch in her festive July 4th 'digs', what a ham

We're wired with sound...

2006-07-25T09:40:00.000-04:00

One day at a time...

2006-07-13T04:35:00.000-04:00

No, not the fabulous 80's tv show, just our little family's daily mantra as we continue to try to adjust to our big overseas move. Every day we get through is one day closer to being settled in here in Italy, right? I hope so, but right now I still miss home : (

Anyway, we've moved into our house and are awaiting the arrival of our household goods (i.e., all our stuff) so we're living in a semi-empty house with some military loaner furniture (picture your old college dorm room stuff, mmmm, comfy). Our little princess is doing relatively well, considering we've uprooted her entire existence in Texas and dragged her across the ocean to a strange and bizarre place where none of her stuff or friends are (or maybe I'm just talking about me). She also tried to test the odds, adding to her stressload by cutting TWO MORE MOLARS, yay! Oh, yea, and then she got a BOIL. Yes, that's right, I said a boil. What in the hell? Who gets boils? Isn't that some weird medeival skin disease that only lepers get? Our poor little baby, I couldn't believe it, but she actually got a boil, and you can only guess where, so diaper changes became a truly fun screaming performance for a few days. On the plus side, she thought it was terribly fun to have 3 or 4 baths a day since there was no way she'd sit still for "apply a warm compress for 20-30 minutes several times a day", yea, um, hello, can you say toddler sitting still for 20-30 minutes without laughing, 'cause I can't : )

So, boils and teething and all, I'd say we're still doing pretty well with our move and all, wouldn't you? Got our computer delivered but won't have a phone or internet access for another 3 weeks or so, so our little house still feels a little like jail being so disconnected from the outside world. Looking forward to a month from now when we can really start setting up "house" and return to our old routine of watching tv, gabbing on the phone and checking email!

Love and hugs to all our US friends and family, hope to be able to post pictures soon...

Qui! Qui!

2006-06-24T05:26:00.000-04:00

That's here! here! in Italian, because we are definitely here, here, in Italy!

We've survived our long flight across the atlantic and made it through our first week in Aviano, Italy. I think we've gotten past all the jet lag and I'm just now beginning to get through the emotional-lag of moving my life overseas... holy cow. It wasn't until we were actually here that I realized how far away from home, family, and friends I was, and I had a few sleepless nights staring at the ceiling, wondering what in the hell I had gotten myself into! : ( Thankfully, in the last few days I have happily stumbled upond some really nice families in our hotel who seemed just as strung out as me, aaaah, so nice to find people as unhappy as you - misery truly does love company!!

Aside from the emotional woes of travel, our transition here is actually going really well, we've found a house and should be moving in next week, although our household stuff won't be here until late August, yay : ) Tony's finished his week of orientation and is settling into his new job and loving it - big office, big responsibilities, too good to be true.

Well, hope to write more soon, don't have our home computer yet so I'm at the mercy of the library hours and computer availability. Signing off from far away...

Ciao, ciao!

On the road again...

2006-05-30T13:29:00.000-04:00

This week our family of mommy, daddy, baby & two furry kitties will bid a fond farewell to our fair San Antonio as we head off on our journey to Aviano, Italy. We will also be bidding farewell to our computer until it's delivered in Aviano in JULY - yikes! We will try to post some updates during our fun moving process when we have access to a computer, but who knows...

Right now we are crazy-busy sorting through files and drawers, packing suitcases and taking down pictures, what a mess! The end result will be amazing when we are happily UN-packing in Italy, but for now everybody in our house is a little grumpy, especially our little one who is cutting TWO first year molars, poor baby! Other than the teething and moving mess, little Ella is doing great, we are keeping our fingers crossed that she makes it through the rest of this week's hellishness and all the travelling okay, they say babies are really resilient, I guess we'll put that to the test.

So, bye-bye lovely sunny (HOT) Texas, and our huge Texas-realty-is-so-cheap house, we will miss our first family home and all our great Texas friends (*sniff*)... Ciao!

One last look at our home...

...and Ella in her first back yard...

Ella's ever-expanding vocabulary - have a listen...

2006-05-16T15:16:00.000-04:00

A Tale of a Cursed Closet

2006-04-14T15:22:00.000-04:00

A bit of a girly fashion rant today so if you're not in the mood for such blathering, don't read on...

I speak to all the women out there with this ancient cry, this woeful wail, the mystery of the incredible shrinking pants!... I know nearly everyone out there has had this experience, the moment when we realize that our pants, the very pants that so luxiurously fit our lovely curves nay a scant week ago, these pants have been attacked by the sinister shrinking gnome that lurks in our closets, unseen, striking at our most vulnerable hour, when we were just beginning to bask in the glow of fitting into all our "tiny" clothes again. I retrace my steps to a few weeks ago...

The weather had begun to warm and I had courageously tried on last season's spring clothes, trying to not be too optimistic about my chances of fitting into any non-maternity pants, when to my great surprise I found that I could fit into most of my spring pants, and not only could I fit into them standing, but I could still breathe when I sat down, and it was entirely possible that I might even be able to eat a small snack without breaking any seams - amazing! I spent the next two weeks excitedly wearing my spring wardrobe, praising myself for not cowering in my maternity clothes as I did last spring, feeling even slightly optimistic that maybe I could conquer that last little bulge left from the baby. Then came the week that the pants were strangely tight again, and in my wonderful new optimistic haze I decidely thought "water weight", "bloating", "bad indegestion", nothing to worry about. Then came another week of tight pants, and another, and another, repeatedly trying on said pants again, and again, and withstanding long moments of trying to sit in them without breathing and realizing the only snack I could eat in them would be my last gulp of air.

So now here I am, realizing that the evil gnome has struck again - blast you, you little invisible bearded fool, your cunning magic has shrunk my lovely spring wardrobe again and I think 14 months after baby is definitely too late to be re-donning my maternity wardrobe, sigh. This week I finally found a few pairs of new pants that fit me without making me look like a bag lady trying to hide my beer gut but I'm not sure if I'm brave enough to wear one style outside - the "gaucho" pants - sooooo extremely comfortable in their knit-ness that doesn't make me have to suck in my magically enlarged gut, but I either look very suave and sophisticated in their flowy-ness or I look like a bad 80's koolats flashback, oh well, best to not wear the keds with these : )

And please, after reading this, don't send the "You're crazy, you're so skinny!" hate mail because while it is true that I have always been naturally skinny I have been 'thickening' just like the rest of us since college, and while my own thickening may have been delayed it is none the less painful when I am donating trunkloads full of clothes to goodwill every other year. Besides, we all have our skinny and fat moments, even those size zero women have them (I hope), and waking up to find you have grown a jelly roll around the middle overnight (yes, I swear, it literally grew overnight) is truly horrifying and leaves you to question everything you have been eating and doing, and not eating and not doing. I am still trying to stay positive and believe it is some sort of side-effect of the new birth control pill I am on, but since it's been three months that's getting harder and harder to prove, so, I'll just resign myself to the fact that my body must just be having a good laugh at my expense and at my upcoming 30-year milestone, hurray, break out the exercise shoes.

Ella the "toddler"

2006-03-23T14:06:00.000-05:00

Okay, I'm trying the video embedding again, see my post below for details on this new trick. This is a slightly more recent video clip of Ella walking, I think taken about a month ago when she was really starting to "toddle"...

If the embedded video isn't playing above, click HERE for the link to the video posted on YouTube.

Cool New Video Stuff!

2006-03-23T11:49:00.000-05:00

This is too cool - check it out, I can have video clips of Ella on the blog!, I think...

I was reading one of my favorite sites/blogs this morning, dooce.com, when I was directed to a site called "YouTube.com" to see a video clip she posted. Then I read about the site and decided to sign up so I could try posting my own videos, because membership was FREE, and who doesn't love free stuff?

I just now tested the site by loading up a short video clip of Ella - the same one I had posted on the scrapbook site last month while I was trying that out - I was planning on buying a membership to that site because it was the only way I could share video but this may be a new solution, I am so excited! Anyway, the YouTube site gave me html code to link the video or to 'embed' the video, I've tried both below in the blog and they both seem to work, how awesome!

For any of our fans out there reading, let me know if you can view the video too, by linking, or if it will play for you below, which just seems ultra-cool to me, I guess I'm a nerd at heart, tee-hee. I'm so excited I'm going to go see if I can go put together a new video clip of Ella to try sharing, hope to post back here soon...

Click HERE to view a video clip of Ella posted on YouTube.com

Or, just look below to see the same clip "embedded", hopefully you will see a little play button, click that and the video should play right here on the blog... (and no, your speakers aren't broken, there's no sound on this clip)

PBS stands for Poopy, Bad Station!!

2006-03-16T12:04:00.000-05:00

Um, hello?, PBS? As devoted to educational programming as you are, could you please explain to me why on god's green earth you would randomly replace Sesame Street today with some gay-ass (sorry to be crass) 'Colonial Williamsburg' show? Yeah, leave on Dragon Tales and the other goofy morning programming, but replace the award-winning, historically fabulous Sesame Street, brilliant way to get those pledges. Oh, my little Ella was totally jazzed to see that programming change. Thanks for screwing with the routine of a 13-month old, I do believe she has placed a hex on you, or I think that's what she meant with all that whining and crying that started when her eyes were not greeted by the beautiful faces of Big Bird, Ernie and Elmo at 9 o'clock sharp. We were actually forced to change to the Disney channel whereupon my daughter became a Wiggles zombie for 30 minutes, terrific. You better bring her friends back tomorrow morning or she's stormin' the castle for sure...

just look at this sad, deprived baby face : (

la la la

2006-03-15T13:35:00.000-05:00

Now I'm not a music-geek or even a well educated music lover, but there's something for me about how a favorite song can make the world stop spinning, just for a brief moment, and let you soak up all the goodness into your heart, for safekeeping...

Our little princess's favorite song for the last few weeks has been "You're Beautiful" by James Blunt (click HERE, and scroll down to the "You're Beautiful" video, if you haven't heard it). She first heard it during our Saturday morning ritual of watching VH1's video countdown - hey, don't judge my parenting, when Sesame Street's not on for those two long weekend days, you gotta fill the time with something or you go right into Elmo withdrawl - and, on a sidenote, it's a good ritual for me as a mommy, keeping me up to date on what the cool people are listening to. Anyway, since she was an infant, Ella has been totally into music, usually vocal stuff, she's even periodically entertained by my own singing, which is truly the best compliment a girl can get. Last summer she loved the band Weezer's song "Beverly Hills", it could stop her woeful crying in the car with just a quick click of the CD to track 12, aaahhhh, peaceful car rides are awesome, even when you have to listen to the same song, looped over, and over, and over. And then, a few weeks ago when she heard the James Blunt song, it was love at first 'hear' again - she stopped dead in her little toddler tracks and became transfixed with the silly skinny white man in that weird rainy video. We've been tuning in week in and week out for the countdown ever since, in hopes of hearing the song again, and then this week I finally downloaded it for her so we could make a new magical-stops-all-crying CD for the car.

So this is our song that can just stop the world for me right now - I pull Ella up into my lap at the computer and play the song on iTunes (with those cool onscreen graphics, of course) and she just lets me hold her for those few glorious minutes. For her, as a newly active toddler, being held by momma is the baby torture equivalent of being put in a straightjacket, so you can understand my rapture at a few exceptionally long minutes of baby snuggles - pure joy, pure unmatched absolute joy, if only for a few moments. I sing along to that simple song and can't help thinking about how she is beautiful, just like the song says, and you just get pulled into the music and away from the rest of the day, the crying and flailing, the drooling and runny nose, they're all gone and you just have a nice cheezy moment to love your imperfect life in it's moment of perfectness. And then it's back to the day, and the week, and the to-do list, but with just a few extra 'warm fuzzies' stored away for safekeeping, or, for the next bout of screamy-mimis : )

(here she is transfixed by another of her favorite pasttimes - lunch!)

how sweet it is

2006-03-10T17:01:00.000-05:00

Ella, the oh-so-mild-mannered baby has developed a new completely obstinate behavior that we like to call the screamy-mimi's, in which she randomly gets ridiculously frustrated with someone, shall we say, mommy, who tells her "no" and then she throws herself on the floor and screams - what fun! Something about being 13 months old means suddenly being able to understand nearly everything and yet without speaking more than five words expect everyone to understand you! Woe to those who do not meet your demands within less than TWO SECONDS!!!

This week she seemed to have more bad days than good but yesterday afternoon she was so sublimely happy running around in the grass outside for a few minutes that I caught this awesome picture:

Even I can't complain when I get to share my bad days with this gorgeous face. Having a baby is such total joy, even the screaming days are fun, when did we ever think that would be possible?

Anyway, she could teach me a thing or two about enjoying the good moments, afterall, we should all have this much fun just being outside soaking up the sunshine (and chasing kitty cats)...

On again, off again

2006-03-09T15:12:00.000-05:00

I have always had such an on-again, off-again love affair with our little blog here - I think about it almost everyday, but never post. Think about things to say, but never say them. Come across fabulous photos but never show them. 'Tis a sad, sad tale of unrequited love...

Well, that little bit of silliness off my chest, I can say in all seriousness I realized after talking to a friend today (yes, Amanda, that's you), that I don't have to be a noble-prize winning poet laureat to write in my blog (after all if Amanda can survive TWO MONTHS in Yemen - yes, I said Yemen - I can certainly bare my soul on the world wide web). I usually wait until I have a ton of baby news or an oscar-winning heroic mommy story to post, but in truth, I have plenty of fun daily tidbits I could share that would just be plain fun for me to journal about. I've shared our blog address with almost everyone I know, but I know there are only a handful of people that check in on it, like I check in on my friends' blogs. And I know that I'm always dissapointed when they don't have updates so maybe I'm dissapointing someone out there too. Highly unlikely, I know, for even as I make this miraculous post it will more than likely stay completely unread for days or weeks until someone accidently types in my address : )

Anyway, I wish I were as funny and well-read as Heather Armstrong (true fans will know this real 'dooce' name), but maybe for today I can just be me and see how that goes. Signing off in mommyville as I listen to the cries of the just-awakened baby Ella-beast...

- no actual tidbits were related, created or harmed in this post, tune in tomorrow for some actual content -

Happy FIRST Birthday Baby!!!

2006-02-04T12:00:00.000-05:00

What a great week for our little princess, her very first birthday - Hooray!!! Grandma Penny came to visit for a whole week and helped us plan a fun little party for Ella with her baby playgroup, it was fabulous! Check out all the partygoers in their cool birthday hats (except for Ella, she of course refused to wear a hat in the spirit of "It's MY party, and I'll cry if I want to")...

Despite the hat-wearing, Ella had a great time with all her baby friends, and as the oldest in the group she showed off some truly impressive cupcake eating skills - she started with some dainty licking of the icing and moved quickly onto cupcake smashing, yum...

She is showing off in so many other ways too, taking more and more steps each day and officially using her first words, "baby", "daddy", and occasionally "mommy". She is just so much fun and we can't imagine our life without her - thanks baby for a wonderful year, we're lovin' every minute of you!

Happy New Year Baby!

2006-01-25T12:15:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year to all, a belated Merry Christmas and apparently Happy Thanksgiving as well, since I haven't posted since November, gasp, how dreadfully embarrassing! As always, I have a wonderfully cute excuse who keeps me away from the computer more and more as she learns to get into everything more and more each day : )

Ella has had a fabulous "winter", if you count the 70-degree days we're having here in Texas winter, tee hee, to all our beloved east coast family and friends, we love it! Ella's first Thanksgiving was a fun one spent at our aunt & uncle's in College Station, Texas, Ella was really getting into her solid foods so had a fun time with stuffing, mashed potatoes and turkey, woo hoo!

Her first Christmas was a fun whirlwind of travel spending a week in Maryland with mommy's family and a week in New York with daddy's. While in New York she also got her first taste of snow, woo hoo! She detested the copious amounts of layering she was subjected to, to endure the strange fluffy white stuff, but she seemed to have fun, and even got her first sled ride with papa. Overall, I think she loved all the extra attention from her relatives and was sorely disappointed to come back home to her boring days with just mommy : )

Since we've been home Ella has been jumping through milestones with leaps and bounds. Before Christmas, totally not interested in walking, after Christmas, pushing around her cute walking cart with a vengeance and demanding to hold hands and walk around the house all the time, she has even taken up to 10 steps all alone (before she realized she could get down and crawl much faster). Before Christmas she was a sea of crazy babbles and then just this week she proudly uttered her first real word - "baby". And while she points to a variety of things whilst uttering "baby", including daddy and the cat, she gets most excited about saying it when pointing at the baby faces in her "Happy Baby 1, 2, 3" book and when looking through her cousin Kyle's baby albums. Looking at photo albums is one of her new favorite things to do, she scrambles joyously down the hallway to our front living room where all the "nice" stuff is and pulls the photo albums out one-by-one, flips through the pages, excitedly pointing to each picture of Kyle and pronouncing "BABY" as if we had no idea a baby was hiding in these books, it is truly beyond adorable.

It seems as if her brain cells are just bursting with growth and activity the way she surmounts new tasks and explores her world. We can even proudly acknowledge that she no longer just eats the shapes in her shape sorter that we bought for her, to teach her shapes and colors, and while she is still not completely interested in "sorting" them, she does like to dump them out and then playfully drop them back in the bucket (leaving that darn sorter lid off, it's just no fun yet, mommy!).

We are excited about the coming weeks as her first birthday quickly approaches, we can hardly believe a whole year has gone by, although it feels like we have never been without her - what was the world even like before she came?

Happily awaiting new milestones to share...

p.s. -- we are also trying out another fun way to share info and stuff with everyone, check out http://figierafam.aboutmybaby.com/, we're doing a 30-day trial before we decide to keep it, they let you post photos and VIDEO, if friends & family like it we'll keep using it so let us know!

9 Months of Mommyhood

2005-11-08T17:30:00.000-05:00

Nine months, nine months, nine months.... I can't believe our little one's been here nine months!

So, Ella turned nine months old this past Friday and we have no exciting news to report from her check-up 'cause there was a bit of a scheduling snaffoo and they made our appointment for the wrong hospital, aah how we're loving this new outsourced appointment company that's working for the military healthcare here in San Antonio : ) We decided we'd have our own checkup and went home and weighed and measured her and can proudly report that ever-so-petite-one is up to a whopping 15 pounds! And we had been told to wait until the 9-month check-up to add any meats to her diet, but I said screw them for messing up our appointment, so we gave her her first taste of chicken this weekend, woo hoo! Not that she even knew, as it was mixed in and completely diluted by cereal and vegetable and applesauce - applesauce, applesauce, applesauce, I swear she will eat anything as long as you mix it with applesauce. Sweet potatoes, wouldn't eat em' - sweet potatoes with applesauce, eaten faster than I could spoon it in. But I still can't stomach the idea of green beans and applesauce so we'll have to find another mixer for those : )

Anyway, I also realized the nine month marker meant that she has been "out" as long as she was "in", sounds weird, I know, but it really just means I can no longer say, "Hey, I had nine months to put the weight on, so I have nine months to take it off", oh well, the deadline has officially passed.

So, nine months of parenthood conquered, mastered, passed, achieved, and all I have to say is I find more and more funny little quirks about 'mommyhood' that make me stop and smile. I've decided you could have a whole list of running jokes, like the comic Jeff Foxworthy has his "You might be a redneck if..." jokes, I think you could have a "You know you're a mommy when...". I think I'll work on it and here's a couple to get it started...

You know you're a mommy when... you check your pockets thirteen times for the pacifier and still walk out the door without your keys (every time).

You know you're a mommy when... doing one load of laundry and remembering to eat lunch are the only things you can accomplish in one day

But my favorite for the week and totally true is...

You know you're a mommy when... you drag the mixer and ALL your ingredients into the BATHROOM to make chocolate chip cookies, just so you won't wake the baby from her nap. (Seriously, I did it)

Ol' Blue Eyes...

2005-10-22T22:20:00.000-05:00

Just too pretty for words, isn't she? (and yes, I'm quite sure she's mine despite the embarrassing lack of resemblance)

Well, it's been a pathetically long time since our last post and no good excuses, ah, welcome to family life : ) All is well with the little princess, she recovered quite well from the infamous first cold (see our last post) even though the snot seemed to continue running from her nose for weeks and weeks - ah, yes, there's my excuse for not writing, right? She's keeping us busy with her fabulous crawling skills, which have not yet progressed into walking, just to faster and faster and faster crawling! She also foud the stairs a week ago and proudly climbed all 15 or so of them, through both landings and up the switch-back turn, totally impressive, really, and the absolute and total glee of her discovery was way beyond cute. And this week she met her first 'baby friends' when we attended our first playgroup for a stay-at-home-moms club that I recently joined, oh hurray for other mom's to talk to, I think poor daddy was getting tired of hearing us talk about diapers and spittup and poop non-stop! She loved seeing all the other babies and just wanted to crawl all over them, it was "fun" chasing her around and trying to convince her to play with her own toys instead of slobbering all over strangers', ha!

What else can I say, our little family's doing pretty good, we're totally enjoying the much deserved cool-down in the hot Texas weather and looking forward to playing outside well into December! ...anybody wanna come and visit? : )

(and here's another pic of little pretty pants... Ta-Da!)

The spam stops here

2005-09-30T08:35:00.000-05:00

Just a note to let everyone know I've just added a word verification option for commenting so don't be surprised when you see that request if you go to leave a comment on this blog. We've been getting a lot of "spam comments" which I didn't even know was possible, and is definitely as annoying as spam emails. Thanks to my friend for suggesting this to keep out the spammers!

And on the family front, the little one is still battling her cold and now I've caught a new one, yippee, the house of snot legacy lives on...

Baby's first cold

2005-09-25T21:30:00.000-05:00

No, no pretty little picture of the fabulously snotty baby enjoying her first cold, I am kind at heart and thought to spare everyone that wonderful view, you're welcome.

Yes, yet another milestone for our little one as this past week she began sneezing and coughing and dripping snot all over her toys - hurray for baby, she's caught her first cold! I had a cold for about a week and was right in the middle of congratulating myself for not giving it to my baby when I noticed the steady stream of snot coming out of her nose last Sunday. I tried to convince myself it was some sort of fluke from her afternoon nap, drool from all the teething that was magically flowing upward into her nose, but no, then more snot came, and then the sneezing, and then the fever and then it was pretty hard to ignore. So, I pulled out all my baby books and magazines and read everything I could find about her symptoms and discovered there wasn't much I could do but watch and wait, she only had a stuffy nose and a really mild fever and to top it off she was happy as a clam! She couldn't have cared less about not being able to breathe, seemingly suffocating every time she ate, and leaving a bright shiny slime trail everywhere she crawled around the house, she loved it! Of course she's had a few fussy moments throughout the week, but between her and me she wins the prize. I had the same cold and whined and complained the whole week but give it to my little 7-month-old baby, and she can kick that germ right on it's ass. You are so your father's daughter, thank god for those tough-guy genes.

So, as of today, I am finishing up the famous cold, the little one's battling her way through it and daddy seems to have just started sniffling, hmmmmm, I think that officially makes us the snot family. Oh well, signing off from snotville with a fun little non-snotty picture of Ms. Cuteness...

(Looks like she's on a really important conference call, doesn't it?.... Baby calling god, are you there god? There's been a mixup, this is soooooooo not my mother, this crazy lady right here, who WON'T STOP TAKING MY PICTURE!) : )

Water Baby

2005-09-02T09:00:00.000-05:00

Here's the little princess at the pool last weekend - having a splashing good time! I think she has no idea why we strap her in a tight outfit and swoosh her around in what seems like a giant bathtub but she seems to enjoy all the sights and sounds and likes watching all the other kids jump around in their bright swimsuits. After a few weeks she's even starting to have some fun splashing and lets us dunk her under water a few times, big girl! Can't wait until next summer when we can really have some pool time fun!

Getting to be such a big girl...

2005-08-21T16:30:00.000-05:00

Our baby milestone of the week - little Ella has successfully moved up to her "big girl" room, wow!, what?... aka, she's now sleeping in the official 'nursery' and not in the pack-n-play by mom & dad's bedside, sigh, we miss her already... We had thought six months would be a good time for her to go sleep in her big crib and that she would be sleeping through the night by then anyway (hah!). Well, she's still getting up at 3 am and then sometimes 6 am too, but I need the exercise anyway, right? - Let me explain, our house's interesting floorplan puts our bedroom on the first floor, and hers on the second, so I'm sure you can imagine that the long walk across the living room and up the stairs at 3 am is sooooo refreshing : ) (Especially when you arrive crib-side only to discover those noises you heard on the baby monitor were not the baby waking up after all, look, she's perfectly asleep, aah, too bad I'm not anymore, tee hee hee). Overall, the little princess seems to be adjusting quite well to the big-girl life in her very own nursery. And while I'm glad we're finally using the room I so painstakingly decorated and created for her, it was definitely strange to move all her stuff out of our bedroom, and all her clothes out of my closet and drawers. Our days are the same as ever but at night sometimes I miss having to be quiet as I crawl into bed or the lovely scent of stinky diapers that used to waft out of our bathroom : )

Little Ella has also gotten her second tooth this week, yay! She still seems to be doing amazingly well on the fussiness scale as far as teething goes and we're soooooo proud of her for it. She's also still enjoying a multitude of new solid foods and she's working ever harder every day at crawling (this week she even tried a new trick by getting up on her hands and toes, though I'm not sure how that helped get her moving at all, I think she was just trying out some of the yoga and pilates she saw on my exercise video). Every day, what new sillyness and fun, can't wait for tomorrow, or even when she wakes up from the nap she's having right now...

Here she is lounging around in her roomy big-girl crib...

Here's the new hands and toes yoga thing of hers, pretty cute, huh?...

Then, taking a break from all that exercise...

And here she is just looking so astoundingly beautiful, I can't believe she's mine...

Rock 'n' Roll Baby

2005-08-14T13:15:00.000-05:00

Rockin' and rollin', that's what the little one's been up to this week, check out her new tummy play - up on her knees and ready to go!!

So she started pulling up on hands and knees like this, just this week, and then she goes rock, rock, rock, rock, flop! - forward on her tummy. Then some rolling and scooching ensues and let me tell you, with the rock-flop-roll-and scooch combo, she can cover quite a bit of ground! We understand this is a definite precursor to crawling so we are frantically scrambling around the house installing outlet plug covers and discovering what possibly edible objects might be found at the 1-foot-and-below level. And although she's definitely good at this new rock-n-flop she doesn't seem that focused on it yet and is still quite happy lounging and rolling around on a play blanket on the ground. By the way, mama is sooooo thankful that you aren't insistent on cruising just yet, please feel free to take your time on this little one, we know that after crawling comes walking... AND running..., aah, lions and tigers and bears, oh my : )

And her first little tooth is coming in more and more each day and I think she's as puzzled with it's presence as we are with her lack of fussing about it. She chews on her toys with a renewed sense of vigor, gnawing away with pleasure with her new little tool. Hopefully we'll capture a shot of the new chopper one of these days, but she still sticks her tongue out a little when she smiles so the little pearl is hidden from view. I'm sure a fabulously goofy toothy grin will be visible soon - we can hardly wait!

Thursday morning giggles

2005-08-11T09:15:00.000-05:00

HAPPY HALF-BIRTHDAY BABY!

2005-08-04T15:30:00.000-05:00

Today is our little princess' 6-month birthday, wow! We can't believe you've been here a half year already, and we already can't imagine a life without you, or even remember our life before you were here. Though it seems impossible, we love you and our new precious family more and more each day. We are so thankful for every moment that we get to share together and we thank god everyday for little miracles in the shape of beautiful baby girls.

Havin' a bad hair day and lovin' it!

2005-08-02T17:00:00.000-05:00

Okay, mean mama, I know, but Ella had this totally hysterical 'duck-wing' hair thing going on ALL DAY yesterday so I just had to take a picture! In addition, she had a huge red baby-zit on her upper lip to go with the funky hair...

...and she still looks cute! Could I have that power please? Bad hair and zits and everybody just loves you, you have got it soooo good baby.

Amidst her absolute adorableness, Ella has also proven to be quite a tough cookie, for we discovered while playing with her last night, as she playfully gummed on our fingers while reading a book, that OUCH!, there was something sharp in baby's gums! Her first tooth has broken through without even the slightest whimper from her - wow, baby, you definitely got daddy's genes 'cause mama needed massive amounts of epidurals during labor and you apparently can cut entire teeth through your gums while hanging out all weekend at INCREDIBLY LOUD AND DISTURBING baseball games (see previous post about our baseball weekend), I am soooooooooo impressed. You take the cake, honey, you really do. Forget all those baby books with their 'fever, drooling & diarhea' horror stories of teething, you just march to the beat of your own drum, don't you little one? I swear, every day you continue to amaze me as you cruise through each month's milestones with absolute glee. You are a truly amazing little human being & we just love you to bits.

p.s. - so if you can cut teeth as easy as taking a poop, I'm figuring we'll just breeze through those terrible twos and you will be an incredibly sublime and peaceful teenager, right?... Right?..... Well, I can dream, can't I... : )

The littlest baseball fan

2005-08-01T15:00:00.000-05:00

So, lovely little Ella attended her first major league baseball games this weekend, woo-hoo! She did astoundingly well with the massive amounts of people, lights, & noise, and even seemed to enjoy herself a little - take a look...

As NY Mets fans in Texas, we don't get to see much of our favorite team even on tv, so when they come to Houston to play the Astros we make the three-hour trek just to catch a glimpse of them, even when they're having another so-so season. We lucked out this time because while they lost on Saturday, they had a great win on Sunday, a very fun & exciting game, thanks guys! I caught a few fun shots of the players too, here's an awesome 'at bat' shot, you can even see the pitch sliding in...

And here's my accidental capture of the true spirit of baseball, can you see?...

Take a closer look at the 'gentleman' on the right...

Yes, I do believe I caught an action shot of ball-scratching, fantastic, isn't it? Just brings out the sportsman in all of us. Anyway, a great weekend all-in-all, a quick fun little getaway, nothing like baseball and hot-dogs & ice cream at the ball park!

Appearing today in a one-time only performance...

2005-07-28T08:05:00.000-05:00

It's a bird.... It's a plane.... I'ts SUPER BABY!!! Well, she is definitely super and I just had to write a quick post to say she must have heard me talking about her in my post yesterday, mean mama complaining about how she wouldn't nap the other day, because she took a stupendous THREE HOUR NAP yesterday - thank you baby! Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you! Mama got three whole hours of hands-free time which she deperately needed to work on a project and get dinner on the table on time for once. You are truly an amazing baby - terrifically super, totally fabulous, and absolutely scrumptious, I could just eat you up!

p.s. - Please take another three hour nap today. Pretty, pretty, pretty please? - love, mama

Yawn...

2005-07-27T07:10:00.000-05:00

So, I wanted to write yesterday and praise my beautiful baby for her new and fabulous schedule which included a 2 to 3 hour nap in the afternoon. That's right, I said THREE HOUR NAP - woo hoo!! However, after going on an epic 3-day stint of said schedule she abrubptly changed her mind yesterday and not only did she not nap for anything over 30 minutes but she also decided to wake up and 6 AM after being on a sleeping-in-until-atleast-8 AM schedule for several weeks now... Aaaahhh, babies are good at throwing you a curve ball once in a while, huh?

Not that I could ever even get mad at her, let alone stay mad, for causing me some extra yawns, I mean how can you get mad at this face?...

As she so excellently displays in this picture, she is doing very well playing on her tummy these days, holding her head up and rolling over ALL the time! So, no, for all the safety experts out there, I do not leave her alone like this on the bed, in fact I can hardly stray a few feet from the fabulous rolling machine that she is. So, we play a lot more on the floor now, where she exhibits her newly acquired back-to-front AND front-to-back rolling skills, as well as showing off her new 'scooching' skills, which I'm sure is a precursor to crawling - TAKE YOUR TIME BABY, no need to start chasing you around or gating you in just yet. So perfect right now, can't get into too much trouble, can you...

Well, it's almost a staggering 7:15 AM and no peeps from the little one - good for you baby, go baby go!, sleep on, sleep on. Maybe today will be the first day of a new epic of sleeping in AND napping, well, I'd settle for either one, yawn....

Silly bedtime noises

2005-07-22T21:15:00.000-05:00

Have I become a blogger?!

2005-07-20T15:00:00.000-05:00

So I've decided to try this blogging thing, inspired by our many friends who blog themselves. It's hard these days to keep up with our many out-of-town friends so I really love the fact that I can 'check-in' on my friends who have blog sites and see what they're up to. I never knew how much time it took to make a phone call or email a friend until I had our baby and had no time for either! So, in case any of our friends or family would like a little window into our fabulous life, here it is, the launch of...

Family Life, unplugged!

So what to say this first post, hmmm.... I'm really psyched that this blogger site lets you post photos, that's the main reason I'm even trying this, so I can share a little blurb and another adorably cute picture of our adorably cute baby! This week we continue the current saga of the entry into the world of solid foods, dum dum dummmmm!!!! (See key graphic below)

This picture sums up our first cereal experience from a few weeks ago, it went surprisingly well and it did not require any goggles or rain-gear, good job baby! Last week we tried our first vegetables as well, carrots, followed by peas, which created carrot-poop, followed by pea-poop, and I think pea-poop wins out on the gross factor. Especially when she is sitting happily in her bouncy seat and I go to extricate her and find out she has had one of the aforementioned pea-poops and it has burst out the leg hole and made a lovely pea-poop puddle which she has been happily sitting in. Followed by a removal of said pea-poop filled diaper only to find that it is literally filling her belly button, ew, ew, eeewwwww! Yes, an actual hose-off in the sink was required, and no, I chose not to photograph this very special moment in her life.

Well, I think that's all the details of baby-life that the web can handle today, and it's all the time my very patient baby will allow me to type. I hope, not too shabby for our first post of family life - more stories to come, for the poop just keeps on coming...