Pretend

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...

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

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

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)

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

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...

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

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...

One day at a time...

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!

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...

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...

A Tale of a Cursed Closet

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"

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!

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!!

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

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

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

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 -