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 -

Happy FIRST Birthday Baby!!!

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!

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

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...

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

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

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

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...

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

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

HAPPY HALF-BIRTHDAY BABY!

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!

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

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...

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