Life Lately

I spent so much energy and at least 3 days getting that road trip blog post ready, that I got all blogged-out for a while.

But here I am again!

Summer is just flying by, of course. I thought I'd give a little update on the kids and what we've been up to lately...

Ella is a hoot. She's quite the hyper little thing and likes to sing at the top of her lungs, no matter where we are. Here are some funny things that she's done/said lately:

- Ella loves to swing on her swingset, and is learning to sit on her big swing by herself and start swinging without any pushes. The other day she got herself going really well, and then she proceeded to burst out in song (The theme from Veggie Tales - with a couple interesting interpretations...)

"IF YOU LIKE TO WALTZ WITH TATATOES! UP AND DOWN THE FRO-DUCE MILE!"

(If you like to waltz with potatoes, up and down the produce aisle!"

- While in the bathroom stall in McDonalds (accompanied by Eli and myself)

Ella asked, "Where is your purse Mommy?"

"It's hanging up", I said, pointing to my purse hanging on the wall of the stall.

Ella replied, "But you don't have to hang ME up. Because I'm not a purse!"

- I was helping Ella to put her sandals on, bending down in front of her. She noticed I was sniffing. She held her hand out in front of my nose and said "Blow Mommy! Blow your nose!" I replied, "No thank you Ella, I don't want to blow my nose in your hand." Ella said, "Of course Mommy! Because I'm not a wipe!"

I'm so glad she's distinguished that she is neither a purse, nor a wipe.

- She also endearingly calls elevators "alligators" and states that our house does not have an alligator, but Grandma's does. (Grandma lives in a condo on the 3rd floor!)

Ella is constantly asking questions and chattering away to herself. She knows all her colors, shapes, and can probably identify about 15-18 letters of the alphabet. We're working on learning the rest of her ABC's, and I'd like to start working more on her numbers too - she can count to 10 but can't identify numbers yet, and doesn't count items very accurately - she often counts things twice or 3 times just so she can make it to 10!

She has been doing very well this past week or so with her potty. For the past few months she would always go pee on the potty whenever I remembered to make her go - but she wouldn't TELL me when she needed to go. And she was rarely getting poop in the potty. These past 2 weeks she has been telling me when she needs to go - for both pee and poop! I feel we are getting a lot closer to being done training, and we've had very few accidents - actually, almost NO accidents, except for when her night time diaper is on...which technically isn't an accident. I've been putting her in a diaper right after her bath...leaving over an hour before bedtime when she could be in undies. I guess once we get the daytime perfected I'll work harder on the nighttime.

Lastly, my good, good mother got rid of Ella's soother while we were away on our road trip! I still catch Ella occasionally with one in her mouth (mostly because Eli keeps giving her them!), but she no longer uses one to fall asleep and I am SO thankful for that! It was definitely overdue, I just didn't want the fight. Apparently, she gave little fight to Grandma over it, so none of us are worse for the wear. Except Eli, who doesn't understand why him and Ella aren't soother buddies anymore.

Now on to Mr. Eli! What a big hunk of crazy this kid is. He's developed quite the little temper, and can go from happy to MAD in the blink of an eye. His bottom lip is one to be envied, I tell you. It's the epitome of sad baby.

Eli is not talking very much still, but he's making a little bit of progress. He says "dada", "mama", "Ella", "a-gah" (all gone), and "uh-oh" - and constantly babbles all day long. He's got the most characteristic little high pitched grunt that we hear over 200 times a day...."uh! uh! uh! uh!" It's pretty much the catch-all vocab word for him.

Of course, in physical prowess, he is at the top of his game. He can pretty much get anywhere he wants to go. He can get on and off a trampoline. He can climb ladders. He could probably swing from our dining room light if he felt like it. Here he is displaying his daring - he loves this super fast, super big slide! He climbs up and goes down all by himself.

(Ella also loves the "goose slide")

Eli has also greatly improved in cooperation during diaper changes - it used to be a battle of epic proportions. Literally a 4 man job. Now, if he sees you coming with a clean diaper and a pack of wipes, he finds an empty spot on the floor and lies down! (What a champ!) He even throw his own dirty diapers in the garbage can after! This improvement alone seriously endears him GREATLY to me.

We've also finally got him off of his bottle. About a month or so ago, I finally got him to take a Nuby sippy cup with silicon spout for his nap and bedtime milk. (He'd been holding on to his bottle for dear life previously). Then this past week (when I noticed that the aforementioned sippy was getting kind of grody) I switched him to a regular Playtex sippy with a harder spout - the same kind he uses for drinking water. Hooray! I am glad the bottles are gone.

Last week I discovered that Eli had Hand Foot and Mouth Disease. Where he got it, I have NO idea. It threw a bit of a wrench in our weekend plans (we had a wedding to attend), but he's on the mend now, and we got through it without too much of a fuss. Poor little dude with his blistered hands and feet! They're all dried up now and healing though.

Just in time - we're off tomorrow on a weekend jaunt to Winnipeg!

P.S. In news of myself, I had a wisdom tooth extracted 3 days ago. While teething at the age of 25 was really not enjoyable, I have to say that having said tooth pulled out was less enjoyable. My mouth is still throbbing.

P.P.S. In news of Chris, he is hard at work once again with his job and his CA course. Of course, he still finds time to keep up his running - he ran another half marathon 6 days after the one in Chicago, and he'll be running an 8 K in Winnipeg on Saturday.

Better him than me ; )

P.P.P.S. My kids really like icecream cones.