Haircuts for Dogs by Ella

Ella was home sick today from school but was feeling much better after she started on antibiotics so this afternoon she had enough watching Curious Geoge and decided she needed to get moving. She was all fired up because she was feeling better and bored and ready to burn off some energy. I had taken off for the morning but was working in the afternoon so I told her she needed to play by herself for a bit.

She went upstairs and played with Cory for a little while in her room and then gave Cory some treats from the kitchen, and then came and asked me to write a note that said "Haircuts for Dogs" on it. She usually asks me to write words so she can copy them, and I figured she was doing this for her game with Cory. She stayed downstairs this time, and was bustling around in her playroom and the kitchen and told me that she had a surprise to show me and she'd tell me when she was done.

About 10 minutes later she brought the note back in and said I needed to write on it "by Ella" or else no one would no who was doing the haircuts. And then she said "oh - and write 'open today' so they know that I'm open!" I thought this was for some imaginary customers so I said "ah, that's really neat, who is coming to get their dogs haircuts?" and she said completely seriously "our neighbors, once they see the sign."

I told her that I was really excited to see her dog station, but I didn't know if the neighbors would be coming over because they may not know about her services. She said "well let me just put the sign on the door and we'll see if they come."

I realized then that she was completely serious and really hopeful for some customers. It was a mix of heart breaking and heart warming because I didn't want her to be disappointed when no customers showed up, and heart warming that she's just so sweet and adorable that she expects by making a note and taping it to the front door that clients will be ringing our bell for her dog grooming serices.

So she taped the sign to the front door and then was very excited to show off her handiwork.

This is the dog haircut station she had set up - she had gotten all her supplies together and organized them on this table, filled her spray bottle with water and even towels. She told me that she set up the picture of Cory because it would make the other dogs happy when they saw it.

 

 

Then, she took me into the kitchen and showed me all the snacks she had set up for the guests who would be coming over. She had bowls, water bottles, crackers and chips, salt and pepper, coffee cream, splenda, peeps and milk all set out for her company. Talk about heart breaking! - - I couldn't even stand her cuteness and just scooped her up and give her a giant hug and told her what a great job she did setting everything up. (I was this close to texting the few neighbors that I know to see if they'd be willing to come over, but my better judgement prevailed).

Unfortunately, the sign on our front door did not do the trick, and no one showed up for her reception or dog grooming, and she kept asking me why no one came. I said that next time we'll need to make sure everyone knows in advance and we can invite them, and hopefully she'll have better luck next time.

 

She asked if we can make flyers for people's mailboxes, so I'm hoping she'll have forgotten about that idea by tomorrow morning...

One of those moments

Ella is learning about recycling this week in school and was all fired up to do a project where she wanted to make her own recycling bin (that is separate from our main bin, will be decorated by her, and only she can use) and wanted me to give her recycling items for her bin. Unfortunately today was recycling day so there was nothing readily available. She didn't like my answer, and told me she really need them for "her science", so I should pour out our milk, water and juice to give her the bottles for her bin. When I said no to that she opened the pantry to look for some cardboard boxes (still full of food)!  Next, she came up with the idea that we could collect items from outside for this project. This seemed a lot better to me than having to dump all our drinks down the drain, so outside we went.

Ella carried a plastic bag and eagerly collected all kinds of things - pine cones, sticks, leaves, acorns, flowers and then some newspapers. We had some extra time before I needed to finish cooking dinner, so we decided to walk up to the playground with Cory. We were about halfway there, and then all of a sudden Ella said, "ooh, I'm going to get some exercise", and took off in a run up the sidewalk.

She was running as fast as she could go, pumping her arms, curls flying, swinging the bag of goodies she'd collected. I held my tongue against yelling out for her to be careful running, and instead I watched her run up the sidewalk and I had one of 'those moments.' I just watched her and reflected on what a wonderful little person she is - her enthusiasm, her joy, her perserverence, her sweetness, her cleverness and fun personality, I could go on and on. She is just such an awesome little girl and I am so blessed to be her mom.

A pic from the playground a few minutes later --

Butterfly Whisperer

This is one of those little stories that was an everyday occurrence, nothing earth shattering, but a really sweet memory so I want to remember it.

We have a flowering plant in the backyard that we noticed was attracting butterflies, and there were several caterpillars on the branches of the tree. The butterflies are beautiful orange monarchs, and the caterpillars are striped and very distinct looking. I found the bush online, and it's called butterfly milkweed and does indeed attract and feed monarch caterpillars and butterflies.

We came home from school one day last week and saw a butterfly stuck on the front path, not really able to move. She obviously had something really wrong with her wing or a leg but of course I am no expert in butterflies and when Ella started yelling "WE HAVE TO HELP HER! WE HAVE TO HELP HER!" I really didn't have any ideas of what we should be doing. But, Ella wasn't going to be dissuaded so I told her that we could transport the butterfly around the back of the house, to the butterfly bush, and maybe that would help her health.
















It was clear the butterfly was trying really hard and she started flapping her wings and being able to fly a few inches, then a few feet at time. Ella was really gentle and kept delicately picking her up and then when she'd start flying she'd squeal loudly about how much she was helping her and how much the butterfly liked her. We made it halfway around the side of the house and the butterfly took off - she flew straight up and landed on a tree branch. Ella was so excited that she had "saved" her :)

Happy Thanks Mothers Day

It's almost 10pm, Ella should be asleep. We went out to dinner and got ice cream after so I'm sure that explains why she's still awake.

A few minutes ago, she came out of her bedroom with her notebook, sat down next to me on the couch and told me she has something very beautiful to show me. I asked her what it is and she proudly opens up to this picture that she made -

Her description of the picture - "It's a special picture of you, me and daddy, and the rainbow we saw yesterday. And an American flag for United States of America! I don't know if it was fireworks day. And it says 'to mommy - Happy Thanks Mothers Day'....sheesh, hard to shoo her back to bed after such a sweet little Thanks Mothers Day wish!!

Chewing Gum

Ella has been very eager to chew gum for about 2 years now. I always chew gum and so she's been really fascinated by it, asks me to blow bubbles that she tries to pop, likes to stick her finger on my gum, etc - she frequently talks about it and along with being able to drink soda, I think that chewing gum, and blowing bubbles, are some of her main goals in life!

I've never let her have it before because I don't want her to choke on it, but when I took her to her doctor's appointment, the sheet of information they gave me mentioned gum and hard candies were okay with supervision, so I decided to let her try a piece as a special big girl treat for being 4 years old.

We had to go to the pharmacy on the way home and I told her she could pick out any pack of gum she wanted and chew her first piece when we got home. She was so excited and very well behaved while I got what I needed at the store (amazing how far a little motivation goes). Of all the different kinds of gum, she picked the same strawberry trident that I chew all the time, carried it to the cashier and told her "that's my gum - I get to have gum now because I'm 4."

With her piece unwrapped, ready to try it



She was so excited I had to capture it on video...


She loved it and I have given her several pieces since then - she is very diligent about wrapping it up when she's done and holds the empty wrapper the whole time so she can throw it out in there when she's done, and then of course hands me the wrapper filled with gum. She swallowed one piece by accident and was very concerned about what was going to happen since she knew she wasn't supposed to swallow it. She'll ask questions like "is it okay if I have gum in my mouth and wash my hands at the same time?", it's just so cute how excited she is about it.

Growing up, Mom always had gum in her purse and I remember saying one time to her how nice it was that she was always willing to share her gum and that I couldn't imagine ever wanting to share my gum as freely as she did. I am proud to say that instead of selfishly hoarding my gum as I envisioned I would, I am carrying on the mother-daughter gum sharing tradition :).

I love...

I have been waiting anxiously for the day when Ella would say "I love you." She is super affectionate and always gives tons of kisses and hugs and other sweet things, but whenever we say "I love you" to her, she just smiles and nods. Sometimes she'll blow a kiss, but that's it. When I ask her "how much does Mommy love you?", she will say "SOOOOOOOOOOO much" - but still, no "love". Well - all that has changed!

On Saturday night, I was getting ready to drive Ella back home and Mom was saying goodbye to her in her car seat. Mom said "I love you Ella" and I said to Ella, "can you say 'love you Grammy'?" and Ella said "I do!". We were so excited and I said - "awww, you love Grammy, that is so sweet!" and then Ella said "luffff" - it was AWESOME, I could barely believe it! She kept saying it "love, love". Be still my heart!

The next day she started saying "I love", and then today she is saying "I love Mommy" - aaah, I do not think there are 3 better words out there!

We are still waiting on the "I love you" combination but in the meantime we are "luffing" the "I loves"!!

All About Ella

It's been a while since I've done a post just updating about Ella and what she's up to. What is most apparent to me right now is what a fun age she is at - I keep waiting for "terrible twos" to hit and while she is certainly strong willed and earns her share of time-outs, overall her personality is just amazing.

She is so much fun to be with, sweet and affectionate, and is a precious little companion. It's like she's at the perfect age. She can be really funny and will do silly things, she loves laughing, and loves making us laugh too. I love her laugh and her sense of humor is so silly. She gives lots of hugs and kisses and loves cuddling and snuggling (on her terms of course).

She is so very chatty, and talks all the time. I just LOVE her voice and just about every single thing she says. She is so funny, talks with so much inflection and seriousness, and many hand gestures. It's amazing how much of what she says actually makes sense and how we're able to understand about 95% of it. Very rarely there are a few words that she'll repeat over and over, so we know she sincerely means something but we just can't figure it out. Most of the time though she makes sense. She strings several words together, and here are some of my favorite things she's said lately: "Cory, I'm nice!" (when Cory was trying to get away from her), "ohhhh, nice baby", "I did it!" (she says this one all the time to announce her many achievements), "I want some water please" (this is her longest sentence so far I think), "yesss", and then when she doesn't want to do something but knows she has to, she says "o-taaay" in this little Eeore voice that is so funny. She also says "no way" a lot and had a little phase of saying "nope" every time instead of no. Oh and she'll throw in a "sheesh" if she's annoyed!

She is using the potty fairly often and does both #1 and #2 in the potty a few times a day. She tells us she wants to go but then once we get her settled on the potty, she wants her privacy, so we need to go in the hallway and wait until she calls us to come in and look at what she did and give her lots and lots of cheers and praise. She is always very proud of herself.

Ella LOVES taking Cory for walks, and at the beginning of each day, she wants to know exactly when the walk(s) will be taking place. This Saturday I told her we were going to go for a walk after her nap. So, we're driving home from some errands and I told her we were going to eat lunch, then nap time. Well she knew that "walk" was coming after nap time, so she wanted to get right to nap time. She said "no eat, nap" so that she could get the nap going. I took her up to change her diaper before nap and she said "nooooo, nap" ...she did not want even the slightest delay in getting to that walk. Of course I still changed her, but she was not pleased with that. She went right down, didn't even want to read before her nap. She took a good nap, over an hour and a half, and as soon as I went in to get her when she woke up, she said first thing with a giant smile on her face "Cory, walk?" So of course we went just like I told her, and she acted like she had won the lottery. She is so happy and enjoys everything, it's so neat. We have a greenway in our neighborhood and we always go in there because it's a paved trail and so nice to not need to worry about cars or the street. And Ella loves it because she can be a little adventurer and doesn't need to hold my hand while we're in there. (You'd think my hand was coated in battery acid sometimes the way she does not want to hold it!) Steve usually takes them for a long walk during the day and then we go once I get home from work. So, Cory has never been happier either!

She is still the Dog Whisperer and hasn't met a dog that she doesn't love. She'll say things like "oh, nice dog" and then many "hi puppy", "ohhhh, nice" while she sweetly pets them. She also equally loves cats and she refers to all cats as "meows".

She's now wearing 2T clothes, is just about a size 6 shoe and still in size 4 diapers.

I've written before about she nicely let me push her stroller when I walked with my and my friends for about 9 months and then all of sudden started rebelling on me so I couldn't even take her with me when we walked. Well, it finally hit me that this could be a semantics thing because I say to her "we're going to go for a walk" but then I put her in her stroller, so maybe she is thinking "that's not a walk!" So, a few weekends ago I tried again. I told Ella we were meeting Miss Christine and Dominic for a "ride" in her stroller at the lake. I had no clue if it would work or not but it actually did! She did such a good job. I told her that if she did a nice job in her stroller the whole time then at the end we'd put the stroller back in the trunk and take a walk. I was amazed, but it actually worked. And this weekend we were able to do it again. I'm really excited, especially because the weather has been beautiful the past few weeks and now with the time change we've got so much more daylight.

We're back to Little Gym and the playground, Ella is fully back to normal with her leg and I'm guessing she's all but forgotten that she ever hurt it. She'll frequently surprise me with her memory and the stuff she talks about, but she hasn't mentioned her leg in a while, which I think is a great sign.

Ella really knows several of her 'friends' now, and knows that she gets to play with Katie at Little Gym and Ryanne at church. We met up with Katie and her parents at the playground last weekend and Ella walked around looking for her saying "oh, Katie, oh Katie"...it was so cute. On Saturday mornings while we're getting ready she says excitedly "katie!". And as soon as we get to church nursery she says "Eyan?" (= Ryanne).

Ella loves singing. Her favorites right now are ABCs (and she says "more ABCs" over and over), If You're Happy and You Know It (= Happy), the Ella song ( = Ella), and Little Einsteins theme song (she'll just start singing out of nowhere RA RA RA and we're supposed to pick up with "ra ra rah, for rocket").

One of her favorite things to do is point to many things in a row and say "what's that?" - you give her an answer, and then you get another "what's that?"...then, repeat 10 or 20 times! It cracks her up though and it's like she tries to stump us because she'll come back to something that she already asked and then see if we'll give the same answer. She is also starting to say "why?" to ask about things. She's definitely very curious and seems to observe everything around her.

I could go on and on and on, but will wrap it up for now, and here are some other pictures from the last few weeks!

Hard at work sweeping


Big hugs for Cory


Playing in a laundry basket


Ella the Adventurer

Close Ups

A few close-ups of my nuggs!

Tutu Adorable

When Mom was here she bought this little tutu and we dressed Ella in it and took many photos - not so easy with such a moving target, but totally precious!














Tu tu cute :)

Ella Happy

One of Ella's favorite new things to say is "Ella happy" (pronounced Happ-py) when she likes something. The first time she said it, I was asking her what she wanted for breakfast and went through about 5 suggestions, all of which got a resounding NO, and then I said "bagel?" and she said "oohhhh Ella happy"...so, bagel it was :).

As soon she surprised me with that sweet little answer, I quickly got the camera and managed to catch some more of what makes our little girl happy!

Baby Love

Ella got her first babydoll last year for Christmas and although she occasionally played with it, more often than not, her version of playing was tossing the babydoll around, and otherwise being anything but sweet and caring with her little friend!

Well, things are very different now and Ella LOVES babydolls. She got a new one for Christmas from Dad and Donna, her name appears to be Baby (quite original!) and she is tops on Ella's list right now.

Ella is so adorable and sweet with Baby - she gives her hugs and kisses, carries her around in a blanket, tucks her in, feeds her, pushes her in her stroller, and makes sure she is involved in Ella's activities.

In the morning when I get Ella up, she lets me know that we have to bring Baby downstairs too. She has another favorite buddy, Violet, that is a stuffed dog that she sleeps with every night, but Ella requires that Violet has to stay in her crib during the day (it's always night-night for poor Violet). Baby is lucky though and gets to have quite a nice little life outside her crib.

Starting the day with some milk


Ready for breakfast!


Baby on the breakfast counter


Nap time


Wake-up Baby (or, as Ella says "Baby Kup-Kup"


Road trip


Dinner time!


Tea and Birthday Cake for dessert


I love seeing how sweet Ella is with her Baby and how she takes such good care of her!

December Photo Roundup

The last few weeks have been so busy, I've missed my blogging time...here are lots of December photos I haven't posted yet.

Eating a Christmas cookie - I baked 6 dozen of them for a cookie exchange, Ella was my assistant chef and needed a taste of our hard work


In her winter hat


Smiling in front of the tree


Sitting on the potty - note that I said sitting - she has not actually "gone" yet...


Looking cute


Video clip of her helping me wrap gifts for Christmas


Drinking out of a cup like a big girl (Which is now her favorite way to drink.)


Bundled up and wanting to help Steve scrape the ice off the car


Playing in her sand table




Investigating a tree


Snuggling with Grammy


Many, many more Christmas photos to come!

Night-night

One of my favorite parts of the day is putting Ella to sleep at night. Since Steve is home with her during the day, it's almost always me who gives Ella a bath and then does the nighttime routine.

First we say goodnight to all the animals downstairs - here's a video clip from a month or so ago, telling Nomar good night (I'm not really sure why goodnight involved a washcloth on this particular night..)




She loves the bath and is always in such a good mood after, super silly, and lots of fun. She smells so yummy and her hair is so cute when it's all wet and she is totally adorable in her jammies. She runs to give Steve a kiss and hug (or several) goodnight, then runs back into her room, picks up a book, and taps the chair for me to get into it so she can climb in my lap to start reading.

At some point during reading, she decides she is getting sleepy, and asks for her "beppy" - which is her binky. She now needs TWO binkies to go to sleep, one to hold and one in her mouth, plus her favorite purple blanky. So, I load her up with both binkies and purple blankie, then we read some more.

Once it's time for her to get in her crib, I put her in there and she stands up, gives me a great kiss and hug, then gets herself all settled in.

Here's a video of some pre-sleep preparations



And saying "night-night"



Happy little girl


Air kisses


Could she be any sweeter???

Magic

Ella has many tricks up her sleeve but her current favorite seems to be making things disappear on us. On Sunday afternoon I wanted to take a picture of my favorite little subject, but could not find my camera anywhere. My camera is never far away and there are about 2 or 3 places I keep it, always downstairs and I always know where it is. I looked around in all my usual places, but no camera.

Extra worrisome was the fact that I had done a garage sale on Saturday morning and the only piece of electronics I did not sell was my old digital camera, so I was beginning to worry that maybe the 'reason' I hadn't sold it was God telling me that I'd be needing to use it since my excellent camera was now missing. I've never misplaced it before and was getting worried I had thrown it out in the middle of packing and unpacking boxes from the garage sale.

We were wondering if Ella might have gotten it and put it somewhere so last night I looked through all her toys - I checked in the cargo holders of her riding toys, her toy boxes, her kitchen cabinets, etc., but no camera. Resigning myself to camera phone and old digital camera for a while, I was just hoping and praying it'd turn up, and sooner rather than later.

This morning around 11am Steve called to tell me that he doesn't know where she had gotten it from, but Ella had my camera! So she must have gone into her secret stash and produced it! I felt waves of relief and about 10 pounds lighter. Now I must locate her hiding place, I'm assuming we'll find a bunch of barettes, singleton socks and sippy cup lids in there (...or not, but these all have a way of disappearing at light speed!!).

Tonight the phone rang and Steve wasn't able to find it - when he finally did, it was in the drawer of my nightstand - Ella strikes again!

She also managed yesterday to get a hold of a box of our wedding photo proofs and scatter them all over the computer room floor - that was more of a slight-of-hand trick I suppose. Then again, I can't be sure, because a magician should never reveal their secrets.

And for some REAL magic, at least in the eyes of my precious 22 month old, I present to you - MAGNETS - Ella's newest delight :).

Jammies & Bedhead

What could be sweeter than jammies and bedhead first thing in the morning??

So cheerful



Morning kiss for Daddy


Lost in Translation...video clip of me trying to ask Ella if she wants a drink or breakfast, when what she really wants is to get up so she can check out what's on the counter. Note the sleepy eyes and crazy hair :)


What a way to start the day!