Ode to Motherhood

If you see any mothers walking around with a mouth shaped peanut butter smudge on the shoulder of their shirt, please give her a break. :)

Ooopie!

Funny little vocabulary update: Ella yells "Ooopie!" everytime she spills something or sees me drop something. I think she's trying to say "oopsies," but not quite! Oh well, it always makes me smile.

Condiment Queen

If you give Ella any type of condiment with her meal, you will surely win over her heart! She LOVES having something to dip her food in.  Ketchup, salsa, barbecue sauce..... tonight she had her fingers dipped in sour cream!

Its. Hot.

Spontaneous Weekend Project:

Adding landscape blocks around the raspberry bushes! Our friends were getting rid of a bunch so we took advantage of their freebies! Grow, little berries!

 Derek's garden is out of control. His tomato plants are 6 feet tall!

 Our pumpkins have taken over our garden and our lawn!



Back in Action

We are back from vacation. We had a wonderful time! We had 4 great days of boating, 4 fun nights with our friends, and 1 spectaular day of fishing. And it feels good to have my Ellie back!!! Time to unpack and get settled again.



Thinking Ahead

Each time Ella sits in her time-out stool, she is just devastated that Mommy or Daddy is upset with her. When we finally rescue her from her time-out (usually only 2-3 minutes long), we approach her and ask: "Are you ready to be a big girl?" She wipes away her tears, stands up, and greets us with a hug laying her head on our shoulders. That is her way of saying she is sorry.

Tonight, she actually told me "sowwy" when we were sitting on the floor. I already forget what she did, but evidently she knew she wanted to bypass the time-out that she knew she deserved. Smooth.

Photography

I love taking pictures. I was optimistic (and naive) when I purchased my camera, thinking I might catch some better shots with a quicker shutter speed. There's a small amount of truth to that.

Fact: The best camera in the world cannot get your toddler to smile and say cheese. I hope to have all of my camera's functions figured out by the time she learns how to sit still.

Late-Night Impersonations

If there is one thing that really gets me laughing, it is Derek's impersonations of people that annoy him (usually people on TV).  There is one thing that really gets him going-- newscasters who can't talk correctly. Its taken him a couple years to forget about Melissa Sissler who unfortunately had a bad lisp and a really bad name to go with that lisp. Last night he had me really laughing at almost 11pm as he pretended to be Colleen O'Shaunghnessy - a local reporter who seems to have a partially saggy face, a lazy tongue, and a speech imediment.

A Night at the Pond

What awesome weather! We spent an hour at a local pond trying to fish. Derek caught a nice crappie. I left my pole unattended for about 30 minutes and discovered a bluegill on it as we were packing up. And on our way out, we said "hi" to a turtle crossing the road! He was not so thrilled.

We lost our shoe hurrying out of the car. :)

Happy Memorial Day!

As we approach the last waking hour of our 3-day weekend, I smile thinking it was spent washing the dirt off of Ella's feet and scraping away at a mountain of dirty laundry. We spent the entire weekend outside, with the exception of nap times. We had three grillouts, 2 bonfires, 1 successful fishing trip, and a lawnmower race. The three of us had playdates with Jada, Kenzie, both sets of grandparents, and several adult friends. :) What more could we ask for?!



Looking Forward to a 3-day weekend!

We are looking forward to the upcoming 3-day weekend! There are a few things we have planned, but we cannot neglect the following:

1. Wash Mimi. Good Lord. I'm sick of people guessing what animal it is supposed to be.
2. Go fishing. Ella and I have not done it yet this year!

Organizer

With all of the recent storms we've been getting, our little firecracker has been staying busy reorganizing Mommy and Daddy's movie collection. And if there is a Melmo DVD, she will find it.

Rough Night

"Terrible Twos" + Teething Irritability = A warm seat on our time-out stool tonight.

Bad Habit

I have started a very bad habit teaching Ella to stick her finger in the peanut butter while we wait for our toast in the morning. Where is the undo button?

Weekly Update

On top of our sore throats, coughs, runny noses, and sneezes, I think we've finally confirmed there are more molars coming in for Ellie, which is what has been bringing bad diapers, fiery diaper rash, low-grade fevers, and severe crankiness for the last 6 days. I'm crossing my fingers this is all over by the weekend.

Amidst the sicknesses, here are the highlights:

• We now know that 30 feet of unused toilet paper can fit into the toilet and be flushed without a major clog.
• Our neighbor gave E a nice yellow tulip to make her feel better.
• Derek is taking on a different position at John Deere. His title is about 10 words long but it has something to do with "delivery improvement."
• Grandma and Grandpa G came over to play with Ellie on Tuesday while Derek and I enjoyed a sponteneous evening out. This was literally our first date in probably 6 months.
• Grandpa Tom stopped by tonight to help us learn how to blow bubbles. Some day we'll get it!
• Pajamas and a hunting license were saved because Derek took note of the contents of our trash. Time to put the garbage can up!

Sleeping Beauty

Ella has always been very easy on us when it comes to sleeping (teething and sicknesses aside). There has never been much of a struggle to get her to go down for a nap or down for bed.  We've never had to actually look at a clock to decide when to begin nap time. Sometimes, she will start getting crabby or naughty, and that is our sign that it's time for a nap. Lately, she has taken it upon herself to crawl up on Mommy or Daddy, lay her head on our shoulder, and fall asleep. When we lay her in her bed, she will turn her head away from us and drift off. I read a lot of parenting articles that address bed time routines, sleep habits, etc. and always feel fortunate that Ella just apparently likes her sleep.

However, the grass is not necessarily greener on this side of the fence! She is an ornery little squirt when she wakes up. :) She's been like that since the day she was born. Most kids seem to wake up refreshed, energetic, and happy. Ella likes to take it slow. She doesn't like to talk a lot, she doesn't like people to be in her face, and she is not in the mood to play until she decides she is ready. In fact, the majority of her time-outs occur within an hour after she wakes up, because let me tell you.....she is a ball of sunshine!

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say she gets that from the Cozart side!

Under the Weather

For the very short time we were outside today, I got to take a peek at our flowers and sneak in a picture. They seem to be the only living thing holding up right now at our house. The rest of us are battling a cold that is taking every ounce of energy we have. And kleenexes.

Happy OSPD!

Happy Office Support Professionals Day to all of the secretaries, administrative assistants, receptionists, etc! In honor of OSPD, I'd like to share a day in the life of a plumber's part-time bookkeeper.

2:00PM-3:51PM: Translate 3 torn/wrinkled/dirty notebook pages full of indecipherable, sloppy scribbles/abbreviations/symbols into the English language.
3:52PM-4:00PM: Generate 6 Quickbook invoices and enter 2 checkbooks worth of expenses into the register.

Thanks, Dad, for passing on your sloppy handwriting to me....both literally and genetically.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to everybody!!

Treats Ella brought for her little buddies on Thursday.

Little Helper

It seems like almost every time Ellie has a new and exciting development, she similtaneously has a new bad habit we have to try to break at the same time. This week, both of these revolve around becoming Mommy's little helper.

• Good development: running across the house yelling "Guckie!" (yucky) and handing me something disgusting (like a teeny piece of paper or a piece of banana she found on the floor beneath her high chair).
• Bad development: throwing things in the trash that aren't actually garbage. Today it was a mitten and her Zsu Zsu pet. Luckily I witnessed it and fished both of them out.