Elea climbing wall

Note to self: Turn phone sideways to use as camcorder...

Elea is only defying gravity vertically, not horizontally AND vertically.  Promise.

Our Little Elea Drew

So with Clayne's arrival, Elea is now a BIG SISTER.  She has handled the transition very well.  Jeff has spent a lot of time making sure she doesn't feel ousted.  But I don't want to write about her in relation to Clayne on this post... I am just going to make some notes about her as she is now-- 2 1/2 years old.

Elea has zero interest in potty training.  She LOVES chocolate milk.  Despite our best efforts, she has stuck to her, "I can't want that," when it comes to any vegetable besides potatoes and all fruits.  Unless you count fruit snacks.  Dora the Explorer reigns supreme.  We have 30+ episodes saved on the DVR with Team Umizoomi and Bubble Guppies coming in close 2nd with 10 & 11 episodes respectively.  (I could lie and say that she only watches the "less than 2" hours of television daily recommended by the powers that be, but I won't).

Elea has been her own little person since before she was born.  I love that about her.  She loves to laugh but she is not about to fake a laugh for the sake of the person trying to entertain.  She doesn't just smile at people to make them smile back.  It was kind of awkward when she was younger because adults would try to get her to interact with them, and if she wasn't in the mood she would just stare back at them-- while I stood there watching as their faces slowly fell.  Now, however, she LOVES saying hi to anyone and everyone.  And not just once.  If we see a person in the grocery aisle she will say hi to them over and over and over until they are out of sight-- it's a new version of supermarket sweep for me because I am  more the the head-down-try-not-to-make-eye-contact type and after the 5th "hello" I feel obligated to interact with said shopper.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

We spent last night and today in our own house for the 1st time since we've been married.  Took us 6 years, but we finally pulled it off!

I woke up at 6:15 this morning excited for Christmas.  Elea had no idea that this morning was any different than any other morning when she crawled into bed with us at 7 am.  She just made her usual "Curious George" & "chocit milk" requests.  So when Jeff came back upstairs he started bringing up Merry Christmas, presents, Santa, etc.   I still don't think she had any clue until she was downstairs looking at the toys Santa had brought her.

Growing up, my family always ate waffles with strawberries and whipped cream for Christmas morning breakfast.  Jeff humored me this year, and I don't think he was super psyched about the idea until he was actually eating them, so now it's been instituted as OUR family Christmas morning breakfast tradition.  YAY!

The other funny one was playing Christmas music while opening presents.  When we were first married and at my family's house every other year, it "made him feel awkward."  So last night when I was setting up the playlist, hoping that I would be able to pull off playing music this morning, he came in and said he thought it was a good idea.  Now that we have Elea, it doesn't make him feel awkward anymore.  :)  Which makes me happy, because the first Christmas I spent with his family instead of my own when we were engaged, the lack of Christmas music during present opening is eventually what got to me and I ended up crying it out later that afternoon!

Jeff & I agreed not to get each other anything this year and for once, we finally stuck to it.  :)  Elea got Jeff a picture frame with family pictures in it for his office at work and she got me a "Rachel Ray, 365 different meals" cookbook.  I am actually really excited about the cookbook, believe it or not.  A girl can only cook tuna casserole so many times.


MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope you all are having or had a great day!

Dancin' girl

These pictures were from Elea's first day in dance class... She likes to run around crazy when I am there and is an angel when I am not, so I don't know if I'll be able to get any good pictures of her actually doing the "dancing"  but whatever, she's 2.  AND once a week I'll have 45 minutes to do whatever I want!

Elea's 2nd Birthday

Elea turned 2 on the 13th.  It seems sort of crazy that she is already 2, but at the same time, she is definitely her own little person & talks A LOT so 2 should seem normal.  If that makes any sense.

We didn't go crazy this year for her birthday-- Just had family over for pizza & cookies and ice cream.  Elea doesn't like cake so I made her a giant chocolate chip cookie instead.  One of her favorite foods is pizza, so I figured I should take advantage of that before she gets old enough to request birthday meals that can't be bought in a drive-thru window. 

For her birthday she got books, books, and more books.  And some Backyardigans DVDs and a small teaset.  She loves books more than any other thing right now.  She falls asleep with 3+ books in her bed at night and tends to carry one around with her the way other kids carry around a blankie. 

It was really nice to be living in a place big enough to have 8 adults and 12 kids without having to walk all over one another.  The kids got in a water fight in the backyard towards the end of the night, which was pretty fun to watch-- and even more fun to send the kids out to the cars sopping wet through the side gate!  (sorry Jen & Shanna!)

Her last trick of the evening was showing us how big she is now that she is 2 by climbing up the sink to wash her hands!

Missing Elea

The 3 three nights during the week of our move we were in chaos so we left Elea with Jeff's mom.  Angie had offered to take her to Page for the week, but when it came down to it, I couldn't stand to not see Elea for that many days.  Even with being able to see her for a couple of hours every day, by the time Wednesday night rolled around I was determined to have the house put away enough so that she could sleep at our house on Thursday.

As often as I complain about her waking up at the crack of dawn, or whining, or other standard toddler antics, she really is my little happy fix.  We missed her a lot those few days- although I think she was handling the separation JUST FINE.  ha.  I'm grateful she has so many people in her life who love her and are happy and willing to help take care of her. 

Sand Hollow

Last minute some friends invited us to go boating down at Sand Hollow today.  I was curious how Elea would be with the sand and water, etc.  Luckily, she loved it & didn't complain about her hands being "gross" even once!  I didn't get to see it, but she even rode on the tube with Jeff and loved it. She kept saying "wee" & waving to the kids on the boat.

The weather was perfect & I'm so glad we went!

Elea-isms

Elea walks up to you and says "pingers" (Fingers) and grabs your hand, pulling you to wherever or whatever she wants help with.  Since she figured that little trick out, her tantrums have nearly disappeared (thank goodness!) it was a rough couple of months with the tantruming.

She still does sign language while using words with a lot of things (milk, dog, more, eat, etc.).  It's kind of fun to watch her randomly bust out a sign that I didn't even realize that she had learned- i.e. "juice" yesterday, for the first time.

"Stuck" is one of her favorite words.  She gets stuck trying to climb the baby gate we put in her door during nap-time.  Or stuck in her booster seat.  Or stuck in her stroller.  Or stuck trying to put pants on.  Or stuck trying to take shirt off.  Or stuck trying to pull a barrette out of her hair. Or stuck trying to pull things out of the bathroom drawers.

Another favorite phrase is "_____, watch this," and then she proceeds to do something she thinks is cool- normally describing the action while doing it.  For example, "Mom, watch this, jump!" while jumping up and down.  A couple weeks ago we were at a friends house and she was jumping on the trampoline, so she kept telling the dog across the yard, "DOG! WATCH THIS!"  Or yesterday, we were on Skype with my parents and she said, 'Papa, watch this!" but I don't remember what she did.  It's usually pretty cute & endearing . . . until she says it before dumping all the leftover food (which is usually a lot) left on her plate onto the floor.

Her favorite show is "agins" (Backyardigans).  Which is fine with me because they aren't annoying.  We tried the Little Einsteins thing for a couple of weeks, but then I had an intense desire to break my eardrums after hearing "I CAN NOT BELIEVE IT!" for the hundredth time.  Backyardigans is pretty fabulous.

Any sort of jewelry or hair accessory is "pretties" or "cute."

We're still in the process of taking away the binkie(s).  We cut the tips off of all of her binkies, and she still uses the 0 month size so they aren't that big to begin with.  When she first saw them, she called them "yucky binkiy" and made a major stink face when she tried to use them.  It's cured her of whining for her binky ALL DAY LONG, but she still wants it at bed-time, even though it falls out the second she falls asleep.  But, she doesn't wake up crying for it in the night.  So baby steps I guess.  Maybe we'll take them away completely when she turns 2 next month-- kind of a cruel birthday present though, huh?

I had a delusional moment or two a few weeks ago and thought it would be a good idea to start the potty training.  But then one morning I had her sitting on the toilet, she climbed down, peed on the floor, and then climbed back onto the toilet.  So, we're post-poning that for a few months, at least until we are settled in the new place.

She's been waking up between 5:45- 7 am every morning.  So she just comes and climbs in bed with me and says "Mom! Shows!" so I turn on sesame street and lay there with my eyes closed, hoping to fall back asleep.  Until she pats my head or face and says "Mom! Drink!" which usually takes a couple times before I stagger out of bed and make her chocolate instant breakfast which is her main source of vitamins since she still has a major aversion to the texture fruits & vegetables & every brand of multi-vitamin I have tried so far!  Mother of the Year Award right here, thank you very much.

Elea is a pretty polite little kid so far.  Sometimes she needs to be reminded to say please & thank-you but a lot of the time she remembers all on her own.  If we remind her she usually says "thank you, ________, thank you!" 

Elea is learning (as much as a 23 month old can) the difference between right/wrong, nice/mean, etc.  While watching disney/animated movies, she has started pointing at the "misbehaving" characters and telling them off.  Yesterday it was Toy Story-- I don't remember what part, but she was pointing at the TV yelling "Stop it Buzz!  Stop it!"

She thinks it's hilarious if we copy what she says.  She's at the age where she says our names over and over and over and over and over and over without any reason.  So one day in the car out of sheer desparation whenever she would say "Mom," Jeff would immediately copy her, before she could even get the second "m sound" out.  Once she realized what he was doing she thought it was hilarious and started changing the speed, pitch, volume, etc.  It's turned into a game that gets us all laughing, especially when she does her various fake laughs and we copy those.  I realized last night that one of these days she is going to start mimickinig US, when we are trying to be stern or serious and we will have a major parenting back-fire on our hands.

There was a while there that she was throwing tantrums/whining often.  When she would starts whining I remind her to "Use your words," and she usually responds with "words."  . . .Obviously that was not quite what I had in mind, but it works to distract her from the whining!  Law of unintended consequences or whatever.

We haven't had any chairs around our kitchen table except for her's and the 2 pinned against the wall because Elea loves to climb.  Everything.  And she figured out how to drag the chairs around the kitchen, so we had more than the top of the kitchen table to worry about.  The baby lock I had installed on the oven melted, imagine that, so about once or twice a day I find her standing on the open oven door, dismantling the stove top burners.  The other day I looked into the living room and she had opened the dresser we use as an entertainment center and had opened 2 rows of drawers and used them as a ladder in an effort to get into the drawer on the top row.  Luckily, it's a sturdy dresser and she still weighs less than 25 lbs.  Scared me to death.  We have child safety locks installed on every permanent drawer, cabinet, and the dishwasher- she loves to empty the contents of whatever she is able to get into, onto the floor, so that will be the first thing we install when we move in a couple of weeks.  No messing around.

She likes to randomly count to 10 and sing her abc's (or atleast 3/4s of them).  I don't honestly know how she picked them up- it wasn't Jeff or me trying to teach her them, that is for sure.

Packing & Cleaning, Cleaning & Packing.

Elea doing the moving box slide/dance.

I didn't get a picture of her jumping, but she was having a great time jumping on the big pile of boxes.

Yes, I understand that we aren't moving for about a month.  BUT, I realized very quickly that I was unable to relax in our house knowing that there were things up and out that would eventually need to be taken down and put in a box and then moved.  So, our walls are bare now, and the cupboards are left with the just the bare necessities.  (Don't think this is all sorts of amazing though, pretty much every decoration in our house fit in 2 boxes.)  Luckily, the people next door to us just moved in last week, so we have been able to use their boxes.  You'd think by now Jeff & I would be smart enough to keep our boxes from one move to the next, but we aren't, this time however, it all worked out.  :)

Our tortured artist

"cuhdors" are the source of much joy & many tantrums around our house.  If Elea sees one of us writing on anything with anything she thinks that she will die immediately if said writing instrument is not handed over immediately.

However, the moments when she is patient enough to sit at the table and "cuhdor" she is as happy and content.  Especially when she gets to use a pen.

You gotta be good at something. . .

. . . so why not snot bubbles?

"Stickers Pretty."