Where did the summer go?

Well is seemed that the summer came and went. We had a pretty boring summer. The only thing fun we did was go to Michigan to visit family for a night. Tom didn’t shut the ware house down until 4th of July weekend. I think we just decided to chill the rest of the time. I feel kinda bad for Jack, but it really was just so hard to do things with Ella. Jack had a new good friend this summer, Matthew.

School is in full swing. 2nd grade is a bit more challenging for Jack and that is good. I don’t think he is as bored in class. However, he still says he hates school. His reason is because he can’t play. He is doing pretty well so far. When he makes mistakes, it seems he has rushed through it. He is so smart though! He is getting more into reading. I am trying to get him to read every night in bed. Some nights he gets so caught up in a book he stays up way too late.

He is on the mite hockey team this year. The coach (Trip) has named it Team Chaos. Not my favorite, but it will do! They have only had practice up until now and have their first tournament this weekend. They are playing so pretty good teams so it may be hard. Oh and Jack had the opportunity to play a hockey game ON the Blackhawk ice. It was so awesome! They had their name above their locker in the locker room. They got a practice jersey. Jack’s is huge!! They even sang the national anthem. He did really well. I think it actually gave him a new perspective on things. He has been different this year already. He went from wanting to sit in the goal to playing a wingman. He is still a very average player and we are fine with that. He is going to learn so much this year.

And on to Miss Ella Bella…or as she is called in the house…Bammy, Belsy, Bells, Pumpkin, and Princess. I am sure there is more. She is just sooooo adorable! She has curly hair. Jack calls it fluffy and likes to touch it all the time. It is at the point now that it is sticking out on the sides of her head. Not much I can do about it and she won’t let me put anything in it. She looks so cute with bows, but she just pulls them out. She is such a good baby. I know all mothers complain about little things, but overall, we couldn’t ask for a happier, easy going baby. She is starting to show us how strong wiled she is. She doesn’t give up easy on something she shouldn’t be doing. She is one very busy little girl. When she is on the go she will only do something for 30 seconds then move onto the next. She has finally started to sit and watch a little TV. This has helped in the morning after Jack gets on the bus. I can get a few things done while she watches a show. She loves her Baby Einstein.

She doesn’t talk much. She says DaDa for everyone. She has started to refer to me as MA. But it seems she only does it when she can’t see me and wants to know where I am. Otherwise if I ask her what is my name she says DaDa. There are times I think she is trying to say something different for Jack, but then the next time she says DaDa. She can do “what does a duck say” and I have seen her cinch up her nose like she is going to snort when you ask her what a piggy says. She climbs all over everything. We currently have our table chairs all bungeed together so she can’t pull them out and climb on the table. It is like she hunts for the chairs to be pulled out so she can climb. She also loves books. She will look through her books in her room for a long time.

Ok, this is a good update so I am going to leave it here for now. Now a picture of Ella last month and a picture of Jack from the Blackhawk game.

Long Week

This was a long week. Ella has decided to only take 30 min naps. I don’t know how she can’t sleep longer since she doesn’t stop moving while she is awake. She doesn’t sit still at all. Crawl, crawl…pull up…sit down…pull up..crawl crawl. It makes me tired just watching her. Of course when this happens I get nothing done since she has gotten very clingy over the last week or so. I can’t be out of her sight or she cries. Or best yet she crawls around following me whining. Momomomomomomom She is so cute and adorable and I just love her to pieces, but she needs to sleep! She has always taken short morning naps, so fine that I am used to. But 30 min in the afternoon? No way. So then on some days she takes 3 naps, or I can’t get her down for that 3rd naps and she is then up from like 2 till 7:30..not a fun baby at 6.

SO I am finding it a bit hard to cope. Wondering if I should go back on my meds. I have been feeling more anxiety. That just scares me. Tom is trying to shut down the warehouse. That is stressful as we have to move everything, get storage space and he thinks a lot of it is going to fit at home. Um ya..not gonna happen. I cracked right after he moved the last time. Then last night he goes and buys a new car. Ok let me rephrase that. He bought a 1992 BMW 735. Yes, a car that is almost 20 yrs old. It is his dream car. He will pick it up this week. Ok so at this moment he has 3 cars. He now has to sell his truck and his other BMW. Let’s not forget the 3 motorcycles he has. I could really go on and on here, but I won’t!

I think I also stress myself out when it is the end of the school year. You get in such a routine with school and I like that. With school out, you just wing it and that is not how I roll. Plus I don’t know what I will do with Jack all summer. It will be interesting with the baby. I will have to make sure we have plenty of Mommy/Jack time.


Here's praying this is a better week!

My Ella song

When Ella was born, 7/27/10 there was one song on the radio that became my Ella song. I listened to it and just thought that some of the lyrics are things I would say to her someday. I know the song is meant differently, but they work for my beautiful daughter.

The song is "Just The Way You Are" by Bruno Mars. I just love it and it makes me happy every time I hear it.

Updates

Ella turned 9 months on 4/27 and she is just amazing. She is basically doing everything but walking. I think she did it all in a matter of a couple of days. We didn’t see this type of action from Jack. He was very happy to just chill. He would sit and watch TV if I put it on. She will look at it for a minute and then take off. I went to BRU today and bought one of those big playpen things. I am sure she will hate it!! She is also my little piggy. I don’t think there is really anything she hasn’t eaten yet that I have gave her. She is eating everything. Dinner is pretty much all people food. Darn, I have a lot of baby food left. I always tend to over buy. It is so nice to put food on her tray and get something done while she eats! My hardest thing is trying to think of things to feed her. Her naps are still kinda all over the place. The length is not consistent. But, she naps so I guess I shouldn't complain. I know moms with babies that don't sleep much. One other thing about Ella is her happy noise..it is a grunt/growl. You would think it would be a happy screech or something...nope it is a devilish growl...not the noise I thought would come out of my cute little girl!!



Jack turned 7 on May 1st. I just can't believe he is that old already! We had a family celebration on Easter since it was so late this year. The for is kid party he had 4 boys sleep over (one boy couldn't stay) It went much better than I thought it would. They all had a lot of fun. I think I will do it again next year. It was so cheap!!!

Jack’s school had a Mother’s day tea for all us moms. It was just the cutest thing and very hard not to cry. They even had little Kleenex packages out for us! They read poems, sang us songs and gave us all kinds of cute things to hang on the fridge. Jack did awesome! He is such a little ham up there! Now if they only acted that sweet and cute all the time!!

On 5/2 the government finally got Osama Bin Laden. I told Jack all about it in the morning, however, he had heard stuff on and off during the day (ie the bus drivers radio) So when he got home from school he asked me... "Mom, did Obama die?" "No honey it is Osama Bin Laden not Obama" "Ohhhhh, they sound the same!!"

That is about it over here. I sure hope this weather will get better soon so Ella and I can go for walks. Any day it seems to get warm, it is too windy. Babies hate wind!

Turning 40

I turned 40 on Wed, Apr 20th. At first I was totally ok with it. I am a mom of an infant and just have time to worry about it. Then it seemed more and more people were talking about it. So it was twisting the knife just a little bit each time. Ella has started to get mobile so it has been harder to manage my time on a daily basis. Then she got sick. Then I got my period. I have also been needing to have one of those talks with my husband about a bunch of stuff, so that was stressing me out. Well I don’t know what happened, but I woke up Wed morning and I was a wreck! Ella wouldn’t nap and just needed a few minutes to myself. It was my birthday after all. Lets not forget that my husband gave me a dozen red roses. Great right…except he gives me those for everything. No extra thought..stop at the grocery store to get them… and really red..again. Please just can’t you buy yellow or pink. I have even told him that before. Uggh. (I do need to say that we bought ourselves an iPad for our 40ths so that was our gifts) Anyway.. I was just an emotional basket case. At one point Ella was in her room screaming and I was in my room in a ball on the floor crying. I am not a crier. It really takes a lot, but this just got me. Then in the afternoon I finally got her down for a nap. She was only down for about 30 min when I Dad just stopped by…dog barking…baby wake up. I thought I was going to loose it!! I can’t deal with cranky sick baby anymore.

Luckily my mom is a great listener and let me vent. She had a bad 40th too so she totally understood. I had to gather myself by the evening because my mom had planned a wonderful dinner with my sister, niece, MIL, and best friend. We went to Francesca’s. It was wonderful! It was just what I wanted to get out of my funk. The food was wonderful. The company was wonderful. I got some beautiful gifts and my mom ordered the yummiest cake. It even had polka dots on it!! My MIL made these cute little goodie bags for all of us with cookies and chocolates.

So after my day that I felt horrible and sorry for myself, it was offset by wonderful family and friends who love me. Happy 40th Birthday to me!

Oh and you would think that 4 people with a smartphone would take some pictures..but no!

What is going on?

Well the last week has gotten away from me. I didn't even write down much to blog about. Lets see where Miss Ella is....

She has now figured out her knees for crawling. She also can totally sit up all the time by herself. If I am sitting on the floor with her she can pull up on me to a stand. I know it will just be a matter of time before she is pulling up on things. I am a little worried about her hurting herself. She knows how to walk with her feet so I think once she pulls up she will start taking off and just crash. She has gotten quite impatient. She really wants to be able to see me and if she can't she starts crawling and whining to find me.

She is eating more solids now. She is getting difficult with spooning baby food, so this week I added peas, carrots, pancakes, and bananas. I will spoon something in while she is eating those.

Ella like to chew on velcro...not the soft fuzzy side, but the rough, prickly side. She also has started to snort. When she gets excited she does this breathing thing and out comes a snort. It is so cute!!

She seems to have caught her brothers cold so now she is miserable. I just broke out the steriods cause I didn't like the sound of her cough. Great..she was miserable and sick for her first Christmas and now it is Easter. I sure hope she feels better by Sunday!

A few things about Jack...

The other day Jack was talking about being a weather man and I said they are never right. He said “its tough being a weatherman”

For his birthday party coming up we decided he can have 3 boys sleepover. He knew 2 that he wanted but couldn't decided between two other boys. Then I asked him one final time and he said Owen, Michael, Matthew with a little side of Jimbo. It was just so funny that we said OK he can have 4 sleep over.

I was playing on the floow with Ella and had my butt up in the air. He came up behind me and said "Mom your butt is an instrument. It is my bongos cause it vibrates so much" Gee thanks Jack!!!

Jack is so into Army stuff right now. He has all the toys and is getting more for his birthday. He loves to play it with his friends and had an American flag that he waves around everywhere. He like to hear all kinds of information about it. I even let him watch Pear Harbour one day when it was on. I think that if he is going to play war that he really should understand some of it.



Ok I am just going to post this cause I keep getting pulled away!

Wake Up Jack!

Just to preface, Jack’s alarm goes off at 7AM. He has to get his coat and shoes on at 8:10 and out the door for the bus.

Me Jack, it is 7:15 time to wake up
Jack some sort of whiny/grunt noise comes out
Me Ok I am going to brush my teeth, you have a few more minutes
--come back a few minutes later---

Me Get up sweetie
Jack I don’t wanna go to school
Me I don’t care..get up
Jack can we snuggle
Me I can’t sweetie, Ella is up
--by now Ella is usually up—

A few minutes later (imagine it in the voice of the guy that says “2 hours later on Spongebob)

Me JACK
Me Jack please get out of bed
ME Jack carter, it is now 7:30 and you have to get out of bed
Jack Waaaahhh
Me really, if you don’t get out of bed right now…(insert some sort of threat)

5 min will go by at which point I am now down stairs making coffee and his lunch

Me Jack are you getting dressed
Jack NO
Me get dressed NOW and don’t forget to brush your teeth

5 more minutes go by
Me Jack did you brush your teeth yet
Jack NO
Me seriously what is your problem. If you are not down here in 5 min (insert some sort of threat)

He finally comes down.

Me what do you want for breakfast
Jack I have no idea can I play my touch?
Me NO

This is almost how it is almost EVERY morning. I am so sick of listening to myself talk by the time he leaves. I can’t get him out of the door quick enough. Once in a blue moon he will wake up and get out of bed and decide to race the clock. I wait to have my coffee until he leaves because I want to enjoy it.