17 Months

My little baby has become quite the little girl. She has so many teeth (I believe 12-13 with molars in the back :) She talks everywhere we go and loves saying "mommy, daddy, car, truck, juice, ba-ba, mimi (my mom), cookie, me, yah, shoe, up, happy, etc" and can identify many animals and their sounds. If you ask her any question she responds with an enthusiastic "yah!". If she doesn't want something she indignantly shakes her head. If she decides she needs something immediately she just says "mommy, mommy, mommy" which is, quite possibly, the cutest thing in the world. She loves it when we ask her where her body parts are and just recently began saying "nose". I love it when she wakes up in the morning and yells my name from her crib until I go and get her :) Her favorite thing to do is to run up to Luke and I and stick her head between our legs. It's really funny and sometimes awkward, but I wouldn't change it for the world. At night she will always help us lotion her up and is obsessed with shampooing her own hair.
I love that she is happy to go to daycare now and has so many friends her age. They tell me how social she is with the other kids and how enthusiastic she is to learn. Nothing could make me happier. When I pick her up she runs to me so fast that she often falls or trips and it takes everything I have not to smile. Her naps have changed because of my work schedule and we are still trying to get into a groove that works. She sleeps at daycare at from 1-2pm but I know she still needs a morning nap because she often falls to sleep on the way to daycare at 9:30am. During the ride home, Ella has become super difficult in the car. She has to be watching Disney Junior on my iPhone or eating or drinking something. Otherwise it's not going to be pretty (or peaceful!). I try to keep her up to see Luke before she goes to bed and her reaction to hearing the door open is absolutely priceless. She screams with the highest pitch you could possibly imagine and gets so excited she often doesn't even know how to control herself. She will repeat his name until he starts chasing her around the house. Daddy-daughter relationships are pretty amazing :)
She has the funniest eating habits and insists on feeding herself with a fork regardless of what's in front of her. She's really good about trying new things and enjoys healthy foods, especially fruit!
I love telling her to dance or shake her booty because she responds immediately and has the funniest dance moves and silliest laugh one could possibly imagine :) I'm desperately trying to cherish every single moment with her because I can't even imagine how fast she is growing and changing. Every month I say to myself, this is my favorite phase :)

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15 Months

We had our 15 month check-up yesterday and Ella did really well. She weighed in at 25.2 pounds (90-95th percentile) and was off the charts again in height at 34 1/4"!!! You go girl :) She is the average height of a 2 1/2 year old at 15 months, crazy! I was thrilled her weight had gone up too. She has been eating really well the past couple of weeks so I'm hoping that continues. Poor thing got another 4 shots (2 in each leg) which is the hardest thing in the world for any mom (& Auntie too since poor Katie had just as many tears as Ellabells). The doctor said at this age they want kids saying 3-5 words and by 18 months, 30 words. So exciting! I just love hearing her try to talk. She will only say "mom" out of desperation when I drop her off at daycare, but her regular words are "dada, ball, and car". Actually, she points at every car she sees and says it. It's so funny because we never emphasized that word, but she is obsessed with it.
Merry Poppets (daycare) is getting better every day. Yesterday she had her first full day of no tears and even napped with the other kids. I was so proud and excited for her. I love that she has these new friends and gets to participate in many fun experiments/activities every day. This has been such a tough decision to make so we just decided to see how everything goes and take things day by day. I'm sure a lot of moms do this, but I find a lot of situations are easier to handle if I write Ella letters so that one day she can see how I was feeling and how much I love her.
On a totally separate note, my anticipation for the holidays is in full swing. I love planning with my sister all of the amazing things we can do together with friends and family. We are going to have some crafts and activities set up at our house for Halloween (apparently the neighborhood goes all out, we will see). Anyone is welcome so let me know if you want to come!

Summer!

Summer is, hands down, my absolute favorite time of year :) I went into summer vacation knowing that my main goal was to spend as much quality time with Ella as possible. My mom would sign us up for every sport/activity/class possible during vacation and we always were at some kind of museum, pool, water park, or play-date. I really want my kids to grow up that way because I have such fond memories of those times. Our vacations consisted of one week at the Newport beach house and one week at Bass Lake. I'm determined to eventually do the same for Ella and, once she's old enough to appreciate it, take her all around the world :)

Well, to say the least, we definitely managed to keep quite busy. Ella took swim lessons and my-gym classes each twice a week. We now have passes to Disneyland & Sea World and were able to visit San Diego Zoo, the petting zoo, pool, and lots of different local beaches. She loved having play-dates with all of her friends and enjoys spending time with kids her age (we are working on her being nice and "gentle"). No matter how girly I dress her, it's becoming quite clear that I have more of a tomboy on my hands. Once I caught her eating her second earthworm (I wish I were kidding) I knew she was my little wild child.

Now I am trying to transition her into a local in-home daycare for the 4 hours that I am at work. We had our transition day where I left her for 2 hours and although she cried for quite some time, I think that it will work out. She did much better than at the 24 hour Fitness daycare (she's only been twice and they paged me after 20 minutes both times!) It's funny because before I had Ella, I wasn't that sensitive to parents leaving their children with me on the first day of school. Since I taught kindergarten for 5 years, I always had to practice being stern and encourage parents to leave the room as soon as possible. I thought the longer they clung onto their child the more difficult they were making it for them. So selfish! Well, talk about being a hypocrite! I went to hug Ella good-bye for the third time and the teacher looked at me like, "Really, I thought you weren't going to be one of those parents." And there I was, knowing it was best to leave but not able to pull myself away. When she goes for real, I'm determined to be a good parent :) I need her to know that I will always come back for her and I could cry just thinking about it. I was telling my sister that the second you have a child you become a walking waterfall. I can tear up at anything that reminds me of my baby, crazy! We have a great nanny option just in case but, after really thinking about it, I do want her exposed to other kids. All 6 of the kids in her "class" are within 18 months of each other so we'll see how she does.

12 Months!

Since I am so late in posting this blog, I have to go back a few weeks and start from Ella's big birthday bash. I might have had more fun planning this birthday party than I did my own wedding, or at least they were comparable. I wanted to focus on every last pink, white, and yellow detail and anticipated seeing everything come to fruition for months. I love getting all of our family and friends together and being surrounded by everyone that we love. I'm not sure Ella had any idea what was going on but she definitely loved all of the attention and all of the presents. The thought of doing this for every birthday is overwhelming to say the least, but I figure every child's first birthday should be something extra special. From time to time, Johnny & I still watch the video of our 1st birthday party in our grandparents backyard and now Ella will have a priceless video too. I have to admit that I think my favorite part of the day was seeing the cake. I had drawn a picture for the bakery and they created it exactly how I envisioned :-)

On June 11th we had Ella's 12 month doctor appointment and she did very well! She got a total of 4 shots which was really hard on mommy and baby (especially now that they know what's coming). She weighed in at 23.6 pounds (92nd percentile) and just over 32" in height (100th percentile!). They made a big deal of her "accomplishment" and she got a special toy and numerous individual visits from various nurses & staff to see the super tall baby (you would never think so when you see her in real life). The nurses were all trying to guess how tall her dad was and seemed disappointed when I informed them he was only 6'1''. It will be interesting to see her actual height one day.... watch her end up only 5'6'' like mommy. She still will not walk by herself, she insists on holding on to someone's hand. We are trying to work on her confidence but she is, without a doubt, an overly cautious child. It will be fun to see how that transpires.

Just last week we went to see her cardiologist to get an update on the VSD (ventricular septal defect). She wasn't cooperating too well with the EKG so it took longer than expected. They attach over 15 stickers to her chest and stomach area to get a reading of the electrical activity of her heart. They determined that she still definitely has the holes so we decided to wait to get the Echo again until her 2nd birthday. Everything should be fine and hopefully it will close by then, fingers crossed! The only issue was that her weight had dropped significantly since the last appointment with her pediatrician. She dropped from the 92nd percentile to 70th percentile in 2 weeks. Doctors don't like to see a significant change in a short time span. I had discussed with the pediatrician that she is refusing to eat anything but snacks and she recommended some things for me to try but, thus far, I'm not seeing much improvement. We are working on snacking all day instead of full meals. We also put her on a toddler formula and poly-vi-sol (which is an infant multivitamin) so at least she is getting the essential nutrients. Doctors seem optimistic that this is just a phase and that it has to do with her molars coming in. I hope so too ;)

I can't emphasize enough what a crazy year this has been. I feel like we have had more life challenges thrown at us that I ever could have imagined and we've learned to adjust and move forward, becoming stronger every day. Luke has made huge strides at work and we are very excited. Hard work really does pay off and we've learned that when you're going through hell, just keep going :)
I'm thrilled to be spending the summer hanging out with Ella and finding fun activities to do every day. I feel like after her birthday, I've grown into my new role as "mom" and have started to leave my old life behind. I mean that in a really good, positive way. I'm okay with the fact that I'll never be the career woman I thought I wanted to be and that kids are my priority for the next, oh 20 something years or so. I would be lying if I said that the decision was easy or natural. I'm hoping to continue to teach either part-time or full-time, but teaching is the best job a mom can have. It allows me to still be a mom.