Food Schmood

Eating is a very practical skill. It's one that I wish I had mastered before I was 20. Yep, I said 20 and I'm joking. One thing I really like about the Montessori method is the push to allow each child to be as independent as they are capable. A few weeks ago, I got a bit tired of hearing Ellie say "more" several times during our breakfast (of cereal). It suddenly dawned on me that I had created a dependence on myself for something that Ellie was capable of doing. Anyway. From then on she got a cup of cereal and a cup of milk (which she also uses for drinking). She is now large and in charge of re-filling her own cereal bowl and she loves it. Loves it.

Sista' Has Somethin' to Say!

So she said it with a phone in both ears!

We like talking on the phone around here. Ellie has two (retired) cell phones, our home phone, and has somehow managed to sneak my current (and very off-limits) cell phone from time to time. This particular day she was babbling away on both of these phones. Miss Personality lives here (and we love it)!

Ellie's Perch

Ellie has been fond of small things she can sit on for quite some time now. One of her favorites is the step in front of our staircase. She just loves to sit there and spread out her "wares" collected from around the house. It's quite funny and cute. She's taken to a new habit, as of late. Ellie says "Mommy!" and pats the step. This, of course, indicates that she wants me to come and park it where she pats it. Also cute. And I usually cooperate, usually.

Frisbee Golf!

Ellie and I tagged along Sunday afternoon with Dan and Uncle Erik as they played frisbee golf in fantastic spring weather. It was quite possibly perfect weather. Not too cold, not too hot, no humidity, a slight breeze, and glistening sunshine. Perfect, right? Probably because it was Sunday... God must have been tired of gloomy Kentucky weather!

Little did I know, but Ellie acquired a green frisbee disc the last time her dad played in a tournament. She was quite proud of it and threw it with perfect frisbee golf form. Seriously, she actually paused after she threw it still holding her form. Hm... wonder if she'll be a good golfer?? Anyway. We were all quite impressed. She waited her turn after her dad and Uncle Erik both threw and then fired away, sometimes two or three throws. At some point she stopped to pick up sticks (I think it was when the ants were marching 6 by 6, horah!). About half way through, she got pretty tired from all of her walking and running and disc throwing, so I took her to JoAnns while Dan & Erik finished up their game. Which was perfect, I'm assuming because it was a perfect Sunday afternoon.

A Visit

Today Ellie and I decided to bring lunch to my friend Sarah, who has a 2 week old baby and a 2 year old boy. When we got there, Caleb (the 2 year old) and Ellie ate for about 5 minutes and then took off to Caleb's room. It was actually quite humorous because he grabbed her by the hand and they disappeared... making a ton of noise playing with toys. Sarah and I just sat at the kitchen table amazed that they were off playing together.

Eventually, they ventured out into the living room and back porch when all of the sudden Ellie discovered Caleb's swing set. She got so excited that she could hardly keep from shaking (or putting on her sweater). We had to go out immediately and swing! Then Caleb showed her how to climb his ladder and scoot down his slide. Ellie was quite delighted with herself that she could actually climb the ladder and go down the slide by herself. She's not the adventurous type (if you haven't noticed...) and this was a big step for her. I'm sure it helped to have Caleb there... he has, after all, mastered the skill of climbing his own fort!

We went back inside for more playing and just before we left, Ellie got to hold Noah. I think this made her day. She held him twice. And wanted him back a third time. She just squeezed him around the middle and when he gave her a nice bite on the cheek (that boy was hungry and looking for some skin!) she was a bit confused.

Talk soon,
Anna

It's A....

The picture the ultrasound tech gave to Ellie and she carried around all crinkled up in her hand.

We went to the ultrasound appointment at the end of last week and found out that we're having another girl! It's a Girl!!! We're all pretty excited and can't wait to see her! Everything looks like it's developing normally and right on schedule. Newbie Raz is now 19 weeks old (in utero). Everything is going quite well and I feel fantastic. Truly, there is nothing to report, and for that I'm thankful!

Love,
The Raz's

Miscellaneous Adventuring

Every Tuesday happens to be Story time at one of my all-time favorite bookstores, Joseph Beth. Ellie particularly likes the songs, finger plays, scarfs, and books at this story time. Afterward, we usually walk around the insanely fabulous children section of the store. And I DO mean fabulous. I could spend hours and hours in that store picking out fun toys for Ellie. They've got the best selection of wooden toys I've ever seen in a store, more children's books than I knew existed (I even found one from my own childhood that I haven't though of in years), an escalator that Ellie adores, an indoor fountain just outside the children's section, and a duck pond directly outside of that. We come prepared for this story time because it turns into a roam around the store, a gape at the indoor fountain, and feeding the ducks and swarms of goldfish in the outdoor pond.

So, today after the story time, we ate our lunch while viewing the indoor fountain. This was the first time I've actually gotten Ellie to eat a sandwich properly instead of picking the meat and cheese off the bread. After she ate, Ellie discovered the outdoor pond (which we've never been to because it's been too cold until now). So, we went out and threw our crackers at the ducks and bought some fish feed for the gold fish. Ellie had a LOT of fun! We left the bookstore and had to make a quick stop at Meijer (a better-than-walmart store), which didn't turn out to be so quick once Ellie discovered the balls, baby dolls, and piano... I could tell she was losing steam when she could only walk sloooowly as we were headed to the check out. As suspected, she fell asleep on the way home with her hand in her food! Whew, what a morning!

Talk soon,
Anna
(E 22 mo)

Yackady Yack! An Update.

As to be expected, Ellie is ever changing these days. She pretty chatty when she's in the chatty mood... which all you women understand, I'm sure. I honestly cannot keep up with how many words she's saying now, but I thought I'd try to do it justice.

Daddy - It used to be and enthusiastic "Da!" It developed into "Da ee" the past few weeks, and just yesterday she started saying "Da Dee!" with a very pronounced Dee. It's quite cute. She asks for Dan all the time and always "calls" for him like she's looking around the house for something she lost.

Mama - Has now turned into "Mommy," which we think was picked up from friends, but not entiretly sure. She just says it a lot while she's playing and uses it when she really wants to get my attention (translate: all the time).

Levi - Our dog... Ellie calls him "Vai" She assumes he fully understands this and will actually say "Vai, go!"

Grandparent names - On occasion she has said her grandparent's names; Oma, Opa, Pop, & Tudi. Actually, Tudi is pretty hard for her to say and sounds something like "choo-ee." But I've only gotten her to say it a few times. The other names are super-easy and she is fully capable of saying them and knows who the name belongs to, but at this point in her life, her grandparents wouldn't know it!

A few new words I can remember: duck, book, door, and she recognizes A B C and sometimes D. We're not rushing the abc's in this household!

Icing on the cake... literally.

Being pregnant and all, I really felt like making a chocolate cake a this past weekend. So what did I do? I made a cake! I enlisted Dan and we mixed up Nana's (World Famous) Chocolate Cake while Ellie was napping. Sometime after dinner it was completely cool, we decided it needed some icing. Dan thought Ellie needed to participate and thus it became a family affair. I made the icing and Dan and Ellie took over from there. They decided it should be lilac, so food coloring was involved, along with some serious mixing, and some downright dirty test tasting. Ellie had her very own spatula and was interested in stirring and spreading for about 5 seconds. She was the test-tasting participant. I laughed at how much icing Ellie could get on her spatula and into her mouth before Dan could stop her. Eventually (after about 3 minutes) we had to take her spatula away, but it didn't stop her from pinching icing directly off the cake. Sneaky!

Love,
The Raz's
(E 22 mos)

Blueberry Face

Is it just me or is there a trend around our house? The messy mouth. The mouth is a popular messy spot for Ellie. Actually, it's pretty much her only messy spot. She's a fairly neat child and manages to keep her clothing pretty darn clean. Ellie particularly enjoys eating frozen blueberries, since they are the only one's I've had around for a while. We use them to make smoothies and she always gets a hand full. This time she had them pretty smeared on her face! (she's wearing her favorite valentine's shirt given to her by Auntie Maryann! She picks it out every time it's clean)

Dr Pepper Mouth

My all time favorite lip gloss is the Dr. Pepper kind (special thanks to Maryann who sent me three tubes of it last week along with mardi gras beads for Ellie). I often share it with Ellie and lately she's taken a liking to applying it herself. She's never been very neat and tidy about it, but usually it isn't that bad. I was putting some on this morning as I was driving to church and Ellie insisted I share. So, being the kind mother I am, I gave her the tube. I continued driving and sort of forgot about the lip glos when Dan turned around (Ellie was being too quiet) and freaked. Not only was her mouth and upper lip thoroughly covered, so were her teeth... she was eating it. Eating. Gross gross. Needless to say, Dr. Pepper lip gloss time was over and out came the kleenex (which happen to clean teeth quite well).

Anna

Le Big Screen

The big cheese with her eyes closed

Oooooooold, but the cleanest dollar theater I've ever been in

We are finding that Kentucky weather is kind of like it is in Louisiana. If you don't like the weather, stick around a bit and it will change. It seems like since the season is starting to change, our weather has been strange. It's been rainy and depressing all weekend so, this morning before church (and on a whim), we took a look at movie times. Ellie's movie attention-span has really increased in the past months and we thought today would be a good day to test out the big screen. The only rated G playing at our dollar theater is Madagascar 2 and it started at 1:00... nap time. We pondered seeing a movie during nap time and decided to play it by ear. After church we ate at Cosi (have any of you ever eaten there? I wouldn't recommend the pizza, but everything else we've had has been delicious!) and asked Ellie if she wanted to go see a movie. She said "Yes!" and we were locked in. By the time they started actually playing the movie in our near-empty theater, it was probably 1:15, but Ellie was still going strong. She danced, ate her animal crackers, decided there was something wrong with her seat, ate a dried fruit strip, and thoroughly enjoyed herself. About an hour later she started climbing down, then back up, then asking for her blanket, then turning her head back and forth, and sucking on her thumb. So... we asked her if she wanted to go home and she said yes. Girl knows what she wants. When we left, they gave us tickets to catch another matinee. Even though she didn't make it the entire time, it was lots of fun and we're looking forward to catching the end of the movie sometime soon!

Love,
The Raz's

Dog Park

At the end of last week, our weather was quite agreeable so we did lots of outdoor activities. One thing we do all the time (as noted by previous posts) is take Levi to the dog park. There's this huge park behind our neighborhood with a 13 acre fenced in dog park that Levi loooooooves. Ellie takes this as an opportunity to roam and yell at all of the dogs. She mostly says "hush!" since her Aunt Joan taught her to say this to her parents dogs back in Louisiana. She also yells "go!" at Levi as he runs by us going about 10 miles an hour (not kidding). He's such a hoss. Anyway. There is a small park situated right behind the dog park and we have to pay it a visit now that Ellie knows how to swing. She has also learned how to silde on her own now. Here are some pics of our adventure!

Ellie's Belly

Ellie went with me to a check up yesterday and behaved quite well for the 2 hours we were there. Yep, I said TWO HOURS. It was crazy that we had to wait that long for the doctor to come in, ask me if anything is unusual, ask me if I was having any headaches (why, I don't know), and tell me I could go home. Crazy. Before the doctor came in, the nurse found the heartbeat on the doplar and left. After having observed the process, Ellie decided she wanted to lay on the table, pull her shirt up, and play. And since we had ample time, we did! Here are some pictures of us measuring her belly. In case you wanted to know, it's 14 inches from the top of the table. Interesting...

Washing

A favorite favorite Montessori activity of Ellie's is what she has dubbed as "wash." She calls any activity with water "wash." When she wants some water to drink, she asks for wash. When you try to clarify if she wants water (by asking her if she wants w-a-t-e-r) she nods her head in agreement and says "wash." So it can be quite confusing. Back to her washing activity.

We fill up the sink in her bathroom and let her go to town. I mean she goes crazy. When she started with the washing activity, I had to change her clothes when she got done. But now, she's gotten pretty good at keeping most of the water in the sink. The washing activity/lesson consist of washing and drying her hands, wetting and wringing out tiny washcloths, filling up cups and dumping them out, looking at the light reflections in the water and splashing them to mess it up, draining the sink, and putting everything up... that's about it. This can keep her occupied for about 30 minutes.

Talk soon,
The Raz's