Elly is 17 months!

I cannot believe my baby girl is 17 months old today!  She is growing so fast and never fails to amaze me!  I'm going to try to post what Elly is up to each month...I wish I had done this from the beginning (I have it written down, but wish it was on here and recorded better), but better late than never!  Maybe I should change the title of this blog to that lol...I've been saying it an awful lot! 

Elly at 17 months

I almost forgot to take a picture today so this is tonight in her PJ's before bed.  It is so hard to get her to stop for a picture these day so this is the best I could do!

• Elly is between 21-22 lbs, wears size 18 month clothes, size 6 shoes, and size 3 diapers still

• She just got her 16th tooth and these last 4 eye and stomach teeth have been the absolute worst of all her teeth.  None of her teeth have been easy but these have by far been the hardest. 

• She has pretty successfully made the switch to one nap a day, which is a welcome change for me.  I know most people dread it, but she never really had a nap schedule before and now she seems to have falled into a pattern of a 2-3 hour nap somewhere between 12 and 3!

• She typically sleeps through the night in her crib, but will wake up around 5-6 AM and then I bring her to our bed and she will sleep until 7 or 8.  I love this and kinda have the best of both worlds with this routine!  I think she had such a hard time getting out of our bed and into hers because I secretly enjoyed her sleeping all cuddled up to me all night and didn't push her out as hard as I could've...shh don't tell Casey!  That is very tiring though to a nursing mom (I became an all night baby buffet!) so while I miss it, I am definitely enjoying my uninterrupted sleep now!  And I still get some cuddle time in the mornings!

• She still eats anything and everything, including spicy foods and beets!  I don't think I've ever given her anything she turned away.  She loves cheese...it's probably her favorite...any way it comes, she'll take it, especially string cheese!  Bananas, blueberries, grapes, yogurt, animal crackers, goldfish, scrambled eggs, beans of any kind, green beans, carrots, peas, and the occasional fruit snacks top the list!  Also, she has learned to neatly "dip".  Today at the basketball game, we shared some nachos and she so perfectly dipped her chips into the spicy cheese and barely made a mess at all!  She loved it!  Oh and I've just recently started giving her juice and she loves loves loves orange juice!  It's still watered down and I limit it to one cup a day (which is probably only 3ish oz of juice)...yes I'm one of those moms!

• She is running and climbing all over the place.  She has figured out that if she can't reach something, she can get her step stool to help her out!  She also can open door handles which is kinda scary...we're gonna have to invest in some new babyproofing items!

• She loves baby dolls and all the Sesame Street characters, especially Abby Cadabby, but she's been on an Ernie kick lately!

• Other than Sesame Street and occasionally Dora, TV and movies do not keep her attention at all, which is perfectly fine with me! 

• She knows all her animal sounds, including "gobble" for turkey which we keep practicing for Thanksgiving!  Not an animal, but she just learned what Santa says, "Ho Ho"...we are still working on that third Ho!

• She points to and names almost all her body parts including knees, chin, neck, cheeks, fingers, toes, arms, legs, foot, hand, plus all the regular ones.

• She loves to pray!  She will put her hands together and name all the names she knows, inlcuding the doggie! At the end, she always says, "Amen"!

•  She appropriately answers yes and no to questions

• Her vocabulary continues to amaze me and she has been pretty consistent with putting words together lately.  She will repeat just about anything you tell her to if she's in the right mood and says new words every day so I have no clue how many words she can say.  Words I hear all the time...mommy, daddy, mamaw, papaw, grammy, grandma, grandpa (Tanner), Neal, doggie, babies, milk, juice, cheese, crackers, cookies, yes, no, please, bye bye, car, play, pray, up, down, on, off, shoes, socks, bow, diaper, pee pee, poo poo (even though she's not been going on the potty anymore), ok, toys, night night, I could keep going, those are just the ones off the top of my head. 

• She loves her music class still and is finally learning the actions to the songs (I think she's known them for a long time, she's just now started doing them in class).  She will "sing" in the microphone when it's her turn most of the time.  At home, she sings in her Dora microphone all the time while dancing! 

• She has been enjoying the ball games...she loves finding the mascot and will yell "doggie" and she dances when the band plays and claps at the right times!  She also is very intrigued by the cheerleaders, which makes me proud!

It seems like I could just keep going, so I will leave you with that and one more picture from tonight

October Update

I know I have really been slacking on this whole blogging thing! I was so excited about it and then nothing...I know! There was so much in the month of October I wanted to blog about, but just never did it. Sorry. I decided about the end of the month I'd just do a big blog with all of October's happenings and now it's the middle of November! But better late than never I guess!

So first of all, I have to say October is probably one of my favorite months..a close second to December. I love everything about fall..the decorations, cooler weather, chili, apple everything, pumpkins, football, candles, fires, smores, halloween...I could go on and on! As much as I love this month, I will never forget October 2007...my Uncle Jerry passed away as well as my dog, Blackie who was 17 (we think), and my mom sold the house I grew up in. Yes I know while my Uncle passing is a legit reason to be sad, the others might not be to many people, but to me they were devastating. My dog was my "rock" growing up...sounds silly I know, but he went through a lot with me and was always there! Ironically (or not), it was my Uncle Jerry who lured him into our house for the first time one Thanksgiving as our neighbors had moved and left him behind. I love to think about them playing in Heaven together! My uncle was an amazing man and I miss him so much! And while I'm happy my mom moved on with her life and moved to a new house, I still miss my "home"...But "home" is so much more than a house and I have to remember that. Anyway, that wasn't necessary to share, but it's what I think of when I think of October. So moving on to October 2010...gonna try to post some pics and let them do most of the talking...

Watching the SIU homecoming parade with Grammy

Elly and Keith's idea of tailgating! 

The game was great...we won!  After the game, we celebrated my mom's birthday on 10-10-10 at her house...no pics of that, but it was a good time! 

Next day...pumpkin patch!

  They ran right up to this and stuck their heads through with no prompting from us whatsoever!  Smart kiddos!

On the hayride!

Trying to lift them!

The next weekend started with a wonderful dinner at the Savages' and more football! 

Here's a cute pic of Elly before the game :)

This was taken at Lindsay's...we went there before the game to help make cake balls for Fisher's 1st birthday party later that day

Happy 1st Birthday Fisher! 
I love this little guy and his big brother is pretty great too! 
You can see the cake balls we Lindsay and Krystal made in this pic!
(I never actually contributed anything to them, but it was my idea so that counts for something right?!!)

The next day we met my Dad at Patti's for lunch to celebrate his birthday.  We love that place!

Elly loved this horse so much! She would laugh and laugh and when it stopped, she'd say "more".  We had to keep putting quarters in over and over!


The next weekend, we left Elly with Casey's parents and got a jump start on Christmas shopping!  We got some great deals thanks to Kohl's coupons and Kohl's cash!  We had a great time playing outside when we came to pick Elly up and got some really cute pics in the process!

Once we finally got away, we took naps and then got up and carved pumpkins!

Not so sure about this!

Picking out which one she wanted to do.  She picked the spider!

Me doing the carving!

Ta Da!  Us with our carved pumpkins!

 I love this picture...it was totally random, but turned out great...thanks Krystal for taking it!

Carter came over that week to help decorate sugar cookies!  He wasn't quite as interested in it as he has been in the past, but that's ok...guess he's growing up!  We still had fun, but boy did having him and Elly wear me out!  I don't know how Lindsay does it...not to mention with a full time job and working on her masters!  She's amazing!

The cookies were just one of my fall baking/cooking projects...I also made crockpot apple butter, caramel apples, pumpkin pancakes in the shape of pumpkins, and chicken & dumplins from scratch...this was my first time making all of these too!  I took pictures of them when I had big plans of blogging about it all, but I think this post has enough pictures so I'll spare you those!  Still had to brag on myself! 

And now for Halloween!  More bragging...I was so proud of myself for making Elly's tutu for her Abby Cadabby costume!  It turned out really cute and was actually super easy! 

 This is my favorite Halloween picture because it is the ONLY one she held still for and smiled!  All the rest she is running around like crazy!  Guess that means she was having fun though!

At Grammy's house...you can totally see her attitude coming through in this one!

Everybody had to wear Abby's hair, including Great Grandpa Tanner!  Elly loves him so much...they always share vanilla wafers and she follows him all around!

Trick or Treating with my friends! 

Having fun!

Giving Daddy a kiss at the end of the night!  Another picture I love! 

And that ends our month of October.  It was such a great month...so many wonderful memories made and so much fun was had!  We are so blessed! 

Sorry for the overwhelmingly long post...I will try to do better from here on out, although I will admit I am a procrastinator so no promises! 

Great Day...Cute Stories!

I was off work today and decided to catch up on some much needed chores around the house so Elly and I hung out at home all day and had a fabulous time! First of all, she let me sleep in until 8:30 and woke up in such a sweet mood. She's been sick so when she woke up in the middle of the night last night, I let her come into our bed. Her favorite word at the moment is, "boo" so this morning she woke up saying "boo" over and over! Guess you have to see her do it, but it really is cute...she really thinks she's scaring you. She'll hide behind things and then pop her head out and yell "boo" and just laugh and laugh! Anyway, we had breakfast and started cleaning away! I got the whole house clean and laundry done before noon! All of a sudden, Elly has become scared of the vaccuum cleaner. I left her in the living room with Sesame Street on (her favorite show) while I went and vaccuumed her bedroom and when I came out, she was sobbing, real tears and all! Now the cutest thing was that Lacey (our lab) was standing right beside her and kept licking her face like she was telling her, "it's ok, calm down"...again, super cute! I had to be a little extra creative to finish vaccuuming the rest of the house but we got it done! After that, we went outside to put some mums in pots that I bought last weekend from a nice little Amish lady and decorate the porch with the corn stalks, straw, and pumpkins I bought last weekend too on our great adventure we had with Lindsay and her family (& Amanda too). Elly was playing so good when I looked over at her to discover the almost empty bag of potting soil on her head! She thought it was hilarious...me not so much at first! She was covered in potting soil...all in her hair and down her shirt, in her eyes and ears. Needless to say, she got an early bath today! I had to shampoo her hair 3 times! She took a nap after that while I made a 3 layer pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese frosting! Yummy! I made a casserole from a new recipe and we finished our day with a long walk after dinner...the weather was just perfect today!

I am so looking forward to this weekend! I am off Friday and Monday for Columbus Day and then Tuesday is my normal day off so I get a super extra long weekend! It's SIU's homecoming so Saturday we're planning on going to the parade, maybe a little tailgating, and then the big game! After that, my mom is having a little get together for her birthday which is 10-10-10 this year...how cool is that! She made the cutest invitations with the Dancing With The Stars judges holding up 3 10's! By the way, that show is totally not keeping my interest this year...at least not yet. Sunday, may hold the pumpkin patch after church and hopefully lots of relaxing with the hubby! Him being gone all the time is already getting old and it's only the first of October! Oh well, it's just part of it I guess. I have lots of little projects planned for my days off including getting pictures organized and finally up on the walls. We just got our beach pictures in the mail that we had done in Daytona this summer and they are so good! I can't wait to show them off! Also, I'm going to attempt to make apple butter in the crockpot for the first time....sounds easy, so we'll see how it turns out. I am really hoping I get around to working on Elly's baby book too...I feel so bad, but I am yet to write anything in it...yes that's right, I said anything! I have kept good notes in my calendar and a few other places of when she hit all her milestones and stuff, but haven't recorded any of it in the baby book. That was part of my motivation for starting this blog...to serve as a sort of baby book for her since I'm obviously not very good at doing it the way most people do! Oh and one last project...I've decided to make Elly's halloween costume...well just part of it. She's going to be Abby Cadabby (from Sesame Street...I'm suprised at how many people have no clue who she is). She already has a headband that looks like Abby's pigtails and a wand. I'm going to make a tutu for her! Never done it before, but I've heard how easy it is and I just want to try it. I have no idea how to sew so making her a no sew tutu might be the only way I may ever make a Halloween costume for her so I figured I better take advantage of it! Then I'll get her some wings and some sort of shirt and we will have an Abby costume! We'll see how this turns out!

Hope everybody has a great weekend and enjoys this awesome weather we are going to have!

Welcome

So I've decided to give this blogging thing a try! I'm so excited to have a place to share what's going on in our lives with the people we love! There are so many little day to day stories and things that happen with Elly and I'm hoping this will give me a place to share them and keep a record of them for my own benefit as well.

So a little update on "things" - My little Miss Ellyana is already 15 months old! It seems like it was just yesterday I found out I was pregnant or bringing her home from the hospital. She has been such a blessing...so much more than I ever could've imagined! Having a child truly does change EVERYTHING, but in such a beautiful way! I experience things differently now and see everything in a different light! She has brought me so much joy and inspired me to be a better person...a better wife, a better Christian, a better friend, etc. She is going to learn so much from me, that I feel this immense responsibility to show her the "right" way.

Elly is a walking, talking, happy little girl. Those words really are understatements, who am I kidding?!! She is walking, yes, but also running and climbing on everything she's not supposed to! And talking...oh her vocabulary just continues to grow! Her newest trick is animal sounds! I am proud to say she knows several different animals including a rooster, which she will tell you says, "Doodle Doo!" She can point to and name almost all of her body parts, including her "butt" which her Daddy taught her just tonight! I am oh so proud of that one! She finally sleeps all through the night in her own crib, which after several months of sleeping with us and waking up every 2 hours was a huge accomplishment! Overall, she is a perfectly happy, beautiful child who appears to be developing just as she should be.

Casey and I are doing well too. We both love what we do and are grateful for our jobs! I am so thankful that I was able to cut my hours down to part time after Elly was born. I have no idea how full time working moms do it! Funny how I can go on and on about Elly, but have a hard time coming up with something to say about us! Our lives kinda revolve around her right now, but I wouldn't have it any other way!

I'm still trying to figure out all this blog stuff, so I am yet to figure out how to put pictures in posts and lots of other things I'm sure I'll eventually understand, so bear with me as I learn!