"Bally"

This afternoon Elise and I were playing with many different toys. I find that as her vocabulary grows, it is sometimes hard to figure out what she means by the different sounds/words she's saying. This afternoon she started moving around slowly and saying what sounded like a cross between belly and bally, more like "bally". She kept saying it, and doing slow moves and spins. Then I figured it out. "Ballet?" I asked. "Ballet," she replied with a big smile. She was doing ballet. She has been doing ballet for the rest of the day. I have no idea where she saw this, but I suspect it was another Sesame Street. We are still stuck on the word 'sigh' since it was the "Word on the Street" a few weeks ago. She started saying it and sighing really loudly after naptime one day. She is still doing it at odd times. It usually makes me laugh, along with the ballet routine, unless of course it is bedtime and she is doing "bally" all over my pillow, like she is right now!!! What a girl!

Sick Kiddo Again

It seems like this has happened a lot lately, but my girl is sick AGAIN!!! I've gotten the reputation with my in-laws for being a slight, or even a medium germ-a-phobe. This is the thing, its not that I'm scared of germs or getting sick myself. The problem comes when my little girl, who is still under the age where you can give medications that treat the symptoms, gets sick. While we are in the current situation, that leaves me as the sole care giver for our wonderful bundle of joy, times of illness are especially hard. She doesn't want to go to Grandma and Grandpa, she just wants to snuggle with mom, which is tricky when she has a bit of a high temperature. That means all day and all night I'm doing my best to remain calm and meet her needs. I love my girl. She is a really neat kiddo, and we have great times together. It is just more difficult when she's sick, to be in a 'single parenting' situation. We are doing our best and are going to continue to keep trucking along, and we're gonna keep trying to avoid sickness in all its forms! One of the funny parts is that Elise has learned to say sorry. She says it when she means 'excuse me'. When she is trying to get past someone, she says, "sorry" repeatedly until she is past them. Since she has been sick, I've had to wipe her runny nose MANY times. It is getting raw and sore, so now as I wipe it, she says, "owie", then she says, "sorry". She knows we say sorry if we give owies. So, she is great at reminding me to say sorry when she gets owies from runny nose wiping. It makes me smile every time.

Well, in the midst of being sick, we took some pictures of our girl looking very grown up in some new outfits.

The blue dress is one my sister made for Elise to match the ones the other girl cousins wore for our other sister's wedding in May 2007. She looks so grown up it in!!!

This cute shirt was a gift from Grandma Parker, and it makes Elise look very "I'm a big girl now", so we had to share this cute picture:

We are finding it ironic that our 'hump day' (the middle day, in this case, the day that is five weeks in either direction. Five weeks from tomorrow Logan went back to Alaska, and five weeks from yesterday he'll be flying back to Oregon to visit again) falls on Valentine's day! I guess that's a good thing, as we can now look forward to being on the downward slope of the countdown, although we're really missing having him here in person to celebrate. We hope to be having some healthy adventures to post about again soon!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

We love to celebrate our family and loved ones, and the wonderful people they are. We are blessed this year to be with some family, although we are missing some key members of our family to celebrate with. We sent a recordable card to Daddy with Elise saying, "Love Daddy" (we practiced a long time for that!), but thought pictures might be needed as well....

SO we took some pictures to share with you our Valentine's celebrations. My mom made this way cute dress for Elise for Valentine's day. She has a pretty intense cold this week, so she wasn't as excited for pictures, but we got a good one.

We hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's day. We are so thankful for all the love and support our family has felt through the difficult situations of the last several months, and hope that next Valentine's day our family picture will include ALL of us at the same time! We love you, and we especially "LOVE DADDY!!"

Outdoors

My two year old is learning lots about her world, and her vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. She is learning labels for everything, and for those things she doesn't know yet, she tries to classify them using words she already knows. When she sees a group of animals, the bigger ones are the mommy and daddy, and the little ones are the babies. This counts for pictures of bees, or bears in stories. This works well for these situations, where it can often be the case. She is also learning letters and numbers, although the ones she knows each day changes. She definitely knows the letter O. The other day she was coloring in a book, and turned to the title page. The first word in the title was "Outdoors". She pointed to the first 'O' and said, "Momma O", then she pointed to the next couple 'o's and said, "Baby Os". It was incredibly cute! What a great detective she is. She can spot an O a mile away! This makes the post office a great place to visit. They have lots of signs with lots of letters. She is always on the lookout for the couple she knows, and then looks for ones that are the same, then she says, "SAME! MATCH!!" She also likes the many stop signs on that street, and seeing the fire trucks across the street too. We're learning about people in our neighborhood who help. She has started pretending that her toys need help, and she then helps them. She is also pretending lots of cooking and cleaning, as well as anything else she has done that day. She talks about things that happened in the last week, repeatedly, and sometimes acts them out. All in all, she's very active, learning quickly, and growing up super fast....but that's what video cameras are for. I'm hoping to upload some video soon, but for now, just imagine hearing her saying, "bye bye" to everything as we leave a store or the house! "Bye fish", "bye toys", "bye door", "bye cars", "bye bye!"

"I'm Two!!!"

She turned 2 last Saturday. We celebrated with a huge Abby Cadabby balloon with Daddy before he went back to Alaska a couple weeks ago. She really loved making Abby's wand go "Poof":

Then on Saturday, the 24th, she and I celebrated with a LOT more balloons!:

When she woke up that morning I sang the happy birthday song to her, then asked if she wanted to call daddy so he could sing. She replied in the affirmative. So we started dialing. As the phone rang, I asked what Daddy was going to sing to her, and she said, "Shoulders, Head, Toes". She wanted to sing "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes", and then she wanted to sing the Daddy song too (I'm so glad when Daddy comes home). We've been having a great time lately as her vocabulary grows leaps and bounds everyday. She's saying a lot of the words for songs and stories instead of just signing them. She even learned a new word for the day: Stop Sign. Grandma Parker sent her a little people set that was the people in the neighborhood, which included a stop sign. I labeled it for her once, and for the rest of the day she said, "More stop sign". As we drove through town, she pointed out each stop sign we saw, and repeatedly requested that we find more. She was visibly disappointed when we parked in front of the house and were done finding stop signs, but has enjoyed playing with her small one, and finds enjoyment each time we drive in the car finding the real ones!

On Sunday, the 25th, we had a small family get together for the eating of the cake. She did really well, and has latched onto a couple words for the occasion. Words like birthday and party. She keeps saying them whenever she sees her card from Grandma Parker. What a grown up girl she is getting to be!!!

Blowing out her candles, she needed a bit of help:

And she loves Abby Cadabby (the newest member of the Sesame Street cast), so I made a special cake for her. I'm so glad it came out recognizable:

Altogether, we missed having Daddy here, but are so glad our girl is healthy, happy, and learning things so quickly! She is a wonderful helper with all the household activities, and even at the grocery store. We sure love our girl!!!

Christmas Moment Highlights

We had a great time with Logan. We really love him, and thoroughly enjoyed spending four weeks with him in Oregon, before he went back to Alaska for work. Here are just a couple of our favorite pictures, we'll try to work on getting this blog more updated again soon...

For now, here are my favorite gifts, under the tree...:

Elise is such a cutie in her Christmas dress Grandma Parker made for her. She has lots more hair now, and is very excited to "do her hair", and loves putting bows in the sides. The bows don't stay for long, but she is getting great about posing for the camera for a quick picture before she takes them out. She is turning two soon, and is talking up a storm. What a great girl! I love hanging out reading stories and pretending to cook and clean with her.

I love spending time with Logan. It is wonderful to have him with us, and to see him bonding so strongly with Elise. Logan and I even got some date time, for which we were thankful for the wonderful grandparents who watched Elise for us. What a great guy Logan is! And his parents are wonderful too!

Elise loves spending time with Logan as well. She keeps talking about going to the beach with Daddy. She keeps talking about and asking about Daddy all the time. She is very attached to him, and he is a wonderful Daddy for her. We love you Logan, and miss you dreadfully!!!!!!




For the next year, we hope it is filled with lots of time together as a family, and even getting to visit the extended family as well. We're keeping our fingers crossed that our situation can be worked out by this summer. We'll try to keep everyone a bit more posted than we've been able to in the recent weeks. For now, we hope your holidays were wonderful, and we hope to be seeing a visit from Logan coming up soon....

Christmas Card from a Distance

Merry Christmas!!!

We hope the season is merry and bright for all of you this year!

We are really looking forward to celebrating together as a family in a matter of days....

we love Logan!!!