An update on Ellie

Ellie is now over four months old and she's starting to show a little bit of her personality. Here are some interesting things about her:

Ellie is a giant. She weighed 17 pounds at her four month appointment. She was literally off the chart. For length she was around the 80th percentile, so she has some length to go with the weight.

She's very mellow and pleasant and super smiley when in a happy mood, but it's so hard to get her to laugh. She pretty much will only laugh if she's getting really tired and slap-happy.

Ellie sort of tries to sit up already. She has no concept of side to side balance, but if you get her positioned right, she will keep her back straight and can sit for several seconds.

She slobbers way more than the other two did and loves to chew / suck on anything that gets near her mouth, especially her fingers and thumb.

Ellie. Hates. Tummy-time. That's why it's so funny that her first instinct when placed on her back is to roll over. She just learned to do that last week, so I guess she's super eager to practice her new skill, but once she gets on her stomach she gets really mad. I guess she just doesn't realize that rolling over puts her on her tummy. That or she is very short sighted.

Here she is on Thanksgiving trying her first food. She didn't really like it.

Halloween

We had lots of fun with costumes this year.

Ellie had to be a hot dog because Jane and Audrey both were when they were babies, so we got to be ketchup and mustard. It was so cold at our church trunk or treat that we didn't actually dress up ourselves.

Audrey wanted to be a scary witch, so that was pretty easy. She was very proud of her pointy hat and her "sweepy."

Jane wanted to be a ballerina or princess, so when I found a Rapunzel dress at a yard sale, that was that. She practically lived in that dress all month.

I made some hair for her to wear for the parties and trick-or-treating.

Ellie's Blessing

Adam's parents came for a visit and for Ellie's blessing. It was lots of fun and I just wanted to post a picture from it and a few random ones. 

Ellie's blessing. When we got to church I realized I had forgotten her blessing gown. Oops! Luckily we only live a few minutes from church!

Isn't she cute?

I've never been able to get Jane to smile for the camera, but when you ask her to show off something she's done to Ellie, you get genuine grins.

Let's not forget Audrey!

This and That

First order of business, Audrey's birthday! Yes, this terrible two-year-old is officially two. She's still got that charming smile. Today at church she ran into the foyer with Adam who was putting Ellie to sleep and then proceeded to greet every person who came out of the chapel with a question, "Water?" After which she would take their hand and lead them to the drinking fountain, let them get a drink, and then congratulate them, "Good job!"

Here's the birthday girl!

She got a brown flip flop cake for her birthday

Here's a list of some of my favorite things that she says:

Fiskit (fix it) "Fiskit the marker."

Yours (instead of your) "Yours eyes pretty mommy"

Delicious (just cute)

"Shuck my corn."

"Pop in the nose." (She's always hoping that Ellie will pop her in the nose.)

These girls are avid readers!

Jane says some funny things too, thanks to her healthy imagination: 

Jane hurt her foot and was sitting on the couch with her bear, Jonas
Jane (pretending to be Jonas): if you smell my ears the ear smelling will go all the way down to your foot.
Jane (herself, sniffling): Okay.
She later informed me that her foot felt better because she had followed Jonas' advice and smelled his ear.

Jane: I need to clean because some badguys came into the house and they made a mess. So I just chopped off their hands and their heads. So...But they just ran away because they still have their legs.

Jane's been learning some new idioms:
Audrey runs into the room with a luchador mask on
Me: Looks like we've got a luchador on our hands
Jane (inspecting her open palms): Nope.

Just after I've finished a run
Me: Jane, I'm pooped.
Jane (concerned and looking at my backside): Oh, no!

Jane loves to mother (sMother) Ellie, but Ellie doesn't usually mind

In fact, sometimes she loves getting held by Jane

Maybe it's just the hair, but this little girl seems so grown up to me

Ellie!

 Adam posted some pictures of Ellie here, so take a look. Here's one from the hospital:

The labor was pretty much as good as it could have been. I had some pre-labor cramping Sunday and Monday, but the regular contractions started around 4:30 Monday afternoon. We got to the hospital at 7 and Ellie was born at 9, so things were as smooth as you could hope. I do have to thank Adam for letting me pinch his stomach and then nearly break his had squeezing it (he had to take off his wedding ring).

We are all home now and doing well. Adam's mom has been here to take care of everything for me, so I've been able to rest a LOT and I'm feeling really good. Jane is in love with Ellie, as I had expected. She wants to hold her every time she sees her, but gets bored after about 10 seconds. I thought Audrey would be somewhat indifferent toward her, and she has mostly ignored her, but whenever she notices her, she runs up and says in her face, "Cutie, cutie, cutie!" and then wants to point out her eyes, nose, and any other body part she thinks of. It's fun.

On another note, I came across a post I started and never finished a few months ago with some quotes from Jane and Audrey, and this quote from Jane made me laugh:

Jane (looking at a drawing of a cow in a book): That cow has a pig on it (the udder). Did you know cows have pigs on their bums?

Three Years Old, Everybody! Three Years Old!

So I forgot to include on my last post one of the most important things that happened last month: Jane's birthday! Now that she's three years old, she reminds me a lot of Sally O'Mally. She's an SNL character from back in the day who liked to let people know that she was 50 years old. Everything she did was "because I'm fifty." That's Jane these days. She's a big girl now and can do all sorts of things, "because I'm three." She even likes pickles and olives now because she's big and she's three. She gave up her pacifiers, so we could give them to the baby when she's born. That was not an easy thing for her, even being three, but she got a Cinderella doll for it.

Anyway, down to the nitty gritty. Jane's birthday was just two weeks after we moved in, so we didn't know very many people yet. I would have just had a family party, but with Adam being home all the time those days, we were hanging out as a family every day anyway, so a birthday party seemed the only way to make her birthday extra special. We decided to keep it low key and have a chocolate milk dance party. We invited a bunch of people from Jane's nursery class and several people were nice enough to come even though they didn't know who we were. Here are a few pictures:

The birthday girl with her birthday crown and a ribbon wand. Everyone got to decorate a wand with ribbon.

Blowing out her candles with some help from Audrey.

She wanted a purple cake until she saw a picture of a rainbow cake. It was all she'd ever hoped for.

As you can see, Jane had a very happy birthday.

P.S. - Jane is going to be the best three-year-old big sister you could ever hope for. She has two little baby dolls that she used to like sticking in her shirt to call a baby in her tummy like me. Recently though, she's been telling me that her babies already came out of her tummy, and now she spends most of her time keeping her babies happy and putting them to sleep.

The Past Few Months

So I figure I'd better do a post before the baby comes. Otherwise, it will probably be months before I get around to it. So, here are just some pictures of what we've been up to:

Jane took a dance class and LOVED it.

 

 

Audrey is still Audrey.

We went to Utah to see some family.

We went to Colorado to see some family.

Adam graduated from medical school! Unfortunately, the memory card from our camera was in our computer, so we don't have any graduation pictures of Doctor Adam Foster, DO. But Adam's parents have pictures, so hopefully I'll get my hands on those soon.

We bought and moved in to our first house.

Aren't we a cute little family?