15 Months and 15 Weeks

Today Ella turned 15 months old

And Baby #2 turned 15 weeks old.

We celebrated by listening to Baby's heartbeat at the doctor's office this morning.

Ella was less than impressed.

But Adam and I had on silly grins of happiness.

I was going to make a dessert to celebrate the double birthday but we have a lot going on tonight so instead I might just stick a candle into one of the blueberry muffins I made for lunch today and let Ella blow it out for both herself and Little Sibling when she wakes up from her nap.

She just walks around with all of her favorite toys in her hands

Let's talk about how many times Ella redecorates the pantry each day and how many times I repair it.

She especially loves clearing out the cracker shelf and helping herself to a buffet of different kinds of crackers.

Also, I really love how she gathers things in her arms and then walks around with them.

I finally handed her a bucket so that she could put all of her prized possessions in there and carry it around by the handle all over the house.

Her favorite thing to keep in the bucket are packets of unpopped popcorn that she recently discovered in the pantry.

And I love how much she loves that balloon!

This blog post had me laughing so hard.

Amen to the last one especially. 

You don't even know how amazing Adam and I are for making it through 3 hours of church each Sunday with a toddler as crazy active as Ella.

Transfer the mess in that third picture above to a pew at church and that's us!

I'm trying to keep up with the drool-faced penguin-waddle child who is attempting to redecorate the entire house

Blogging has been slowing down because I have a mountain of art projects that I'm in the middle of right now and because I'm trying to keep up with this drool-faced girl: 

She has this little waddle that looks like a penguin and it is kind of ridiculously adorable. 

Recently I got her a helium balloon from the dollar tree (which is one of her top 3 favorite toys right now, right after Gerard) and she just waddles from room to room with her balloon in hand.

Did you die of the adorableness of that image?

Because if you didn't then you didn't imagine it right. 

 I love that she has a long string of drool hanging from her mouth as she plays with the ice cubes in the bowl.

I've been trying to find good activities for 14 month olds, but it's tricky.

The ice cubes in the bowl one only entertained her for like 3 minutes and she just ate the ice cubes the whole time.

 Ella is absolutely convinced that the house needs to be redecorated and she is the one to do it.

She spends her entire day going around the house making the adjustments that she thinks it needs, including this lovely garbage bag kitchen display.

If you like her work, feel free to call her up and she would be more than happy to come redecorate your home for the low cost of a box of cheerios.

Her latest words are "There you go" (which sounds more like "air-go") and "Thank you" which sounds like "Taka."

So basically they sound nothing like the real thing, but hey, she says them at the right times so she knows what they mean!

Oh and "baby" but she doesn't seem to know what that means.

She occasionally talks in a way that I think is in imitation of someone, maybe me, where she says a sentence and then pauses and says "ahhhh" and then continues the sentence and then pauses again to say, "uhhhh."

So it sounds like this, "Jebikatoon. Ahhhhhh. Lotorotooo. Ahhhhhh. Babintoonskin. Ahhhh. Oogs. Ahhhh. Corbschinkin."

Speaking of babies, she really loves them.

A lot.

She likes to do this kind of tickling thing and get right up to their face and talk all high pitched to them.

That's her cousin, Crosby, and she loves that baby boy!

 The child who has to have veggies disguised in her meals to ever eat them had steamed broccoli this week. 

I fully expected her to fling every piece off her high chair after one taste but instead she made us question whether or not she really was our genetic off-spring by shoveling the broccoli in her mouth as fast as possible. 

Adam and I happily dumped our entire servings of broccoli onto her tray for her to eat so that we wouldn't have to, and she finished it all off without a problem.

I can't figure out if she was just really hungry or if she actually really loves broccoli that much.

She has a cousin who is also in love with broccoli, but I mean, really, how did our daughter end up that way?

We're talking about a girl whose mother only eats dinner so that she can get to dessert, the real and most important meal of the day.

 Gerard is seriously this girl's best friend.

She loves that little stuffed animal like she loves no one else.

She talks in a high pitched voice to him and giggles at him and hugs him all time.

As soon as she is put in bed she feels around to find him and hold him up to her face while she sucks her thumb.

 This girl rarely falls asleep in the car.

She is very strict about where she falls asleep, but that is okay with me because as long as she is in her bed she still sleeps from 7pm-10am each night (that is 15 hours straight!) and has 1-2 naps during the day, so I'm kind of the luckiest mom in the world right now to have a baby that sleeps that well.

And when Ella is asleep I work on stuff like this for Laura Nash, who I work for, or for whoever else I'm doing an art project for.

Getting into Trouble

Oh if I could just capture every moment of mischief this girl gets into each day.

But usually I don't have time to take a picture before she gets hurt or causes harm to whatever she is getting into.

And the thing is, she's not trying to cause mischief, she's exploring her world, figuring out all that it is capable of and it's so fun to watch her!

At least that's what I told Adam when he asked me why I had allowed her to throw around the contents of a bag of cotton balls all over the bathroom floor.

One of my favorite moments of this past week was while I was cleaning up after Ella's breakfast and Ella was playing with her toys in the living room and I hear her exclaim, "No no no!" 

And I turn around to find her holding the remote control up in the air for me to see.

Yeah, the remote control is a no no no.

She giggled so hard as I came towards her, trying to figure out what to do with the remote so that I wouldn't take it away from her.

I kind of love that she announces when she's getting into trouble by saying "no no no."

She probably thinks that that's what a remote control is called.

And the toilet and my cell phone and mysterious small objects she finds on the floor and wants to stick in her mouth, they are all called "no no no."

The toilet paper has been a recent favorite, for me as well as for her because when she plays with it, that gives me like 12 minutes of time to wash my face, get dressed and brush my teeth while she waddles around with the master wad of toilet paper in hand and tears small pieces to leave a trail behind herself. 

 You can just go ahead and judge me for that laundry mess on the floor, with Ella leaving multiple messes like this on the floor each day and pulling out every single thing that I've put away that day, it's considered a success to just have the house look the same as it did that morning and no worse.

 I found Ella waddling around with these two things in hand and I died laughing.

 Before I knew it, she had figured out how to turn that bag of chocolate chips upside-down and helped herself to a rather delightful semi-sweet treat.

 She was rather pleased with herself.

But then she became very distraught when she realized that I was picking up some of her treats and throwing them into the trash.

But it didn't take her long to find another treat to help herself to

Pretty sure she would live in the fridge if I let her because she loves that thing.

As soon as she sees the fridge door opening she races toward it as quickly as possible and tries to pull out everything.

Kiddo Footprints

My sister-in-law, Lindsay, found this idea for using footprints in such a cute way.

We made these for my mother-in-law for Christmas. 

Those are the footprints of the four grandchildren in the family.

We bought canvases and acrylic paint and painted all the kids' feet  and thumbs to make the prints.

Some of the grandkids thought it was fun and others were less than thrilled but it all turned out so cute!