I am so grateful for video recorders so that I can forever remember what these kiddos were like at different stages.
Fenton is pure sweetness.
And Ella has me laughing so much throughout the day.
I just adore them.
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
All About E's Little Life Right Now
This pretty much sums up 2-year-old Ella.
We are big into letters right now.
We take walks and stop at every sign to point out all the letters.
She hollers out letters she sees as we drive through town.
She had a square-shaped sandwich for lunch today and she bit into two of the sides opposite of each other and then exclaimed, "H!" because it was shaped exactly like the letter H!
I blame all of her interest in letters on The Letter Factory, by Leap Frog.
She loves that movie.
But I'll warn you now that if your child watches it, you will fall asleep at night to that song running endlessly through your head.
Seriously, it will never stop.
And because it is so permanently stuck in your head (since you've watched it 10+ times in a week) you may get the urge to even sing it to your spouse while he is getting ready for bed and he will beg for you to stop.
On the plus side, it is a much less annoying song than other alphabet movies I've seen.
Holy cow are there some horrific alphabet movies out there.
And as you can see by her holding her crayon, she is definitely a lefty.
Ella is usually doing one of two things during the day.
She is either quietly organizing her toys into her various purses and favorite corners or she is running in circles and singing non-stop about anything that pops into her head.
Also, she sometimes stops mid-song, folds her arms and says a prayer before she continues on her way.
I have no idea why the sound of cheering makes her want to stop and pray but it's kind of hysterical.
The amount of crazy energy that is pent up in that little body is astounding.
Also, "toots!"
She will come running to me from all the way across the park to inform me that she "tooted."
Oh thank you, Ella, I'm so glad that you let me know that.
Oh man, I love her!
"I Want to Wash My Hands, My Face and Hair With Snow"
That song has been stuck in my head for days now since that snowstorm that swept the country hit our town.
Living in a place that doesn't see much snow, it was a happy and beautiful surprise.
It was the first time that Ella had EVER seen snow and she was enthralled!
Luckily, my sister-in-law had just barely given us a snowsuit, it was perfect timing because I don't even own a heavy coat for Ella since we don't ever need one here.
Whenever we would walk through the snow E would start hollering, "Ball! Ball!" As in: I want to make a snowball!
Because, of course, that is the first thing her dad taught her to do in the snow, make a ball and throw it at something.
He took her outside to play and she was in heaven!
(I tried to embed a video in this post of Adam' throwing snowballs at Ella and Ella exclaiming that snow is "yummy!" but my computer is struggling with life, so here's a link to it instead).
^The first time she went out to play in the snow, she grabbed an empty spice jar and a spoon and started digging in it.
She loves filling up her empty spice jars (that she conveniently emptied of their spicy contents all over the stairs so that she could fill them with better things).
^Baby enviously watched Ella playing, wishing he had a snowsuit in his size.
Fenton and I stayed inside and happily blew bubbles and drooled while discussing the yumminess of milk.
She's Her Own Best Friend
And I can hardly blame her.
In my very biased opinion she is a rather delightful person.
And quite hilarious.
We have a full-length mirror that we keep between the living and dining room because Ella loves to watch herself and interact with the other Ella in there.
She watches herself dance, she talks and sings to herself, she gives herself hugs and kisses and laughs at her own jokes.
She even stops in front of the mirror mid-tantrum to watch herself scream and cry as if it's a great performance.
Yesterday we pulled out the box of holiday decorations so that we could deck out our apartment for Halloween and Ella found the fake Easter basket grass and decided that the dining room would look especially nice with that fake grass flung all around it.
As I was loading that video onto my laptop, Ella was watching it with me and was laughing so hard, she considers herself pretty hysterical.
Old McDonald
Clip One//
I love her little voice singing this song.
Clips Two-Five//
The dancing of Ella.
Just look at those little hip twists and arm waves!
She likes songs that have a strong beat the best, so she tends to like the hip-hop songs on SYTYCD.
Um, feel free to ignore the scattered pile of clean laundry and the fact that Ella is naked in most of these clips (she does occasionally wear clothes but we always strip her down for dinner and it seems to be after dinner that the dancing bug bites and so she tends to be in the nude).
Clip Six//
This is when Ella met Fenton in the hospital and her reaction is kind of hilarious and crazy, it's as if she is claiming him to be her own personal minion.
Clip Seven//
We go through this routine at least once a day, where Ella points out that Fenton has toes, amouth and eyes (and knees and elbows and eyes and a bellybutton and ears and hair, etc. etc.) and then she declares that he needs to be cleaned up ("meekah!").
A Little Girl's Life
Clip 1
Noises that animals make.
I had flipped the video recorder screen around so that she could see herself, which is why she keeps pointing herself out.
She also keeps signing "please" as she makes the animal noises, I have no idea why.
Clip 2
This is what childhood memories are made of: dancing in front of the tv (or laptop) in your diaper.
This is what childhood memories are made of: dancing in front of the tv (or laptop) in your diaper.
I cannot even tell you how much I love it that she likes watching So You Think You Can Dance.
She won't sit/stand still to watch ANYTHING except for dancing
Clip 3
Tickling and how "all done" is one of her favorite words
Clip 4
An all time fave activity, she and Adam can play this for a very long time before getting bored
Clip 5
A typical mealtime at our place, a massive mess and lots of chatting about who knows what
Bits of Ella (a video of adorableness)
Absolutely in love with this video that Roz Cinema made of our family.
In love.
Blowing Kisses
It starts out with Ella dancing to the ABC's-- don't mind me just singing right along (but I really want her to learn her ABC's so I have to sing along so that she can learn it).
She gets so excited when her grandpa plays that song, she pretty much loves it.
And then for some reason she folds her arms like she does when we say family prayer.
And then you have to pay attention and listen to her singing the ABCs on her own-- adorable.
Then there's a whole bunch of "nigh-nights" and blowing kisses and that's pretty much how we conclude most every single day.
(Her bed is in the casita out to the side of the house, so that's why we head outside when it's time to go to bed, that might not make sense if you haven't been to this house before).
Usually she voluntarily tells us when she's ready to go to sleep by saying "nigh-night" when she feels tired.
Smart girl.
A post about Christmas, of course
Christmas with a baby is pretty wonderful.
Ella didn't even know what was going on but she thinks that having her three cousins around is just about the best thing that has ever happened to her and she was entertained by her new toys, talking on her cell phone and dancing to her mini keyboard.
The moment she saw her giant bear her eyes lit up and she waved and said "hi" to him before cuddling with him.
She was in her Christmas PJs pretty much all day.
The plan was to see Les Mis of wonderfulness, but they were sold out by last night (of course) so we just watched all sorts of movies at home and played games and ate about five times as much food as we should have.
This is the first time in SIX YEARS that Adam's family has been together for Christmas so it was fun to just be around everyone.
When I put Ella to bed tonight I blew her a kiss and I heard her blow one back to me in the dark and my heart melted.
It was a perfect day!
I love how Ella holds her phone up to her shoulder blade to talk and how she says "hi" over and over and then just chats in her cute little gibberish.
Some pictures from my sister-in-law, Lindsay
The Tub
I feel like this video captures a lot of what Ella is like right now,
the chattering,
the funny noises,
the few words she knows how to say,
her constant energy,
her love of balls,
her silly little tantrums
and funny sense of humor.
This little girl who is always going places and doing things
Clip 1: Dancing and singing with her dada in the pantry. Love those feet kicks!
Clip 2: An activity that this little girl does everyday for a long time, just throwing that ball and chasing after it over and over.
Clip 3: We are this close to walking. If she only had the courage to let go of things and just venture out on her own.
Clip 4: She scoots around on anything that will slide on the floor, metal containers, cardboard boxes, anything. And can you tell that the pantry is a favorite exploring spot? So many things to get into in there.
Clip 5: Repeat clip 2 but with a balloon this time. It keeps her occupied longer than any other activity (she just recently began doing activities by herself without needing to be entertained all the time, it's so fun to watch).
Clip 6: I just love this clip, running in endless backward circles (to the Somewhere in Time soundtrack). She can also crawl backwards as well, which I think is very impressive!
A Little Celebration for a Little Girl
Ella's birthday is today!
She is one sweet little year old.
Last night we had a small party with Adam's brothers and Adam's brother's wonderful girlfriend, Heidi.
Next year I think we'll have a full-on party because I think she'll love it.
But at this age I knew she wouldn't really care that much about a party so I decided to keep it small and just do things I knew she would enjoy.
I had been plotting in my imagination for a long time now how I wanted her birthday to go.
One thing I imagined was that her cake would look like this pin I found on Pinterest:
Beautiful, right?
I made some white cake from scratch and some raspberry frosting because that girl loves her raspberries.
Unfortunately, when you add lots of raspberry sauce to buttercream frosting it gets really heavy and sloppy and doesn't really frost a cake too well.
It looks something like this:
Yeah.
Fail.
Big time.
I mean, that thing looks like a pink hair ball explosion.
I don't even know.
I didn't even try to finish frosting the big cake because that frosting was out of control.
Luckily, it tasted better than it looked.
Ella liked it.
And then there were presents to be opened.
The one thing I knew she would like was a 3-in-1 trike, which her Grammy and Pa Jones got for her.
But after that, she really has very little interest in toys and I didn't want to spend money on something she would never play with.
So instead, for her birthday I got her a ton of wonderful children's books that I love.
As you may recall, she doesn't care for books very much right now, but I'm hoping that one day she will and when she does I want our home to be filled with books that have the most wonderful illustrations so that those beautiful pictures can be a part of her everyday life.
I had way too much fun selecting my favorite children's books.
And I can hardly wait for the day when I can read them to Ella!
So although she probably won't play with her birthday presents now, I hope she'll love them one day.
We also blew up some balloons and put them in a box and she loved playing with those because what kid doesn't like balloons?
None.
Then we took a walk with Ella's new trike and she was in heaven!
She loved that thing.
I can't wait for her to figure out that it's a tricycle that she can pedal.
Here's her uncles Seth and Ethan on our little walk.
And now a video of the day:
It includes her digging her fingers in some cake and me opening her presents for her and all of us playing games at the end of the day while listening to Christmas music.
Today we are finishing off the celebration by going swimming at a place that we hear is really fun.
Happy October 29th!
What Ella's knees look like at the end of church and some other scenes from the past few days
This is how Ella's legs look after church each week.
That is from her crawling all over the church building for three hours.
And then add some graham cracker crumbs to her chin and the picture is complete.
Sometimes I forget how funny Ella is until we are at church and I see her do her usual crazy antics
(like spinning around in endless circles on the floor and shaking her bum and kicking her legs to the music and the way she bear-crawls when she has a dress on because she gets all tangled in her dress when she crawls normally, and her other noises and expressions and cheese grins) and I realize how much everyone around us is laughing.
Sometimes Ella crawls off and I can't see her but I can tell where she is in the aisle by watching the peoples backs and seeing who is laughing, if they're laughing then Ella is right in front of them doing something crazy.
When we go to the library, this little one likes to pull movies down and bang them against the metal shelves.
I came into the kitchen the other morning and found this scene:
And we carved pumpkins with some friends this weekend and caught this little clip, but of course, once you turn on the camera they don't laugh as hard as they did before you turned it on, but it still cracks me up.
And then it all comes to an abrupt end when Ella realizes that she has some keys in her hand.
Just so that I can always remember what she was like at this age
Clip 1
Her dad and Uncle Seth teach her how to dance.
Really this clip is just wonderful because of how crazy those two boys are acting for that little girl.
Clip 2
This is how mealtime goes 3 times a day, every single day.
I love cleaning oatmeal off walls.
Clip 3
Adam somehow managed to train Ella to holler and shout whenever she is in a place with cool acoustics (the garage, the bathroom, and the top of the stairs) so Ella always shouts when she gets to the top of the stairs and then babbles yo no one in particular.
She has been very determined, lately, to learn how to get down the stairs all by herself.
Face-first is her favorite method.
Clip 4
Nakey, the bathtub and dad always result in giggles.
Also, she no longer happily sits or lays in the tub, standing is the only way she wants to take a bath anymore.
And sometimes she slips when she pulls herself up and I almost die of fright every time.
Clip 5
The dryer is always excellent entertainment.
Clip 6
Ella must have a make-believe friend because she has these very lengthy conversations with no one in particular all the time.
And that cheese grin-- I love it!
Humming and dancing and spinning in circles
1// This is a regular activity, turning in endless circles
2// Dancing (I could die with how cute her little bum-shaking is and how they both start bouncing at the exact same time-- oh man I love it!)
3// Causing chaos in the tub-- she likes the tub the most when it has no water in it because it is much better for making noises that way.
4// Climbing stairs because she's a little girl and no longer a baby
5// Talking and wash-cloth-waving
*Note how Ella is almost always humming and babbling, when she isn't verbally making noise, she's making noise with the toys around her.
This is real life, that is exactly how it is every single day.
He's a good one, that cute-faced boy
It never ceases to amaze me how much this floaty-haired girl loves her dad.
There is a very special place in her little heart for him.
She is convinced that he's pretty much the best thing in the world.
This is a recording of her reaction to first seeing him when he comes home from work.
This is the reaction he gets from her every single day.
And then there's a clip of him playing with her fresh out of the bath and how much she loves giggling at him.
He has to be a pretty wonderful dad to be so adored by that sweet girl.
And seeing that makes me just fall even more in love with him.
He's a good one, that cute-faced boy.
(I love how she holds her hands under her chin when she is so happy).
Moments in the life of the Baby of Cuteness
My favorite part is at the end
Clip One
I just love that little grin of hers and how much she loves to play with her dad
Clip Two
She loves that song so much, it makes her smile every time she hears it, without fail
Clip Three
Ella in her bed, flailing her hands and playing and stuff
Clip Four
How much she loves splashing and swimming
Clip Five
This is the first time she's ever done something to make herself laugh