Introducing: Ella's Little Brother

Fenton Adam 

July 14

8:38 AM

7 lbs 13 oz

If Ella were to introduce you to him she would inform you right away that he has "Ahhs" (eyes) and a "nohs" (nose) and a "mah" (mouth) and point them all out for you.

Also a "hawt" (hat).

And oh, those cheeks!

And then there would be much squealing and happy fist clenching and exclamations of "Beebee! BEEBEE!"

As long as her Momma isn't holding him and as long as he isn't crying then he has her approval.

The first time she heard him cry she became seriously distressed.

She looked at him with this alarmed expression on her face and her bottom lip was quivering (in exact imitation of her brother's) and she looked up at us, almost in tears and kept saying and signing, "All done! All done!"

And when I sit down to feed Fenton, meltdowns occur.

So far she refuses to hold Fenton but we're working on that, although he has received plenty of loving jabs and pokes to the face from his sister.

If Adam were to introduce you to Fenton he would say, "My son!"

He is busting with pride to have his own little boy.

When Ella came, I had Fenton sent to the nursery so that her first time seeing him wouldn't be wrapped in her Momma's arms.

I wanted to give him a better chance at survival than that because boy does that girl get defensive of me showing affection to anyone besides her.

I had never been away from Ella for so long, so I was ecstatic to see her.

After hugging her and chatting with her for a bit we headed down the hall to meet Baby Brother.

She helped me wheel him back to the room, which may have been the highlight of her experience meeting him.

 

Ella voted that we bring this couch home with us instead of Baby Brother because it was far more interesting to play with.

She climbed all over this thing for the longest time.

Unfortunately, she was overruled.

It's pretty much the greatest having him at home and in our arms!

I know it's cliche to say, but I honestly can't believe how much my heart has grown to love both these kiddos so much, the center of my world has just become so much bigger and that much more wonderful.

The Baby of Cuteness Turned into Little Girl

Something about this little outfit and her hair up in pig-tails like that and maybe because I was organizing Baby Boy's tiny clothes and saw a brand newborn at the doctor's office this week made me realize that Ella isn't a baby anymore.

She's a little girl!

Remember when she was the Baby of Cuteness?

But now she has an opinion about things and sings to herself and has a sense of humor and an incredible vocabulary (even if I am the only one who understands most of it).

And it's so fun!

It's funny how every stage is so fun, the newborn stage, the 9 month old stage, the one-year-old and 18 month old stage, they are all so different and changing so quickly, which is probably why it's so fun, you have to be paying close attention to catch it all before they change again.

Little Girl's Grammy and Pa and Aunt Maddy came to visit these past couple of weeks and oh how she loves them! 

They shower her with love and attention and life for a toddler doesn't get much better than that.

We were hoping that Baby Boy would make his entrance while they were here but he's decided that he's rather comfy right where he is.

I still have contractions all day long (like I have for almost a month now) but they have yet to become the real thing.

And although I'm so anxious to meet him, it's nice to have just a few more days of just Little Girl and me.

Days where there is still time for me to join her on her favorite stair in our apartment and chat about this and that.

That is her favorite chatting place.

She goes over to that bottom stair at least once a day and pats the spot next to her while jabbering some long sentence that I'm pretty sure means, "Come here, Momma, and let's just talk about random things," and so I do and she talks and talks and talks and occasionally I pick up little words here and there but mostly it's just jibberish and occasionally she giggles, which helps me know when I should laugh too and I say things like, "Oh really? Whoa."

Baby usually joins us on that bottom stair too.

And we can sit there for a very long time just talking about nothing in particular and I love it because I can tell that she loves it!

She just wants someone to stop what they are doing and listen to her talk about her life and I love being that person!

I hope I am always one of her best go-to listeners.

OCD Cleaning Girl

^As soon as Adam gets home from work he gives me a kiss and then does flips with Ella, he's been doing this with her since she was pretty much an infant, and she loves it.

He says he won't be doing flips with Baby Boy because he's suspicious that throwing Ella around like this is what caused her to have such insane amounts of energy, but I'm pretty positive that she just came that way. 

^She loves wearing these shoes, which is too bad since they are too small for her, but she loves to put them on and then spin around in circles and watch them until her feet are too sore to wear them anymore.

This is our little OCD cleaning girl.

She has an idea about how things should be and she is not afraid to vocally let us know when things are not looking the way she thinks they should. 

Often, when I put her down for bed she will point at the toys and clothes scattered around her room and yell in a very distressed voice, "Meekah! Meekah" (Clean up! Clean up!) and I will hurridly run around the room and pick everything up so that she can calm down and go to sleep.

Heaven forbid that she has to fall asleep in a messy room!

If I remember to clean everything up before putting her in her bed she is awesome at helping me clean!

She will sing the clean up song and bounce her bum while helping me throw all her toys in their proper baskets.

If there is a mess on the floor she gets very anxious to clean it.

At our home I'll hand her a napkin and she will go over and wipe up the mess and then throw the napkin in the trash can.

But recently we were at a restaurant and she pointed out the mess on the floor at a nearby table and exclaimed that we should, "Meekah!" but I wasn't about to go wipe up the someone else's mess on the floor just to calm her down so I distracted her with some food and assuring her that someone else would eventually clean it up, she seemed satisfied, thank goodness.

Sweeping is a big hit right now, and keeps her occupied for a good 4 minutes, which makes it totally worth sweeping up her even bigger mess after she's done scattering it across the entire kitchen floor. 

She frequently pulls every single washcloth out of the drawer in our kitchen and then, without me telling her, puts it all back in, making sure every last one is stuffed into the drawer, no matter how full it is.

She finds crazy amounts of joy in helping me unload the dishwasher and "helping" to fold the laundry.

And the OCD goes even farther, besides the room needing to be clean when she goes to bed, there are only certain things that are allowed into her bed.

Gerard (obviously) and her blanket (and ONLY her favorite alphabet blanket, no other blanket is allowed, even if it feels exactly the same as her alphabet one, it will be thrown out if it is any blanket besides her ABC one.)

The ABC blanket is always carefully placed in a certain corner of the crib and then she goes to the opposite side of the crib and sleeps there.

Even though she likes to sleep on the opposite side of the bed from her blanket she still likes her blanket to be there.

And she likes to wear PJs but NO socks or anything else that is not part of the usual routine.

If I try to put her to sleep with socks on or with a sippy cup of water or anything else she becomes very distressed and will cry and freak out until I take it our of her bed. 

Only Gerard and blanket are allowed.

It's kind of crazy.

But at the same time, how can I complain about a girl that likes to keep things clean and orderly?

She is the one always reminding me that we should clean up her toys from the tub before she gets out or the mess of books she pulled out before we leave the room.

It's awesome.

Also, she picks invisible things up off the floor and hands them to people, she'll even hand them to strangers.

And she'll do it again and again, rushing to one certain point on the floor and pick up something invisible and then hurry over to hand it to someone and then go back to that same spot and pick up another thing and hand it off to someone.

Who knows what she thinks she's picking up, maybe there are just too few messes in this world for her to clean up and so she has to imagine ones of her own.

Oh man, I love her.

P.S. I finished the "Faves" page at the top.

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.

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

Squeaky Clean

^She is always pointing out the eyes on everyone and everything, she loves eyes!

After she points out the eyes she usually will then point out the nose and ears, all in a kind of hushed whisper.

Almost every single morning I can expect to walk in to Ella's room where she will scream with happiness to see me and then promptly say, "Baby!" (referring to Gerard, of course) and then "Eyes! Eyes!" as she once again points out his beautiful black eyes to me, like it's the most important thing and without a doubt the first detail that should be noticed when we get up for the day.

^She asked for a chocolate truffle and I said "no."

A while ago I found this pin on Pinterest that lists 10 different pictures to get of your child each month to record them growing up and their new mannerisms and behaviors. 

It suggested taking a picture of your child in the bath and to take a picture of your child when they are squeaky clean, so that's how these pictures happened.

A few awesome and less than awesome things:

When you are 8 1/2 months pregnant and the average temperature for the week is 115 degrees.

Which means that by 10pm it is still over 100 degrees outside.

So awesome.

I don't even care what our AC bill looks like at the end of this month, we're just trying to survive.

When your 1 1/2 year old goes on a water tube behind a wave runner for the first time.

I was having a cow.

At one point the water rushed over the tube and started pulling it down and Adam was trying to hold up Ella so that she wouldn't drown in the gush of water, but also trying to still hold on and get the tube upright.

 I was just freaking out and screaming and hyperventilating on the back of the wave runner, watching the center of my world struggle to breathe.

Adam's poor brother who was steering, having to deal with an insane-o mom while trying to get the tube stabilized.

But they quickly got it righted and Ella wasn't even upset about the whole thing, because it was seriously less than a second but it seemed like she was under the water for SO LONG!

It's a good thing to have a dada, if I was Ella's only parent she would probably be locked up in a bubble where nothing could ever hurt her and she would never have a moment of adventure.

Waking up every single night with contractions, some of which I have to do that crazy labor breathing through because they are leaning on the painful side (it's kind of crazy that breathing a certain way can help ease pain, who even figured that out?).

I seriously feel like he could come any day. 

But maybe he'll kick back and get comfortable and not come for a while.

Who knows.

At around 4:30am the other night I woke up to something other than contractions, I woke up to Ella screaming "ANNIEEEE!!!"

I pretty much flew off my bed in record time (especially with a huge belly) and promptly ran right into the bookcase that I have sitting outside Ella's room (because I need to paint it, so that seemed like a safe place to keep it in the meantime) and rushed in to find Ella sobbing.

She has never screamed out for us in the middle of the night.

But this week she did it twice, both times she was so completely distressed, it was heartbreaking!

I wonder what kind of nightmares a 1 1/2 year old has?

Luckily, after some cuddling and singing she was ready to go back to sleep.

Little Girl also has a thing for horses because she can spot a horse from a mile away.

I had no idea how many horses there were where we live until she pointed each and every single one of them out to me from the backseat of the car.

She's memorized where every single one is in town because she exclaims, "horsey!" right before it comes into view.

(She's only been in a forward-facing carseat for 2 1/2 months now but she's got this town memorized in that short amount of time, she always screams, "Dada!" when we drive by Adam's work, even though it doesn't look that much different than other buildings in town, she knows which one it is).

There is an intersection in town that Ella always exclaims, "Horsey" at and I couldn't ever see the horse that she was talking about.

Finally I realized that the horsey she was talking about was the Sinclair dinosaur on the sign at the gas station!

Do you need a rather fantastic blog to add to your collection of blogs to follow?

Here is one: Harper's Happenings.

It's about this little girl who seriously has the most hilarious and wonderful personality and her mom's writing is hysterical.