I bet you'll never guess what we did this week! We went to the pool! Oh, you did guess that? Huh! :) I took a disposable waterproof camera with us, but I haven't finished the roll yet, so I'll have to add pictures of this trip to the pool later. How on earth did we survive before digital cameras? Ella didn't understand why she couldn't see the pictures right after we took them, and it drove me a little crazy that I couldn't tell if the pictures turned out or not and that I have to finish the roll and then drop them off somewhere to be developed.
We have recently decided to refinance our home, which means a visit from an assessor. The banker told me they would probably not be able to get to our house in at least 10 days because the assessors were booked pretty full, so I felt confident that I could get the place looking presentable by the time the assessor showed up. The day after we were at the bank the assessor called saying she would be there the next morning at 10am! Yikes! Chris and I quickly did some crisis cleaning, shampooing the carpets and boxing up our mountain of back logged laundry and hiding it in Mom and Dad's garage. (Note to future self: when buying next home, make sure the carpet and the drapes match, or at least blend well with the fur on the animals). The next morning I got up at 9 so I could quickly make the bed and vacuum the carpet that Ruby had slept on the night before. At 9:40 I'm just about to brush my teeth and get dressed when the doorbell rings. Excellent. Of corse the assessor would be 20 minutes early, of corse I'm not ready for the day, and of corse the doorbell that hasn't worked in weeks suddenly decides to ring, causing Gretta and Ruby to bolt to the door barking ferociously, which wakes Ella up, startled, she starts to cry. Excellent. After tossing the dogs in the yard and picking up a crying Ella, I answered the door. We are off to a good start. HA! We also haven't fixed the carpet that Ruby tore up on the 4th of July, hope that didn't hurt us too much! I guess we'll find out in a week. I haven't photographed my cleanish house yet, as proof that it can happen, I need to do this. How do I not have any pictures yet? Slow week I guess.
Here we go, we haven't had pictures of the dogs lately. Gretta stayed with us this week while Mom and Dad were in Canada on vacation. Gretta and Ruby spent a lot of time chewing each others' faces. It was too hot this week for them to spend much time outside in the yard. Notice the nicely shampooed carpet they are choosing to roll on? At least you can't tell where Gretta has rolled.
Ella requested that I paint her nails one night. She is getting very good at sitting still while I paint. You can't see it very well in the pictures, but she chose a lovely shade of blue to go with her jammies. What you also can't see very well in this picture is how little room there is left on my lap for Ella to sit on! :)
When the nail polish is dry Ella will hold her hands up for you to see. Usually she holds her palms out toward whoever she is showing, but Chris got her to turn her hands around for the camera.
Friday night I got free tickets to a Kernels game from the NL community center. Sadly I was scheduled to work, but Chris, Ella, Eric and Hallie got to go. They had good seats, nobody got hit by a ball (although I hear there were some close calls!), and there were fireworks after the game, which Ella told me all about later ("Fireworks, BOOM!") I think a good time was had by all.
Saturday while I was at work Chris and Ella spent some time at Grandma and Grandpa Lewis'. Ella enjoyed blowing bubbles.
Yesterday was a big day. I had my 36 week appointment a week early since Dr. Minyon will be out of the office next week. Again, nothing new to report really, baby is still head down and showing no signs of arriving anytime before September 9, which is shockingly less than a month away now. Dr. Minyon and I both think Baby will be arriving late, like Ella, but maybe just not as late. Bag is not packed, have not pre-registered at the hospital, crib is only partially converted back to a crib from when Ella used it as a toddler bed, the car seat cover is still in need of a bath, and we don't have names picked out, so no rush really, we can use all the extra time we can get this time around! I have purchased one package of diapers and tentatively scheduled a newborn photo session for Baby, just to feel like I've done something to prepare. The diapers were on sale and I had a coupon, and I'd purchased a LivingSocial coupon back in February for the photo session, and it expired this week, so I kinda had to get that scheduled, but hey, it's still stuff I can cross off my list of things that need to be done before Baby arrives. We also got fiber optic internet service yesterday, which I'm extremely excited about! I can now upload pictures much faster than I could before. Woohoo!! Now if only it would help me find time to update my blog in a more timely manner.
Ella had her 2 year check up this week. We've been taking Ella to my doctor appointments so she can listen to the baby's heartbeat (which she loves, and if you ask her what Baby says she will do an excellent impression of the sound of baby's heartbeat), but at first she would start crying when we got the the exam room because she thought she was there for shots, so we got in the habit of reassuring her that it was Mommy's turn, so the night before her appointment I told her that it was Ella's turn to visit Dr. Minyon, to which she responded "no, Mommy do it." I told her that she would have to have a shot, and that it might hurt just for a second, but then I would take her out for a shake afterword. This was a tradition that my mom started with Eric and I when we were little and I've decided to start it with Ella too.
The morning of her appointment, she knew it was her turn to visit Dr. Minyon, and she did a really great job until we tried to lay her down on the table to measure her height, she thought we were going to hold her down on the table to give her her shot. :( She was not happy. I gave her my iPhone to take pictures with to calm her down, and this is what she felt was important to capture...
Her new pink minky that Gra Dondee made her for her birthday.
"Dr. 'yon"
And Mommy and Baby Bow-Wow, whom she decorated with stickers.
She was big enough to stand on the big girl scale and only had to get one shot, which she did a great job with. She only cried for a few seconds until the beautiful band-aid was applied,
then she looked up at me, wiping the tears from her face and said, "all done, no crying, shake." I love it when I can tell that she understands the conversations we have! Ella's head is still in the 90th percentile, her height is still at the 75th percentile, and her weight has finally climbed up to between the 10th and 25th percentile at a whopping 24 pounds! Dr. Minyon gave Ella a kitty for being a good girl and passing all her tests and she got a sucker on the way out of the office. I took this picture in the parking lot, she was upset because her sucker was dripping.
Then I took my brave big girl for an Oreo shake.
Gra Dondee and PopPop got Ella a subscription to National Geographic Little Kids for her birthday. The first issue arrived in the mail this week. She LOVED it! She was so quiet in her car seat I had to peek in the rear view mirror a few times to see if she'd fallen asleep. (Don't worry, the car was parked in a parking lot when I took this picture!)
Friday we had Ella's 2 year pictures taken at Kent Park. We also took some last family-of-three pictures. It was pretty hot out, and you can see it on Ella and my faces in some of the pictures. Ella got pretty stingy with her smiles, but she's still pretty cute if I do say so myself.
You can check out the rest of the pictures on my Shutterfly Share Site. The password is ACE
RAGBRAI was in Coralville on Friday, so we stopped by for a little something to eat and evening entertainment.
Ella is the youngest kid in her tumbling class, she made the age cut by one day since the class started the day after her birthday, but she is definitely the most willing to try new things. Her teacher wanted to know if we have her signed up for other sports yet because she seems to have no fear. We told her she should see Ella in the swimming pool. Check out Ella's newest skill, summersaults!
Tuesday it was Mommy's turn to visit Dr. Minyon again. Again not much to report, everything looks good, Baby is still head down, measuring right at 34 weeks, and we are expecting Baby to arrive after his/her due date (9/9), just like Ella did. But just incase baby should come early, I'm supposed to pre-register at the hospital already. Can I really be that close to the end? Yikes! We are so not ready! 6-7 weeks to go! :)
A quick binky update: Ella is still doing really well without the binkies! She hasn't used one at nap time, bed time, or in the car since giving them to Baby Bow-Wow. We've caught her sneaking hits off of them every now and then, so the other day I had Ella help me wrap them up in a gift bag for her to give to Baby Bow-Wow when s/he arrives. Now that they are wrapped, they are sitting on a shelf above the crib out of reach. I thought giving up binkies was going to be a challenge, once again Ella surprised me. Makes me a little nervous about Baby, after being so spoiled by Ella being such an easy baby/little girl, I have a feeling Baby may be a handful! Guess we will find out soon enough!
Wednesday morning I had another doctor appointment. Nothing exciting to report really, baby is still head down and measuring right at 32 weeks, yay Baby!
Once Baby arrives s/he will eventually be sharing a room with his/her big sister, Ella. We have 3 bedrooms, but the third one is downstairs, and I'm just not ready to send Ella down there yet. So we've been working on moving the furniture around to get both Ella's bed and the crib to fit without being in the way. Things are still not where we want them to be for sure yet, which brings us to our preventable accident of the week. We know that tall, heavy furniture with shelves or drawers should be bolted to the wall, and we'd been advised way before Ella was born to be sure that this was done, but was the dresser securely fastened to the wall when Ella decided to open all of the drawers while Mommy was at work and Daddy was switching the laundry downstairs? No, of course not, way to go Mommy and Daddy! Thankfully Ella escaped with only minor scraps and bruises, it could have ended so much differently. This event has really helped motivate us in getting ready for the new baby to arrive, which includes re-childproofing and deep cleaning the house. The nesting has begun. And it's making Ruby nervous. Here's a picture of Ella with her battle wounds under her nose, on the insides of her elbows, and across her legs.
Thursday morning Ella and I went to see Rio at the movie theatre. Our local theatre offers a special showing of kids movies throughout the summer and winter months at a reduced admission price. Ella is free, as always since she is under 3, but I only paid $2 for my ticket. It's nice because you don't need to worry about how your kid is going to handle the movie theatre experience, because everyone else in the theatre is there with their little kids too, who are getting up mid-movie for potty breaks, etc., and if you have to leave because it is too scary, it's okay, because you are only out $2. Ella loved the movie. She had a lot to say about it during the movie, I only caught a few of the words (bird, airplane and puppy), but she just kept going on and on about what she saw and flapped her 'wings' a lot! She sat through all but the last 10 minutes, then she decided she wanted to watch the rest of the movie standing on the floor. It was so cool and dark in there, I almost fell asleep! We both had a great time.
Thursday afternoon we found ourselves at the pool again.
Saturday we stopped by North Liberty Blues and BBQ where Ella and I got to climb into a fire truck. It was a pretty soggy event with all the rain we'd gotten the night before, so we didn't stay long. That night we watched the fireworks from PopPop and Gra Dondee's back porch.
The Johnson Co. Fair started this week. Mom, Ella, Chris and I went down Tuesday afternoon. Our first stop was the food booth. After lunch we walked through a few barns to see some of the animals. Ella named the animals she saw and told us what sounds they made. One of the barns had cows in one half and chickens and roosters in the other half. As Ella was looking at a couple cows she heard a loud "cock-a-doodle-doo," she thought about it for a second before looking at me with the most confused look on her face. It was priceless, and I'm sad to say that I did not get a picture of it. :( It was way too hot to be at the fair, so we got some ice cream and left. Probably our shortest visit to the fair ever.
This little piggy took a nap:
This little piggy tried to eat Ella's stroller wheel:
These were the cows that seemed to say "cock-a-doodle-do":
I got Ella to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" for the camera in the car this week. She was a little distracted, but she's still pretty cute. I'll keep working on getting her to sing "Bow-Wow" for the camera.
The night before Ella's second birthday Chris, Ella and I were all looking at pictures from the year before. We talked about how Chris and I couldn't believe how much she had changed in a year, and how a year ago she gave up drinking baby formula from bottles and that since she's a big girl she likes to drink chocolate milk from sippy cups or cups and she likes to eat M&M's. We asked if Baby would be able to drink chocolate milk from sippy cups and eat M&M's when s/he arrives, to which Ella replied, "No, baby." Somehow the conversation moved onto binkies and Ella decided that since she was a big girl and was going to be two the next day, that she could give her binkies to "Baby Bow-Wow." She went around the house hunting for all of her binkies and taking them into her room and lining them up in the crib to give to Baby Bow-Wow. When she couldn't find any more binkies to give to Baby Bow-Wow at our house, we went over to Gra Dondee's and PopPop's to see if we could find any old binkies there. She found one and placed it in their crib to leave for Baby Bow-Wow.
We weren't sure how well this was going to work out as she was pretty attached to her binkies. That night when I tucked her into bed she mentioned her binky on her checklist of things she likes to have at bedtime. I asked her what she had done with her binkies, and she replied "Baby Bow-Wow!" I asked her if she still needed her binky, and she replied "No, big girl." She seemed happy with her decision, so I kissed her goodnight and went and sat on the couch outside her room figuring that she would be in tears within 5 minutes. I was wrong! She actually fell asleep without her binky. I sat there for a while waiting, thinking there was no way it could be that easy for her to give up her beloved binkies, but she stayed asleep. I asked her about it the next morning, and she was so proud to tell me again that she'd given her binkies to Baby Bow-Wow!
The birthday girl with her tutu on!
Ella and I had lunch downtown with Gra Dondee, Papa and Uncle Eric. After lunch Eric and Ella played a few duets.
Ella and Grandma Donnie wrote on one of the Book Marks.
On the way home we made a stop at the mall for a ride on the round and round.
Later we went swimming at City Park Pool.
Ella played on the slide in the park.
We had dinner at Texas Road House.
Then went home to open packages...
and have birthday cake.
I don't know why Grandma Dondee, Ella and PopPop are blue.
On Saturday Ella helped make the cake for her birthday party
and went on the merry-go-round with Grandma Mary.
Ella loves merry-go-rounds, or "round-and-rounds" as she calls them, so this was the theme for her party. This was her invitation.
This was my first project in digital scrapbooking. Chris has been very patient helping me learn how to use photoshop. I used Scrap Orchard's Mr. Kite Mini Kit to create this invite.
The weather on Sunday was awfully hot. I thought I would save some time and finish decorating the cake when we got to the park, this was a mistake. As you can see the green on the bottom started melting off as soon as I put it on, so I stopped decorating there and called it good enough. Ella's favorite part about this cake: "Round-and-round!" My favorite part of this cake: I could place the candles in the center of the cake, where the horses block little hands from grabbing them. No repeats of last year!
Getting ready to blow out the candles (even though the breeze has already extinguished them)
She didn't want to wait for us to cut the cake, she wanted to just dig in!
Thanks everybody for braving the heat to come help Ella celebrate her 2nd birthday!
Jana & Aaron
Grandma Dondee & PopPop
Ed & Kathy
Aunt Hallie & Uncle Eric
Grandma Mary & Grandpa Mike
Jen, Clark & Colbin
Ella opened her presents, then we walked over for a ride on the round-and-round.
The birthday girl with Daddy.
The birthday girl with Mommy.
The a/c in the car didn't even come close to helping us cool down, so Ella, Gra Dondee, Pop Pop, Chris and I decided to go to City Park Pool for a swim. This is one of the pools that Eric and I used to work at. This was Ella's second time visiting this pool, she was 8 weeks old the last time we took her here. She enjoyed it much more this time around!
I have a fun pregnancy related story from this week to share, but go ahead and skip ahead if you are eating while reading this update, it's not really a pretty one, but we've been laughing about it all week. Mom, Ella and I went to Noodles for lunch for the first (and possibly last) time on Monday. I ordered the macaroni and cheese to share with Ella. Ella and I really enjoyed it. Baby, not so much. I made it to the back of the restaurant where the bathrooms were, and even into the bathroom and into a stall, but unfortunately, not over the toilet before it all came back up. If loosing your lunch was an Olympic event, I would have easily taken the gold that day, with extra bonus points for coverage. There was vomit EVERYWHERE! Not much in the toilet itself, but on the toilet, the floor, my shoes and three out of four of the walls of the stall. I was quite thankful that nobody else happened to be in the bathroom at the time and quickly cleaned it up as best I could with toilet paper and paper towels while I prayed that Mom and Ella were making a mad dash for the getaway vehicle so we could escape quickly without notice. I was so embarrassed when I had to go tell the hostess that they really needed to spray down the women's bathroom with bleach water. We were out of there in a flash. Somehow I'd managed to keep my clothes and hair clean, but we had to stop by my house to pick up some clean sandals and then stopped for gas before we headed up to Cedar Rapids. As I'm walking out of the gas station, I hear someone say, "hey, weren't you just at Noodles?" Seriously?!? Some guy in a truck had been at the same restaurant that I'd just vomited all over and then driven to the same gas station in the next town and recognized me from across the parking lot? That's really quite fantastic and not embarrassing at all! It will be a while before I feel I can show my face at either the restaurant or the gas station again.
Ella's last dance class of the summer was this week. She was late because I couldn't get her out of the swimming pool! As soon as we got to dance, she and Gra Dondee ran ahead of me into the studio. By the time I got across the parking lot Ella was already in her class, with the door closed, no tears! Woohoo! :)
After watching her really enjoying the last two classes, and showing off her skills at home, we've decided to sign her up for more classes this fall. I'm glad to have found something that she can do without me, and with other kids her own age!
