Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from Ellie!

 

Our girl has been doing great - she's had fun with the holiday festivities...

 been worn out and slept hard every night...

 seen new faces...

 tried new things...

and been surrounded by love!

Holey Shirt

Ellie has a new (GOOD) problem!  Since she's been crawling for about two weeks now (we're so excited, it's this cute little belly crawl!) she's starting to put holes in her shirts from the friction of her feeding tube!

Now she's Holey Ellie once again!  But we love our holey girl!

Lunch theater

Today Ellie showed Julia and I her new trick.  Enjoy the debut of "Pointing".

Luckily she humored us with a request for an encore so enjoy the double feature!

Chips

Instead of leaves, today we had chips for lunch!

Morning play

Is she the caboose or the conductor?  Either way, I'm not sure she's too thrilled with the game.

She'd rather eat a leaf off the floor as evidenced by what I pulled out of her mouth.  Too bad the leaf calorie count is just not high enough for a meal.

It's actually very exciting she put this in her mouth - a big step for her!  She'll do the same with a cracker now - so great!  But, nice little soggy bites drop out bit by bit.  We have lots of crackers!

Internet Sensation

This morning I stumbled upon this!!!

See how this:

turned into this: (You have to wait for the banner to change, but I knew that taped up face looked familiar when I saw it!!!)
www.choa.org

Funny faces

This post is a tribute to the 6-year-old photographer in the house.  Even with his hand over the flash, he's proud to show off his latest collection called "when I take Ellie's picture she makes funny faces".

Here you will indeed see...some funny faces.

And here is the photographer himself saying "No, I'm not the subject here!" while being captured by the 9-year-old.

And when the 4-year-old hears "funny pictures" - well she shows us all she's up for the challenge.

The kids are quite entertained by the camera!

Singing Oma

A surprise visit from the grandparents of Tennessee!  Ellie was quite thrilled to be serenaded by such a lovely lullaby for bedtime!

The swing of things

Soothing Ellie and getting her to nap has always been hard due to her not being very portable.  Enter the baby swing that she's grown to love over her 19 month life.

But it was time to try to see how she napped laying in her crib, just because she was getting sooooo very big for the swing!  She took to it just fine and here is the empty swing and a napping Ellie in her bed!

She's not four months (and "zero") any more!

Bedtime and Bathtime

I loved this moment of the boys having their first "Peanuts" experience - the Christmas decorations box included a comic book from Jeff's day.  They are really into it and laugh at them - very cute!

And little crazy girl and her latest new toy - a diaper.  Here she is falling asleep on my legs clutching her nappy until she couldn't hold it any longer!

Yesterday when she woke up from her dreams of diapers...poor sweet girl...her mom had given her too much milk right before she fell asleep and she had a little spit up in her crib.  Well, alot I guess you could say by the looks of her matted hair in the back :(.

 But the concept of a morning bath was enough to make us all smile and a load of laundry later - all was well.

 Cute face!!!

(shout out to Uncle Ken who's gag gift of a Justin Bieber cup has made its way to the bath)

Luckily some matchbox cars around the Christmas tree kept everyone happy while I cleaned Ellie all up.

 The abandoned school table after I discovered her nighttime mess.

 And a morning snack of some yogurt made her need a bath once again!  But she did not get one :).

And if the day wasn't exciting enough already, we all went for flu shots!  The doc happens to be across the street from Chick-Fil-A and I happened to have four free milk shake coupons in my purse!  So some tears on the way to the shot turned into silence and slurping on the way home.  Ellie even got a taste when we got home - if anything will turn that girl to food it's the Peppermint Chocolate Chip seasonal shake from that wonderful establishment.  The boys really understood getting the shot was more about keeping Ellie healthy than themselves.  And then their reward was a delicious treat like this!  Life can, at times, be full of rewards if we look for them :).

Xavier took this picture of Ellie watching me wrap some presents!  She rolled and sort of crawled (getting closer to really crawling!) right over to the action!

Turkey and Rudolph

I have to show this to my fellow wives/moms/chefs out there. I'll try to work Ellie into it to justify making this post about food!

Last year on Thanksgiving, friends brought food to our house!  We were home bound and the doorbell kept ringing with food - including a turkey!!!  This year I thought I'd be able to make my own turkey but I try not to take too much on if I can help it.  So I decided to try something I'd read about once.  Last weekend, I went ahead and cooked the turkey all day Sunday. I used the regular spices, some chicken broth, lemon peel (makes it so good!) and threw it all in a roasting bag. I let the turkey cool, took it apart, and put white meat in one plastic container and dark in the other and popped it in the freezer, all wrapped up in foil.  

We spent Thanksgiving day with family, so on Friday we had a small little turkey dinner just for us.  So I excavated the two chunks of ice out of the freezer (I felt like a paleontologist digging in Iceland looking for bones!) and plopped them in a roasting pan.  Within one hour it went from this:

to this!!!!!  And let me tell you - it was the juiciest turkey we've ever had!!!  It marinated like that for a couple hours on 180 degrees in the oven.  When it was time to eat it was amazing and sooooo moist!  I think I'll do it this way from now on!!!  Thank you Ellie for making me look for ways to simplify life!

 And here is little Ellie being pinned down (in good fun) wearing a blinking Rudolph nose!

 She thought it was hilarious to keep pulling it off :).

Y'all have a wonderful Sunday!  We'll be celebrating 12 years of marriage today - Jeff and I are by far not perfect people...but we are certainly perfect for each other :).