Oh, the pictures

I got rid of my BlackBerry a while back and emailed myself all the pictures. I just found them in my inbox and thought I'd give them a share. Here are some good ones from the last few years!

Miss those gymnastic classes.

She'll kill me for this one day.

Looks like an Italian mobster baby.

Just before going home.

Big Bird, you're HILARIOUS!

Proud new mama - again.

Our trips to Grandma and PawPaw's include pretty regular McDonald's stops.

About the only time she was ever quiet in church.

Reading to sis

I can't get enough of Ellie's love of "reading" to sister Katie, mom, dad or any other willing subject. I hope she doesn't outgrow her love of books any time soon :)

(Note, sorry if this is a painfully long video... but Ellie is slow when randomly making up words to go with her book of choice.)

Thanksgiving... late

Figured I better get these up before Christmas! We had a great weekend hosting the grandparents and great-grandparents for a late Thanksgiving.

Teeth!

Need to amend Katie's 10-month update with news of the appearance of her first — and second! — tooth/teeth. Felt like mother-of-the-year this morning when one of the daycare workers asked nonchalantly, "Did you see Katie's teeth?" Um, no, we had not noticed the two bitty teeth that seem to have appeared overnight on her bottom gum. Super cute :) I will try to get a picture later.

Date night

 

Brian and Ellie went to a daddy-daughter dance on Saturday. They had a great time, especially Ellie who apparently didn't stop "dancing" — i.e. running laps around the dance floor — for about two hours. So glad they got some quality time together. Now I want my own date night with our little princess :)

Katie: 10 months

This photo is a bit ironic given that it's almost hitting 70 degrees here today... but happy 10 months to Katie!
It's been a trying month for our baby girl, in some ways. but overall she's been a champ. Here's a look at highlights:
1. Tubed. Her ears are hopefully better than ever thank to the ear tube surgery last week. We have to be a bit careful about getting water in her ears, and she's still getting drops 2x a day, but other than that you wouldn't know she had been sick.
2. Pulling up/rocking. Katie is still not crawling in the traditional sense, but she's strong and loves to pull up on mom or dad if we're nearby. She gets almost fully onto her knees and then rocks forward and back, but most often she winds up sitting back down rather than lurching forward — even though I taunt her daily with toys just out of reach.


3. Rolling. Katie is a super roller and more often than not she ends up sleeping on her tummy. I'm fine with it if she is!
4. Scooting. Katie can get where she wants to go, even if it isn't pretty :)
5. Talking. Katie is adding to her ma-ma and da-da arsenal. She's trying to say ball, and we've heard some other sounds that sounded suspiciously like words recently.
6. Waving! Katie happily says "bye-bye" and "hello." Too cute.
7. Eating new foods. Just last night she tried black beans, and today at lunch she had a bit of cheese. Katie's allowed to have some dairy (not milk or eggs, though) and other goodies now that she's 10 months, so I'm sure we'll try some more fun stuff in the coming weeks.
8. Pincer grasp. Katie is a master of picking up her Cheerios and lots of other toys.
9. Hating socks. Katie won't allow them on her feet... and she even confiscates them from the feet of all her classmates at school. Good thing it's been a warm fall.
10. Happy, happy, happy. Despite having back-to-back ear infections this past month, Katie is just such a cheerful, smiley girl. Sometimes I worry it's to her detriment because she can sit quietly on the floor and play by herself — a blessing, to be sure — but I hope we don't sideline her too much... then again, she has ways of making herself known when attention is warranted... 

Katie and Max

 We enjoyed a long overdue visit from Meghan, Dan and Max a couple weekends back. Max is just a few months Katie's junior... so hopefully they'll grow up great friends. Most likely they'll get into some trouble together in 10-15 years, just like their moms did :) Katie took her chance during the photo op to grab a handful of Max's peach fuzz hair.

 But here they are looking nothing but sweet and innocent.

Brave girl

Katie has ear tubes! She went into surgery this morning like a trooper, and came out a very unhappy camper... But she's resting now and will hopefully wake up more comfortable and happy. The baby-sized hospital gown was a killer, just like when Ellie had to wear it for her procedure. Thanks for all the good wishes. And keep your fingers crossed for no more ear infections for the girls!

P.S. Here's Katie back to as-good-as-new a few hours after surgery. Love her :)

Belated Boo!

 OK, it's not yet Thanksgiving... so I've decided it's not too late to share these Halloween images. We had a very fun trick-or-treat experience this year now that Ellie is old enough to "get it." She was thrilled to hear that, in the words of Jerry Seinfeld... "Every one I know is just giving away candy?!"
And she's pretty much been on a sugar high since Oct. 31... so that's been good. Had a great time parading our bat and bear around the neighborhood. 

First haircut

Katie got her first haircut recently! She still has quite a mane, but now it's a little more under control. A little :)

Dress-up

 Not Halloween, but inspired by it. Ellie and I decided to play dress-up the other day... and then she picked a very large basket to take around the house for pretend trick-or-treating. Oh, we also decided to dress up Katie. Probably a good thing the dogs were outside...

Some things...

... are just more fun with kids. Case in point: Raking leaves. Elle, Brian and I had a fun morning chore on Saturday. Beautiful weather, some jumps in the leaf pile... hard to complain.

Therapy some day

In one of the rare posts from Brian:
Yes, we've traumatized Ellie. Again, you might say.
But if there were ever a reason to believe that our little girl would end up in intense therapy one day, our trip to Wolf Park is it.
Dorothy picked up some half price tickets to Wolf Park, which is a pretty neat place near us where wolves are kept on a large, fenced in tract where people can study how they interact with each other in as natural a setting as possible. So, we took the girls out thinking it would be great to see some animals up close.
When you walk into the park area, there's a set of bleachers and several times per day, a volunteer grabs a microphone and talks about how the wolves got here, how they're studied, how they interact and all that wonderful educational stuff. When we got there, one of these was going on.
During these presentations, other volunteers are inside the fence, playing with the wolves or whatnot. Ellie and I got a front-row seat and watched as the animals paced back and forth.
Then it happened:
"Well, it's about time for a feeding demonstration," the woman said into the microphone.
Oh, this will be cool, I thought.
The smell got to us before we saw it. It was a rotting deer, a roadkill deer, that had been dead for some time, gaping wound in its side. There it was, coming around the corner, being wheelbarrowed into the fence. The wolves paced faster.
And then, just a dozen or so feet a way - but still through the fence - it was dumped right in front of Ellie.
"Daddy," she said. "What's that?"
Um ...
"That's a deer, Ellie," I said.
Maybe she'd let it stop at that. Maybe that would suffice.
"Oh, no, Daddy! What are they doing to the deer?!?!" she squealed.
I panicked.
"Well, honey, you know how you like Mini Wheats? The wolves like deer. The deer is just like Mini Wheats," I stammered.
Ellie sat quietly for a second as wolves viciously ripped dripping entrails from the original hole, and now new holes that they'd formed in the deer carcass.
"That's not Mini Wheats, Daddy," she said.
No. It's not.
We may have gotten off lucky. She mostly thought the whole thing was just a little icky. She didn't put together that the deer had once been alive. We haven't seen Babmbi yet, either, and may delay that one for a bit.

Oh, the therapy.

Library stops

 A few pictures from our trek to the downtown library yesterday...

And a few more fun pictures from our visit last week to the West Lafayette library. Cutie pies!

ENT visit

So, took Katie to the ENT last week and got the verdict: ear tubes. We kind of thought it was coming, since she's fought three ear infections consecutively in roughly the past month. I'm nervous about the surgery (scheduled for Nov. 29), but I'm not a total basket case like I was last time. Obviously any interaction with anesthesia is worrisome, but I now know just how brief of stint the surgery really requires. (Literally, Ellie was out of our sight about 15 minutes when she had it done -- at the exact same age.) And we also know the benefits from the tubes. I think Ellie has had only 2 ear infections since getting the tubes. We're hoping to get Katie off the constant antibiotics and make her generally a happier camper by going this route. No way to know for sure if it's the right decision, but we're putting faith in it. Please keep Katie in your thoughts the next couple weeks as she fights this latest infection and tries to stay healthy ahead of surgery.

Even though she's totally over doctors' offices right now, she was able to have a bit of fun on the floor of the ENT's place last week... 

She's getting SO CLOSE to crawling!

General silliness

Here's a little dose of our silly girls. (I'm sure Ellie's bouncing has nothing to do with the candy in her hand... probably will be good when the Halloween stash is behind us. Good thing mom and dad are helping out on that task.)

Katie 9 months

A few days late, but Katie is still the newest 9-month-old in this house! These months with our baby girl are flying by... I don't think it went quite this fast with Ellie, but I guess we've got our hands a little fuller these days. We had a great weekend of mostly laid-back time and really enjoyed playing with the girls.
Here's Katie's top 10 at 9 months:

1. Not yet crawling, but she loves standing. Katie doesn't seem to be in any hurry to crawl or walk in any traditional manner. She can usually get where she wants to go if there's a toy in sight, though...
2. Lots of talking, noise-making and general "being cuteness." Katie's a big fan of ma-ma, da-da, ba-ba (?) and raspberry/fart noises.
3. Eating, eating, eating. Katie definitely enjoys real food more than bottles these days. For the past few weeks it's all we can do to get more than an ounce of bottle down, but she's more than happy to shovel down an entire bowl of baby cereal, fruits or veggies. And puffs or cheerios are gone in no time. Had worried for a while that she might not be getting enough fluids, but she seems to be growing fine. Doc had no concerns today (on the growth front...) at today's checkup. She's 20 lbs, 8 oz and almost 28 inches long/tall. 80th percentile for weight and 50th for height.
4. She's a clapping machine. Came in handy as we caught part of the Packers game yesterday while the girls played nearby :)
5. Taking off her socks. Katie absolutely refuses to keep them on her feet. Wasn't such a big deal for Ellie at this age because it was warm... but I worry Katie is going to freeze. Might need to break out the duct tape soon.
6. Loves to knock over any towers of blocks, toys or other objects within reach. We're also trying to teach her to put items into buckets, etc.
7. Drooling up a storm. Maybe she's finally going to get her first teeth? I can't believe she didn't get any several months back when she had all the classic teething symptoms... but maybe it's the reason for her current drool-fest and subsequent diahrea. So. much. diarhea. (sorry to the faint of heart readers...)
8. Laughing. My favorite laugh from Katie is in response to a silly face or giggle from her big sister. Absolutely melts my heart.
9. Sleeping pretty great. Knock on wood, Katie is a champ going through the night, as Ellie was around this age. Whenever she's feeling fine we can count on her being down from about 7-7.
10. Being such a happy, lovey, easygoing baby. Katie is just a gem. Brian and I feel so lucky and blessed.

On a less cheery note, the doctor did discover another (or possibly the same) ear infection in Katie's left ear at her appointment today. Since she she's had so many and the oral antibiotics don't seem to be getting the job done, she's getting daily injections of antibiotics for the next three days... and then we're going to see the ENT doctor on Thursday. It was right about this age when Ellie had to get ear tubes because of her frequent ear infections. We'll see what the doc says about Katie, but I just hope she gets healthy soon!

Jack-o-lantern

 Ellie showing off her carved pumpkin with mom and dad. Katie was already in bed :(
Happy Halloween all!!

Family resemblance

 Sisters! I see plenty of family resemblance in the photos of Ellie at almost 9 months and Katie now.. minus, of course, Katie's super-crazy hair! Love those smiles, though!!

Sleep? Who needs it...

Katie's MO these days is to wake up in the middle of the night and want to play, kick us and generally be awake for an hour or so before going back to sleep. Hoping it's ear infection-related and not her new schedule. Hard to be too mad when greeted with this cuteness in the morning...

Another ear infection...

Poor Katie (and sleep-deprived mom and dad)... she was diagnosed yesterday will her third ear infection in less than 2 months. The doctor isn't even sure that the infection ever cleared up through the course of antibiotics we recently completed.
Unlike the stealth ones she had the last two rounds (where there weren't really any symptoms from Katie), she spiked a 101-degree fever yesterday at daycare. And Katie is having a really tough time sleeping at night. I'm guessing it's uncomfortable for her to lay flat, but even with her crib mattress propped she seems to be struggling. We've got her on a third kind of antibiotic now, so hopefully this one takes effect soon.

Zoo storytime

 Much to my dismay, the Bedtime Zoo story this past week featured Snakes! But I still agreed to take Ellie over there, along with Olivia and her mom, Rita. The stories they read were very cute. And then Ellie and Olivia were very brave in touching the snakes they brought around. I missed picks of the girls petting a very large python (!!!), but here's the baby Boa Constrictor they showed off.

 The highlight of the evening for the girls may have been this huge touch screen projector that they let Ellie and Olivia play with for a bit. Very cool.