Ellie’s first day of school

Miss Ellie is back in school two days a week (from 9:00 to 12:30).  She’s been very excited about seeing her friends and her teachers (although she didn’t understand, until today, that she doesn’t have “Ms. Bord” and “Ms. W” this year), and I’ve been very excited about having some one-on-one time with Charlie and maybe, just maybe, getting some things done around the house.

Here are the requisite first-day-of-school pictures from this morning and last year.  I can’t get over how much Ellie has changed!

The backpack is still just a bit too big, but at least it doesn’t drag along the ground this year!

On the way into school, we saw Cain and Jess.  This is Cain’s first year, so he was a bit nervous, but he did great!  And I’m so glad that he and Ellie are in the same class  -- Ellie just adores Cain!

Ellie lost no time finding her classroom

“Hello, School.  Did you miss me?”

Ellie’s feisty little friend, Ella, is also in her class this year.  I feel a bit sorry for Mrs. Huckaby because these two can be trouble together, but they’re also so sweet together.

Ellie and Cain got right down to work.  Cain’s expression in this picture cracks me up – I guess he was really thinking about what he wanted to draw!

I’m kicking myself for not getting a picture of Damian with the kids, but here a few of me with the kiddos outside of Ellie’s classroom.

        Charlie and I were excited to pick up Miss Ellie and hear all about her day – she told us all about how she glued buttons on a big “B” and learned about how God made the Earth.  She also said “tell Mrs. Huckaby when I need to go potty” about a dozen times – I was a little nervous about sending her to school in big girl pants, so I guess I really drilled that into her, but it worked – no accidents!

Ellie's buying!

I think Ellie may be potty trained-ish! She's been going without diapers for the better part of each day (we even left the house without a diaper twice -- man, that was scary!) and today she went without a diaper all day, except during nap, and didn't have a single accident. Woohoo! So it seems that we'll soon by buying half as many diapers as we're used to; so, thank you, Ellie -- you just "bought" Daddy and me a date night!

Charlie's first green smoothie

Peach, strawberry, banana, spinach and sprouted quinoa -- it was a big hit!

He had another one today that was peach, strawberry, banana, spinach, celery, carrot, and sprouted quinoa, and he loved it too; which is a very good thing because he's on a bit of a hunger strike -- he won't nurse at all and he won't eat baby food...or finger food other than eggs. So I guess it will be eggs, milk, and green smoothies for a little while.

Not just a pretty face

Our big, bad 1 year old and our sweet treat of a 2 1/2 year old

Charlie had his one year well visit today and he was actually well for this one! As a reward, he got another vaccine and some blood drawn (I think he'll do his best to have a fever again for his next well visit). He's such a brave little guy -- he didn't even cry when they pricked his finger, but he did wail for a short time when the nurse gave him the shot; mostly I think his feelings were hurt that the nice lady who was just smiling at him, jabbed him in the leg.

As we all know, Charlie is a big boy. He weighs 25 lbs, 13.5 oz. (90th percentile), he's 31.5 inches long (85th percentile), and his head is in the 96th percentile. At one, Ellie weighed 25 pounds and was 31.25 inches -- pretty close! And Miss Ellie is now 39.5 inches tall and weighs 34.2 pounds. The nurse didn't calculate Ellie's percentages, but according to the internet, Ellie is in the 92nd percentile on weight and off the charts on height.

Both kids are in such fun phases right now. Ellie has really gotten into role playing and pretending -- I just love listening to her talking to (or for) her stuffed animals and toys. She has tea parties with them, feeds them, puts them down for nap, changes their diapers, tells them to share with each other, etc. And she's gotten SO much better about sharing with Charlie. She certainly still has her moments, but in general, she's really sweet to him and genuinely enjoys playing with him. She's still a bit of a tomboy and loves being outside, rough housing, etc., but she's also very into princesses these days. She often tells me that she's "Princess Ellie" and she's insisted on wearing the same "princess skirt" for three days in a row. Although I never seem to find time to work with Ellie on her letters, numbers, etc., she knows most of her letters and can spell her name, she can count to 20 (as long as you're not fussy about 14-17), recognizes many numbers, knows her colors and lots of shapes, including a rhombus -- I had to use google to figure out what rhombus is! She's still super expressive and makes me laugh out loud at least once a day with something she says or does.

Charlie also makes me laugh daily because he has such a good sense of humor -- he loves playing peek-a-boo (he's great at covering his own eyes), making (or really, viewing) funny faces, screeching back and forth with Ellie, and blowing enthusiastic raspberries. And I just don't think I will ever get enough of his squeals of glee that follow his discovery of something he's not supposed to get into, and precede his double-time crawling. It just cracks me up. He isn't walking on his own, but he's getting very close -- he can walk with very little help and he's experimenting with standing on his own. The biggest challenge with Charlie right now is that he does not sit still...ever! Just changing his diaper is absolutely exhausting. I have to change him on the floor now (otherwise he'll flip off the changing table), often with one leg thrown over his chest to keep him on his back. I left him with a 12 year old last week and forgot to warn her not to change his diaper. I came home to find her standing in the middle of his room, holding him by the armpits (he had nothing on from the waist down), with a look of absolute panic on her face. She said, "it-it-it was going so well, but HE WON'T STOP MOVING" at which point I noticed that they were both absolutely covered in poo, as was the changing table. Poor girl! She had gone through 4 diapers and almost an entire pack of wipes, just trying to get a diaper back on the little (actually, ridiculously big and equally strong) wiggle-worm. In addition to not wanting to sit still to have a diaper changed, Charlie also doesn't want to sit still to nurse very often. I'm still doing my best to nurse him several times of day, but he much prefers a sippy cup of milk on the run. He also wants to feed himself, which is wonderful, but he doesn't like many finger foods other than eggs (his fav!), cheerios, cheese, chicken, watermelon, peanut butter and bread, and banana. I'm desperate for him to like pasta because it's one of our staples, but so far, I haven't had much luck. In the meantime, he still gets at least one "baby food" meal a day. So just when I was to the point of making only one dinner per night (at least 5-6 nights/week), I'm back to making at least two breakfasts, lunches, and dinners per day. Oh well. Hopefully Charlie will start eating more "adult" food soon!

I just can't get over how blessed I am to be these kids' mama! They're so sweet, and funny, and generally wonderful. Every minute that I get to spend with them (even the minutes that make me crazy) is such a gift. As kids headed off to school on Monday, I started panicking thinking about the fact that I only have three more years before Ellie will be out of the house most of the day. Almost half of my "full-time" time with her has passed already. Sniff, sniff. Anyway, it's made me even more grateful for every day I have with them...and for my incredible husband who makes this time possible! Oh how I love my little family!

Video

Here's a video from Charlie's party. We're still working on the video of Charlie digging into the cake.

It's so wrong, but...

I still have video from Charlie's party and Colorado that I need to post, but I just couldn't resist bumping this one to the front of the line. It's Ellie playing with a little cyber kitty -- it's an app on the iPhone that lets you pet, feed and talk to a little caricature of a cat. But if you pet it too hard, the cat gets knocked out. Ellie had no idea that she was "hurting" the cat, but she thought it was hilarious to beat up the cat. I'm glad she hadn't played with this app before visiting Shiny Grandpa and Meme's cat!

Oh, and for the record, Damian and Ellie do occasionally wear shirts...you know, for special occasions and such. But not when it's 105 degrees!

Charlie’s first birthday

How is it possible that my sweet little boy is one year old?! The time has just passed so, so quickly. Anyway, I’ll do a longer, sappy post later, but first, here are the pictures from his birthday party.

Since it’s still ridiculously hot here, we decided that a pool party was the way to go. So on Charlie’s birthday, we had about 17 adults and 15 kids over for lunch and a swim. That’s right – 32 people! It was (somewhat) controlled chaos, but oh so much fun. And Charlie loved all of the activity! Unfortunately, in the madness, we did a terrible job of taking pictures of our guests – I’m hoping I can get pictures from some of the other moms at the party.

Our good friend, JR, stopped by on his way to the airport…before heading back to Abu Dhabi! Now, that’s a good friend!

Charlie wasn’t too sure about him though. ;-)

Here’s the madness in the pool! On the far side of the pool is the inflatable slide that we got for the party. The kids loved it – including Charlie. I don’t have a picture of it, but the kids also loved some blocks of ice that we froze little toys in. We dumped them in the pool (in a fruitless attempt to cool the 98 degree water) and the kids had a blast trying to get them to melt so they could get to the little toys inside.

Here’s Amy, baby Parker, Rileigh, Meredith (I think – it’s hard to tell with the mask) and Jaclyn:

For the kiddos who wanted a break from swimming, we had sidewalk chalk, the plasma car, etc. Here’s Cain and Jessica decorating our driveway, and Jackson (always concerned with water safety – I think he’s wearing goggles and a ring) and Jay getting out the plasma car. Unfortunately, Hillary couldn't come to the party because she had a training session for our MOMS group (she's a co-chair this year!). :-(

After eating lunch (we did wraps, chips, fruit, etc.), it was cake time!

Here’s Charlie’s cake – it’s a carrot cake (no sugar, of course) with cream cheese frosting (again, no sugar – but quite delicious…if I do say so myself) and “sand” made from crushed Cheerios.

And the cupcakes for the rest of the kiddos:

Charlie was so sweet while we sang “happy birthday” – he just looked around the room like “why are all of these people looking at me and singing?”

He was a bit timid about digging into the cake, but Big Sister Ellie was happy to show him the way!

Meredith considered helping out too, but decided to wait for her own cupcake.

In the end, the cake was a hit. Charlie ate quite a bit yesterday and a huge piece today!

Ellie was SO careful with her cupcake. It was hilarious to see her slowly make her way through the crowd, totally focused on not dropping her treasure. I’m pretty sure that she’s doing the Gigi tongue-of-concentration here.

I wanted to get a whole family shot, but there was no way that we were going to get Ellie away from her cupcake! I guess 3 out of 4 isn’t bad, right?

We also didn’t have much luck getting Charlie to wear the birthday hat that I made for him (you’re welcome, Charlie).Of course Ellie is always extremely interested in anything that belongs to Charlie, so she was happy to model it for us.

Big Boy Jackson enjoying his cupcake. He said “Adrienne, this is sort of like a muffin, isn’t it?” Can’t get anything past this kiddo!

Ellie didn’t waste time time removing the flag from her cupcake before diving in.

In an effort to make up for the fact that we don’t have a single framed picture of Charlie in the house, I made some garland for the party. This combined with the cupcake flags (showing a newborn picture on one side and a current picture on the other), and a slideshow that we had going on the TV (with all of the pictures of Charlie from the last year), made it a whole house-o-Charlie.

We asked everyone to bring a gift or clothes to be given to children in foster care, in lieu of a gift for Charlie. But Charlie still got a few goodies (and some generous contributions to his college savings accounts!) – including these great cars from Shiny Grandpa and Meme. They’re soft, easy to grab, and self-propelled – everything a kiddo could want in a toy!

Charlie and Ellie have already played with them a ton – they’re particularly fond of turning them into bumper cars!

I know this picture is out of focus, but I just love Charlie’s expression!

Today, we finally gave Charlie his present. And it’s also a big hit. He and Ellie did a good job of taking turns riding and pushing. And now we have another mode of transportation for walks around the neighborhood!

In the end, I think it was a perfect birthday weekend for Charlie. He got lots of love and attention…and cake.

Doesn't hurt to ask

While helping me make frosting for Charlie's cake:

Ellie: Can I try a bit on my finger?
Me: No, you already tried some.
Ellie: Can I try a bit on your finger?

Who's breakfast was it?

One egg with spinach and cheese
One bowl of oatmeal
Half of a banana nut muffin

I didn't realize that the concern about how to keep enough food in the house for a growing boy starts before the first birthday!

Chef Ellie

Ellie loves helping out in the kitchen.  The other day, she made her first pizza and she did an awesome job!  She helped roll out the dough (and loved sprinkling flour on the dough) and then pricked it with a fork:

Spread it with sauce and tore up some spinach to put on top (and was very diligent about placing the spinach evenly over the sauce):

And the most important ingredient: CHEESE!

About to enjoy the fruits of her labor:

Charlie enjoyed the fruits of her labor too.  It was his first real “people food” and he’s definitely a fan!  If given the choice, Charlie would feed himself 100% of the time – he seems to think that being spoon-fed is for babies.  If only he could use a spoon!