Sophia is 3 1/2

So this means she's half-way through the year toward being 4!?! What?!  

Here's what Soph is up to these days:

• She loves to dance and dances like a crazy person.
• She sings or makes some type of music all the time.  She turns everything she says into a song and can keep a pretty good tune!
• She loves to take all of her blankets and other random toys and build bridges and tents out of them.  
• Her favorite movie is Wreck-it Ralph which she calls "Wreck-it Rolph"
• Her favorite shows include:   Bubble Guppies, Super Why, Curious George, The cat in the hat knows a lot about that, and Backyardigans ("Yardigans")
• Her favorite songs are:  Nice to Be Alive (Still loves it and we still have to censor the lyrics by screaming out "Funny Raisins!" to replace certain explitives), When Can I See You Again? (The WIR song), Ways to Go.
• She totally knows how to use my phone and loves to make calls to Daddy, Grandma, Grammy, and Aunt Lucy.
• She's potty trained 100% but still has some accidents from time to time.  If she gets even the tiniest drop in her panties, she HAS to change them.  We go through like 10 pairs a day!
• SHE LOVES FOOD!
• She loves peanut butter tortillas and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, which she calls "jelly sandwiches" but gets mad if you don't put the peanut butter.
• She loves macaroni and cheese (goni and cheese)
• If you ask her what she wants for dinner she'll say she wants "a chicken sandwich, cheese, and clams"
• She calls Capri Suns "football juice"
• She loves raw oysters and steamed clams.  We're going to have to start ordering more than our typical dozen when we go out!
• She LOVES Ellie!  It's so awesome to see them together.  She calls Ellie "Juju" and we have no idea why.  She loves to help out whenever she can and loves to tell strangers all about her baby sister.
• She's very specific about which blanket she wants to sleep with at night.  Always either one of her purple "cozy blankets" or her bigger pink one she got from Grammy.
• She's an awesome swimmer :)  She did swimming lessons this summer and just loves to be in the water.
• She's starting soccer in the fall!  She so excited!  
• She's starting to be able to put letters together to form words and thinks that every word has something to do with her name.  I.e. TABLE - starts with a "t - t - t - sound" so it's T-O-P-H-I-A.  Etc.
• She can count to 20 on her own and to about 50 with some coaxing.  
• We have these crazy little things that we do together.  
• Silly Game - I look from one side to the other and back again with a bizarre confused look then suddenly look right at her making a crazy face/noise.  She loves it.
• We say:  Heeeyyyy Sophie---Heeeyyy Mommy---Heeey couch --- Heeeyyy chair ---etc etc until we run out of things to say.  She likes to make up gibberish words then have me yell "That's not a word!"
• We say: Soooophiiiiiia...I loooooove you.  Mooooommy...I looooooove you.

Some crazy things she says:

• We went to Red Lobster for Ken's birthday dinner.  
When the server came to take our order, Sophia exclaimed "I want a lobster!" The server played along and asked if she wanted a big or small lobster. Of course Soph wanted the big one.  After our food arrived (obviously not a lobster for Sophia) she yells out "Hey lady!! I wanted a big lobster!!" With a totally appalled look on her face. Ha!

• (After Chuck jumped off the bed)  "Whoa Chuck!  That was a fancy move!

• Oopsy Daisy!

• It sure is...  For example:  "It sure is hot."  "It sure is dark."

• This is my special...  Fill in the blank.  Special ball.  Special blanket. Special banana. Etc.

• She asks for her Grandpa.  I try really hard to explain to her that he's in heaven with the angels and she had been doing really good with it, but recently she's decided that her Grandpa is waiting for us at the airport.  I think she remembers the last time we were there (last October) and she ran to him at the airport when we arrived.

I plan to continue updating this blog as I think of more things she does so keep checking in for updates!

And here's our girl!

Three Months.

Our little Ellie is Three Months old today!!

What an amazing baby she is! Such a gift from God! It's so crazy that a couple of fools like us could be blessed with not one, but TWO precious beautiful lovely babies.  I certainly never thought our family was incomplete before having Ellie, but boy does she bring a whole new level of completion to us!  It's like she's not only me and Ken's baby, but she's Sophia's baby too.  She's our baby.

About Ellie:

• She still loves her tummy time. She looks around and giggles until she finally gets tired and then she'll lay down and usually fall asleep.  If I'm there with her, I'll let her sleep on her tummy but if I'm going to be working around the house I'll roll her over.  
• She is sleeping much less.  She likes to sleep, play, eat, play, sleep in that order. Nursing doesn't really put her to sleep at all.  She takes about 4 naps during the day, each lasting about 1-2 hours, with about 1-2 hour play times between.   At 7:45 she is ready to get to bed.  It's like clockwork.  She'll start getting super fussy and I'm thinking "What the heck is going on?"  Then I look at the clock, sure enough, 7:45.  I feed her one last time, swaddle her up, and down she goes.  
• She still wakes up once at night to eat then goes back to sleep.  Usually at 3:30 or so.  Most times, she will make noise as if she's really upset but her eyes would remain closed.  Even during the feeding she would primarily stay asleep.  When we finish up and do burpees is when she really wakes up and coos and giggles for us, making it so hard to want to put her back to bed.  She also wakes up when she breaks free of the swaddle.  
• I go back to work on the 6th so we're trying to get things more on a regular schedule.  The past few nights we have tried just giving her back her binky rather than grabbing her up to feed.  Surprise!  It totally worked a couple of nights we had to get up 2 or 3 times to give it to her and one night she just slept right on through from 7:45 to 6:30.   To be honest, I really haven't minded waking with her in the middle of the night.  Ken gets up with me and it's like our private Ellie time.  By this time with Soph, she was already sleeping in her own room for a month.  We're having a really hard time letting Ellie grow up.  She's our baby!!

• She is starting to eat less frequently and more quickly.  She eats when she wakes up around 7, then again around lunch time, then once in the afternoon and a little bit of cluster feeding in the evening although that is diminishing now too.  She's outgrown "fussy time" in the evenings so really she just eats dinner then eats again right before bed.  It takes her about 5-10 minutes (usually closer to 5) to empty the boobie.  Judging by how much I get when I pump, that's about 4-6 oz she eats at each feeding.  I pump both sides right before I go to bed (so that I don't wake up in soaking wet agony in the middle of the night), the unnursed side in the middle of the night and in the morning, and as needed during the day.  I'm storing up about 12-16 oz in the freezer every day.  
• She is completely out of Newborn clothes.  So sad.  She's growing so fast!  
• She is wearing Size 1 diapers.  We have a boatload of size ones so we're hoping she stays in them for a while.  
• She is so joyful.  She coos and jabbers on to us all.  She also YELLS to get attention.  If I don't get in there right away when she wakes from a nap, she'll yell at me.  Not crying, yelling.  Like "Hey lady!  I'm done in here!  Entertain me!"
• She has started to love to play with crunch toys.
• She's getting a little better about the binky.  She still doesn't love it quite like Soph did, but I think it's growing on her.  It might seem crazy that I'm pushing it on her so much but I really get the feeling she wants to suck her thumb.  Don't get me wrong, I think thumb sucking is totally cute but, it was so easy to take away Soph's binky when the time came and I know it would be much tougher to "take away" a thumb.  She certainly loves to suck/chew on her hands though!  And she's such a drool-fest these days!
• She rarely cries.
• When she cries, she wales!!
• She smiles.
• She smiles.
• She smiles.
• She smiles.  This one deserves four bullets because she seriously smiles all the time!! It's too adorable.
• She giggles pretty frequently too.
• She has been rolling over every now and then.  Soph didn't roll over until she was like 7 months or something because she hated being on her tummy, so this is crazy to me.  Toward the end of this month, she started rolling regularly.  She'll go from belly to back in both directions.  
• She still goes by Ellie, Elle, Elle Belle, Ellie Belly, Smiley, Snort Snort, Ellie-Roo, Ellbow, and (drumroll please) Juju.  Yes, Juju.  A few weeks ago Soph started calling her that and hasn't stopped.  We don't know.

Here she is this month!

How rude.

Hates the 4th of July!!! (???)

Sleeping Angel

Neck getting stronger and stronger!

Sophia Loves Juju

Smiley!

Um, April, I think there's a problem here.

And Stonger...

Soph took this one :)

Watching the ESPYs with Mommy!

Two Months

Another month has flown by.  

One thing is for sure.  Ken and I ROCK at making babies!!  Ellie is such a good baby.  I mean REALLY REALLY REALLY good.  She's so sweet.  You can just tell that she is going to be a sweet person.  She smiles around the clock.  She's so curious.  She only cried in the evenings.  Just wonderful.

We had her two month appointment on the 26th.  Everything was perfect.  She had to get a bunch of shots unfortunately.  One of them was supposed to be three-in-one combo shot but they were out of it.  My choices were to wait until they got more in, give her 5 (yes, 5! shots that day), or give her two that day and come back for the rest the following week.  We opted for that one.  As we were about to leave, the doc told me "We'll see you again at 4 months and we'll start talking about solids at that time."  My heart sank.  I know two months is a long time from now but these two months have flown by which means before I know it, my sweet little baby will be eating solids.  Slow down Father Time!

So here's the low down.  

At two months old, Ellie:

• Weighs 11 pounds 6 ounces (slightly above average and I was told that breast-fed babies chunk up in the beginning then thin out sooner)
• Is 22.5 inches tall (Average)
• Is out growing most of her newborn clothes.  .:tear:.  On to size 0-3.  She can also wear those tiny little baby shoes that Soph could never wear because her feet were/are so narrow.
• Has created a schedule for herself.  She goes to bed at about 7:30-7:45, wakes once during the night at around 3:30 (or sometimes 5:30 - never other times for some reason), she eats, smiles and coos making us not want to go back to bed but rather play with her for a little while longer than we should, then goes back to sleep.
• Eats about 4 times during the day then cluster feeds in the evenings.
• Seriously loves to be on her tummy.  If this were the 80s, she'd sleep through the night for sure.  Damn you SIDS!  
• Has started to giggle!  Mainly she laughs at Sophia.  Soph has the magic touch I guess.
• Is starting to grasp at things.
• Makes lots of little non-crying noises.
• Hold herself up on her arms really well.
• Is starting to support her weight on her legs.
• Was baptized on her two month birthday (post later)
• Is the light of all our lives.

Her list of nicknames continues to evolve and includes:  Elle, Elle Belle, Ellie Belly, Ellie-Roo, Smiley, Snort Snort, Ellies (plural Ellie?), Ellie Baby, Ellie Girl, and Ellbow.

Here are some highlights of Ellie's second month.