new year's eve

the funniest thing elenora says is "snow" because she is very amused by the way it vibrates in her nose. she wrinkles up her nose and squinches her eyes and says "snow...snow...snow" with a very nasal sound. i'll have to obtain a video of this for everyone's enjoyment.

here's a photo of ella saying "snow":

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it's snowing outside right now. another major snow storm. k. was supposed to come to our house tonight, but the snow is postponing our make-your-own pizzas until tomorrow night. j. and i will order in some chinese for dinner and snuggle in for a cozy, quiet evening.

here are my new year's resolutions:

1) Keep our room clean.
2) Save money.
3) Get to the gym several times a week (if not more).
4) Floss every night.

i feel like these are so basic and typical and lacking in imagination. and i have a nagging sense that i've been tucking away other resolutions that i'd wanted to make, and now i can't remember them.

the last one is going to take the most effort. when i'm already in bed ready to sleep it seems to take so much effort to get up and spend ten minutes flossing.

i've started Ethan Frome. i read it in high school and remember quite a bit of the imagery from the tale. i picked it up because i checked out Age of Innocence from the library and it was part of a "Four by Edith Wharton" collection that also included Ethan Frome. last night i started reading the story just to see what it was like now that i'm 14 years older, and now i'm sucked in. it's so short anyhow that i think i can read both of the stories before the three weeks are up and i have to return it to the library.

i love the library. elenora and i have such a good time there, and the books i'm able to get for her are so wonderful. i picked up a lot of books about snow this time. one of them is an illustrated book of the poem "stopping by woods on a snowy evening" by robert frost. and it is beautiful. just pencil drawings with a bare amount of color. but tucked into the trees and the snow are all kinds of animals that ella just loves to find. she loves the deer, and makes me flip back to the page with the deer several times before continuing to the end. we also got a book by mem fox called "ten little fingers, and ten little toes" which is adorable because it has sweet pictures of babies.

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more words

i lined up ella's toy animals today and pointed "what's this?" to each one of them. straight down the line she said "cow," "horse," "pig," and "chicken." (sheep are just called "baaa")

i then sat with her at the computer and pointed through photos of family and friends. "who's this?" i asked her, and she answered "mimi" or "jay" or "heather" or "kendra" or "grandma." these words aren't crystal clear, but she is consistent and the consonants or the syllables are correct, and you can understand what she's trying to say.

yesterday i came home and momby said "we've been saying our colors." and she grabbed a pink crayon out of the box and said "ella, what color is this?" and ella said "pink." and she grabbed a yellow crayon out of the box and ella said "yellow."

this afternoon she was playing in the living room and i said "ella, who is jesus' mommy?" and she said "mary." she knows this because of j.'s book...but i wasn't reading her the book at the time, so i was quite impressed that she knew that.

last night we went to the library, where they have a large bear in the children's reading section. she loves that bear, and will snuggle it while i pick out stories to take home with us. when we got home last night i said to her "ella, tell daddy what we saw at the library" and she said "bear." i was really impressed that she could understand that sort of a question that requires remembering something at a particular place.

she also says:

hat
monkey
polar bear
chapstick
God
spoon
tyke trike
Melody (a little wooden doll)
Burt (another wooden doll)
Little Guy (a plastic tub toy doll)
boy
belly
balloon
plane
chair
muffin (sounds like "muh-muh")
blue
"minnie" (a baby doll who looks like ella did when she didn't have hair)
milk
pepper
couscous
coo-coo (for coo-coo clock)
step (when we go up steps)
deer
necklace (sounds like "neh-neh")
mitten (sounds like "mih-mih")
Kendra
Jay
Heather (sounds like "hah")

and a million more things.

amazing.

on my phone

here is elenora pretending to talk with someone on my phone. (this reminds me of a video i have of lorien when she was younger.)
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Christmas '08

elenora's second Christmas has come and gone. she is such a joy to be around and truly made this Christmas something special.

Christmas Eve we took elenora into boston to the service at Park Street Church. we sat with momby and j. and h. ella very adorably looked at the cross on momby's choir robe and said "T"! i love the Christmas Eve service because there are lots of children in the sanctuary and you can walk up and down the side aisle with a 15-month-old (bringing smiles to everyone's faces as you pass them by).

here are some photos of ella's Christmas dress. we had to wake her up from her afternoon nap in order to dress her in time for the service...which you can see she wasn't too thrilled about. but the dress was adorable. such a good color on her.
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the only thing sad about Christmas Eve was that j.'s parents' tire blew on their way into boston and AAA never showed up to help them after the service. j. finally went out to get them at 9:30 pm and they all arrived home at midnight. our traditionally late dinner turned into an incredibly late dinner. however, when we all finally did gather around the table it was a very enjoyable meal.

Christmas morning we all slept in until 9 am. then we had eggs and mimosas and coffee and opened our presents. j. read ella the book he wrote for her while she ate her breakfast. she really enjoyed it, and has read it multiple times since. all day we asked her "who's birthday is on Christmas?" and she responded "Jesus."

here ella is on Christmas morning with the tree. she likes to name all of the ornaments. in the second photo she is saying "mouse" while pointing to a little mouse ornament given to me by mrs. ruth years ago.
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we gave elenora a baby named "amy" who she quickly became a good mother to by offering the baby a bottle. ella calls her "may-me."
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Christmas afternoon we went to momby's for presents, dinner, and dessert. elenora received all her presents before dinner (since bedtime came soon afterwards). she was generously given some amazing toys that we are excited to play with. momby gave her a beautiful little stroller for her babies. ella gave baby amy a spin around the house several times, stopping every few feet to pat amy's head with a "good baby" gesture.
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j. and h. gave ella a gorgeous magnetic chalk/dry erase board (to go with the alphabet magnets i gave her earlier in the day). elenora is loving this gift so much already. she says "chalk," and she likes to draw on the chalk board as well as putting her magnets on and off the board. she has already learned that "E" and "e" are called the same thing (yes, she says "e" when she sees them...as well as saying "B" and "T" and "D" and "O" and "K" when she sees them).
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here she is signing "thank you" to aunti h. for the presents:
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momby gave her a cute little wind-up elephant:
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we're so blessed by our family and by each other.

bear-bottomed tights

here are some photos of elenora's tights from k.
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j. calls this photo "keepin' it real"... i call it "but mommy, i already said i'm all done!"... (she can't always be happy, right?):
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here's ella with j.'s friend a., who was home for the holidays from california:
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here's a video i'll title "swingy legs":

toddling around the house

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who's this?

elenora knows her own name...and can say it, too! now you can ask her "who's this? who are you?" and she will say "ella!" it's adorable. also, if i point to her reflection in the mirror or to a photo of her she will say "ella!" this morning in bed for our snuggle time i pointed to j. and said "who's this?" and she said "dada," and then i pointed to myself and said "who's this?" and she said "mama," and then i pointed to her bunny and said "who's this?" and she said "buh-buh," and then i pointed to her and said "who's this?" and she said "ella."

it's probably my favorite thing that she says.

well the weather outside is frightful...

what a storm! it makes us so thankful for a warm apartment.

i took the train this afternoon for the first time in four years. k. and i have been meaning to have an afternoon together for several months. tradition is to go to newburyport or marblehead to christmas shop, but this year we never seemed to find the right weekend for it. so this week we promised to gather at her house for an afternoon of coffee with baileys and "middlemarch." when the storm struck, i decided to take the train, since i can walk to the ipswich station and the beverly station is minutes from her house.

what a fun time. the pbs version of george elliot's novel is just phenomenal. and we exchanged our christmas presents. k. was so generous. she even gave me some cute "bear-bottomed" tights for ella (they have a bear on the bottom).

it is so cold outside, and extremely windy. the train was 15 minutes late picking me up to go home, and my legs were just frozen. it was so nice to arrive home and curl up on my couch with "house of mirth" and eat grilled cheese and tomato soup for dinner.

i switched comforters on my bed to the quilt made by a. and given to us as a wedding present. it is so beautiful...the most beautiful thing anyone has ever made me. the whole room looks fresh and new.

i can't believe this week is christmas. elenora is enjoying the experience of having a tree in the house. i think somewhere deep down she will remember this christmas.

j. wrote elenora a nativity story book for her present from him. it is so beautiful. he's quite the artist, actually. i've been looking for a good nativity story book that would tell the story in a way that would really interest a 15-month-old. j.'s story is perfect, with a dog and a cat on every page and a narration that is very accessible and lovely. i can't wait for her to open it and read it.

ella is enamored of her books lately. the first thing she does when i get her out of her crib in the morning is to say "book!" and to point excitedly at her books. then i put her down while i gather her clothes for the day and she happily opens various books and looks at their pictures. she keeps bringing books from her bedroom to the living room play area, and we probably have about 15 books piled up by the toy basket. she very often opens and "reads" the books, and can point to everything on the page. she makes good associations between the books and real life, too. if the book has a monkey in it, she will point to her crib, where she has a stuffed monkey. if the book has a christmas tree, she points to her own tree. if the story has a character who is sleeping, i can say "ella, what is the [baby bear] doing?" and she will make the sign for "sleeping." in the jan brett stories, i can say "who is coming next?" and she will point to the side photo where jan brett will put a picture of the next character to enter into the story. if the book has a picture of an animal yawning or sneezing, i can say "ella, what is the [bunny] doing?" and she will mimick a yawn or say the "aaaa" of "aaa-choo!"

it's really amazing how much she comprehends. what a fun little girl.

singing video

okay, so she's not really singing, but i found this to be funny since it was just a prolonged vocalization, seemingly for no other reason than that she was enjoying it.

winter wonder land

i arrived at work yesterday at 11:20 to find out that a late email the previous afternoon had informed everyone else at the Office that we would all be released at noon due to the forecasted snowfall. so i worked my forty minutes and headed to the post office to mail presents to my parents and to my brother and his family, got an eggnog latte at zumis (my favorite drink) and headed home.

the snow started soon after, and the storm was just as expected. high winds and tons of white stuff whirled outside our cozy apartment.

by this morning i was feeling a little stir crazy. by this afternoon i was going nuts. after ella's nap i bundled her up and took her out for her first real encounter with snow. it's not often in MA that we get such a lot at one time, so the snow drifts were really something. especially to a little girl who was about as big as them. the snow was really light and powdery, so we had fun kicking it and pushing our mittens into the little hills on either side of the sidewalk. elenora broke into fits of laughter when i picked up a ball of powder and said "aaa-aaa-aaaa-chooo!" and blew the snow all over the place.

here she is as a winter bundle:
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here she is all rosy cheeked after our excursion:

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words

it's hard to list all of the words that elenora says. what doesn't she say?! she is so easy to understand because between the sign language and the verbal capacity she communicates so well. she always says at least partial words for things...saying either a syllable or two or a consonant or something that is accurate and in context.

here are a few words, just to list some:

bear
pear
fish
block
book
bell
mouse
star
tree
moon
cat
beads
avocado ("cado")
cookie
chocolate
brush
Jesus (yes, she really does!)
ball
cricket
Mimi
Poppy
"Mam-aw" for Grandma
Pop-Pop
"Bill-Bob" (a toy she has)
"Betty" (another toy)
chicken
"Lisa" (a character in a book)
sock
girl

ella sometimes says things as questions, with a sweet inflection at the end of the word. "mama?" "yes, baby?" "daddy?" "he's at work, sweetie." at which point she will make the sign for "work."

it's a whole conversation.

videos of elenora

elenora is really into babies right now (makes me think of brianna). here she is with "superbaby":

here is a little video of elenora walking:

5 dollars, Charlie Brown

we have a christmas tree! elenora and i went in search of one today. after three stops, we finally found the perfect tree. it was the last small tree on the lot, and they gave it to me for $5. this is probably due to two things: it's a week away from christmas, and the tree is fairly scraggly. we love it, though. i just finished decorating it and can't wait for elenora to see it in the morning.
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ella got her flu shot today. the nurse was so quick that ella and i were both left looking at her like "did you really already give the shot?" elenora didn't cry a bit. the nurse seemed just as surprised and kept telling the other nurses what a good baby ella was. elenora was walking around the office just minutes later--charming everyone she met.

it was so warm out today. maybe fifties. it's still warm out. i am sitting by the open window in my shortsleeves. elenora and i had some great play time outside running around the yard. she really walks great, and i can now kind of "chase" her and catch her up into the air. she was loving it.

j. and i got away this past weekend. it was so lovely and relaxing. just being able to be loud at night and relax in the morning by ourselves was amazing. we went out for thai food friday night and then spent time in the jacuzzi. in the morning we tried a new breakfast place where we had these gormet omlettes. mmm. we did stop by home to see elenora, and she was having such fun with "mam-aw" that she didn't really notice us. so it was easy to head out again in the early afternoon. we decided to head to a furniture store and see if we could find something to replace j.'s bachelor pad bowl chair with. we found a beautiful sage chair that will just work perfectly in our living room. we get to pick it up this saturday, and i can't wait to bring it home. we didn't head to newport after all, because we suddenly realized that we didn't really need to get far away to feel like we'd been on a vacation and "gotten away." so we did a little christmas shopping and were home in time to put elenora to bed. it felt so good to snuggle with her and read her stories. she'd had a fantastic day with her grandma.

we all want to do this again sometime.
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last night i was able to finally wrap all the christmas presents. it took me three hours this year. it feels really good to have that task out of the way. and now that the tree is up i can just relax and enjoy the holidays.

i made a slow-cooker ministrone soup today. thanks mom! it turned out really good except that i turned it to high instead of low because i wanted it to cook in time for dinner tonight, and the noodles all turned to mush. but the flavor was fantastic, and it's super healthy.

i finally have batteries in my camera again. i'll be going back to old blogs and adding the photos that correspond. so check back through if you're interested.

big steps

we're weaned. last week elenora nursed for shorter and shorter periods of time each morning, until finally she didn't seem to want to do it at all. so i guess that's it. good timing, actually, since this is the weekend j. and i are going away.

also, ella is walking all over the place. she's very steady now, and will go from room to room. not extremely quickly, but with good form.
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this morning at work the vendors sponsored a breakfast for the editorial department at the cafe. it was a really lovely time with bacon and eggs and fruit...and i got to sit with k. and two of the abstractors and have conversations. since i've been doing this part-time job i don't get to interact with as many people at work anymore, so it was really fun. we're having a holiday pot-luck lunch in two weeks, too.

j. and i went to an open house this weekend for that condo. it turned out to be a lot smaller than we'd be looking for, and it has a lot of half-finished projects that we would not want to take on. plus, after evaluating our financial situation it just does not seem possible that we will be able to buy a house in any remote future.

possibly when we're in our 40s.

it's discouraging. we love this area and have family and good jobs here. i think we both grew up thinking we'd own a home one day. and right now "the market is good for buying a house." yet, the tiny place we looked at was far too expensive for us. moving to where the real estate is more affordable eliminates our good jobs and our proximity to family (and childcare).

do we have to give up on this idea of home ownership? sad.

today after lunch i gave elenora a bite off a piece of chocolate. and without my saying it she said "chocolate" (not crystal-clear, but clear enough to understand). she's picking up all kinds of words lately. often she will at least say the first consonant of the word. like, when she hears a train she says "t" and when she plays with her little bear named "pufkin" she says "p." when she plays with her alphabet puzzle i hold up the "K" and say "what is this?" and she makes the "k" sound.

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i think she's teeting again. or maybe she's got another cold. her nose is like a faucet, as well as her mouth. her poor chin and cheeks were all irritated last night from wiping away so much drool.

ella is very much into Jan Brett books now: the hat, the mitten, the 12 days of christmas. and today she is enjoying Mr. Dog (or, Crispin's Crispian, the dog who belonged to himself). we're also getting into an audrey wood phase, having borrowed Piggies and I'm as Quick as a Cricket from the library.

i need to find some more place i can take ella to play during the winter so that she is not always couped up in the house.

thanksgiving and stuff

it's been beautifully and thankfully warmer the last few days. ella and i can be seen walking around town--her in the sling and me in a light sweater. it's so wonderful to get out with her again. yesterday afternoon we played in the yard. she's standing up without holding onto anything and then just taking off. she still will go down every few feet or so, but she is also capable of walking ten feet at a time. sometimes i'll be on one side of the room doing something and suddenly she'll be standing next to me, having toddled on over. it's really precious.

she continues to add to her vocabulary. one of the cutest things is that she has these two little plastic people who we named "bill bob huckabee" and "betty blondie." she will actually say "bill-bob" and "beddy."

we all traveled down to PA for thanksgiving with j.'s aunt. we left thursday morning, arriving at 5:30 pm. elenora was so good in the car. she cried about a minute total the entire trip, and we only stopped twice for 20 minutes each time. she's really good at amusing herself and is so pleasant. when we arrived at aunt d.'s ella had fun playing with her two cousins, noelle and lindsey.

then things got interesting. ella was put to bed in her pack-n-play in the same room where j. and i were to later join her. the room was freezing cold. aunt d. had no fan with which to white-noise out the rest of the sounds in the house--and with 14 people in the house that was not a good thing. at first, elenora went to sleep and was fine. but at 10 pm she woke up crying very hard and when i went in to comfort her she'd had a poopy and was freezing cold. so i changed her and put her back in her pack-n-play. she continued to cry very hard for another hour, with me sitting on the other side of the door listening. finally j. suggested we just go in and go to bed and maybe that would comfort her enough to go to bed too. but since she could see us she just stood in her pack-n-play screaming as if to say "why won't you pick me up? i'm right here." at 1 am j. was ready to pack our car and leave for home. i suggested laying ella between us to see if she would sleep then. she did...

...until 4 am. then she decided that every 20 minutes she would sit up and try to get us to play with her. we were so tired and just kept saying "ella, lay your head down and go sleepies," but 20 minutes later she would sit up again. it was the worst night we've had since she was about 2 months old.

at 7 am momby offered to take ella downstairs, and j. went back to sleep. i got my shower and joined everyone. for ella's morning nap we stuck the pack-n-play in the tiny upstairs bathroom because it had an exhaust fan. she slept over an hour, but still...

in the afternoon j. and i went into philly to see his grade school friends. two of them just had baby boys, so it was fun to catch up with them all. elenora was really sweet, but she only got a 30 minute afternoon nap with all the people talking loudly downstairs. when we left there j. made the decision to pack up and take us home. ella was asleep before we even got to aunt d.'s to pack up, and she slept the whole way home. i slept a good bit of the way, too. it was the right decision.

saturday it was nice to wake up late in our own home and then go out to breakfast downtown. ella got a good afternoon nap and i went shopping. just before i left j. said "you're not very good at surprising me" which put the pressure on for me to find something Great. and i really did try...but i just couldn't find anything surprising in our price range. i'm still thinking about it, but i think j. will just have to settle with things he expects.

i found a house i love that is for sale in town. it's not even that expensive for houses around here. http://www.zipvo.com/listing_view/?id=014755&mls=70839097&p we sent an email to the realtor...not that anything can come of this. we don't really have a down payment (thanks to half of this year being lived on our savings) unless we cash out my profit share. which is not a good idea. how do people get down payments? i don't even know the first thing about how to go about thinking about looking at houses, let alone trying to get a loan and buy one.

tomorrow c. is coming to visit. we had our high school 10 year reunion last week that she went to, so it will be fun to hear about that. i looked up some old classmates on a website the other day to see what they're doing. only a few of them had blurbs about their lives. tara duval is a lawyer, just as she always said she wanted to be from the time when we were friends in elementary school--which makes me happy. aj jeromine is working in a cubicle, which makes me sad since i always pictured him as a famous cartoon artist working for disney or something. kristi furman had no profile, though i wish she would.

i wonder what people who knew me way back when would think of my life? here's my blurb, if i had one: married, 1 baby, works as an editor at a publishing company, reads large books, enjoys the outdoors. that about covers it.