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.