playdate with aurora

sentences

elenora is forming sentences a lot lately.  today we had the comcast guy here to install stuff.  we told ella his name was "Lee" and she started saying "Lee's fixing our TV."

yesterday morning j. switched cars with me at my work because i have the beach sticker and he wanted to take ella to the beach.  when he put her in my car she said "daddy's car roof opens.  mama's car roof--No."  which is correct.  j.'s car has a sun roof and mine doesn't.

something sweet is that when he switched the cars he told elenora that i was inside the building at work.  as they drove away she started pointing to the building saying "mommy!" and crying, and j. said "mommy's working in there.  do you know what she's doing?" and ella very sadly said "editor."

during the middle of the day yesterday i took ella outside and she was picking dandelions and saying "one for ella. one for mama."

anyhow, she didn't mind the sand yesterday.  her desire to discover the beach and chase seagulls outweighed her desire to keep the sand off of her feet.  i took her back to the ocean in the afternoon and we had a great time finding seashells and walking along the beach.  sometimes the water came up over her toes and she would look at me and say "too much!"  (j. told me later that in the morning the waves had washed over her feet and he had said "ella, is that too much cold?" so she must have remembered that phrase.)

yesterday was 92 degrees (in April!).  around 7 pm the winds suddenly started whipping around our building and blew in a cold front.  today we've got 67 degree weather.  a good day for the park. j. and i took elenora after her nap and she enjoyed going down the big slides, hiding in the "forts" and swinging.  j. sat on a tire swing and pulled her onto his lap and i pushed them, which was really fun.  while on the baby swing she looked over at j., who was on a sort of porch swing, and said "daddy's swinging." then she looked to her left and saw another girl swinging and said "girl's swinging."  and then looked at me and said "ella's swinging."

when the comcast guy was here we sort of took all the toys that have been taking over the area 5 feet to the left and 5 feet to the right of the TV in our living room, and we maneuvered them into a small area away from there...and suddenly we had a living room again!  it's funny to look back at photos of our living room pre-baby days to see how uncluttered our lives were, and this sort of felt like a flashback.  so now that the weather is nice and we do most of our playing outdoors, i think i'm going to purchase some storage bins and clear off the bottom shelf of my bookshelf in the living room.  we'll place three storage bins of the most commonly used toys on that shelf and somehow reorganize ella's room to move the rest of her toys in there.  i'm excited about the prospects.

dirty

we took ella to the beach yesterday. walked down the boardwalk to where we could view the stretches of white sand and beautiful ocean.  placed her feet in the sand.  "pick up! pick up!" was her panicked response as she felt her feet sink into this warm, soft stuff that her mind gave only one adjective to: Dirty. 

she's so funny.  at the park, if she falls down off the slide or something, she sits there looking at her hands--her fingers outstretched and a disgusted look on her face.  she looks up at me and says "dirty!"  and i say "it's okay to be dirty."  and she just says "dirty."  and i wipe her off.

we spread out a beach blanket and got out the trowel and the little cups for scooping.  she could barely bring herself to sit close enough to the edge of the blanket to gingerly move some of the sand around with the trowel.  every time she reached too far and got some sand on her fingers she looked at me and said "dirty!" and i'd have to brush her off.

we tried multiple times to show her how fun it was to walk in the sand.  i ran around kicking at it and j. took her down to look at the water.  i picked up some seashells and she put them in her cup.  but every time we tried to put her feet down on the ground she would urgently say "pick up!" 

j. says that he had an irrational dislike of being sandy when he was a child.

great.

friday afternoon i took ella to a different beach before dropping her off at her grandma's for the night.  she had shoes and socks on then, and didn't mind running around.  although, each time i handed her a seashell she would hand it back to me saying "dirty" until i'd brushed it off for her.  oh brother.

saturday morning i babysat aurora and took her to the beach and she proceeded to pick up great handfuls of sand and throw it in every direction, including in her hair.  funny how different kids are.

i'm sure elenora will get past this after a few more trips to the sea.

saturday afternoon we took elenora to a birthday party for the daughter of one of j.'s old colleagues.  we'd randomly run into d. and his wife the night before at a mexican restaurant, and they invited us.  it was so fun, and elenora had a great time running around a beautiful backyard, throwing whiffle balls and climbing in and out of a low-sitting beach chair.  she'd climb up, turn herself around and say "backwards."

yesterday at the beach she started saying "everybody sitting." then as we walked to the car she said "everybody walking."  then she started clicking her tongue and she said "somebody clicking."  hah!  so now we play this game where i say "ella, somebody's [sitting, laying down, standing, etc.]...who is it?"  and she will say who it is.

sunday morning we took elenora to church again.  she really loves it.  all week, if i said "did we go to church this week?" she said "back."  j. and i are liking it, too.  the congregation seems to have good community.  they have a good sense of humor during non-formal moments, but also keep the formality when appropriate.  only, i wish we could meet people easier.  it's almost as if they have such good community with each other that they forget to welcome or introduce themselves to new people.  we awkwardly stand to the side during coffee fellowship after church for about 8 minutes while ella eats a muffin or cheese and crackers, and then we slip away.

i bought a plane ticket last night.  i'm going to NC to see my folks in june.  randomly, i will arrive there on my brother's birthday.  too bad he can't be there to celebrate, but maybe we can have ice cream in his honor?

spring is here.  all the magnolia trees and forsythia and daffodils are in full bloom.  this is my favorite time of year.  it's just as colorful as autumn.

here are newish clear words:

computer

avocado shell

sea gull

fix it

I broke it. (second full sentence...she was actually saying it after i said it...i broke her mobile)

sea shell

strawberry

blueberry

ice cream sandwich

hold that

ocean

beach

clean up

wash

new one

everybody

somebody

climbing

clicking

stay

mamaw's house (in response to "where are you going to have a sleepover tonight?")

sunscreen

broken

new computer!

so here's the most expensive thing we own.  and we love it!  what a difference it makes having a new computer.

back.

all week elenora has been saying "church...back." and then i ask her "do you want to go back to church this week?" and she says "okay." so we went to church this morning and it was, again, wonderful. i really love this church. it's very small (maybe 150 people) without the inundation of students from gordon college. lots of families with school kids, senior citizens, and a few other young couples like us. elenora is one of maybe three or four children under 3. again she was one of two children in the nursery, and she was so happy to just stay and play with t.

more and more, elenora will say anything you ask her to say--even large, multi-syllabic words. if i ask her what i do for work she says "editor," and then if i ask her about what momby does for work she says "teacher."

we went to the park multiple times this week. on friday we went to a park behind the local elementary school and there must have been some after-school program going on because one of the adults who was watching a group of kids sent over a girl with an ice cream sandwich for ella. this was ella's first ice cream sandwich ever. (she came home saying "ice cream sandwich.") at this park there was a little play house just elenora's size that she had fun going into and opening the shutters and ringing the doorbell.

we had such great weather this week...it was so lovely to spend so much time outdoors. the daffodils are all in bloom and the trees all have buds. i ask ella "are the trees fuzzy?" and she gets a very solemn face and says "noooo!" because she knows that i think the buds make the branches look fuzzy. it's our little joke. she's such a silly.

sometimes if i guess wrong about something she's saying (or if i purposely suggest that she's said something different from what she actually said) she starts laughing hysterically. like, she was on the swings and she was saying something that began with a "B" and i suggested "did you say 'boot'?" and it must have been so different from what she was actually saying because she just started laughing really hard and saying "boot" over and over. and now any time she even thinks about a swing she starts saying "boot" as if it's this great joke.

we were walking yesterday around the block and she saw a group of three dandelions and she said "three!" and then we walked past a bush with little buds on it and she said "buds" and then she said matter-of-factly "leaves" (because i've told her that buds turn into leaves).

she comments on the weather, too. if it's rainy or windy or sunny, she will tell you. she says what something is, what color it is, and how many there are. "one boat. red."

she uses participles. "singing." "sitting." "walking." "eating."

i got out a ton this past week. i got up and worked out every morning before work, and found i had so much more energy in the afternoons to go back out for walks with elenora around town. i feel so much better about life in general when i'm taking care of myself.

j. and i got to go to the boston symphony last night (an annual event). we got in early enough to relax at the malaysian restaurant we frequent every year. split a bottle of wine and some appetizers. mmmm. our seats were excellent in the auditorium, and the music was fantastic. i loved getting out with j. last night, and we really couldn't have had more fun together.

tomorrow i get a day off. i'm planning on getting up early to go work out and then momby is coming over to go out to breakfast with us. then j. and i are going to a few stores to look at computers. the one i'm typing on is possibly 9 years old. just really time to look into something faster.

i did go house viewing yesterday morning. ugh. the 3 homes i looked at were all just falling to pieces. cracked walls. cracked ceilings. siding that needed complete replacement. floors that were uneven. is this all $240k can buy? oh well. my realtor and i are getting to be very good friends. i'm the same age as her kids, so i think she's sort of taken me under her wing. she says "you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince." so i guess we'll keep looking a little longer.

sheep

j.'s aunt nina emailed an e-card to momby, who forwarded it to us.  it's an animated sheep who is lost and who wanders the hillside "baaa-ing" until jesus comes and finds him and scoops him up and takes him home.  ella loves this animation.  she sits in wonder as the sheep wanders the hillsides.  and she baaas along with the sheep and says "mama" (because he's looking for his mama) and then she gets so excited when jesus comes and hugs the sheep and takes him "home."  here are some photos of how happy she is watching this:

http://www.americangreetings.com/ecards/view.pd?i=488225508&m=4896&rr=y&source=ag999

growing

our plants are growing!  what a magical thing to watch these little buds appear.  ella loves helping me water them.  she points to the big ones and says "daddy one" or "mommy one" and then points to the little ones and says "baby one."

new things

first of all, my brother and his wife are expecting their second baby! and so is a.! they're both 6 or 7 weeks pregnant, so i guess we'll have two new babies at the beginning of december. very exciting.

last night i made a new resolution. i've been thinking about how easily my workouts used to fit into my schedule when i worked full days at ebscoland. i used to just combine my lunch and breaks and go to the gym for an hour every day in the middle of the afternoon. it just happened, and it was easy because that was just the routine and it fit in so well. i haven't found that easy gym routine since elenora was born. and especially since i started getting up at 6:30 am. by the evening i'm just too tired to go to the gym, and often j. will have orchestra or basketball in the evenings and i'll be stuck at home. but last night i decided that i'm going to try to go to bed by 10:30 pm and get up at 6 am and do a workout before work starts. i go to the gym every morning to dry my hair anyhow, so if i can just get there a half hour earlier than i've been doing i can work out and still get to my office by 7:15 am. then i can have a normal day and relax in the evenings.

this morning i got to the gym by 6:25 and worked out until 7:10. it felt really good, and i had a lot more energy today than usual.

here is a list of things elenora is saying clear as a bell:

lucky
calculator
blue one
hold one
little bear
awful
pickle shoes (she finds this phrase hilarious)
barrette
easter
sitting
walking
painting
popcorn sweater
water cup
river
purple ball
leaves
picture
camera
boxing
shirt
hug
kitten
suction cup
hanger
flowers
daffodil
moss
shadow
puma
window
notebook
dandelion
swinging
tuna
pita

happy easter, elenora

today was the perfect easter. when elenora awoke we snuggled with her in our bed and let her open her easter basket. she loved the watering can and the paints and paint brushes. we let her pick which easter dress she wanted to wear (she chose a light yellow one with little roses sewn on it from my uncle m.) and then we took her to church.

we went to a church we haven't gone to before. we'd never even been inside, so we had no idea how to get in or anything. everyone was so friendly, though, in pointing us to the nursery. there were just two women and a little boy in there, so elenora got lots of good attention. she didn't even cry. the women pointed us in the direction of the back of the church so that we wouldn't walk into the front of the sanctuary, but our choice of sitting in the balcony was poorly timed...as we walked up the stairs we could hear a bell choir, and it turned out that they were up in the balcony and we appeared just where everyone was looking and slunk into our seats. oh well. turns out we were sitting behind the minister's wife, who was so welcoming and happened to know j.'s parents and some friends of their family. the sermon and service were very good.

after the service we went to the nursery to get ella and she was happily coloring in easter eggs on a paper with crayons. it made me so happy to see her busily engaged and not crying. the nursery workers remarked on how verbal she is and said "it's really kind of amazing." elenora pointed to a big orange crayon in one of her hands and said "mommy" and then to a little orange crayon in her other hand and said "baby." that's a new thing lately: she will point to a big item and a little item and say that one is the "mommy" or "daddy" and the other one is the "baby."

the minister's wife came into the nursery and noticed us and said they were holding an easter egg hunt for the children next door in the yard of the minister's house, and she invited us to join. it was so fun to watch elenora have her first easter egg hunt with all the other children. she was so excited. and they gave her a large easter basket prize for being the youngest easter egg hunter! it really blessed my heart that they treated us with such open hearts as if we weren't strangers who had never attended their service before. i even met another couple who have three little girls, and they were really nice. i would love to go there again.

this coming wednesday night that church is sponsoring a movie night at a local cinema where they will play the film "fireproof". it's supposed to be inspirational for married couples. lord knows j. and i can use a night out if nothing else, so this should be a good date for us.

we got elenora home in good time to get a full nap. when she awoke momby and j. and h. came over and we had two easter egg hunts and quiche and veggies and dip and crackers and fruit salad. ella loved having her family around. the whole day just couldn't have been any nicer.

how the toilet saved my marriage...

so friday morning i got up at 7:15 am with ella and made her pancakes. i called in to the bedroom to see if j. wanted any, and he didn't. after her breakfast elenora trotted into her room and proceeded to throw a book off her toy box and onto the floor. that is one pet peeve of mine. i really don't like it when she throws books on the floor. and especially library books, which this one was. i said to her "elenora, i want you to pick up the library book." and she did something she rarely does: she stood there crying and stubbornly refusing to pick up the book. i just kept on gently, but firmly, stating that she needed to pick up the book, and she just stood there refusing to do so and crying loudly. finally j. came into the room, and the change of scenery pulled her out of herself long enough for her to pick up the book.

but then j. was mad that he'd had to get up and was sort of claiming that i had purposely tried to keep him awake all morning with things like asking if he wanted pancakes and elenora's crying. so he said he was going to sleep at a motel for a night so he could sleep in. which i didn't appreciate. and we ended up just angry with each other. i took elenora outside for a walk, and when i came back inside i went to the bathroom and as i turned to flush i heard a crash and looked to the floor to see the outside cover of my cellphone laying on the ground (it had been in the shoulder pocket of a purse i had on). i desperately looked all over the floor as the water swirled, but when it cleared i saw my phone in the bottom of the bowl. ick. j. came in and pulled it out, and we just stood there laughing about the whole thing.

i got a new phone. but i lost all my telephone numbers. the only ones i have memorized are for j. and a.

friday night h. came over to watch ella while i got a hair cut downtown. afterwards, she stayed and chatted with me for over an hour about these brunner boys we married.

sometimes i just find marriage to be a ridiculous thing. why do people do it? what was god intending when he suggested it? "till death do us part" seems to me now to be a very naive notion for young people who grow up on idealism, romanticism, and fairy tales.

j. and i are fine now, by the way. we'll keep working on this a little longer.

go green

here's her new tricycle!  i love this thing.

no money...

new words include beetle-bug and bagel. really, if she wants to say something, she just says it. multi-syllabic words have not been slowing her down. she says a lot of them just fine on her own, or. if we break them down, she will say things syllable by syllable.

"no money." i don't know why, but she started saying that last night and thought it was hilarious. just laughed and laughed.

the house hunting thing is discouraging. i feel like i'm stuck between jumping back into being comfortable and just relaxing where we are and diving forward with all of the home showings and pre-approval processes and home listing searches. it's such a frustrating place to be. on the one hand, we feel like the market is going to get as low as it will ever get around here and the government and my grandparents are all offering us help. but on the other hand the properties here are still too high. even if we did get a house at a "good price" for around here, our monthly payments would increase by $500+. that is so scary. i feel lost in knowing whether we should pursue this or not.

i get such mixed messages. everyone says "this is the time to buy!" but then my dad says to me tonight that we probably shouldn't buy. so i don't know what to do.

i feel like i've just wasted a lot of everybody's time. my poor realtor who has spent hours showing me places for the last few weeks. poor j., who i've dragged around to showings. poor ella, who has also had to schlep around the north shore with me. and poor me for wasting so much energy, time, and dreams on this.

on a more positive note, easter is this weekend. i blew out 7 eggs yesterday (and made a quiche). there was a learning curve, i'll tell you. the first egg has a huge hole in the bottom, and the next 2 are cracked up the side. but the last 4 look actually beautiful. j. and i are going to have a lot of fun coloring them with ella, and i look forward to writing "EMB 18 months" in pencil on the bottom and storing them away as a memento of this time in her life, like my mom did with me. sunday afternoon we're going to have j. and h. and momby over for an easter egg hunt and light dinner. how fun that we get to experience this children's tradition all over again now that we're parents. oh, and elenora's easter basket is just about the coolest thing ever: 1 watering can shaped like a yellow duck, 1 paint brush, 1 water-color set, 1 little porcelain doll, 1 wind-up butterfly, 1 Dove chocolate bunny with fairy wings, 1 trowel and rake set, and 1 small copy of "Chicken Soup With Rice."

i picked up two bunches of cut daffodils at the grocer today and elenora was so sweet with them. it's nice that i can just leave them on the coffee table in her reach and know that she will not pull them apart or knock them over.

she and i planted 3 plants on monday that are sitting on our window sill, and i'm looking forward to watching them grow with her.

oh, and i ordered the Kettler Go Green tricycle i've had my eye on, and it should arrive any day. i loved my tricycle growing up and am so excited to give this to her. it was such an ethical dilemma figuring out whether to order the 95% recycled Go Green trike from Amazon or to pick up a (much more expensive) non-recycled-materials Kettler tricycle downtown at my favorite toystore. i still don't know which choice would be more environmentally friendly. but maybe it all evens out?

pigtails

i was able to get some pigtails in ella's hair!  here are the adorable photos:

new clear words (just today!)

gentle
ipswich
pinky
middle
thumb
pointer
happy
funny
spill
tickle
desitin
filter
coffee
climb
clip
fence
cinnamon
dirty

i went to newburyport today and picked her up a little icey pack that is shaped like a koala that is meant to put on little kids' boo-boos when they get hurt. i gave it to her this afternoon and told her it was a "boo-boo buddy" and she started walking around saying "boo-boo buddy." this is perhaps the longest phrase she's put together so far.

her "very quiet cricket book" is running out of batteries, and sounds pretty sad. i told her it sounds "pathetic" and she started saying "pathetic."

randomly, she picked up an oval shape from a shape sorter and said "oval" and i pointed to another one and asked her what that one was and she said "circle" (and she was right in both cases, too).

and a few she's been saying for a week or more:

water
mail
bite (as in "can i have a bite?")
pine cone
dress
swing
slide
patty
apple

i heard her talking about her mimi the other day and then she suddenly switched to saying "julie" instead.

the things we do when it's been raining for days...

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pronunciation

elenora's pronunciation has really improved the past few days. all of a sudden she can clearly say words that she has said only partially before. some of these words include: white, one, ten, brunner, red...

she's started saying "hi, baby!" which is so sweet, because that is what i say to her. i'll hear her walking around saying "hi, baby." or if i talk to her on the phone she says to me "hi, baby." i took her to the park today and she walked up to a little boy who was digging in the sand with a dump truck and said to him "hi, baby!" hah.

i took her to the hannas' two days ago for a visit. they have a huge german shepherd named elsa who elenora thought was hilarious. elsa was running around with a blue frisbee and ella was laughing. she said "elsa" very clearly, but vascilated between calling elsa a "dog" and a "cow" (it's a big dog).

yesterday we viewed three more places. two of them were old and falling apart, but one of them was a large, beautiful condo in a renovated victorian home with vaulted ceilings, large windows, three bedrooms, and tons of closet space. we really liked it, and it's about in our price range. but it's in danvers, which is almost a half hour from ipswich. i'm trying to think of how a long commute would affect me. i'd have to go to bed even earlier and wake up even earlier so that i could still try to get home and have that time with ella before her nap. j. and i don't go to bed or get up at the same time right now most nights, anyhow, and sometimes i just feel like we don't really see each other or get time together unless we make an actual date night.

this whole house thing is so complicated. i feel so inadequate to make such a huge decision. even getting pre-approved has been a huge hassle. i want to go through USAA, but i can only do that over the phone during the day (which is hard because i have work and then taking care of elenora) or over the internet (which is also difficult because i don't really understand all the intricacies of the questions or how best to answer them). and j. and i never seem to have time to sit down and do it together.

also, i'm afraid of buying such a huge thing at such a huge price and then discovering that it's a nightmare of problems. buying a large, old condo (even one that's been renovated) could lead to all kinds of trouble.

or maybe it'd be great. i don't know.