grown up.

me, i mean. i'm 30 today. i've had a lovely day so far.

yesterday i celebrated my last day in my 20s with the following:

1) after ella's breakfast, she and i took a stroller ride downtown to zumis and got an iced coffee, then headed to the park to enjoy the autumn air. j. joined us there after awhile and he and i sat and cuddled on a picnic bench while she explored the little play houses and the slide.

2) after a shower, i went to the gym at work for a good workout (so i could feel less guilty eating all the food i knew i would consume later in the day).

3) after the gym, i dressed in a fun, summer dress and sat in the sunshine in the yard and read my book for almost an hour.

4) when ella woke up, we packed her bag and j. and i drove her over to momby's. when we arrived, j. gave me my first birthday present--a hardcover copy of elenora's 1st-year baby book, made from this blog on blurb. it is the most amazing present, and so much fun to look through. it has all the photos from her first year of life, and all of the blog entries from before i was pregnant until her first birthday. now i'm so excited to make year 2!

5) when j. and i came back home we decided to enjoy the weather and take a long walk. while out walking we passed by some fisher price toy kitchen appliances and snagged a toy rolling pin, a measuring cup, and a saucepan for elenora. (today i went back and grabbed the toy sink/dishwasher, and put it in my kitchen so that ella can wash her dishes while i wash mine! can't wait to put some actual water in her sink with suds and let her go at them!)

6) got all dolled up and went to duckworths for dinner. i had champagne and we split a shrimp and prosciutto salad, then split a lobster risotto, then we each had half-portions of our entrees so that we would have enough room to split a banana cake dessert. yum. j. and i had so much fun together.

today i slept in a bit, but i went to the gym after ella went down for her nap this afternoon, and now j. is doing the dishes for me! what a sweetheart. i really do feel very special.

tonight we're going to momby's for a family dinner party. elenora is very excited about it.

i do miss having cake. i mean the chocolate cake with chocolate frosting like my mom always made for me. nobody in j.'s family likes cake much, so i just requested pie for dessert tonight...but i find myself nostalgic for the good old chocolate chocolate. where's my mother???

i had so much fun with s. and k. the other night. indian food is amazing. i would eat it every day. and the girls gave me such thoughtful presents. they really made me feel special. k. gave me gorgeous earrings from the village silversmith of rockport, and she gave me a wallet that was made with such beautiful fabric and ribbons. i told her it makes me feel grown up, and she said "oh you ARE grown up baby." s. gave me a framed piece of artwork that takes me back to vermont every time i look at it. it is very folk-artsy, with cows and farmland in the foreground and mountains in the background. i told ella it's a picture of where i grew up.

the weather is amazing these past few days. cool, sunny, crisp, lovely. it's funny to think that in the space of 5 days i went from dressing ella in a t-shirt for bed to dressing her in her fleece jammas.

last night j. and i were thinking about ella's second year of life, and we realized that there has essentially been nothing bad that has happened to our family this past year. reading back through some of those months of ella's first year of life, you can hear the struggles we were going through with ella's sleep and j.'s job situation. but this past year j.'s had a good job and ella's been sleeping great. my job is still good (i'm up for a raise this week--fingers crossed), and i've really found a great balance between work, family, homemaking, friends and me-time. the past few days when elenora wakes up, her first question is "where are we going today?" or "what are we going to do today?" we have amazingly fun times together. i'm so lucky.

baking together

today was our first baking project together--ella and me. one reason i haven't baked with her before today is that we don't have a good set-up for her to help me in the kitchen. our table is in the dining room, and the kitchen is tiny, without a little table for her to easily work with me. but today i decided to pull her high chair and tray into the kitchen and let her help me from there.

i can't even express how much fun it was. c. sent me a new cooking magazine for my birthday and it had a banana streussel muffin recipe in it that i had pretty much all the ingredients for (i substituted a few things). elenora was so good at helping me. she put the ingredients in the bowl and helped me pat down the brown sugar (while licking her fingers the whole time) and stirred the ingredients together. she was so good, and interested in everything. she helped me grease the muffin pan with butter, and then told me which cup to place the batter in. then she helped me sprinkle all the uncooked muffins with the streussel mixture. as they cooked in the oven she was so interested in them that we pulled her stool up in front of the oven and she kept sitting there to look through the lighted window.

they turned out pretty good, too.

i used frozen ripe bananas that have been sitting in my freezer for a good year or so, and i didn't have any all-purpose flour--just wheat--and i didn't have any walnuts, so i used oats in the streussel instead. also i used olive oil instead of canola. but with all those substitutions the muffins actually taste pretty good.

tonight s. and k. are taking me out for indian cuisine for my birthday... the first of three nights celebrating my 30th. tomorrow night ella will sleep over at momby's and j. will be taking me to duckworths, our favorite restaurant, for an amazing meal (their food is incredible). monday night momby is hosting a party on my actual birthday. she's making lamb... mmm.

we haven't heard anything about the house. we might hear something on tuesday. we're not expecting to get the house, but it's exciting anyhow. we're both sort of hoping we get it. it really would be a great place to live. but we know that only God can put us there, and we're trusting that he knows if it's actually a good situation for us or not and will make things happen accordingly.

it's raining today. this is the first rainy day in weeks. the last 2 days have been amazingly beautiful. i awoke on thursday and thought "it's autumn now." you could feel it in the air.

thursday afternoon s. brought aurora over and we took the girls down to the park. while we were there ella was swinging on the baby swings and aurora and s. were on the big, bench swing and i asked ella if she wanted to swing on the bench swing with aurora and she said "want to not swing on the big swing with rora?" but then 1o minutes later after aurora had moved away from the big swing these 2 big girls placed their stuffed animals on the bench swing and ran away. ella was curious, saying "kitties on the swing!" and she walked over to look. one of the big girl's little sisters must have thought ella was going to steal the stuffed animals, and she ran over and stood in front of the swing with her arms stretched out and a glare on her face. poor ella has never been glared at before, and she just stood there talking to the little girl. i went over and said "ella, this little girl doesn't want to share with you" (can you tell i was hurt, too?) "let's come over here with mommy." elenora looked up at me sadly and said "mommy asked you 'do you want to swing on the big swing'." which for some reason struck me as really perceptive--she just expresses herself with such clarity and understands her own emotions so well.

anyhow, so we took the girls to zumis for ice cream.

tonight during dinner ella and i were talking about cats and i asked her "ella, where is freddy?" and she said "in cat heaven" and so i asked her "where is god?" and she answered "in god heaven."

ella-isms

"you and i." ...she said this at penelope's house when they were sitting next to each other on the floor playing. ella scooted up next to penelope, shoulder to shoulder, and said "you and i" very affectionately. (or she'll say this when we get back from the beach and i place her and myself in the tub to rinse off. or she'll say this when she and j. sit on the couch together.)

"want to not do that?!?" ...in casa de moda when she was busy climbing on a kid-sized chair and i wanted to hold up a leotard to see if it would fit her and i said "ella, can you come over here so i can try this on you?" and she answered "want to not try that on?!?" (she's getting pretty good at negating sentences.)

"where's God?" ...while half-way through reading the golden book about "God" at bedtime. she was looking at all the pictures of the children and the flowers and the animals, and it suddenly struck her that God wasn't on the page. that was a hard one to explain.

"it's not good." ...at dinner-time when there's something on her plate that she doesn't want to eat. i respond, "yes it is good, ella." and she restates: "no, it's not good." (this is new, and it is a phase i expect her to grow out of by the end of the week.)

"what's that?" ...she says this, to my chagrin, when she can't tell if a person is male or female (like a woman with short hair or a man with long hair). i've realized that this is what she means because this statement is usually followed 30 seconds later with a statement such as "not a boy" or "not a lady." i try to soften the blow to the person in question by answering "what's that?" with a statement such as "the lady is wearing a necklace" (so that they think she means their jewelry and so that ella is clued in to the fact that it's a lady) etc.

poo happens

elenora went poo on the potty last night! i sat her down just before her tubby, as usual, and after a few minutes of us just chatting and laughing she leaned forward and made a face and i heard a little plop! i was so excited. only a parent gets that excited, right? i said "elenora! that's fantastic!" and we gave her a special teddy bear sticker for her chart.

very cool in a very "so you're a mom" way.

j. and i looked at a house yesterday. we met with our realtor today and talked with our broker, and i think we're going to put in an offer--possibly tomorrow. i don't think we'll get it...it's a short sale and priced very well, and the realtor showing the house said she expected lots of offers higher than the asking price...but it's kind of exciting to think this could be our home. i had such a difficult time sleeping last night because of all the thoughts racing through my head.

moments

yesterday, i forget why, j. asked ella out of the blue "what are some things that daddy tells you not to do?" and ella thought about it and said "not to point at people." which was something he had told her in a restaurant a full week before.

i took elenora outside to play with chalks on thursday afternoon, and we saw some little bugs hopping about in the grass and ella looked at me earnestly and said "bugs are bad." i laughed out loud on that one, because of course we've never told ella that bugs are bad... she's just sort of made her own conclusions. i think maybe she was influenced by the time we were going to the beach but when we got there the greenheads (huge biting flies that attack you for 1-2 weeks of the summer at the ocean up here) were swarming around the car and i just drove us through the parking lot and out again saying "there are bad bugs here; let's go to russell orchard."

yesterday we were doing the clean up song and ella likes to throw out names of people who have to clean up, so she threw out the name "laurie" with a sly little look like "you didn't think i'd remember her, did you?" and i sang "laurie has to clean up! abbie has to clean up! elsa has to clean up!" then i asked her "ella, what is elsa?" and ella said "elsa's a dog." (and this is incredible because we haven't seen this dog but 3 times in her life--the last time being june or something when we took abbie out for ice cream.) so i asked ella "where did we go with abbie?" and she said "for ice cream."

elenora is rhyming all the time now. she'll get herself started and then just keep going. she'll say "coat, boat, toat, moat" and then change to "rhyming, miming, timing, giming" etc. or we'll go back and forth with it.

she did end up spending the night at her mam-aw's last night. j. and i went to dinner in newburyport and took a really late night walk around town. it's been so hot and muggy here. they keep saying we'll get some storms, but they've all traveled above or below us. it felt cool when we stepped outside for our walk last night, and then we realized that that was only the case because it was so hot inside.

one of momby and r.'s dogs died this past week. we had to explain it to elenora. i overheard her later that day saying to herself "other dog went to doggy heaven."

hot

when ella went to bed last night i thought she felt a little warm. but it's been 90+ degrees outside every day for a week, so i just pushed it out of my mind. at 4 am i awoke to elenora crying so hard. i went in and she was the hottest i have ever felt her. her limbs were all tense and kind of shaking. it was really scary. we administered tylenol, and got a wet wash cloth and a cup of water, and sat by the open window in the rocking chair. she just kept saying "sing another song" and so i'd sing another song until finally her head became cooler and she said "want to go in your crib?" and so i put her in her crib at 5 am and then got up and checked on her at 6 am. then i dragged myself out of bed to go to work.

when she got up later her head was cooler, and besides a lack of appetite, she has been acting fairly normal. when j. woke her up this morning she told him sadly "i had a bad nap. mommy put some tylenol on you."

i keep going over in my head all the places we have been this week--trying to both enjoy and stay out of the heat--and wondering if she could have picked up a bug somewhere.

monday morning i took ella to the beach and we went swimming. then monday afternoon when she woke up i said "do you want to go to the mall?" (thinking of where we could be in air conditioning) and she was very excited to go to the mall, which seemed strange to me since she's been there about five times in her life. so i asked her "what do you think is at the mall?" and she said "teddy bears at the mall!" which surprised me because, sure enough her grandma had taken her to look in build-a-bear back in june when we got photos taken at the mall for father's day. i couldn't believe she remembered that. so i took her to the mall and k. met us there and we got a little candle at Yankee Candle for ella to hold (vanilla cupcake, mmm) and 2 shirts at children's place.

on the way home from the mall ella was holding a book about corduroy's pocket, and i started telling her the story verbally while i was driving, and every time i got to the end she would say "read it again." so i told that story about the pocket about 6 times. in the middle of monday night, elenora woke up crying and i went in and she said "want to find a pocket? where's my pocket?" and i said "here it is ella, in my hand" and i "gave" her a pocket from my hand and she went right off to sleep. she must have dreamed about a pocket.

tuesday morning she woke up talking about baby nathan and how she was going to see him. maybe she had another dream? so i called m. and she invited us over for lunch with her and nathan. then in the afternoon elenora and j. and i went to the beach. she loves putting her face right into the ocean water and then comes up laughing.

wednesday after ella's nap i took her to the library to meet up with frannie and j.l. while we were there i pulled some books off the shelf that we had gotten out a couple months ago, and ella took a look at them and said "emily's birthday" and "little bear and the missing pie"... which are the exact titles on the covers of these books. somehow she knew the titles and had remembered them for a couple months.

someone should study her brain.

h. met up with us at the library and she and i took elenora to zumis for ice cream. then ella and i went to get our vegetables.

anyhow, today i'm sort of dragging with the lack of sleep. it's at least not as hot outside. we were going to have ella sleep over at momby's tomorrow night, but we'll have to see how she's feeling.

e. had her baby on tuesday night. little robyn verna. i told elenora she has a new cousin.

questions and answers.

the other day after ella woke up from her nap she asked me, "did you have a dream?" which is how she tells me that i should ask her "did you have a dream?" she said "yeah." i said "what was your dream about?" and she said "milk." which was very specific, so i'm pretty sure she really did have a dream about milk. i didn't realize she would know what a dream was or what it was called. i asked her if it was about mam-aw, daddy, etc. and turns out bubba and mommy were also involved in the dream.

when we put ella in her crib for a nap or for bedtime, the last thing she says every time is "go outside a wake up." which means she wants to go outside when she wakes up. it's her favorite thing.

she has been going on the potty again. two nights in a row she went right when we put her on the potty before her tub. she pointed down and said "goes in there" and then she just went. i told her she could have a sticker and she said "just like molly matthews!" (which is the name of the little girl in the potty book we got ella).

we were reading a book that had an airplane in it and i said "did you go on an airplane?" ella said "yeah." "where did we go?" i asked. ella answered, "to see mimi..." then she thought for a second and said "swimming in the pool." i said "did we swim in a pool with mimi?" ella answered "yeah. mimi blew bubbles." "you're right, mimi was blowing bubbles. what did she say when she blew bubbles?" "bubble bubble bubble." that's going back about 2 months.

we play a game sometimes that i like to call: "is this a silly song or a serious song?" i'll sing a song and after a few words she will tell me if it's a silly song or a serious song. she's really good at being accurate.

i also like to ask her about her food: "is it [hot, cold, spicy, salty, sweet, juicy, sticky, etc.]?" she's really good about describing what she is eating correctly.

yesterday we took elenora to the beach, and she and i swam in the ocean for at least a half hour. she loves the water. even if she gets it on her face, she just laughs. i feel bad for the mothers who are trying so hard to bring their babies into the water and the babies are just crying and crying.

when i ask her where she was born she usually answers "born in the country" (!?! i don't know where she got that from!) but then she will more seriously say "born in the water." maybe that's why she loves it so much?

i got ella some sidewalk chalk yesterday and we spent a good hour after her nap playing with it outside our building. i drew various shapes and colored them all in differently and then we played a game where i said "can you stand on a [blue circle, yellow triangle, white star, etc.]?" and she would run over and stand on the correct shape. she's so much fun.

ella sings all the time now. and i hear her rhyming all the time, too. yesterday i overheard her humming a song and based on the tune and the rhythm i knew it was "are you sleeping, are you sleeping, brother john? brother john?" on our way to the beach yesterday j. and i took turns asking her "can you sing..." various songs, and she would sing them all the way through, including edelweiss, the ABC song, and others.

today she was playing with her toys and she was actually speaking for them. one of her dolls was asking "can i have a ride?" her imagination is really blooming. sometimes when she speaks for a toy she will hold it right up to her mouth as if she's breathing the words right into their mouths.

momby is gone again right now, and most of our house is in desperate need of attention. j. took elenora to russell orchard this morning so that i could clean up ella's room. i'm looking forward to ella's next sleepover at her mam-aws, which is when i really get to do some good cleaning. tonight j. and h. are coming over to babysit while we go out. i think we're going to that little theater to watch "food inc."

a busy day.

yesterday was a really full day. after work i realized that i needed to take a piece of tupperware back to a lady in the office, so i grabbed ella and we went to ebscoland to drop it off. it was so fun to bring her to show to everyone, since it's been a really long time since i've done that. she was really sweet to everyone and they were all impressed with her verbal ability. she pointed to a. and said "that one's a boy!" and then she counted to 10 and sang the ABCs for m. it was really sweet.

then we came home and she ate lunch and went down for her nap. i took "a day in the life" back to the library and picked up the gulag archipelago, and then i called my doctor and set an appointment for 2 in the afternoon to have someone (finally) look at my fingers. three fingers on my right hand have been irritated for over a year. it started with the tip of my middle finger, then spread to the tip of my pinky, then to the tip of my ring finger. and lately it has started moving down my fingers. they are all dried and cracked and itchy. i was fairly certain it was caused by the baby wipes, and when i got to the doctor he said i have an allergy to the wipes and have to avoid touching them from now on.

does this mean i don't have to change diapers anymore? well...

so he gave me some plastic gloves to wear, and some corticosteroid cream. we have been thinking of potty training ella around her second birthday. maybe we'll start sooner. any helpful advice on that would be welcome!

when ella woke up from her nap, s. brought aurora over and we all walked downtown (no strollers) to get the girls some strawberry ice cream. they were adorable splitting a kiddie cup. then we all went to the river walk and the girls ran around for a long while. walking back up the hill to get the girls home was a bit tiring, but a good work out. ella of course wanted to pick every flower we passed. when the girls said their good-byes they gave each other a huge hug. it's so cute.

today as she was falling asleep for her nap i heard her on the monitor saying "go to the river when you wake up...go see rora."

elenora's new favorite thing to do is to rhyme. she'll say "want some haps?" and i'll say "want some saps?" and she'll say "want some baps?" and i'll say "yes, but do you want some caps?" and she will switch things up and say "want some hics?" and i'll say "how about a little pics?" and she'll continue the thread of rhyming, changing the first consonant up each time. it's so smart.

today i had such an odd schedule. momby is gone again, so i had to go to work and then come home and then go back. while i was home i took ella out for a walk to rite aid to get my prescription cream. then we played in the yard for a 1/2 hour. she loves being outside and picking flowers. i always find random drying and fading flowers all over our floors and table surfaces that she's brought in and dropped.

1 john 5:13-15

something awful happened this afternoon.

our day was going so well, too. we went to church and ella had a lovely time in the nursery. the sermon was wonderful. it was on 1 John.

we went out to breakfast with momby, r., j. and h. at sophia's, then ella had a good nap and afterwards h. met up with us for a walk downtown to the town's 375th anniversary celebration where we had ice cream and got ella a balloon. then we went to the winthrop elementary school playground to meet up with j., where he and his brother were going to videotape themselves doing some dunks on the courts...

when j. arrived he put his things down on a bench and came to say hello to elenora. he had brought 3 mini video cassette tapes with him because his brother had borrowed our video camera and j. didn't know if there would be a tape with space on it for them to tape on. he was going to check them all at the courts to see which one had space...

there were about 5 teenage boys at the courts. at some point while j. was sending ella and me off home, these boys decided to swipe all 3 of the video cassette tapes...

tapes with irreplaceable footage of elenora's last 22 months.

i felt like they stole minutes of my daughter's life. it was heartbreaking. i felt like it was footage she would never be able to see of herself. precious footage of ella singing songs. footage of our trip to NC to see her mimi and poppy. and who knows what all else.

brutal.

i wrote out 5 large posters to put up around town, begging for the tapes to be returned. i want no trouble, i said. just please return our tapes.

j. went out to hang them up. he was gone for 1/2 an hour. when he walked back into the house he was holding the 3 mini video cassette tapes.

he'd gone to 3 different establishments around town to hang posters, then decided to go back to the courts just in case there was anything there. there were kids there, and j. walked up and asked if any of them had taken the tapes and one kid said "oh, here they are. i didn't know they were yours."

we're just so relieved.

1 John 5:13-15: "And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he hears us."

sure enough

ella slept over at her mam-aw's house last night and we went to weathervane for dinner and then met up with the hutsons. they're having a boy--just found out. jude harvey.

i woke up early today and for a moment i lay there thinking "i have to get up and go to work or care for ella" and then i sank back into a deep sleep as i remembered that i had no obligations this morning. lovely. when i woke up it was almost 9 and j. suggested that we go out to breakfast and then head out on a road trip to ME. it was the most perfect day of the summer--warm with a cool breeze and no humidity at all. the sky was blue and you could walk at a brisk pace without sweating at all. we hit traffic in NH and decided to take the exit for portsmouth, which was beautiful. we window shopped and walked and split an iced coffee and ate sandwiches at a harbor restaurant. we got elenora a kazoo and a book about using the potty and a frisbee.

when we got home we relaxed for awhile and then i heard ella outside our building and i ran down and played with her in the yard. it was so nice to see her. she loved her kazoo and the book, and before dinner j. and i took her back outside and took advantage of the gorgeous weather by throwing the frisbee while ella wandered the yard after a black and white cat that likes to visit us.

i know i've been brutal about writing lately. i told j. that it's partly from a lack of being able to upload photos onto our new computer, so i think he's going to give me a new camera for my birthday. i'm really excited about that prospect.

i was looking into taking a russian course at gordon, but they're not offering this semester. i just figured that with all the thick literature i love reading i might as well do it for some credit. i'll have to see. i finished cancer ward and i'm now reading "a day in the life of ivan denisovich," by the same author. it's a short book. i'll finish it soon.

last night a. asked me what is new in our lives, and j. and i found we had a hard time explaining. it's not that nothing is happening. it's just that what is happening is mostly the little every-day things of life that keep us happy and busy, but that seem so unimportant when we tell them to people.

elenora sang the entire alphabet song this week several times.

also, we took a trip to beverly to walk with k. to a cafe for ice cream and coffees. on our way back we stopped by k.'s neighbor's yard to look at 2 dogs in their yard. one was named precious, and ella said "hello little precious!" k. asked her a question and elenora responded "sure enough!" which made me laugh so hard, as i've never heard her say that before.

frannie gave ella a stack of books last week, including 2 "angelina ballerina" books that ella is just in love with. and e. recommended the book "the littlest matryoshka," which we got from the library this week and are loving.

elenora doesn't really say the "s" combination sound ("sm-" "st-" etc.) so when she says "smiling" it sounds like "miling" and when she says "making a stack" it sounds like "making a dack." which gets kind of interesting when we're outside and she picks up a little or big stick. (i'll let everyone figure that out themselves.)

we've had lots of play dates since there's been such lovely weather. that's another factor that has led to a dearth of writing. we've seen e. and penelope twice in the last two weeks. we went to their house last week, and e. and i had a great time catching up while the girls so sweetly played together.

tomorrow momby and r., and j. and h. are meeting us for church in essex, then we're all going out for brunch. i think there's some big town thing going on here in the afternoon. i hope the weather is just as nice as today, although the report says rain.

i would re-live today over and over again. it was just perfect.

rowdy

last night h. babysat for us so we could get out of the house for an evening. momby has been gone 10 days (just returned today) and we needed some fun time out. we decided to go see "away we go" at a local arts theater in a town nearby. i love local theaters. they're so intimate, and much less expensive than the cinema at the mall.

after we got home, h. said that after she put elenora to bed she could hear her singing and chatting for quite awhile. before i had left i told ella that she could sleep with blue bunny only if blue bunny was not rowdy. well, after listening to ella play for over a half hour, h. went into ella's room to settle her down. apparently elenora stood up immediately and pushed blue bunny toward h. and said "blue bunny too rowdy!"