christmas with the croup

yesterday morning i took elenora sledding for the first time. there are some good hills a few minutes' drive from our home, so i took her there. we had a lot of fun playing in the snow. i think i had more fun sledding than she did. ella opted to just run/crawl around in it without the sled most of the time. but it was really nice to be outside in the snow without freezing. (the temperature was up to 38 degrees yesterday.)

after ella's nap, we headed to boston for the park street church Christmas Eve service. i had planned on having elenora wear a pretty black velvet and red plaid dress, but when we went to put it on her it was too small (i'd just eye-balled it ahead of time... it was given to her last year after Christmas and i'd hoped it would work for this year...) so i quickly glanced through the closet and found this black-and-white dress that i'd picked up in a give-and-take. it turned out to be the perfect dress. so precious.

the service was lovely, and i actually got to pay attention to it this year. we sat in the very front row by the piano, where momby was located. j. and h. were there too. ella was so good. she was wiggly, but so cheerful. she definitely amused the entire row behind us. she'd randomly ask a stranger "what's your name?" or say "merry christmas!" to the baby behind us. after one of the songs she said "want to sing it again?" she sings right along with "silent night" and loved seeing the baby Jesus and Mary and Joseph.

however, as the night wore on, her little nose started running and her head felt warm. by the time we got back to the b.'s house, she was sneezing out green stuff. i put her to bed and she cried 40 minutes later. i put her back to bed, and had dinner with everyone, but then she woke up coughing something horrible around 11 pm. sounding like a seal barking. j. called the doctor and he said "croup... take her outside for a walk." so we bundled her up and took her for a late night walk around the neighborhood before driving home. not a very good night sleep. i was up for awhile at 6 something, and then up for good by 8 am.

not what i had hoped for christmas morning.

but i tried to make the best of it and just have fun with her. first, she noticed the little unicorn sticking its head out of her stocking. so i let her take that out and she played with her "mommy and baby" unicorns until breakfast was ready. she was so sweet with them--tucking them into a makeshift bed and carrying them all about.

j. came out for breakfast (he slept horribly--worrying about ella's health). blueberry pancakes, orange slices, turkey bacon and scrambled eggs.

in our rush to get ella home last night we forgot our champagne at momby's house, so we didn't have our traditional mimosas. and j. had stowed all of my presents at his parents' house and we'd forgotten them, too, so i couldn't open any of my presents.

here is ella opening her stocking...

after breakfast j. and elenora opened their presents. i really enjoyed seeing ella with her presents. i'm glad i got everything that i did. some big hits included an etch-a-sketch that has magnets shaped like animal heads, a medical kit from my mom, and a baby doll that came with lots of accoutrements like binkies, a bottle, diapers, a spoon and bowl, and a potty.

here she is pretending to pour some tylenol into a spoon for her baby.

also, j. made elenora a book by pasting about 60 photos onto blank pages and writing about her life in a way that is specifically written for her.

yes, he gets the #1 dad award. i think it's just so sweet that he would take the time to do that for her to show her how much he loves her.

after watching my family open their gifts, ella and i headed out for a walk around the neighborhood. then she had lunch and i put her down for a nap.

when she woke up we took her to j.'s parents' house along with all of our gifts for his family. the plan was to have elenora open her gifts from his family, then eat dinner all together, then put ella to bed and open all of the presents from the family. we traditionally sit around and each person takes a turn opening a present until everyone's gifts have been enjoyed. then we usually drink coffee and eat snacks and cookies and play games into the night.

then we were going to leave elenora at her grandma's so that we could get a much-needed night off.

so, well... that is what we were supposed to do.

elenora did open her presents. and we did eat dinner as a family. and we did put elenora to bed. after the first time of shutting the door and going downstairs, ella cried immediately. "want mommy to tuck you in better???" is what she cried. i found her still tucked in just fine and told her to go to sleep. 10 minutes later she cried again... "want mommy to tuck you in better???" and again she was still tucked in just fine. over the next hour and a half she kept crying... and getting more and more upset... and not sleeping at all.

i could barely open presents, which held up everyone else's present-opening. and nobody could relax and enjoy the whole thing with ella screaming upstairs. it was so frustrating. finally we brought elenora downstairs and momby packed up our things while i hurriedly opened all my gifts all at once so that i could leave--taking ella with me to put her to bed at home.

as i walked out the door i turned to say good-bye and just kind of burst into tears. 8:40 pm, and i was heading home with a sick, overtired baby.

and here i am now. feeling very sorry for myself indeed. j. will be home later with all our gifts.

oh Christmas tree

yesterday we went as a family to get ella a christmas tree.

we picked out a good "apartment-sized" tree.

here it is all decorated!

On our way home with the tree, I saw one of my midwives, who helped birth Ella, in the window of a cafe downtown, so I dropped j. at home and drove back and Ella and I went in and saw her. It was so special for me to ask Elenora where she was born in front of my midwife and to have Ella answer "I was born in the water!" Then I got a coffee and took Ella to the new park, because it was almost 40 degrees outside with no snow on the ground (something we won't see often throughout the winter).

Oh, but what an awful experience! I watched Elenora take a horrible fall onto her head. Terrifying. She was on one of those bridges that kids run across that are kind of wobbly. She's run across it a bunch of times. But on the very last run she tripped and fell sideways (away from me) and fell head-first off of the bridge (which was probably about 4 feet off of the ground). Her head hit first and then her face and neck and then the rest of her body. It was awful. I just held her and she cried and I didn't know if moving her was the right thing to do or not. I was trying to assess her injuries, but afraid of moving her. Her face was all scratched up on one side from the mulch, but otherwise she ended up being okay.

I just could never forgive myself if she had been paralyzed or broke something. As it is, the rest of the day, every time I looked at her bruised and scratched face I just burst into tears. Thankfully it is not worse than it is.

in these 2 photos you can see just a bit of the purple side of her face.

as of today she's actually looking pretty good. just a small bruise on her cheek and a few scratches. otherwise no other injuries. thank God.

ready or not?

okay, so i caved in and gave her back her binkies. she's only 2 for goodness sake. she's obviously not emotionally ready to give them up, and they aren't damaging her teeth (or her verbal skills, that's for sure). she only has them when she sleeps, and i don't think she keeps them in all night...just to get to sleep.

i know i sound like i'm trying to justify it. but i really just couldn't listen to her cry any more, and her early morning wake-ups were throwing all of us off. we tried for 5 days.

whew.

anyhow, christmas is coming and we're all pretty excited. yesterday afternoon elenora and i went to the library and found lots of wonderful books on christmas. and mrs. r. gave us an advent calendar, and i just dug out the nativity set my mom gave us. so we're having lots of fun.

and elenora is potty training so well! i haven't even read the book yet, and i don't know how to close the deal, but she goes on the potty about 5 times a day now, and she is excited about it and suggests it. the mini-oreos don't hurt her desire to go.

i'll tear myself away from moby dick for an hour to read the potty book. meanwhile, we got out 2 children's books about using the potty at the library and ella seems to really be interested in reading them. i'm not sure i like that one of the books calls the urethra a "wee-wee," though. how weird.

snowy morning

on friday j. decided that it was time for elenora to quit the binkies, cold turkey. it's been something we've been meaning to do, but have been putting off... kind of like the whole cry-it-out thing. but on my pre-nap walk with elenora on friday she said "you don't need your binkies anymore" (meaning herself) and it turns out that j. had had a discussion with her about it. well, it's been an awful few days of non-naps and partial naps. no naps on friday or saturday, and just an hour long nap today (her usual nap is about 2 hours long). then last night ella woke up at 11 pm and this morning she was up at 6:30 am. j. stayed at a friend's house last night because of the snow, so i was up terribly early this morning.

anyhow. hopefully the binky problem will soon be behind us and she will start taking naps again and sleeping in (or at least playing happily in her crib like before).

little sleep or no, i knew i needed to put on my "yay, it snowed!" face for ella, who was extremely excited about it.

we were out in the yard by 8:00 am. it really was beautiful. the kind of snow that sticks to all the tree branches.

we kicked the snow, and tromped around.

and we made snow angels. i had to show elenora how to do it, which required laying down in the snow. no snow pants on me, of course. i told her "that's love." (like when my own mother used to give me the yolky bite of her sunny side up on toast because that was the only part of a runny egg i liked growing up... or when i'm cold myself, but i take off my coat to wrap around elenora in her stroller... that's love.)

here's my angel.

and my other angel, on her sled from her grandma. i pulled her all around on this thing. too bad our biggest hill in the yard is only about five feet.

i've started "moby dick." it's been difficult to get into, but i am going to push through. some of the language is old english, and then there's so much description at the beginning i've had a hard time focusing. maybe once the actual story takes over i will figure out why it's such a famous classic.

like grandma betty

elenora was playing dress-up yesterday as i made dinner. she put all of her dress-up clothes on and then said "i look a little bit like grandma betty." (see photos from our recent trip to S.C. for comparison.)

nack nerds

there's a children's poem, made into a song, that goes: "two little black birds sitting on a hill, one named jack, one named jill. fly away jack. fly away jill. come back jack. come back jill."

the other night at dinner, elenora suddenly made up her own version of the song by putting the letter "N" in front of every word.

honestly, ella makes me laugh more than anybody.

full moon