elenora has become such a good helper around the house. when she leaves a room she turns off the light. when she puts something down on the coffee table, she puts a coaster underneath it. when she leaves the table and i'm clearing things to the sink, she will take it upon herself to push in the chairs for me. she is also good at setting the table and is learning how to fold the laundry. she is an expert sock matcher and stuffer, so j. will no longer receive a pile of clean socks to sort and fold himself (yes, i put my foot down on folding his socks for him). elenora will take it upon herself to clean up the play room if she notices me picking up the house. last week she said "i'm helping to pick things up because you do so much around here, mommy."
which felt good in every way.
elenora has now gone a week without any nighttime diapers. only one accident, on the third night. we tried waking her up at 11 pm and putting her on the potty so she could go , and that worked out fine for a few nights. but then one night i went in and she was already awake and said "hi mommy!" and i didn't realize until 15 minutes of sitting on the pot later that she had already taken herself to the potty and i was waiting for nothing. then she had a hard time falling back asleep for about an hour. i certainly don't want to create a night waking habit, and would rather wash bedding than get woken up throughout the night. so we went back to letting her do it herself and she's had no accidents since. here's hoping diapers are all done (for this kid at least).
elenora is still really good about finding creative play to do when she wakes up. though, she is such an early bird that i have heard her playing downstairs at 5:45 am before and had to go down to tell her it's still nighttime. at least she lets us sleep and just entertains herself. on the weekends she will wait until after 8 am to come in and i'll sleepily let her climb in next to me and she is so snuggly--stroking my cheak and giving kisses and saying "hello sweetheart!" (to me) which just melts my heart.
we're in the middle of january and there's still no snow. we've had more 40 degree weather than we've had 20 degree weather. i'm enjoying it, since we can still push the stroller to the park and ride bikes outside, etc. i know ella would love to see some snow, though. she says that winter is her favorite season, because she loves sledding and skating and all other snow activities. without the snow, we've been able to practice kicking around a soccer ball. ella is getting pretty good at dribbling the ball, though her favorite thing might be when she accidentally kicked her shoe off her foot when she kicked the ball--bringing us to call it the game of "socker".
ella is 40 inches tall.
i've started working 4 extra hours a week at work to increase our income while j. ramps up his clientele at the private practice. his H.E.S. job is done, so the focus is all on this private practice. he continues to get multiple referrals a week, so we're not too worried. but it's going to be very strange not having that salary for awhile.
we watched the documentary film "Food Inc." a week ago, and we've undergone our own food revolution since then. i've started buying all our meat and as much locally grown produce as i can get at a local farm, and i'm trying to really focus on buying organic foods. the local meat tastes so much better than store bought. which makes a lot of sense when you see how industrial meat is produced.
i'm also counting calories on an app on my iPhone. never did that before, so it will be interesting to see how that impacts my health. i've been getting to the gym about 4-5 times a week since thanksgiving, which feels really good. i even took ella on christmas day and she and i did some yoga and tumbling together.
i think i need a new church. i don't get anything out of the sermons at the church where we've been going. and sometimes they are so exclusive (presupposing that everyone in the pews are the same--like that we're all republican conservatives etc.) that i just feel like if anyone asked me what i thought about a topic they would be so shocked and then would shut me out. i don't want to feel excluded or like i can't bring my own thoughts to the discussion. i'd like to be in a church community where dialogue is welcome and people listen to each other and learn from each other.
it's a year full of changes ahead of us... and already so many changes have occurred.
