Love, Love, Love

Happy Valentine's Day! It's felt a little hectic over here; Jorge has been working a lot, and I've been really busy at work. But life is good! I have a husband and daughter who I adore.

Here are some details I wanted to highlight from the last couple of weeks.

She likes to dip her chicken in ketchup now . . . she loves ketchup.
She also eats a lot of blueberries, which makes me happy. And she still loves her baby dolls. She likes to climb inside the ball hamper to play, and she took one of her dolls in there and pretended to feed her.
She's more into the pull-toys now.I made her little birds with a nest. She was too young to help, but she likes her little birds. (I found the directions here)Bed hair
I put a little apron on her for the first time and she wore it all day, even under her sweater. She likes the pockets.
This is what our bed looks like in the morning.I kiss her all the time.
For Valentine's Day I made a heart potato stamp for her to paint with. She smeared more than she stamped, but it kept her amused for a little while. It took a little while for her to start using words, but now she mimics a lot of the words we say. My favorite so far is "dog." She says "oooh" all the time, when something happens or to mean "uh oh," and she keeps her mouth in the "O" shape for a few seconds. When I ask her how much I love her she puts her arms out. Today we were listening to children's music online and the song said, "If you're happy and you know it, wink your eyes," and she started closing her eyes really tight and then opening them, and it took me a few seconds to realize she knew what they were saying. I showed her how to wink her eyes once when we heard the song, and I was surprised that she remembered. The song she's enjoying the most right now is "Wheels on the Bus," because she likes to do the hand motions.

Changes

I put in my resignation at work today. My last day of work will be March 2nd. It was difficult to tell everybody since I've enjoyed working there, but they seemed to be really happy for me. And I'm excited to be able to stay at home with Elena Rose.

I feel so blessed to have this opportunity, and I feel really blessed to have a husband who sacrifices to make it a reality. Not only does Jorge have a challenging job supervising clinicians at a probation camp, but a few nights each week after work, he works as a children's therapist for a mental health agency. Then on the weekends he usually has something he's working on for the house. Needless to say, between all of that work and spending time with me and Elena Rose, he's super busy. But he always finds time to show us that he loves us. He's awesome, and I love him.

There are a lot of changes I want to make now that I'll be staying at home. My New Year's resolution is to cook more, and I definitely want to implement this. I haven't cooked much since having Elena.

I've been working on improving my patience, and I want to continue this. Elena's at the age now where she does the exact opposite of what she's told, just for the sake of it. And she usually looks at me and smiles while she does it. I'm a very calm person, but not exactly a patient one. So I'm working on this so that I can be the best mommy I can be; she deserves that.

I also want to take better care of myself. Sometimes I fix her lunch and I'm so concerned about what she'll be eating that after I feed her I realize I haven't even thought of feeding myself. It's amazing how much things change after having a baby.

I want to have playdates so she's around other children more, and I want her to have more outside play since the play area in the backyard is almost done. The park is close, so we'll be able to go there a lot, too.

The last major thing I want to accomplish is getting a lot done during the day so that the evenings and weekends all family time, and we can just focus on being together. That'll be nice.

She finally has her area set up in the backyard. We still need to paint, but it's pretty much done. Now the rest of the backyard needs to follow . . .

Her playhouse is surrounded by recycled rubber.

We planted flowers for her. Now we just have to teach her not to pull them out . . . Amy visited yesterday, and Elena enjoyed visiting with her.I've enjoyed my work, and while I'll be sad to stop working with my friends, I think it will be an easy transition for me. Here's why