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

Just One Week

It's amazing how fast time has been flying by.

Poor Elena woke up in the middle of the night Friday throwing up next to me. It was a stomach bug that passed super quickly, but she wasn't feeling great all weekend.
She's a real trooper, though, because she still managed to have a good time. Here she is playing with her oatmeal "sandbox."
And she enjoyed a visit from my mother-in-law.She's cooking something up.She's making something for me here, too.I made a felt board for her. You can probably guess which song these pieces are for. And we made play dough. She helped. She really likes to squish it now. I have to watch her closely, since lately she holds everything up to her mouth, then looks at me to tell her not to put it in. Ahh, the testing phase . . . By the way, who would've thought that a toddler wouldn't like getting her hands dirty? I'm always encouraging her to dig right into things (like the finger paint, oatmeal, dirt, the play dough, etc.), but a lot of the time she doesn't want to. I'm glad that she's enjoying the play dough, though, even if her hands do get dirty.

She's so much fun. I've enjoyed every stage, but we really have a blast with her. She has a great sense of humor, likes to hide, and let's us know what she wants. Now when I ask her "How much does Mommy love you?" she puts her arms out to the sides. Lately she's wanted me to sing to her until she falls asleep, rather than read a book, she prefers to play with cups in the bath rather than the actual toys, and she likes to cuddle on the couch when she's getting sleepy.

18 Months

Elena Rose an 18 month old. Crazy!
This was the first time she even tried to catch a ball.
. . . and we have ourselves a little hoarder. She kept walking back and forth between the playroom and her bedroom to throw everything in her crib.A couple of weeks ago she started pointing to her diaper whenever she would go to the bathroom, and then she wanted to sit on the toilet.

And then she got her own potty.She hasn't quite figured out what it's for, but she likes it.

And I sewed her a dress! Now that it's done, our beautiful weather has gone away and it's cold, but she'll be able to wear it soon enough. Here she is trying it on over her clothes.
I also made her these little mittens. (The mitten tutorial can be found here)All is well over here. She's growing and changing so quickly, but that makes it fun at the same time. Every time I'm serving her food she says "blow," to make sure it's not hot. And every time I say "ready," she says "set . . . " I never realized before how often I say "ready." She also blows kisses all the time and tries to do the motions to "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" and "Wheels on the Bus." Whenever she gets hurt she wants an ice pack to hold on her owie. When she sees pictures of crying babies she whimpers, and when her toddler friend is upset she pats her on the back. She's super sweet.

Projects

We didn't do much for New Year's Eve. I actually didn't even realize it was New Year's and I went to the grocery store at 7 pm, just to find out it was closed. I was never one to really celebrate it, and having a toddler makes it an even smaller event--at least for us. We had a quiet night. We've been pretty busy though.

We laughed the other day because while Elena Rose was napping, I was working with my sewing machine and Jorge was in the backyard cutting wood to build something . . . makes us sound old-fashioned! We sure have been accomplishing a lot, though.

I can't lie, I love to organize things. I completely emptied and reorganized our pantry, which had been building up clutter for the last 2 years, making it impossible to find anything. Here's the before: You wouldn't believe how much had expired, and how much was unopened that we forgot about because we couldn't see it! Here's the after:And I sewed this, which is now my favorite scarfMeanwhile Jorge built the base for Elena's playhouse (a cute little wooden one that I found on Craigslist). He also cleared out the area around it, so she'll have this whole area to play house.And he built this little table to put inside of the playhouse, for her kitchen toys and whatever else she wants to play on it.Now all that's left for the playhouse is painting the base and trim of the house, and decorating around it. She needs a little landscaping, right? I'll post pictures when it's done.

I couldn't do a post without adding pictures of her. All is well!

Playtime

I have this entire week off of work, and it's been really nice . . . lots of quality time for all three of us.

Elena's new favorite thing is feeding treats to Ginger and Charlie. She just grabs handfuls of treats from the bag and throws them on the ground. Ginger and Charlie love it too!Charlie was running around inside and Elena was pointing at him and laughing. She loves the dogs.We've been going to the park for the last 3 days since the weather has been so nice. She likes to look for squirrels on the walk and at the park, and a lot of them are really used to being around people so they'll get close (sometimes a little too close).The slide is her favorite thing. She'll go down then want us to help her climb back up so she can go again about 10 or 20 times. Right next to the park there's a big open field, so she likes to go there and run around and play chase. She found a pine cone the other day and I told her, "That's a pine cone. They fall out of the trees." The next day she found a pine cone and held it up to the tree. Then today I asked her to find a pine cone and she did. And she held it up to the tree again. I was proud of her (they learn so quickly!) so I told her to bring the pine cone home. She put it in the seat of her stroller and "helped" me push it. Then about every 10 feet she would stop and walk around to the front to make sure the pine cone was still there.My grandma got me this umbrella for Christmas. Elena saw it and just had to play with it, and she loved it. So for awhile today she and Jorge were hanging out under the umbrella, on the couch.She loves to clean up. I washed a cup for her to play with and she immediately took it to her little kitchen and pretended to wash it in her sink. Then this morning she wanted a baby wipe and I gave it to her and she started wiping down her room.

The flip side of this is that she isn't the biggest fan of getting dirty. She walks up to me all the time with a hair or a piece of fuzz that she wants to throw away. So I wasn't sure how she would respond to finger painting. We've done it for the last two nights before her bath. It's taking some getting used to, but a few more times and she'll get the hang of it. She got some paint on her foot and didn't like it.Then I ended up sticking her entire foot in it. In the middle of the painting tonight she started doing this motion with her hands, which she does when she wants me to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star." She's making the "diamond in the sky."This is the finished product from the first night. Pretty impressive, considering she didn't really want to touch the paint!