Regrets

You know when you do something that you know you shouldn't do but you do it anyway, and then it comes back to bite you in the butt? Well, I am feeling that right now. I didn't want to wake Ella up from her morning nap today because when I wake her up she tends to be really crabby. Now she is refusing to take her afternoon nap and we have small group tonight. It would be really nice if she slept now so she will do well tonight. It seems like this happens a lot. Every time I swear I will never let her sleep too late in the morning again, but I know I will. Because sometimes it just doesn't seem worth it to keep her schedule so tight.

Cookie Baking 2009

Every year for the last 20 years my mom's family has gotten together to do a Christmas cookie exchange, and let me tell you, it is the best day of the Christmas season. Christmas eve and day are fun and everything, but there is just something about our annual cookie baking day that is near and dear to my heart. I love my mom's family, but there are a lot of them and so on Christmas day it is pretty crazy and kind of difficult to have a whole lot of quality time with everyone, especially since we now divide our time with my family and Kyle's. But on cookie baking day it is mostly my aunts, my mom and sister, and my Grandma, with a few cousins thrown in and random extra people. It is a bit smaller (not that anything is small in a family of nearly 50!) and so much fun! We listen to Christmas music cranked up loud and help each other make cookies. There is a lot of laughter and reminiscing about past years and how our family has grown and changed. Except for one year when the kitchen was being remodeled, my mom has hosted every cookie baking. I think there is something special about having this day on the farm. Maybe its just me, but Christmas feels more Christmas-ey when it is on a farm. I suppose I just feel that way because I grew up on a farm.


I stole some pictures from my sister's facebook page to give all of my none family member blog readers an idea of what the day is like:

Here I am showing off dough I mixed up for my mom

Ella "helped" organize the cut outs for sugar cookies

Here are my aunts Paula, Cathy, and Carla, Carla's daughter Calli and me working on cookies

Ella's Words and Noises

Ella has always been a pretty vocal person, but she hasn't used a whole lot of words until just recently. They say that toddlers have a verbal explosion around 18 months, and that is definitely true of Ella. There were a handful of words and names that she has known for a long time, but these days it seems like she is repeating new words almost every day. Here are some of her new favorites:

Monkey
Back
Neck
Wet
Apple
Uck
Duck- luckily she is really good at doing the "d" sound!

She says more than that, but those are the newest and most used. She still doesn't use sentences, or even 2 words together. Hopefully soon she will start actually talking so we won't be so clueless as to what she wants. Another new verbal thing for Ella is making animal noises. Until a few weeks ago she only did cat, dog and cow noises. Now she can do almost every farm animal and some extras. The other animal noises she makes are:

Horse
Pig
Sheep
Goat
Chicken/bird/duck- they all sound the same
Owl
Monkey
Lion/Tiger

The best one is her pig noise. She won't do it very often, but I think it is hilarious! It is really exciting to hear her repeating more words and then remembering them later and randomly saying them. It really does seem like she learns a new word almost every day.

New Man in Ella's Life

Several times I have posted pictures of Ella with the leading man in her life, our friend's son Hurshle. Well, Hurshle moved this fall and there is a new little man competing for Ella's love. His name is Owen and he is another friend's son. He is a bit younger than Ella; in fact he will turn 1 on Christmas Eve. We have babysat him a few times in the last couple months, and Ella loves it when he comes over!

Giving Owen a hug

Parallel Play

Drinking buddies

Fall Fun

It has been a long time since I have posted anything, so I think my goal will be a new post every day this week. I will start with some fun fall pictures I took a really long time ago before this snow storm we are currently being hit with.

This fall I raked up a big pile of leaves for Ella to play in. She actually liked playing with the rake more than playing in the leaves. It is very difficult to get good pictures of Ella because she wants to play with the camera every time she sees it, but here are a few anyways.

She kind of looks like she is swimming through the leaves

Here she was playing with the rake (until she saw the camera!)

This one is somewhat cute