Ellie's 2nd birthday: part 2

On the day before Ellie's birthday, we took her out to breakfast to Cracker Barrel. She had a ton of fun & loved looking at everything in the store!

The morning of her birthday, I made pancakes, and I made a Mickey Mouse shaped pancake for her. She LOVED it!

 

We had some fun and played with her during the day, but it was a pretty typical day.

We had Mexican casserole for dinner, which is her favorite meal, and she ate a TON of it, like always.

I made her a boiled black cake, and we FaceTimed with Grandma & Grandpa Timothy so they could help sing Happy Birthday to her.


 

She loved the attention and only wanted the ice cream (just like last year!!) until her hands got way too cold for it!



We had a great low key day and had a lot of fun with our sweet little girl! Happy Birthday, Ellie! We sure love you!

Ellie: 2 years old

Two years ago (and a little bit...) I did the hardest thing I had done yet, and welcomed Ellie RaNay Grigsby into this world on her due date!

It was a perfect day, and EVERYTHING went exactly how I wanted it to go. Life was perfect, and we had our beautiful little girl!

Two years later, every day is a new adventure full of tantrums, whining, the occasional laughing fit, DRAMA DRAMA DRAMA, and a hug and a kiss whenever possible.

Notable things about Ellie at age 2:

• Everything is "Ellie's" and she points to herself when looking at something and calls it her own
• She has quite the vocabulary and is starting to put more words together
• She LOOOOOVES her baby dolls
• My Russian Nesting dolls are her favorite toy ever
• She loves to be girly and have her nails painted, hair done, and wear dresses and bracelets!
• She LOVES her cousin Isaac and talks about him ALL the time
• She loves to play with Grandpa Grigsby and asks for him
• She loves to FaceTime with Grandma & Grandpa Timothy
• Dancing is her favorite way to get around
• She is clearly addicted to television and Netflix. Working on changing that...
• She is VERY active and has tons of energy. She loves to go outside and just RUN RUN RUN!
• She likes to sing songs and will sing along with any song playing, and she'll get the hymn book and sing songs from it
• If either one of us is on the phone, she will grab her play phone and talk on it while we're talking
• She is getting better at saying prayers and repeating things, though sometimes she just sits there and says "amen" until you get to the end
• She is wearing size 24 month clothes, size 6 shoes, some 2t size clothes, size 4 diapers and only has a mild interest in potty training.
• She still takes a 1-2 hour nap, and I am SOOOO thankful for this!
• She sleeps in a twin size big girl bed and LOVES it. We think she's fallen out a few times, but she always gets right back in and goes to sleep, ha ha!
• Her favorite foods are: scrambled eggs, apples, blueberries, Greek yogurt, green beans, goldfish crackers, milk and smoothies. She is getting better at eating meals and will eat a lot more meat than she used to.
• She is SUPER obsessed with putting her shoes on.
• She loves her little brothers, and is always trying to help, even when her help isn't wanted...
• She loves taking baths, and anything else to do with water
• Her favorite toy is her Minnie Mouse car
• She is a pretty good listener, and talks ALL the time
• She's good at carrying a tune!
• She loves to help me whenever she can, and I love to let her learn how to do simple chores around the house
• She's very much so a mommy's girl, but she gets SO excited when daddy comes home from work, she runs and gives him a hug.
• She's always asking, "Hold it" when she wants me to hold her, or if she wants to hold one of the babies.
• She likes to lay down next to the babies, and thinks it's the neatest thing ever
• She says, "Down you" when she wants you to lay down next to her
• She's extremely possessive of her things. The babies CANNOT play with her old baby toys, or use her blankets AT ALL.
• She can almost get herself dressed, and she can put certain pairs of shoes on her feet and 85% of the time gets the right feet.
• She loves to go "buy-bye" with me and usually behaves extremely well when we're out and about
• She can count to 10, with just a tiny bit of help
• She knows a LOT of her letters
• She knows lots of colors and I think her favorite is either pink or green. Not sure yet...
• She has a GREAT imagination and uses it all the time when she's playing by herself
• She is getting MUCH better at playing by herself
• She loves to go to church, and specifically, Nursery

That's Ellie at 2 in a nutshell. I know there are probably more things, but I cannot think of what they are right now. She's a little firecracker that keeps us on our toes, but she is so much fun. Even though she makes the days really hard, I am so thankful that I have her in my life. She brings our family so much joy and happiness!

Ellie's 18 month stats

We finally got in to the pediatrician this morning for Ellie's 18 month check-up. Don't worry, she's almost 19 months old ha ha. Oh well!

She weighs 23 lbs 15.5 oz and is 31 1/2 inches tall. Both of these put her right around the 50th percentile mark. She's still my little girl, that's for sure! Her head was just over the 50th percentile, so she's very proportionate.

Everything looks good with her development and growth and she didn't have to get ANY shots today! Bonus! She did have to get her finger pricked for some blood though, but she did remarkably well with that. They will call us if anything is abnormal, so let's hope it's not!

I wasn't 100% impressed with this pediatrician, because he wasn't very thorough. He asked me only a couple questions, but I felt like he was rushing us, which I hate when going to any Dr. Maybe we'll try someone new for the next visit?

All in all, our little Ellie is healthy and doing well. She's going through some anxiety with sleeping in her bed and I think it was triggered by taking the side off of her crib. She did super well the first night, but then she wouldn't take a nap in her bed or go near it. We put the side back up, and she STILL didn't want to go near the bed!When we got back from our early appointment, I made her take a nap, because she didn't go to sleep until 11 and was up at 7! She screamed for a while because I put her in the crib but hopefully this phase passes because she's always been a GREAT sleeper, and I'd hate for that to end now!

Time to go do something productive (or maybe just look at things on pinterest to make...)

Ellie: 18 months

I can't believe my little Ellie is 18 months, but she is! She's getting to be such a big girl and is growing up more and more every day!

She's a busy little girl that keeps me on my toes 90% of the time and I just love her!

Here are some things about her at 18 months:

• She has 9 teeth now! One tooth came in right as we were going to Utah at the end of June, and she's got two molars coming in.
• She is addicted to her binky and has to have it everywhere. I was hoping to get it away from her by 18 months, but no such luck. Maybe after this round of teething is over?? She calls it her "ginky" and always knows where we hide them!!
• She has recently become a picky eater, but will still eat goldfish, grapes, bananas, cheese of any kind, turkey lunch meat, bread (sometimes), pretzels, peas, rice, pasta of any kind (except mac & cheese), watermelon, apples and sometimes bell peppers, cooked or raw. She won't eat much meat, especially not beef! I have no idea why.
• She is wearing size 4-5 shoes, size 3 diapers and 18 month clothes (though the few 12 month things I haven't put away yet still fit).
• She can say a big variety of words and is now especially good at saying "mine" since our visit to Utah. She and her little cousin who is almost 2 years older than her didn't always play super well, and she picked up mine pretty quickly! She loves to say "hewwo" when picking up a phone, remote or anything else she thinks is a phone. She jabbers all the time, and sometimes I can understand what she wants/needs.
• Her favorite show is Curious George (thank you, Netflix!) and sometimes it allows me to get some quiet time for 20 minutes/clean up uninterrupted, do what I need to do!
• She always wants to go "buh bye" and if we forget to lock the front door, that's exactly what she'll do!
• She loves giving hugs and kisses and isn't satisfied unless she gives you a kiss on the lips.
• She loves to sing and dance and twirl around the room.
• Her favorite toys are her stuffed kitty, her baby and the doll stroller. She will push that thing around forever, and also try to get inside it, too!

She is a silly girl and we love her so much! I still have to make her 18 month appointment, so after that, I can update with her stats as far as weight/height go. I'm guessing she's about 23 or 24 lbs.

Ellie: 13 months

Ellie's another month older, and she's just seeming bigger and bigger to me! She's learning to say some words (in her own language of course) and has so much personality, I can't even stand it sometimes. She is mostly happy, except for right now, because she's sick! We went to the dr. yesterday for her ear-tube surgery follow-up and found out that one of the tubes was plugged with fluid, and the other probably had some fluid. Both her ears were full of fluid, and he didn't like that. We hadn't seen any drainage yet, (which is when you start putting antibiotic drops in her ears) but he says we would have seen it in a day or two. Ellie's been pretty awful the last few days, so I hope these little ear drops do the trick! If not, I'll be taking her to her pediatrician for a hefty treatment of antibiotics...the exact thing I thought I wouldn't be doing less than 1 month after having ear tubes put in...

Ugh. It seems we just have the worst of luck here in the Grigsby residence. At least with sickness we have bad luck.

Anyway, here are some things about Ellie at 13 months:

• She can say ma ma, da da, papa(grandpa), wow, go and kick.
• She loves to jibber jabber.
• She loves to sing the theme song to the Backyardigans.
• She loves to dance to any and all music.
• She loves other little kids.
• She barks whenever she sees ANY animal. Especially cats and dogs. They're her favorite!
• She LOVES to walk outside and if we let her, she'd probably just take off and wander around for hours!
• She loves to eat and is doing better at eating a variety of veggies.
• She loves to wear jewelry. Necklaces, bracelets, rings, you name it.
• She also loves to wear clothes on her head.
• Bath time is still one of her favorite activities.
• Her best friend is our little neighbor, Alexis, and she runs to the door when you ask her if she wants to go see Lexi.
• She's got 3 teeth and will soon have 4! The bottom two have been around for a while, but she only has the top right so far.
• She takes 2 naps a day, but sometimes they're not very long. Naps have been crazy lately, with the sickness, and all!

She's such a cutie pie and we love to have her in our family. I don't know what I'd do without her. Life would be pretty boring. She keeps us on our toes and we're so thankful for that!

p.s. this blogging thing is not for me lately. I haven't felt like writing anything down for the longest time! That needs to change, though. I think once I get over this cold completely, I will take the time to write about Christmas, Ellie's surgery and anything else that's going on in our lives!

Big girl!

Walking is just around the corner, folks!

Check Ellie out!