Well now...

That was easier than I thought! Ella is now officially pacifier free! The day I wrote about having to wean her off the pacifier, I decided to try it again. She cried a bit at first, but she calmed down within ten minutes. That night, I was just too tired to deal with crying, so I just gave the pacifier to her.

The next day, I decided to also eliminate her morning nap. It was only an hour long anyway, and she was getting to where she wasn't really sleeping during her afternoon nap. I figured that it was time, and maybe, just maybe, she'd be tired enough to not think about her pacifier. Well, she asked for it, but didn't even cry! And, she went right to sleep! That night, she did the same thing. But, I wasn't holding my breath. I figured she was jut really tired.

Friday, everything went perfectly, and the same so far today! Yay! The funny thing is that now she doesn't have her pacifier, she has become much more attached to her bunny (BunBun). She has been carrying it all around, and asks for that to snuggle with while she sleeps. It is so cute! When I give it to her, she gets this big smile on her face and giggles. Then she hugs BunBun like she hasn't seen it for a very long time.

I am so relieved this is all over and very grateful that it was so easy!

Busy Little Bee

This is how I found Ella this morning when I went in to get her up. That is a long-sleeved (with two sleeves) shirt she's wearing. Apparently she only wanted one sleeve! Silly girl! Her hair is up because she's been teething/sick for a week, and I don't want her hair plastered to her face with snot in the morning. It happened Friday morning and was not fun to clean up!

And yes, she still has the bumper in her crib even though it should have been gone months ago. She doesn't even try to climb out and when I have taken it off, she doesn't sleep because she's either hitting her head and making her cry, or losing her pacifier through the slats and making her cry. The bumper will go when the pacifier goes.

Some time in the next week, we will be working on weaning her off the pacifier. Oh joy. She turns 18 months old a week from today, and that is the deadline I set. Now I just have to gather up the strength to do it. I tried at nap time on Monday, but she cried so hard, I gave in. I hate giving in.

I'm hoping it won't be too terribly difficult because she's not very attached to it. She only really wants/needs it when she goes to sleep. She doesn't use it when she's awake, except every once in a while when she sees it lying around or we give it to her at church to keep her quiet. Sometimes I feel I'm more dependent on it than her! It also kind of makes me sad because it means my baby is growing up! Very bittersweet.

'Tis the Season

I am so excited for Christmas this year! It feels like it's our very first Christmas together. It's not, though. It's actually our third in our marriage and fourth ever. However, it's our first Christmas in our own home, with our own tree and decorations (as measly as they are). Our first Christmas, we were living in Craig's parents' house, and last year we were at my parents' house.

A couple weeks ago, I was really dreading the Christmas season to come. We have a VERY tight budget, and really don't have the money for extra things like Christmas presents. I was expecting a year with no tree, decorations, and very little gifts. Now, I know that's not what this whole season is all about, but when you don't even really have the money to buy gifts for your child and husband, it kind of spoils the feeling.

I'm going to sidetrack here for a bit. During our whole marriage, we have never had much money, mostly stemming from a certain house that I hate. I won't go into it, but things have always mostly worked out. Especially so in the past 10 or so months. We have received so many blessings, I can't (and won't) name them all.

Well, about a week and a half ago, we received a wonderful blessing. We got a very unexpected check in the mail. It wasn't that much money, but enough to be able to give ourselves a decent Christmas without dipping into our budget. Talk about coming in a timely manner!

We got so excited, we went right out (okay, two days later) and bought us a tree and a few decorations. And then a few days later, we started/finished buying Ella's gifts. I have never, ever in my life gotten things done so early! Now we can relax and really enjoy the Christmas season and it's true meaning without the stress of wondering where the money is going to come from.

Heavenly Father has truly blessed us in so many ways. We know that some day, we will look back on the first two or three years of our marriage and be so thankful for the struggles we went through.

I didn't mean for this to be so long, but I just wanted to share how thankful I am for all of the blessings we have received, and how excited I am for the Christmas season. I am also so very thankful for all our family to celebrate it with! There really is nothing greater in life than being with the ones you love to celebrate such a wonderful holiday.

Yummy Goodness

Recently, I have been having to urge to bake. And I have. I love baking, but the past few weeks, I've been wanting to bake something just about everyday. Not good on the budget or belly! I have refrained myself from doing it everyday, but I have baked something about once or twice a week. Still not good on the belly, but oh well! Craig loves what I make, but he's probably not loving the fact that I am making all these things! In the past three or so weeks, I have made snickerdoodles, chocolate chip cookies, a pumpkin pie (totally made from scratch, even used a real pumpkin!), cinnamon rolls, and I have all the ingredients saved and ready to go, to make another batch of chocolate chip cookies in the near future. That's a lot of stuff! Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, we have not been sharing. We didn't finish eating the pumpkin pie, because Craig didn't really like it, and I couldn't eat the whole thing myself. It was not sweet enough for him and I don't have a blender or food processor, so it was a little stringy. I thought it was really good. I'm very proud of myself because it's the first time I have ever made a pumpkin pie, and I did it from scratch. Crust and all. With no help from my mom.

On top that, I have been in the mood for reorganizing things and deep cleaning. But that's where it stops. After my usual chores around the house, I'm just too tired to do these things. But, I did do a craft! *gasp!* I am not crafty, and usually have no desire to do crafty things (hence the reason my house is not really decorated). I got tired of Ella's hair clips and bows just floating around the house and getting lost. So, I made a hair bow holder. It's very rough looking, but I think for me, it turned out pretty okay.

So that's what I've been up to recently. Ella is still as cute as ever! She turned 17 months old yesterday (only one more month until nursery!) and woke up saying two new words and calling herself 'Allah'. Her new words are 'morning' (as in Good Morning) and 'button'. She has a very large vocabulary. She can say 'nana' - banana, 'bapes'- grapes (her two favorite fruits), 'tink-oo' - thank you, 'welcome' - your welcome, 'here go'- here you go, and she calls Craig 'Daddy', and calls me 'mama', 'mommy', and 'mommo'. That was just a sampling. She says lots of other things, and mimics lots of words. She loves to talk, sing, and dance too. She is growing up so fast! Here she is kicking back and relaxing with her giraffe.

I just had to share this last picture. Ella made a TV friend yesterday. His name is William, and he was on The Price is Right. He caught her attention from the moment he was called out from the audience. When they announced his name, what does she say? "William!" About five times. When he made it up on stage, she could not take her eyes off of him! It could have been his very bright lime green shirt, though. I was trying to take a picture of her to send to Craig, but I could not get her attention so I could actually take a picture of her face! She acted as if I was not even there. It was so funny. She came back to life the second his turn was over.

Now I must go eat a cinnamon roll because I was writing about it!

Fragile

I swear, I must be fragile these days.

Yesterday I had a bit of a scare. My back and stomach was pretty achy and a little crampy. At first I thought it was just a reaction to the major stomach problems I had the night before. It was pretty bad. I thought I was going to die in pain. But then I remembered I had these stomach problems a few times when I was pregnant with Ella and had no side effects the next day.

I really started to worry when I realized that was most likely not the reason I was feeling this way. I couldn't stand up for very long without my back and stomach hurting, so I decided to rest and stay seated as much as I could. Unfortunately, Ella decided to act up a bit and continuously get into things (which is not common for her), and then I had to clean the kitchen because it was bugging me. So, it didn't go as planned.

As the day went on, I started to think that maybe it was braxton hicks and I was fine, but thought it was a little early for those. And I was having some pain, and I didn't remember if braxton hicks could be painful. Then I started thinking contractions. Not good. I'm only 22 weeks along. But then I ruled that out partially due to denial, but also that it didn't really feel like contractions.

The rest of the day, I took it easy as much as I could. I had a lesson to teach in the afternoon, but she didn't show up (which is very unusual without a call). We could have used the little extra cash, but it was a small blessing because I don't think I would have lasted through the lesson. Dinner was very hard to cook, but thankfully we had something in the freezer that was very quick to cook up. At this point, it was very hard to stand for more than 10 minutes at a time.

We had to go get dog and cat food, so even though we were both feeling pretty yucky (Craig got a flu shot the day before and had a reaction to it). While in the parking lot, I was rubbing my lower back and hit a spot that was extremely painful. It was very close to where the kidneys are. So then I immediately thought I had a kidney infection. But I wasn't showing any other symptoms. But who knows. The last and only time I had one, it had already turned into a pretty bad kidney infection before I even knew anything was wrong. Apparently, I don't feel UTI symptoms. Sorry, too much info.

Thankfully, by the time we left the store, I decided it wasn't a kidney infection. The pain was on my muscle. It wasn't until I was giving Ella her night time milk that I finally figured out what was wrong with me. As I was handing the cup of milk to her, I remembered that the day before while doing dishes, I was trying to unscrew the lid off of a sippy cup that had sat out too long. It was very hard to get off and I tried about five times before it finally came off. Then I remember thinking that I should be careful so I didn't hurt my stomach muscles. I got the lid off and didn't think anymore of it until last night.

So, my pain and cramping I had yesterday was from trying to get the lid off the sippy cup. I accidentally strained my muscles. I am better today, thankfully.

The moral of the story: if you are pregnant, and can't get the lid off of something, whether it be a jar or a sippy cup, do not try to continue to get it off. Wait until your husband comes home to get it off for you. Even if there's old milk inside and are wanting to add it to the load of dishes in the dishwasher.

Halloween and a Birthday!

This is a little late, but we've been pretty busy since Halloween.

We had a great Halloween this year. In the morning/early afternoon, we went to a birthday party for a nephew and had lots of fun with family and Ella had a blast playing with her cousins on her daddy's side. She's such a little social butterfly and it's so cute watching her play with other kids/babies. Total opposite of me, thank goodness!

That night, we went over to my sister's house and went trick-or-treating with them. We didn't collect any candy for Ella because we think she's still a little too young (next year, Ella), but we dressed her up and watched Matthew and Grace rake in the goods! We dressed Ella up as a bear this year. So cute! It's the same as last year, but we didn't get pictures last year, it still fit her this year, and money was very tight to get her a new costume. So it all worked out! We had lots of fun all day, and Ella was completely exhausted by the end of the night!

She did not enjoy getting dressed in her costume!

Yesterday was Craig's birthday. He is so old now! Just kidding! He turned 32, but I don't see him at that age. He seems to be more like 28 to me. And he says he feels 25, so that's all that counts. It doesn't matter how old he is. All that matters is that he's a wonderful person, husband, and father. He does so much for our family and makes so many sacrifices for us! Ella and I love him SO much! And our little boy will too, when he is born.

The Big Ultrasound

Yesterday we found out if this little baby is a boy or a girl. Craig and I both came out of the appointment very excited. This baby is VERY active. I mean, it looked like he/she had just downed about five Dr. Peppers. Because of that, it was hard for the U/S tech to tell what the baby was. However, after a few tries, she, and we, could definitely tell what it was. The baby was also in the breech position (meaning feet down) so she really couldn't get a true profile view (the little stinker!).

The baby is very cute, if I might say so myself. The baby was pushing on me extending both arms and legs and then bringing them back in. It was very funny to see live! It reminded me of how Ella is. Everything looks good, and the measurements are right on with my due date, so things are going perfectly!

Pushing the arms and legs against me

Oh yeah, I guess you would like to know what this baby is! Well, it's a......

BOY!