Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Bye Bye Binky!


Our girl, she's growing up! I can't believe how she changes every day. We're about to try forcing a change on her... and I don't think this one is going to be very popular.

Now that we're in the third trimester of pregnancy number 2, things are in full swing to prepare for arrival of "baby brother." Ella has been sick a lot since Christmas. That's about the same time that one of her ear tubes "grew out." We're hoping she won't need to have it replaced, but in the meantime, we're trying to get her back into the habit of being a good sleeper.

A lot of the sleepless nights have come from being sick. She's congested, her throat hurts, she coughs, her ear hurts, etc... But, recently we've noticed that she wakes up several times at night, simply because she's lost her binky and can't find it in the bed.

We've been asking several other moms for advice, and the consensus seems to be that it's time to get rid of the binky. She doesn't use it during the daytime at Laura's house. Not even for naps. We've kept it for bedtime at home, because it really seemed to be a great tool for her to "self soothe."

Now, there's concern that she's too dependent on the binky, that she may try to take a binky from baby brother, etc... So we're going to give it a go and say "bye bye" to the binky this weekend.

At first, we'll give her the binky to fall asleep, then we'll go in and take it out of her crib. No more back-up binkys scattered around the bed. No more mommy and daddy coming to find the binky for her. She can rely on Elmo and Zoe and her blankie to help her get back to sleep. (and I"m sure we can rely on Ella to voice her displeasure with this decision)

We're sure to face a few more sleepless nights. We'll see is this trial period works... for all 3 of us!

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

Sick, Sicker, More Sickness.. and finally SLEEP!!!


We've basically been sick since Christmas. All of us, off and on, all at once, you name it, we've had it. Ear infection, respiratory infections, bronchitis, stomach flu, etc... We take vitamins, we all 3 had flu shots this year.... but we live with a 1 year old germ factory. Any germ that comes along... finds Ella!

She really hasn't slept well since we got home from Florida. If Ella's not sleeping well, none of us are. At first we thought she was in a rut, and we needed to use some "controlled crying" techniques to get her to soothe herself again. She's always been such a great sleeper, surely this was just a rough patch that we'd help her work through. We'd use some tips from "Super Nanny."

Then we realized she had an ear infection and we'd been letting her cry when she needed us to help with the pain! Talk about feeling like a horrible parent! But it's totally a guessing game. You never know when they're sick and when they just want to stay up and watch a video!
We capped it all off last weekend with a trip to urgent care, a trip to Children's Mercy Hospital, and Ella's fever topping 105!!! As if that weren't enough, Troy was sick at the same time with a stomach flu and my parents were in town. When it rains it pours!!

Last night, we finally got some welcome relief. Ella is hydrated again. She's drinking and eating. She went to bed at 8 and slept until we woke her up at 6:30 this morning. I was afraid something was wrong. I've forgotten what it's like to sleep for that long! Thank God we appear to be on the road to recovery!!




Tuesday, February 6, 2007

ELMO... our new best friend!




I have to start by saying that we blame this all on Dane! He brought Elmo into our home with a video on his laptop and there is no going back!

Ella loves Elmo. She couldn't pull herself away from the videos. Troy had to copy them onto his computer. Then she started spotting Elmo just about everywhere... on diapers, in stores, on television.

I noticed an ad on TV for "Elmo Makes Music." The live stage show was coming to Kansas City and I knew Ella would really enjoy it. I decided to get tickets, but Troy refused to go. We'd taken her to the circus late last fall, and she had little or no interest. I was certain this would be different. Music, big life-size fuzzy muppet characters, dancing, etc... they'd get her attention.

I was prepared to buy the tickets and take Ella myself when we finally wore Troy down. "I can't let my pregnant wife and baby go down to Kemper Arena alone... so I guess I'll have to go along."

Saturday morning, we got up, got dressed, had breakfast and packed our bag for Elmo's 10:30 performance. As soon as the lights came on and the first character hit the stage... we lost Ella. She was mesmerized! Lights, music, singing life-sized muppets.... she was dancing on Troy's lap, waving at Elmo and all she kept saying was "OOOOOOH!"

45 minutes into the show-- intermission. Ella finally had a chance to catch her breath and take a drink of milk! They bring out hundreds of Elmo balloons, cotton candy, snow cones... if kids will beg you to buy it, they had it-- and it wasn't cheap!! (Luckily we had brought an Elmo doll and Zoe doll from home so Ella was content.) We made it through most of the second act before she even started to wiggle. (photos all show the side of her face, I just couldn't get her attention!!)

Since the show, Ella can't get enough of her Elmo and Zoe dolls. She has to sleep with them every night... one in each arm... that's how she falls asleep. I'm not a fan of the character clothes... but it looks like Elmo is here to stay so I guess we'll all have to get used to him!

Monday, February 5, 2007

BAAAARF on Daddy

Troy says I haven't been blogging enough lately. So I'll take this opportunity to pick on him just a little bit.

Until this wekeend, Ella hadn't thrown up since she was a little baby in the hospital. That was different... really just spit-up. This was a full blown puke!

Troy was feeding her a piece of Valentine's candy from Grandma Robinson and the next thing I knew... something was splashing onto my kitchen floor. There they sat... Ella in Daddy's lap, both of them covered in kid puke. It was gross and smelly!

I thought Troy was going to hurl too!! He stood up and almost dumped Ella in the puddle of vomit. He kept saying "It smells! I think I'm going to get sick." Of course, the dogs came in to try and "clean up" for us. I told Troy to put them outside and get out of my way. He was scaring Ella more than the puke did!

We stripped off her clothes in the kitchen and I cleaned up the mess. Troy had to put clean clothes on our girl and change himself. "She got it all over me!"

Men think they're the "stronger sex," but when it comes to vomit... even our big tough Daddy gets a little grossed out.