Sweet Eliana

Eliana has been exceedingly sweet lately, especially when it comes to William.  She really wants to play with him and be with him.  The other day she played "princesses" with him.  This meant she gave him her pink princess wand to chew on while she wore the pink princess crown and played with the big wand.  William loved this!  Later that same day, William was sitting in his carseat while I unpacked the van from a shopping trip.  Eliana sat on the floor next to him and "read" him a book from memory.  She wants to take care of him!  I love watching her grow and learn.  I think every day she does something that surprises me. 

A couple of her cute quirks:  She often wants to eat/drink whatever mommy and daddy are having.  If she doesn't know what it is, she will take a really small taste, and always says "Mmmmmm! I love it!"  You can tell if she really loves it, however, if she ever goes back for a second bite.  Which usually she doesn't.  Also, when I go to give her a goodnight kiss, she always tells me where it can go.  Sometimes it is her nose.  Sometimes on her purple blankie.  Sometimes her cheek or forehead.  But if you kiss her somewhere else, she will take the kiss off and hand it back to you.  I make sure I kiss her where she indicates so that she keeps it.  I write this down so I don't forget these precious moments. 

Breakfast one morning with Eliana sampling my strawberry spinach almond milk shake.  She "loved" it, but didn't drink it.

Swimmers

I have been thinking and reflecting on the time when Eliana was a baby, and I have realized that she cried A LOT.  Eliana cried when she rode in the car in her carseat.  She cried in the stroller.  She cried when you put her in her crib.  She cried in the Bumbo seat.  She cried during bathtime.  As long as you were holding her, she was happy and smiling.  She was a first baby, so we had lots of time to hold her.  But there were definitely a lot of things that made her cry.  I figured every baby was like that.  Bathtime was so bad that Eliana would go up to two weeks without taking a bath.  I dreaded bathtime because Eliana would scream so much.  Things have changed a lot and now Eliana really likes the bath.  She pretends she is a mermaid and lays in the water with her hair floating all around her.  Then William came along.  I was scared of the bathtime screaming again, but it never happened.  He loved the bath right from the start.  When he gets in the water, he laughs and kick, kick, kicks his legs.  Because of this discovery, bathtime has become a much more regular thing around our house.  (That's probably a good thing, right? Haha)  The kids will spend up to 45 minutes in the tub just playing.  So much splashing is going on that the floor usually gets a good mopping after it is done.  This has become one of my favorite evening activities.  Also, I just love the way clean kids smell :)

Splash Splash Splash

Squeaky clean and ready for snuggles

Sweet William

 Some facts about William:
1.  Eliana has given him a new nickname: Willa.  (She adds an "a" to the end of  a lot of words - "Put that on my plate-ah.  I need a shoe-ah..." David has picked up on it and started calling him that too.  I don't like it.  I prefer WB3.
2.  His snaggletooth is super sharp.  You might think it is really cute that he chews on everything and that he likes to hold your hand.  But don't let him combine the two and chew on your hand.  It hurts!
3.  He just might be the most smiley baby in the world. 
4.  He loves naked time.  But watch out, you are likely to get wet.
5.  He keeps moving his bedtime up.  I have been putting him to bed around 6 or 6:30pm, which was working out great.  But now he is wanting to go to bed around 5:30pm.  Around 5, he gets really cranky.  He can barely hold his head up and is practically begging to go to bed.  But then he likes to wake up around 5:45am and start his day.  I can't handle getting up that early on my days off.  So I keep trying to get him to stay up at least until 6pm.  What can I do to get him to shift his clock back??  And then I have Eliana, who we put to bed around 8pm and sometimes at 10 I can still hear her talking to herself in her room.
6.  William is the sweetest part of our day every day.

He was so tired!  But I was trying to keep him up past 5:30pm.

Big smile!  If you look closely, you can see a little tooth!

Check out those lashes

Christmas time

St. Nicholas stopped by our house earlier this month, and Eliana was very excited!  We told her the story of St. Nicholas and how he puts presents in people's shoes.  She then ran to her room to pick out a shoe for herself, and then one for each of the rest of us too.  Later, when I said something about St. Nicholas bring something for Spot the dog, Eliana said, "Silly Mom, dogs don't wear shoes!"

I couldn't get her to stand still for a picture.  St. Nicholas brought her an orange (which she kept calling a watermelon), a chocolate Santa on a stick, and a toy.  She had chocolate for breakfast that morning :)

The aftermath...

 A couple of days ago, Eliana and I hung up Christmas lights while William was taking a nap.  Eliana was most excited about putting them on a little tree in our yard.  She asked if it was a Christmas tree, and when I said yes, she squealed with delight.  But then she wanted me to stop putting the lights on the fence so she could use the strand as a seat belt for her bus.  While I didn't do it, I was impressed with her imagination. 

Eliana checking the length of the strand of lights.

Dixie also came outside to help us.

Being my little helper.

But then she got bored and wandered off

I love the lights!  They look so pretty twinkling outside my window.  More than any other decorating I have done, the lights make me feel like it is Christmas time.  I also pulled out a carved Nativity set.  Eliana has been really into all of my Christmas things this year.  (I will be lucky if any of them are still in one piece by Dec 26th).  She took this Nativity set down from the shelf and was showing it to William (she turned around to show me when I got out the camera).  It was so cute!  She was telling William whom each piece was and demonstrating how the angel spins (I'm not entirely sure it is supposed to do that, but it does now).  William just sat there taking it all in. 

Today we made some "snow" to play with.  It is really easy to make.  Combine 2 cups corn starch with 1/3 to 1/2 cup vegetable oil.  Eliana was having a great time scooping it, packing it into balls, and pouring it on things.  Then she decided to take her socks off and try putting her feet in it.  I was okay with that and thought she had a neat idea.  Then Eliana decided to lay in the snow.  I wasn't quite as excited about that idea, but kids are supposed to be messy, right?  It actually cleaned up pretty easy because I just took tarp outside, shook all of the snow into the grass, swept the kitchen floor, and threw Eliana into the tub.  What a quick and easy winter activity!

Eliana's Prayer

This was Eliana's spontaneous singing prayer this morning:

"I love you God.  You are my favorite.  Please be with us and bring us more warm.  Thank you!"

Absolutely no prompting from me.  She melts my heart!

5 months old

Happy Thanksgiving!  We managed to survive five days of travel with mostly good spirits.  David and I both had Thursday through Sunday off, so it was a great chance to go back to Indianapolis and spend lots of quality time with our families.  Eliana was extremely excited to see both sets of grandparents.  We left Columbus Wednesday afternoon and came back on Sunday.  It was a really nice trip with Eliana behaving pretty well despite the lack of napping.  Right up until our drive home Sunday afternoon.  By that point she was very overtired.  I was hoping that would mean she would pass out as soon as the van hit the road.  Instead, she was so tired that she cried the entire ride home.  Anything I tried to give her to entertain her, she threw on the floor.  She said she was hungry, so we got some fast food.  Eliana then proceeded to throw her food on the floor.  It was a great trip.  :)  After a really long nap yesterday and sleeping in today, I think we are FINALLY getting back to normal.  Boy, it takes Eliana a long time to recover from vacation!  William, well, what can I say?  He is so calm and easy going.  He says, "So my naps got thrown off?  So what?  I'm still the happiest baby you will ever meet.  Nothing can shake me."  He is just about perfect.  He even managed to sleep through Eliana crying in the van, and sleep through several night of her crying as she went to bed.  He is the best baby!

And now he is five months old!  According to the ol' bathroom scale, he is 18lbs!  So as not to be shown up by his big sister, William also got his first tooth two days before he turned 5 months old.

This is what William always looks like - sucking on his middle two fingers

Eliana hates for William to be lonely

I just love how they are looking so intently at each other.  William loves his big sister so much.  He watches her every move and she can make him laugh so easily.

This is also how William always looks.  He loves chewing on his feet!  I think the cloth diaper get in the way and prevent him from pulling them up to his mouth.  But as soon as diaper change starts, he gets those feet up in the air and then the toes go in the mouth.

Check it out - a tooth!

This is how I found the kids this morning.  Eliana told me that she had put a skunk scarf on William (it was leftover from his skunk costume).  He is also surrounded by medical equipment because he was "very sick".  Luckily Eliana is a doctor so she fixed him with a bandaid.

Working nights

Last night I worked my first night shift in over two years.  I am sure most people who follow this blog know this already, but just in case you don't, I switched jobs after William was born.  I am back in the NICU working with precious but sick little babies.  While my other job in the Infusion Clinic was not terribly interesting, it did have a great schedule.  So now I am back to working some nights, weekends, and holidays.  It stinks, but those babies need nurses even on holidays.  I will be working a rotating shift, which means that I will be working about half the time on days and half the time on nights.  It is a little crazy, but at least not all of my shifts are at night. 

So David had the kids all to himself last night for the first time.  I actually put William to bed before I left for work (he goes to sleep around 6pm).  On my way out, I gave David a kiss and wished him luck.  For me, William usually gets up about two times a night, around 11pm and 4am.  Sometimes he gets up more, and on the really good nights, he just gets up once around 3am.  I was a little worried about David getting up at night, but he used to do it with Eliana, so I knew he was fully capable.  I came home in the morning and anxiously asked David how the night went.  Do you know what that little stinker did?  He slept 11 hours straight!  David didn't have to get up until 5am.  William has never done that before.  What a glorious night, and I didn't get to enjoy any of it!  What do you think the chances are of a repeat for tonight??

Not all the pictures can be adorable.  This one just makes me laugh.

I might not get much sleep, but at least I get a smiling baby to help me do the laundry.  Totally worth it.

Leeds Pumpkin Farm

The last weekend in October, Eliana, William and I met up with some of Eliana's friends from her old daycare.  She seriously talks about Jack and Jake all the time!  Sometimes I think she has an imaginary friend named Jack, because Eliana is always talking about what she did with Jack even though this is the first time she has seen him since her last day at daycare.  She was sooo excited to see them.  She ran up and gave them both hugs and the three of them immediately started chasing each other and giggling.  Eliana leaving daycare was one of the hardest parts about leaving my old job, just because she had made such good friends there.  I am glad we had this chance to see them.  Plus we met at an awesome place called Leeds Pumpkin farm!  They had giant slides, hay mounds, zip lines, a petting zoo, a hay ride, and Eliana's favorite: a banana bus ride.  Plus there was plenty of stuff to buy like pumpkins and caramel corn and pie.  We will definitely be going back there next year.  Actually, Eliana often asks to do the banana ride when I ask her what she wants to do for the day.  Sorry, that ride is closed for the season!

The three musketeers: Jack, Eliana, and Jake.

The kids did a great job of sticking together.  They are all holding hands with Jake's mom Rachel on the left and Jack's mom Angie on the right.  It was the most perfect day in October to go.

Playing in the corn bin.  It is like a giant sandbox but with corn instead of sand.  The kids loved it.

The corn bin also had lots of trucks and buckets to play with too.

One of the many giant slides.  Eliana really liked going down the slides with her friends.  But both boys left soon after this, leaving just her with William and me.  She wanted to go down the slide again, but without her two friends leading her, Eliana got scared at the top and started crying.  That was the end of the slides.

So we took a break and ate some pie!

William wanted some too, but I said no.  :)

The banana bus ride!  The first time she rode this, she was too scared to ride by herself.  So believe it or not, I squeezed into one of those barrels with her while wearing William in the Ergo.  It was tight, but we did it!  Then Eliana realize how fun the ride was and didn't need me to ride with her anymore.  She rode it at least four times!

The banana bus traveling by the pond.

She has grown a little since this picture last year.

William actually had two Halloween costumes.  My mom gave his a skeleton one, but Eliana insisted that he be a skunk for trick or treating, so I had him wear the skeleton costume to the farm.  Eliana was not exactly excited about the photos that I wanted to take.

But then when I started taking pictures of William by himself, Eliana stopped playing on the hay and jumped right in.

We had a great day!