Baby Number 2

Just a little comparison.  I wore my green dress to church a few weeks ago, and it reminded me of when I wore it my last pregnancy.  It just so happens that I have a baby bump picture from 32 weeks with Eliana:

And a picture of 33 weeks with Baby Boy:

Hmmm, pretty similar. 

Addendum to Mother's Day Post

I forgot to mention one of the best parts about Mother's Day!  That Sunday, when Eliana got up and we started getting ready for church, out of the blue, she said to me, "Mom, you look beautiful!"  Totally unprompted.  I said, "I do?!" and she replied, "Yeah, beautiful."  How sweet is that?  Now that really made my day.

Mother's Day 2014

May 17th we moved from our little duplex in Victorian Village to a larger single family home a little bit north in Upper Arlington.  So for the past month, we have really been pretty consumed with all the moved involved.  It has been a very ambitious month!  David started out in his ER rotation which mostly involved working nights then switch to a very busy inpatient rotation with 13 hour days, 6 days a week.  We have been trying to buy a van to replace our two door car.  We had to find a renter to take over our lease so we could move early.  Eliana is still working on potty training.  I am working three days a week, plus 8 months pregnant.  Then throw in packing up a whole house, moving, and unpacking, and we have just had a crazy month!  Good thing Baby Boy hasn't decided to show up early!

As I hope you all remembered, May 11th was Mother's Day.  At daycare, Eliana painted a little flower pot for me and planted a marigold in it.  This is how she looked when I picked her up that Friday from daycare:

David took her to the store for Mother's Day and let her pick out a present for me.  Eliana picked out a Hello Kitty dry erase activity board!  What a perfect mother's day gift!  She knew just what I wanted :)

Since Baby Boy couldn't pick out a gift, David picked one out for him.  So from my son, I received these beautiful flowers.

The card was also made by Eliana at daycare.

A very sweet Mother's Day.  I loved all my presents!

And here is a bonus picture.  One of the last taken at the old house.

Eliana was almost too cool to eat her banana slices.

Hopefully soon I can blog about the new house.  It is pretty amazing!

"I want to be a Star"

Recently we read a book called Dream Big, Little Pig! by Kristi Yamaguchi about Poppy the Pig who wanted to be a star.  Ever since then, Eliana has used the line "because I want to be a star!" as her excuse for doing anything and everything.  In the picture above, Eliana was painting, and I found her painting her face and teeth (yes, teeth).  When I asked her why she was eating the paint, she said "Because I want to be a star!"

"Oh no, Eliana, you had an accident.  Why did you pee in your pants and not in the potty?"
"Because I just want to be a star."

"Eliana, why are you ripping pages out of that book?"
"Because I want to be a star!"

"Eliana, stop poking me in the eye."
"I have to, because I want to be a star!"

The answer to any why question, especially when she is in trouble, is always "I want to be a star!"  I guess Eliana thinks being a star means doing any crazy thing she wants.  Where did she get an idea like that?

State Park fun

David just finished up his ER rotation and happened to have Tuesday off before starting his next inpatient rotation today.  So we took the day for a little family vacation to a state park and a dairy farm.  We drove an hour southwest of Columbus to John Bryant State Park near Yellow Springs, OH.

Clifton Mill

Hanging out with Daddy on the covered bridge.

Little Miami River

We started with a really easy walk in Clifton Gorge Nature Preserve to a picnic spot in a meadow.

After eating, David wanted to rest for a few minutes on the picnic quilt.  Eliana couldn't figure out why Daddy was laying down.

So she decided to join him for a few seconds.  Then she got bored, got up, spilled her green beans (in the small pink bowl by her head), and put the pink bowl on Daddy's belly.

Exploring the meadow

She liked picking dandelions.

That's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in her hand, and peanut butter all over her face.  She likes to eat her sandwich from the inside out - first licking all of the jelly off, then scraping the peanut butter off, and then sometimes eating the bread.  It is a very messy process!

 After our picnic, we tried to get Eliana to walk the short path back to the trail head.  It is amazing how much she would run around in the meadow, but try to direct her to run in one direction, and all Eliana wanted to do was be carried.  We had so much fun.  Hiking is definitely different now (much slower with a lot more time spent looking at sticks and rocks) but I had a great time and was just cracking up at Eliana's antics.  Great time spent together as a family.  We went on one more walk with Eliana in the hiking backpack.  Since I was already carrying Baby Boy, David had all the responsibility of carrying Eliana on his back.  Therefore it was a short walk, but through the gorge among lots of purple and white wild flowers.  I really loved it, but I think David was pretty sore afterwards.  That was all the hiking we could handle for the day.  Near the state park is Young's Dairy Farm, so we stopped there next.  This was by far Eliana's favorite part of the day.  Between the ice cream, tractors, and petting zoo, this girl thought she was having the best time ever.  She was giggling nonstop and was having fun no matter what she was doing.  She loved the animals and got down on her knees to pet some baby goats.  As she gets older, it is more fun to take her to places like this because she enjoys it so much more now than when she was little. 

Eating our ice cream that is made there on the dairy farm.  This monstrosity was called the "Cow Trough" and involved five giant scoops of ice cream, three topping, whipped cream, nuts, several cookies, and a cherry on top.  It was quite impressive in its size, which was rivaled only by the size of Eliana's eyes when she saw it.

Driving her tractor.

Checking out the colored barrels

And last, giving the goat a hug.  So sweet!

Easter

Amazingly, David was able to get the entire weekend off of work, so we made a quick trip to Indy to celebrate Easter with our families.  We spent Saturday at my grandmother's house, Eliana's G.G., and then Sunday at David's parents house.

G.G. found a baby turtle in her front yard that she saved for Eliana to see.  After this, we let the turtle go in the pond behind her house.  Eliana was only mildly interested in it.

Eliana playing with Grandpa, sitting on the picnic table that he built for her!  So cute to watch them interact.

Hanging out with Uncle Mike.

My family's Easter picture.

And now just the three of us.

Sunday morning before we headed over to David's parent's house, my mom had a little Easter egg hunt.

That's right, it was a hunt for all the big kids too.  My mom puts money and lotto tickets inside the eggs to encourage participation from even the most reluctant hunter.

Hunting with Grandma.

Sweetie

Checking out her piece of candy.  After putting it in her mouth, Eliana spit it out, then picked the chocolate off the ground, put it back in her mouth again, and spit it out again.  Then she asked me to help her get the dirt off of her tongue.  That's why the rest of the candy we switched out for goldfish.  Happy Easter!

Adele's 2nd Birthday

 Eliana's good friend Adele just celebrated her second birthday.  As part of the party, her parents had Mr. Eric (a kid's music man) come and sing some sing-a-long songs with the kids.  He had some instruments available and a couple of microphones set up for kiddie karaoke.  While most of the children enjoyed playing the instruments, few were brave enough to try out the mics.  After singing lots of songs in my lap, I finally convinced Eliana to go up to the microphone and sing.  She was awesome!  Eliana loves to sing and knew most of the words to every song (Wheels on the Bus, Itsy Bitsy Spider, etc).  The song that finally pulled her to go up was "You are My Sunshine," one of her favorites.  Once up front, Eliana stayed as the center of attention the whole time.  She's our little diva!  Adele is such a great friend to Eliana and we had a really great time at her party. 

Hanging with the birthday girl on the right wearing their party favors, sunglasses!

Happy 2nd Birthday Adele!