Friday, November 10, 2017

2 Years.

Look who is TWO!

I can't believe we have reached the two year mark. As always, it has come upon us so quickly! In the last six months, Ellie has grown in many ways. 
Her language is developing every day as she adds more and more words to her vocabulary. She is naming most things these days, repeating what she hears us saying. For the first time, I can see her satisfaction of being able to verbally express what she is trying to tell us. Seeing that light bulb of recognition go off saying "Yes! They understand me!" is such a cool thing to witness. With the growth in vocabulary has also come the process of learning how to string together words. This is another neat progression to see as you can literally see the wheels spinning as she slowly puts the words together. So far she has a handful of two to three word phrases she can regularly throw out. These include goodies such as "sissy cying", "yuh you mama (or dada, or sissy)". I also love the moments when her mind is working overdrive and all of the words come tumbling out in a jumble of nonsense. My most recent favorite that I don’t want to forget is how she pronounces “snow”. Saying “s’s” are hard for her so she concentrates real hard and says “no-sss” when she is saying “snow”. 

Ellie made leaps and bounds quite literally over the summer in regards to her legs and low muscle tone. In June we started her at a new physical therapy office. We were very happy with the direction and care at the new facility. Our new therapist recommended Ellie be fitted with SMO braces from the start. These are to help with supporting her ankles, creating an arch, and forcing underutilized muscles to work and gain strength. Soon after being fitted with the braces, she was released from physical therapy as she was hitting two year old milestones, 5 months ahead. It has been so awesome to see her confidence grow as she runs, jumps, and climbs everything. For the long haul, it looks as though she will be in these SMO braces until age 3 or 4. Her right ankle is still leaning in quite obviously, although it doesn't appear to bother her at all. Finding the correct shoe to fit the SMO brace with her feet being so little was a lot of trial and error. We have found the Tsukihoshi brand has been our favorite so far because of the width they provide.

Ellie is consistently hesitant about anything that is new to her. In order to get her to try something it generally takes a few demonstrations and goading in order to get her to buy in. This can be anything from trying a new food to putting on mittens. Once she decides she is into something then she is all in and fully invested. Recently, she refused to wear mittens, screaming and crying over them despite her red, frozen hands. She eventually warmed up to them after realizing that everyone else wearing them, while they were also excitedly encouraging her to try them. Once she finally allowed them on, she refused to take off the "ittens", even inside. She then wore them all around the house calling out "-ittens! -ittens!". These are the moments that Adam and I often find ourselves shaking our heads to each other and muttering under our breath..."this girl....is gonna give us a run for our money...”

In the last six months, Ellie has been working her way out of her sweet, calm infant shell into a stubborn, outspoken, feisty little being. She is everything that two's are known for and then some. There are many times I feel like I'm dealing with a moody twelve year old instead of a teeny little two year old. She puts herself in time outs regularly when she is mad, crosses her arms, frowns, and pouts to express all those tough to handle two year old emotions. I think her ability to be so obvious with how she's feeling is exacerbated by the fact she has a big sister who she idolizes and copies incessantly. She has learned so many ways to show "I'm mad right now!" and loves to make sure we all know it. She is also insanely stubborn and insistent. The girl knows what she wants and refuses to accept much less. She typically spends her days finding anything she can to feel as though she is the one in control and making the decisions. These personality traits sure will come in handy when she is older and ready to rule the world.

With these strong emotions has also come an increased aggression. Ellie has struggled with biting, hitting, and kicking, none of which her older sister ever did. In fact, Adly is usually the target for these forces of aggression. (Don't worry, Adly is rarely innocent, she loves stealing her little sisters toys). As Ellie heads into being two, these things appear to be going away ever so slowly. I've read all the parenting books trying to figure out how to best approach it. I honestly think it is something she will just have to grow out of as her vocabulary increases. She is also different from Adly when it comes to punishments for such acts. Adly was fiercely against time-outs and refused to sit in one spot for any given amount of time. Ellie, however, takes the sentence handed to her with dignity and sits and waits until she is released from her jail cell of a time-out chair. It is usually followed by a "sa-yee mama, or sa-yee sissy..." and a few bats of those beautiful blue eyes, which makes us all melt to the floor and forget.

On the flip side of her little outbursts, Ellie continues to be our biggest snuggler. She still loves to cuddle up and watch a show or read a book. Her nighttime routine includes a song before bed where she snuggles right up into our neck and pops her thumb into her mouth while Adam or I sing to her. Every night that she does this, I feel like it could be the last, so I continue to soak each and every one up. She is also a huge hugger. She will always offer a hug when anyone is sad, coming home, or leaving.


Her sister is her absolute best friend and I hope they always stay this close. They love to play together (and then fight, and then make up and play again before fighting again). She absolutely adores Adly and does anything and everything her big sissy does. In the last month or so, Ellie has also adapted her own version of a "nye nye" blankie and 2 stuffies (Hoo-Ha the monkey and Doggie the dog). This is stemming from Adly's obsession with her own night-night blankie and snuggling with it for our bedtime TV watching. Now they both run into their rooms grabbing their lovies the second they hear that it is time to "watch a show" at bedtime.

She continues to go by mostly Ellie, with her full name, Eleanor coming out usually when she has been naughty. I so love the name Eleanor. I hope that as she continues to grow, it begins to stick more. For now though, she continues to be our little Ellie Bellie.

As much as Ellie likes to keep us on our toes, we sure love her to bits. I cannot wait to continue to see her grow, change and thrive into her own little person as she ventures into the land of the twos. To my sweet Ellie girl, you are a constant ray of sunshine for our family. We love you so.

Here's a little about Ellie at 2:

-favorite toy(s): Doggie and Hoo-Ha the monkey

-favorite food: pancakes and oatmeal w/raisins

-favorite book: Dance Me Daddy, You Are My I Love You, & Goodnight Moon

-favorite animal: dog

-favorite show: Wee Sing

-favorite movie: Sing

Saturday, June 3, 2017

18 Months & Unstoppable

Miss Ellie Bellie is now 18 months old! Oh, how the time has flown. And speaking of flying, so is Ellie. She has almost mastered the skill of walking and is using that prowess to get into anything and everything imaginable.

She continues to be happy go lucky most of the time, exploring the world without much hesitation. her personality seems to be much different than her big sisters. Where Adly is shy and demure, Ellie busts into things without much thought. With her newfound ability to get anywhere she pleases has come her insatiable appetite for danger. Nothing seems to stop her when it comes to curiosity and well, being an outright stinker. She is famous for giving a little side eye, mixed with a grin as she reaches for anything and everything she is not supposed to have. Whereas Adly spent her time happily playing within the parameters we set around our house; Ellie looks for any place imaginable that hasn't been baby proofed (or has) and dives for it.

Ellie is talking more and more, but is definitely way less verbal than Adly was at this point. However it is so much more exciting having a big sister to cheer her on whenever she does come up with a new word to repeat. She acknowledged me as "mama" for the first time a few weeks ago which was amazing. She calls our nanny Colleen "Leeny". She will also make attempts at most words you ask her to say. One of her favorite things this past month has been saying "beeeyey!!" which is "belly" while invading your personal space and lifting up your shirt. She will do this to anyone and everyone, no matter your stomach situation.

Her slower language development is already starting to lead to glimpses of meltdowns. She has never done anything in public thus far, but her favorite reactions seem to be throwing herself on the floor, banging her head on the couch, or biting the crap out of any inanimate object she can find quickly. She is most frustrated by her sister stealing things from her or me not understanding what she is trying to say. It is so hard to try to communicate when they are so close...but just can't yet.

Speaking of her sister, Adly and Ellie continue to grow and find ways to play together which is awesome. They will often run off and play together, however the language barrier still plagues their ability to actually "play". Most of their time together consists of Adly creating games around Ellie that Ellie has no idea of whats going on so she just runs back and forth yelling and giggling. Ellie still adores Adly and completely looks up to her, calling ,"Sissy! Siiiisssy!!" all day, every day. Adly, ever the opportunist, has seen this as a way to at times torment this little being that cuts her attention in half. Last week, I was cleaning the kitchen as I heard Adly yelling about a gorilla that was after her. I came into the living room a few minutes later as Adly tells me, "The gorilla is locked away. Don't worry, we're safe!" Turns out the "gorilla" was her sister who she'd locked in her pitch black closet. I of course ran and opened the door, only to find little Ellie happily playing in the dark with a toy, completely content. Someday, Adly...you'll get yours. 

Ellie also seems to be super tough. She incurred her first elbow and knee scrapes during our random bouts of warm weather. Having her bare skin exposed while running around the treacherous driveway resulted in quite a few spills. Both times, she was cut and bleeding and I didn't know until much later. She never cried or made any indication she was hurt from a fall. I was sure cleaning the wounds would illicit wails, but no. She happily played with her toy while I cleaned and placed band-aids. I hope she's always this tough!

Speaking of tough, she is also pretty rough and tumble, compared to her big sister. She tends to be the one doing the damage when it comes to them fighting. She is also a hitter and a biter (only with our immediate family), which is new to us as well. So far, this seems to be her favorite way to "express" herself. Hopefully it is a quick phase that fades with more communication skills.

The engineer in her continues to blossom as she focuses in on something and repeatedly attempts to figure out what it is and how it works. She still picks up the smallest items and investigates them carefully. As she's grown, it has become more of an effort to see how things work together and fit into each other. I love this so much about her, and can't wait to be able to talk through her thinking when she is bigger.

Her progress with her legs has been up and down. We are switching therapists for her physical therapy in the coming weeks to get a new set of eyes on her. She'll also be seeing an orthopedic surgeon to be evaluated. While she's made great strides as a walker (and even runner), her ankles are still very loose and leaning in without the support of shoes. It has been a frustrating process to not have direct answers. We are hopeful that these next steps are just the beginning of a short road to finding the best solutions to help her as much as possible.

Ellie, you continue to brighten our days with your never ending smiles and happy outlook on life. We love you for always keeping us on our toes!!






Tuesday, March 14, 2017

16 months!

Our sweet Ellie is now a whopping 16 months old. She has spent the months since her first birthday growing rapidly, but her biggest burst has most definitely been in the last month.

She is now talking away. We went from babbles and sporadic dada's to saying all sorts of things and attempting to say almost anything we get her to repeat. Her word list includes goodies such as: Shay, (her cousins name), Gaga (grandma), Papa (grandpa), sissy, ba-ba, ball, mama, uh-oh, dada, hi, hot, belly, head, and bye. She says "dada!" when he walks in a room, but has yet to really say it for me. Her first two-word phrase was "ka-koo!" which is "thank you". She also says "buh-bye!" This burst of language really took place in the last week.

Those crystal blue eyes are still holding on strong!

She's been all over the place with foods and her likes/dislikes change daily. I guess she's just another normal toddler in that department. Some of her favorite foods (depending on the day) are yogurt, applesauce, cottage cheese, fish sticks, spaghetti, chicken nuggets, pouches, milk, and pancakes. She loves using a spoon, and loves creating a food disaster zone every time she uses one. She despises anything new and will refuse to eat whatever is new to her. She has no qualms about twisting her face and looking beyond disgusted that you would even attempt to offer her something so terrible (like pizza).

From a very young age, Ellie seemed to have really good fine motor skills, picking up the littlest objects off the ground to investigate. She is an expert at finding the tiniest crumb or piece of dirt on the floor. I try not to think about the amount of items she's actually consumed from our floors. As she grows, it has been interesting to watch her develop this skill. She will sit and place items around her and spend an extended amount of time working to put them inside each other or place them in specific orders. In the bathtub, for the longest time she would sit and try to figure out the toggle on the spout to turn on the shower. Every bath, she would look up the faucet, feeling around trying to figure out what that thing was and why it was there. After some time, she discovered if she pushed up, the knob at the top would stick out. And if she pushed that knob down the toggle would come back out for her to play with. She was so excited when she figured out how it worked. Watching her so carefully make these discoveries and figure out how things fit into the world is one of the coolest aspects of this age. I never want to forget that feeling of seeing your child discover something new.

She spent an hour trying to figure out how to put the insert in the shoe like mama did. 

Ellie LOVES having an older sister. She is most definitely the bruiser, who has no problem walloping her older sister, attempting to bite her, or poking at her while pretending like she's "playing". She also loves to instigate wrestling matches between the two. Adly, ever the complacent older sister is pretty gracious when dealing with this, although she definitely gets her jabs in at various times too. One of Ellie's earliest words was "sissy" and she can be found most often trailing behind her yelling "Sissy! Sissy!" 

With Ellie, there are way more toys all over the house than we ever had when Adly was this age. Adly has an insatiable imagination that is active from sunup to sundown. Because of this, Ellie has developed the ability to pretend much earlier than Adly ever did. She will take the toy foods we have around the house and pretend to eat them. She feeds fake foods to the stuffed animals. In the bath the other night she was filling up a lego with water and having the toy pig drink the water. While Adly continues to impatiently wait for Ellie to really be able to talk, they have developed a level of play that is so fun to see happen. They giggle and laugh and chase each other around the house and Ellie copies everything her big sister does.

Snacking with sissy. 

Car Carts. Every child's dream, every parents nightmare.

As a baby, we watched Adly grow into a very careful, thoughtful toddler. She rarely took dangerous chances and definitely wasn't a climber. Enter the younger sister and all that easy parenting gloriousness went out the window. Ellie definitely challenges our patience and our fears by having, quite frankly, no fear whatsoever. The kicker about Ellie being fearless is that she knows it. Most often, while she's climbing on top of something and then attempting to stand, or rocking the chair she's on to knock it over, she'll look over her shoulder with a sneaky grin almost as if to say, "yep, I'm doing it again, try and stop me now....". 

The biggest accomplishment for Ellie the last month has been her advancement to walking. She was diagnosed as "low tone" around six months. We didn't know much about it other than the fact that she was very bendy and didn't put any weight on her legs. She garnered nicknames like "froggy" and "flopsy mopsy" because she was just that: floppy. When she moved to sitting, she would lean back with her legs flying up in the air. It looked as though she had abs of steel, balancing herself on her tailbone. What we have learned now is that she actually had no core strength and that position was a way for her to overcompensate for that. We followed our pediatricians advice and waited out physical therapy until she recommended it at her one year checkup.

Hearing your child has a deficit and needs some sort of outside help is scary no matter the situation or the age. I kept telling myself she'd be fine. She had hit every milestone in a timely matter and she was so close to walking, she could overcome it on her own. Around 14 months, she did start to "walk". But her ankles were still so loose and I couldn't deny her stance was off. He legs bowed inward and her feet outward to support her weight. Something just wasn't right. It was then that I finally made the call for therapy. We looked into early intervention and a childhood therapy facility our pediatrician had recommended. I am so grateful Illinois offers programs such as early intervention, which provides free screenings and in-home visits for families with a child who is displaying some sort of developmental delay. However, our insurance policy also covered physical therapy, so we chose to go through that. This was mainly because she could start the same week I called, whereas early intervention was more of a wait.

Therapy helped almost immediately. Since Adam is off of work, he took on the duty of taking her every week. She definitely regressed over the first few weeks and quit walking all together. This was mostly due to the new inserts her therapist had her use and the constant therapy she was receiving from Adam at home. All of the changes forced her to re-learn how to walk correctly which took some time. Ellie, ever my stubborn offspring, hates therapy (or the therapist) with a passion. She would spend most visits according to Adam crying, clinging and whining. At week four of therapy, Adam excitedly texted me that the therapist had taken Ellie away to the therapy gym where he could watch her through a double-sided mirror. Once Adam was out of the picture, Ellie started walking everywhere with the therapist. She cruised for an entire session, not sitting down once. By the time she got home, she went immediately back to crawling only. It wasn't until after the next session that she began actually attempting to walk at home. Of course, being at work and not being able to witness any of this awesomeness was pure torture.

A few weeks later and at 16 months, she's now taking careful steps around the house. Her signal that she's going to walk is to say, "go! go!" If we tell her to "go", she'll stop crawling and start walking. Seeing her walk now is completely different than when she started around 14 months. It is amazing to me what becomes "normal" to you when you're dealing with a child that doesn't fit the norm. As I see her now, taking her careful, yet precise, yet wobbly steps the memories of Adly learning to walk come flooding back. She is now learning to walk as any other child does, it just took a little extra help to get her there.

Another thing that has taken a while to get here have been her teeth. She had her two lower teeth pop through shortly after turning one. For a long time after that, there was nothing. Then one day, I was able to get my prodding fingers into her mouth, only to discover she had an entire mouthful of teeth coming through. Her upper right fang was the first to come through with that spurt. Months later, her two front teeth and a few back teeth are creeping their way out. Thankfully, and I mean this with the utmost sincerity, we have been blessed with an easier teether. (Terrible teething moms, I salute you). Besides a few fussy eating sessions and some whining at night, it has not even been noticeable.

Ellie continues to fill every last ounce of our beings with her snuggles and love. She is a total lovey and will happily crawl into our laps at any given moment for a snuggle and a hug. I find myself holding on to every last bit of her babyhood. Every night at bedtime Adam and I have both developed a routine of a little snuggle and song time with her. When we stand up from reading our night time book in the rocking chair, she throws her thumb in her mouth and snuggles her head right into the crook of my neck. With her little arms wrapped around my shoulder I quietly sing, You Are My Sunshine,  and hold back tears, willing time to slow down.

Happy 16 months my sweet Ellie girl. We love you to bits.





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