Wesley in video form

I haven't posted many videos of Wesley, so here are some fun ones to entertain everyone :) Most of the videos I have with Elle and Wesley end with Elle being too rough with him and the camera cutting off quickly - and they ALL feature extremely loud, shrill talking/yelling in Wesley's face. Fun times. Tim loves how Wesley looks at the camera during these videos, especially the ones when he's obviously looking at me but then looks away like he's just noticing the camera is watching him, too.

Elle videos

Life has been bananas lately, so please forgive my lack of regular posting. I've got some posts in the works, just need to find time and energy to finish them. But because she cracks me up on a regular basis, I wanted to share a few recent Elle videos for your viewing pleasure :)

Elle was a (hyper) pirate for Halloween. We attended some fall festivals the weekend before Halloween, but at the last minute, I decided we'd check out a trunk-or-treat near us on the actual day. Since she was dressed up, we also decided to go visit Daddy at work. Elle wasn't very cooperative, but I did manage to catch her signature line on video:

Elle loves looking at old birthday and holiday cards (hers or ours). She got a few Halloween cards in the mail and was "reading" them to me. It was really cute to hear her tell me who had signed each card (she's mixed up several sides of the family and friends, haha).

We got "The Very Busy Spider" from the library a few weeks ago, and Elle picked up on it quick. I was surprised that she got 85% of the animals, verbs and actions correct as she was "reading" this to me (i.e. the cat cries "meow" and asks about taking a nap, the goat says "mah" and wants to climb on the rocks). Sometimes I listen to her and just shake my head in awe.

A week in videos

Elle has been rather hilarious lately. Emotions have been strong, but with the tears have come lots of giggles, tons of songs and countless priceless moments. I realized I haven't taken many videos of her lately, and over the last week or so she gave me plenty of material :)

Elle sang this - just one verse - for approximately 20 minutes straight the other night. The next day, I found out that our commute home is approximately 32 of these long. I stopped counting as I tried desperately - with no success - to steer Elle toward another song.

She's stubborn. When she thinks she knows what something is, she will not be convinced otherwise.

She's a scary monster. She's a help-o-bot. She's also in a race. (Just watching this video exhausts me.)

Elle practiced for "Talk like a Pirate Day."

And amid songs, Elle accuses Mommy of farting.

Songstress

I mentioned last week that I've been singing to Elle at bedtime, and she's starting to pick up on "My Favorite Things" and "Do-Re-Mi."

She has been singing up a storm for months - many of the videos I've taken of her involve snippets of "Mary Had A Little Lamb" or "Twinkle Twinkle." It never fails to bring a smile to my face. She's a big fan of mash ups. Her extensive vocabulary shines through in her singing, although there are a lot of these gems:

"Monkey Monkey sat on a wall, Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, all the horses and mommies again, couldn't put Humpty together again."

She's adding some pop songs to her song list, too - I heard Flo-Rida's "Whistle" for the first time about a week ago in my Spin class. Since then, I have heard it an average of 2.6 times a day. Elle heard me singing it on Sunday afternoon, and by Sunday night, she had it down. We also reviewed her Usher lyrics with a strong "Oooooh Baby."

She pretty much cracks us up constantly, which isn't always a good thing. But I'm loving this musical stage and hope to capture more of it on videos that don't involve a mouthful of crackers or multiple demands to look at the camera while I'm video taping her. Girlfriend has a mean "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes."

Elle: 21 months

Elle is 21 months old today. TWENTY ONE MONTHS. Since I'm always super late on my monthly updates, I figured I'd post a few recent videos in a timely fashion to mix things up a bit :)

Although she's being raised a Steelers fan, I encouraged her to give her dad's team a shout out:

   

Elle tries to whistle (and copies her father's baseball outbursts):
  

One of Elle's favorite babysitters sings a song to her about "Three Little Monkeys." Elle sings it a lot now, but she almost always starts it with "two little roggies," and even after Mr. Crocodile comes and snaps a frog out of the tree, there are ... still two little roggies. The kid exercises her creative license.  *shrugs*

  

Elle is super silly at bath time. She kept splashing and telling me "That's funny."
She's a big fan of telling us when stuff is funny.

 

1.5

Happy half-birthday to my dearest Elle Belle!

I honestly don't know how Elle got to be 18 months old. (That's like two whole pregnancies.) It pretty much hit me yesterday. And then I freaked out.

Because it feels like just yesterday that I was taking photos like this:

And now Baby has more hair and personality that she did even six months ago, and we play and take photos like this:

But I thought that instead of a sappy post or a recap of what she's been up to at this age wouldn't be nearly as fun or as accurate as a look in to our life with a one and a half year old. These videos are all from the last two weeks.

Eleven seconds of can't-be-missed-cuteness:

Elle's new favorite form of rebellion:

Counting (and counting and counting and counting):

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Singing and fun at dinnertime:

Elle Belle, you're so smart, sweet and fun, and your daddy and I love you to pieces. I can't believe how fast you're growing, but I can't wait to keep watching you learn and continue developing in to your own (opinionated, stubborn, intelligent, hilarious) person.

Videos, videos.

I'm swamped. The holidays, the job, the home - everything. I have been slacking on taking/editing/posting photos and videos, and I feel like Elle's fans (read: grandparents/aunts/uncles) deserve this little mid-week blog of non-substance. Also, I sent out our Christmas cards and put the blog address on there, so I don't want our friends and family to think the material on ye olde blog is stale (hi friends! hi family!).

I've got a few posts started (mostly mentally) about what Elle is up to these days, as well a few "deep thought" posts ... but for now, you get the videos.

Elle has been going around singing "May, may,  may." I thought one of the sitters taught her "Mary had a little lamb." The next day, I realized she's signing "merrily, merrily, merrily" from "Row, row, row your boat." She's also got "Twinkle, twinkle" and her "ABCs" down. She references a turtle in this one, her favorite TV show character "Chica," and refuses to say "snow" or "go" as she does oh, 99.9% of the rest of the time. She's such a cooperative little singer :)

And this one is just a random snippet from our evening - she was obsessed with finding Sidney the cat ("Where'd he go? Where'd he go?") and made several "calls" on the remote, although by the time I got the camera out she was more interested in turning the TV on than finding the cat.

A few recent videos

Here are a few videos from about the last few weeks:

"Ello?": Elle "answers" the phone:

Dogs and cats:

Silly dance to a silly Christmas mouse my mom insisted we bring back from Ohio:

Num num num & blowing kisses:

Chatterbox Sillyhead

I've got several posts in the works, but I'm feeling a light-hearted, multimedia vibe right now :)

As I mentioned before, Elle is talking. She's been saying (and in some cases, whispering): Hi, Dada, kee kee (for the kitties), baby, mama (usually just when she's mad, but now sometimes when she sees the mom and baby on a big box of diaper wipe refills), bye (more on this one below), and then other noises that sound like "yay" (when we clap and cheer) and "no" (when I tell the cats "no"). Very, very cute. She also likes to sing the "E-i-e-i-o" part of "Old MacDonald" with us - my mom heard her singing on the phone today, and it was pretty cool :)

But anyway.

I haven't shared many videos of Elle on the blog lately - they've been posted to our Shutterfly site and/or Facebook, but here is one of her whispering "hi" and waving - at herself, but waves nonetheless (apologies for the odd angles and poor camera work):

Here is Elle making silly faces as she knocked her sippy cup over and threw fish on the floor. She started waving "bye" that day, and I truly think that was the first time she said "bye," too:

Here is the world-premier video of Elle being ridiculously silly today - she kept giggling every time I bumped her butt and said "Bump set spike!" It was an infectious kind of belly laughter, and she kept it up for about 10 minutes - what a silly, silly girl :)

Again, never-before-seen footage:

So much to say ...

I have a ton of blog posts (for both blogs), e-mails, etc. to write ... and no time to do it.

See, Christmas for us isn't really Dec. 25. Since I have to ship 96% of our gifts, as well as address cards (which are extremely cute, I must say), Christmas comes early and needs to be completed by mid-December so I don't spend Elle's college fund on sending packages far and wide.

This is from the "making of" part of our Christmas cards:

And although I'm greatly reducing the amount of Christmas baking I will do this year, I'm still baking a few things, and we have work potlucks, holiday parties, birthdays, etc. to bake for ... this week I'm making at least two batches of cookies, a cherry cobbler, a white chocolate raspberry cheesecake, carmelitas and a cake. In addition to working, working out, trying to sew curtains for Elle's room and everything else daily life throws at me.

So, in short, I'm burning the candle on both ends. (I actually have a blog post in mind about this very fact.)

I might not post a lot or very often in the next few days, but I hope to be back soon with several posts, from serious to fun to milestone-riffic, as Elle met Santa for the first time last week :) I leave you with some recent videos of our little El(l)f(e).

(And yes, I *have* made time for videos - I haven't even uploaded all of them, but on my days off, it is typical for me to grab the camera a few times a day and just grab a few minutes here or there of Elle being Elle.)

Quite possibly the cutest noise ever:

Trying to record her laughs without her noticing and being distracted by the camera:

My favorite part of this one is when she realizes I've got the camera and flings her towel off:

Crazy for a current favorite toy:

Remember that Vitamin D? She still loves it and even "helps" us give it to her now:

Ohio recap: The east side

I've decided to make these recaps photo-heavy in the interest of time (you know, since we went to Ohio more than a month ago). We'll start with the first four days of our trip, in which Elle and I spent time on the eastern side of the state, visiting my family and friends.

Day 1:

Elle and I arrive at the Tampa airport. Elle sleeps in front of our gate.

Elle eats on takeoff, fusses a little during the flight and then falls fast asleep. (Side note: Seriously, traveling with her was a breeze, especially at the Tampa airport. They helped me fold up the stroller and flip the car seat to go through the security scanners, and that was pretty much the biggest hurdle we faced. We had a flight that fit in well with Elle's schedule, and I wore flip flops and no belt to make it as easy as possible for me to get through security, and I just had her diaper bag as a carry on. SIMPLE.)

We arrive at my parents' house. Elle and Doug play.

I meet up with some of the coolest high school friends ever for coffee. Elle was super excited to meet these ladies.

Day 2:

My sister-in-law Ashlee and niece Abby arrive! Ashlee and Abby were in state from Colorado, so Ashlee drove down from Toledo to spend some time with us.

Abby is a month older than Elle, so it was fun to see them "meet" for the first time. They seemed to be in competition - Abby would eat, then Elle would eat. Elle would poop, then Abby would poop. Abby would cry, then Elle would cry. Elle would sleep, then Abby would sleep. It took a good 10 hours for them to finally be happy, awake, clean and fed at the same time.

During my pregnancy, my grandma insisted that if Elle and I were to visit during my maternity leave, she would
come visit us rather than having us add a Pittsburgh stop to our itinerary. I love my grandma dearly, and I would have gone to Pittsburgh so that she could meet Elle, but having her come to us allowed for much more quality time, AND we gave her the surprise of a lifetime when she arrived and found not one but two great-granddaughters eager to meet her. 

Grandma decided that "Great-Grandma" was a bit of a mouthful, so she'll now be known as Grandma Rene, which is especially appropriate since Elle and I share the middle name of Irene.

Elle initially was all up in Abby's business:



Grandma Rene spent a lot of time imparting wisdom on the two little ones:



More video here and here.

Day 3:

More family time with Ashlee, Abby, Grandma Rene, Grams, Gramps and Uncle Doug. Elle spent some time with Gramps watching music videos. Here, Elle is educated about Fleetwood Mac.

Ashlee and Abby had to leave that afternoon, and Elle and I met up with some of my closest college friends for dinner.

Elle was thankful that Aimee gave her a bottle and Claudia helped burp her.

Day 4:

Grams and Grandma Rene ran some errands while Elle and I met up with a high school friend for lunch. Lisa and I were in band and German Club together - her daughter, Elizabeth Anne, or Ella, was due about three weeks after Elle. We got the girls together to "meet," although Elle slept through the whole thing :)

That afternoon, we headed south to rendezvous with Aunt Marti. Grams and Uncle Doug dropped Elle and I off. Grams bid Elle a temporary farewell.

Then Aunt Marti shuttled us to Columbus, where we met up with my good friend Teren for dinner.

Uncle Jeff also joined us. It was a par-tay! Then we headed back to Marti and Jeff's so that Mommy could have a glass of wine or three and Elle could take a break from the car.

Eating and sleeping.

Here are some more recent videos of Elle.

Here, proof that she's my daughter - thinking of food even in her sleep:

Snoring:

Some videos

Aside from vitamin D, Elle has a new love: Her swing. Specifically, a set of little holes on the left side of her swing. This love is followed closely by the handle on her car seat. She became enamored with them about two days ago - she becomes transfixed and has started making cute little faces and noises at them, especially the holes on the swing, and when we try to get her to look at us she looks irritated that we've interrupted her flirt session. We've taken to joking that when she gets cranky in the swing, she must have had a fight with her boyfriend, or when she gets especially googly-eyed with the car seat that she's broken up with the swing and moved on. Here is a quick video of a recent "date" with the swing (warning: if you get motion sick, you might want to pass on the video):

And here is a video of Elle sleeping. She makes some puppy whimper noises at first - and I'd hoped to catch more of the grunts/moans that she makes during the night (I have slept through some of them, but if I'm at all awake I'm convinced she is waking up - and when I check she's usually out like a light), but it is cute, anyway: