Thankful...

We have so much to be thankful for this year. Today, I took E to her 18-month check up and she's doing very well. The dr thinks that she should be talking more, but I know that it will come with time and then she'll never be quiet. She was 24 lbs and 36? inches. Her height is above the 98th percentile and her weight is up to the 40th percentile. She's finally putting on some weight now that we aren't playing outside so much. (Unfortunately, so am I!) But, I'm very thankful that she's such a healthy, happy little girl.

I'm also thankful that we won't spend our Thanksgiving holiday traveling. We get to stay 'home' and yet still see all of our family! That is such a blessing. No more 2 days here and 2 days there. We are just here! Besides, E isn't quite as portable as she use to be, and she only sleeps well in her own bed. I'm thankful that we can just stay here and relax for the next 4 days! Other than tomorrow, naps will be on schedule. Bedtime should be regular. It will actually be a relaxing holiday! Yeah!!! Moving back home has been a wonderful blessing on so many levels.

I'm thankful that I'm staying home with E. It took me awhile to get into the new routine of life at home, but I'm enjoying it more all the time. E is so much fun to watch grow and develop. She's the most wonderful blessing. I'm also thankful that Jut stays home with her 1 day/week, so that I can remember how much I love teaching. I needed this break away from the classroom to remind myself why I love what I do. I was contemplating a new profession, but I know that my desire is to be in the classroom. My year off this year has really brought that into focus for me. I'm thankful for this opportunity to be home, and yet look forward to the day that God provides me a new classroom, whenever that may happen.

These brief few things don't even begin to cover all that I have to be thankful for, but it is a beginning. Lastly, I want to leave some pics of the things that E has been doing lately to make me smile and be thankful for my time with her.

My little reader

She really enjoys her juice!

Sitting in the clothes basket

Wearing the clothes basket...

Wearing her toy container...

Our blessing are too numerous to count!!!!

Mama's Little Helper

E is getting to be more and more of a little helper these days. She loves to 'help' me do dishes. Now, I have found that she needs to stand on the dirty dishes side of me so that she doesn't keep throwing the clean ones back into the water. So, she stands on the 'dirty dishes' side and keeps my water full of dishes to wash. It keeps her quite entertained until she runs out of dishes to throw into the water...and so far, she hasn't broken anything yet. So, that's a good thing, too.

E also decided that she liked to rake leaves, or rather play in the piles of leaves, after a few times doing it. We raked our backyard at least 4 or 5 times. We loaded the leaves up into garbage bags to haul them to the curb. Well, E loved to help fill the bags! She started by putting one leaf at a time into the bag. A pile kept her busy for a LONG time!! By the time we were finished, she was scooping them up using 2 hands to help the process go a bit quicker.

She will also be my little 'tree-hugger' one day. She always pick up trash or litter on the ground. People that don't know her well always hurry to warm me that she's picked something up because they are afraid that she's going to put it in her mouth. But, I know better. She picks it up, peers closely at it to figure out what it is and them she hands it to me to dispose of. It doesn't matter if we are playing outside or are in the church...if there is something on the ground/floor that shouldn't be, she'll take care of it! (By giving it to me to take care of, of course!)

New Diapers...

Now, I know that most people don't get excited about new diapers, but I do. I love my cloth diapers!! We haven't been using them much since we moved because of a variety of issues, but we are back to it. CottonBabies replaced my set that were worn out with their 1-year warranty and I bought some new ones to replace the ones that just aren't any good anymore. So, we are back to cloth diapering full-time. Yipee!! I hate disposables!

One of my orders was from a work-at-home mom. She made us what we call "Victoria's Secret" diaper. It is a leopard print with hot pink crushed velvet on the inside. It is so cute! It makes E into a crazy girl! She loves it too.

My next project was creating fleece soakers (think modern version of 'rubber pants') to go over her fitted diapers that I ordered. They are so expensive to buy, but super cheap to make. So, I found a pattern on-line, went to Jo*Anne's to buy some fleece and headed to Mom's to sew it. Now, what I found out was that I'm not going to make a living selling these on E*bay...I can't sew a straight line to save my life, but the cover is pretty cute, if I do say so myself. I don't think that it will fit over her enormous diaper for night. I will have to tweak the pattern a bit and try again, but it will fit over a prefold. I had forgotten how much fun it was to sew...I may have resurrected an old hobby...We shall see.

Happy Halloween!!

What a beautiful day!!! We raked leaves during the day (9 huge garbage bags full) and went visiting this evening. E dressed up as a Pikesville College Cheerleader. Jut and I were Pikesville bowlers...for those of you who aren't aware of this wonderful fact, the Pikesville lady bowlers have been the national bowling champs for several years. Enjoy the pics documenting our day...

A very long day....

Jut had a 'fun' day yesterday with Elizabeth while I went subbing. I think he's more thankful all the time that he's back to work full-time and I'm staying home...especially with days like yesterday...

The day started at 8:45 receiving a call from Alma to sub in 1st grade music. They were desperate for a warm body, and so I accepted the call. Jut actually had Friday off this week instead of Thursday. But, he still had some work to do at the church so he dropped me off at the school.

He and E went to the church. E did fairly well playing, but Jut didn't get too much done before lunch time came around. They brought me some Wendy's and went home to eat their lunch. Upon arriving at the house, Jut finds out that he's locked out. There is a door between our back door and kitchen, which we don't have a key to, and sometimes it gets locked. All of the easily accessible windows to the house are, of course, locked. Well, Jut tries to take the window out in the door to the kitchen, but that is unsuccessful. He then pulls the car underneath the breakfast nook and hops on the hood and both of those windows are also locked. Meanwhile he's trying to keep track of a wandering 1.5 year old. So, none of this is done in a timely fashion. Luckily at this point in time, the neighbors come home and offer him a ladder. So, he uses the ladder to check the windows on the other side of the breakfast nook. Luckily they are open! However, the window is only 18 in x 13 in. He didn't even think he'd really fit through, but after some precarious moments he did manage to hoist himself inside. First challenge of the day is conquered...and it only took a 1/2 hour or so.

E doesn't go down for her nap very well because she's overly tired due to the delay in getting inside the house, but she finally goes down.

I arrive home around 3. Thankfully, a very nice teacher from the school brought me home. Jut tries to open the front door and it won't open. The metal thing on the door frame has come loose. So we monkey around with that and in the process wake up E...We finally get the door to open, and find the wood inside the door frame has rotted. So, Jut, my "Bob Vela" goes to the hardware to buy some long screws to fix it by just drilling it in to the good wood behind the bad wood. After several frustrating attempts to get it to work, we call in the reinforcements...namely my dad. He's got more tools and more 'fix-it' skills. I was thankful that it was raining, so that he'd have time to come by. Because Jut had had enough...I think there was steam coming out of his ears by this time. His frustration level had definitely been attained!

So, Dad shows up. Fixes our door so that it would lock. We put E to bed and think its been a long day...little did we know it wasn't even close to being over.

Just as we were getting to go to bed at 11, E wakes up screaming and having trouble breathing. I couldn't get her calmed down so I took her out in the cold to help her airways. That worked. Then, she decided that she was hungry. So, she ate. I decided that we needed to clear her airways better. So, we give her a Vick's bath, which she played in for at least 40 minutes. I kept adding hot water and more hot water and more hot water as the bath cooled. She had a great time. She didn't care that it was after midnight.

Jut hunts down the humidifier and gets it going in her room. We go through her entire bedtime routine, put her down...and she cries, and cries and cries. Long story a bit shorter...I didn't get her to sleep until after 2! We finally figured out that the humidifier absolutely terrified her. Poor girl.

Now the blessing in all of this is that Jut was suppose to be gone to a high school retreat this weekend. Luckily for me, it was cancelled. I'm glad I didn't have to do the 11-2 shift by myself!!

My funny girl...

We've been sitting E on her potty quite often in the last couple of weeks. Not that we think she'll be potty-trained anytime soon, but as a preventive measure from peeing on the carpet. She's had a nasty diaper rash and we like to give it some good quality air-time. However, I don't like cleaning the carpet numerous times a day. Hence, now when un-diapered, E sits on the potty. Well, she thinks its pretty cool and so she sits on it diapered too.

Today after she had finished lunch, she went over and sat on the potty. I sang her our little "potty" song, and then turned back to my lunch. A bit later, I turned my head to check on her and she was backing up to my stock pot that she pulled out of the cupboard. She then proceeded to sit in it, like she would her potty. The look on her face was priceless as she sunk in and didn't just stay on the top like the potty chair...then it was even more funny when she realized that she couldn't get out. She was not impressed that I had to run and get my camera to record the incident. But, it was hilarious!!!

Fall is definitely here. Jut, E, and I took a walk yesterday to enjoy the beautiful weather, but it was rather chilly. E had lost the mittens by the end because you just can't hold on to leaves and be your own little parade when your mittens are on. However, the cold didn't bother her a bit. She is our little outdoors girl!

Daddy's Girl

For those of you with us at Statewide '07, you may remember Jut buying this ridiculously overpriced onesie for our baby-to-be Sri. At the time, we didn't know if she was a girl...Well, Elizabeth has finally grown into that silly onesie. (Hint: she is wearing a transformer onesie, if you are not up on your '80s culture...)