Our Wonderful 3 Year Old!

Our precious Eleanor Marie is 3 years old.

Ellie is such a blessing and wonderful gift. I am thankful everyday for her kind and loving heart.

Watching her grow into this beautiful little girl has been so amazing.

 

Ellie went for her 3 year check up and is weighing in at 30 lbs and is 3 ft. 1 inch tall.  This little girl loves to go to the doctors and was actually disappointed that she wasn't getting a shot! Haha, she is so funny! 

Ellie is a thinker and an observer.  Always has been.  She pays attention to everything, has the most amazing memory, and such a passion for learning. Everyday I am amazed at what she has learned and continues to learn and the excitement she has for discovering new things.

 

I have the most fun teaching Ellie, she is my little student.  We have her word wall down in the playroom with the sight words she has learned, up to 15 words and growing everyday.  At her desk we keep the high frequency word books she has learned.  She is up to book number 10 in the series. She honestly has such a passion for reading and her early reading skills really do amaze me.  I love being able to utilize all of my Kindergarten teaching materials that have been sitting in boxes since I stopped teaching.

This summer she wrote her name for the first time! We were out doing chalk on the patio and she ran over to show me that she has written her name.  I was so surprised!

She has been quite a busy girl this past year!

Ellie had her first dance recital in May.  What a fun and special day that was!!

She also finished up her gymnastics class.

We went through the joys of potty training earlier this year and was completely potty trained by February/March.

Ellie started going to "school" in April for 2 days a week and she loves it! Her teachers and classmates are all so wonderful and sweet.

We have been on several trips and she continues to be an excellent traveller.

 

Ellie went to her first Auburn Football game and loved it!  She knows all the cheers and of course the sight of Aubie puts the biggest smile on her face.

 

College friends would call me the "human IPod" because there were few songs I didn't know.  Well my child is starting to follow in those footsteps.  She loves music!!  Any and everything! She can pick up on a song so fast.  She loves getting my IPad and turning on Pandora to Raffi Radio that plays not only great children's music but oldies as well. We sing a LOT in our house and have many dance parties.

Ellie's most beloved stuffed animal is "Lamby".  Now, Lamby isn't allowed to leave our house unless we go on a trip but she talks about Lamby all the time.  She refers to herself as Lamby's mommy and does a wonderful job taking care and looking out for her lamb.

Ellie is an arts and crafts kind of girl.  She loves painting, playing with stickers, stamps, markers, water colors, sidewalk chalk, you name it.  She is always so proud of the artwork she makes at school.

Ellie is my little organizer and certainly has an idea of how she thinks things should go. She is mommy's little helper!

Ellie has the silliest personality.  She loves to rhyme, make up songs, change the lyrics to songs, change words to make them sound funny, did I mention rhyming! Ellie really has a great sense of humor. As silly and loud as she is at home, she is still shy in big groups. 

Ellie is extremely thoughtful of others.  She is such a great big sister to Erin.  She is so patient and very helpful.  Erin will knock something down Ellie has been working on or take apart Ellie's Legos and she doesn't get upset.  She just says "oh baby Godzilla" or  "silly Erin" and goes about her business. I love watching the 2 of them together and I love when Ellie is trying to teach Erin something.  She is so gentle and sweet to her baby sister. 

 

This girl has style! Haha.  She loves to pick out clothes, play dress up, accessorize and all the things girls. She likes to help pick out Erin's clothes as well as put clothes on all her stuffed animals.

What else can I say?!  In our eyes Ellie is the most amazing 3 year old!!

 

Ellie's school picture

 

We love you so much Eleanor!!

Erin Rose is 1 Year Old!!!

 

Our Sweet Erin Rose turned 1 year old on August 23!!  We had such a wonderful time celebrating her birthday on many occasions with family.

Erin weighs 15 lbs. 15 oz. and 28 inches long.

 

She is small but mighty!

 

This is the same "1" that I took pictures of Ellie with when she turned one and at the same location at the park.  Erin has changed so much!  She continues to cruise on furniture and loves standing herself up from a squatted position.  Still not taking steps unassisted yet.  She is also not crazy about keeping her shoes and socks on her feet.  We are going to have to work on that before the winter comes!

 

Erin loves clapping, waving, blowing kisses, playing Peek A Boo, swinging, trying to climb on furniture, climb in the bath tub, and just being outside. 

She loves pushing things around the house, baby stroller, shopping cart, boxes, etc.  Even though her head barely looks over the top.

Erin is a little cuddly bug!  And my shadow most of times, when she's not following Ellie around.  She is very chatty, vocal, and loves to make noise.  Erin is also super friendly. 

 

My little peanut is officially done nursing as of 3 weeks ago.  She is exclusively on whole milk and eating like a champ now!  She prefers drinking from straws rather than sippy cups.  And she just wants to eat what everyone else is eating.  The transition from nursing went a lot easier than I anticipated it would.  Over the course of about a month I slowly weaned her and she did great!  She loves blueberries, pears, peaches, peas, green beans, black beans (really any kind of beans), recently had salmon and loved it, zucchini, squash, potatoes, avocado, grilled cheese, bananas, pasta, cheese.  You name it! She really has improved on her eating since turning one!!!  She loves to feed herself with a spoon, but makes for a BIG mess ;)  I feel good that she will start putting on more weight now.

We were at the O'Donnells on her birthday and had a great time! Ellie helped me make banana cupcakes with cream cheese icing.  They were yummy yummy!

Ready for Cupcakes!!!

Sweet big sister trying to put on Erin's birthday hat.  Ellie was really good about helping make Erin's birthday special.  A couple weeks later when we celebrate with my parents Ellie did say "But Erin already had her birthday."  

We made yellow cake and chocolate icing for Erin's celebration with CeCe and GPa (a family favorite).  Ellie helped make 2 mini cakes for she and Erin.  Erin loved feeding GPa her cake more than eating it herself. 

All Done!!!

 Erin signs for "all done", "more", and just this week started signing for "milk".  We are working on please, thank you, and water.

Since turning one Erin has 3 Teeth!! Yay!! And the 2nd top tooth are cutting through right now.   So almost 4 teeth.  Phew! It's about time!

We have also started swim classes.  Much like her sister, she is a water baby too!

 

We love you Erin Rose!!

 

 

11 Months Old

Love that sweet little face!!

Can't believe Erin will be 1 year old in a month. Crazy!!!

This month brought lots of changes, as they always do!

Despite all those changes still NO teeth and still very little weight gain.

 

Erin did have some firsts though.  First high temperature, got up to 105 degrees :(

And a week later unrelated to the temperature, first trip to emergency room. Poor baby girl had a UTI. She was the HIT of the ER with all the hospital staff.  She was just has happy as can be and loved all the attention.

Erin is growing into quite a little personality.  She is tiny but feisty and full of spunk.  She loves to cuddle when she's sleepy and just like her big sister is so happy when she wakes up from naps and in the morning.  Erin always greets me with the biggest smile!

Her new trick this month is spitting out her food, drink, etc.  She just loves the new noises she has learned to make.  It's hard to put on weight when you spit out a lot of your food.  Little stinker!!!  She likes to pick up and eat Cheerios, pieces of bananas, blueberries, avocado, puffs (of course), and most recently black beans.  We are trying new things constantly with her.  She does love yogurt! She eats most of her veggies in thick purees.  I give her steamed veggies to pick up and eat just trying to encourage her to feed herself more.  I also tried homemade hummus with her.

She is still nursing and while she can drink from a sippy cup and a straw cup, she just drinks and then spits it out.  Sigh

All she wants to do is stand!!  She loves standing and playing.  She especially loves standing in the tub which is a big No No!  And she battles with me all during bathtime.  Ellie makes me laugh as she sits nicely in the tub saying "Erin, we don't stand in the tub.  Please sit down Erin!" In her very sweet little voice.  She is cruising on the couch and tables.  She is a very busy little girl and so desperately wants to keep up with her big sister.

Bless her heart!  Teething has been a long process and she chews on any and everything.  I pray she gets some teeth very soon!!!

I love those dimples!

Happy 11 Months Erin!!

 

Can't wait to celebrate her birthday with all our family next month :)

Standing 10 Month Old

Erin's first year is flying!!  So hard to believe that she is already 10 months old.  This month came with many new things, the biggest being standing!  Erin is now using any and everything to pull herself up to stand.  She is loving her new sense of mobility.  She took her time before pulling up to stand and I was perfectly ok with that ;)

Erin is going to certainly keep my on my toes!  She is busy, busy girl.

 

Happy to report that she now weighs 15 lbs. 5 ozs.  She is growing and no matter what the percentiles say, we think she is perfect just the way she is.  She eats, she sleeps great, and is generally such a happy baby so I am not going to worry about it.

Perfectly petite with a growing personality!

Still no teeth :(

Still nursing, takes milk from sippy cups, and eats 3 solid meals a day.  I am always trying new things with her and going the ones not so well received the first time around.  Recently made Baby Guacamole (avocado, cucumber, and cumin) and she loved it!  I also made a Red Lentils and Rice Soup that she was not a fan of, but I have quite a few portions in the freezer so we will just keep trying.

Erin loves music!  She sits or stands and bounces to the music.  We have lots of dance parties in our house.  Both my girls love music.  

Erin loves to play peek-a-boo and Pat-a-cake.  Her favorite books to listen to are the Hallmark Recordable books ;)

 

She adores Ellie and wants to be with her all the time.  Erin takes off and heads start to the bathroom when Ellie is going potty. She wants to be involved in everything.  Erin also tries to sit underneath Ellie's chair while she eating like a little puppy dog.

She loves clapping too! And she also started waving this month.

These onesie stickers are becoming quite annoying because that's all she wants to play with during our photo shoots. 

Happy 10 Months Erin Rose!

We Love you!

Busy at 9 Months Old

Happy 9 Months Erin!

 

This morning photo shoot was quite eventful.  One little girl could not sit still.  All she wanted to do was crawl and explore.  My biggest challenge was trying to snap few pictures before she would try to crawl off the chair. 

She has changed so much this past month except in her size.  Haha, she still a little peanut.  Weighing less than 15 lbs.  I am anxious to see her growth chart at her well baby check up tomorrow.

She is sweet and petite!

 

Biggest thing that happened this month is Erin started clapping!!!

I love watching her clap with excitement.  She even clapped for her big sister at her dance recital :)

As you can see she was all over the place during pictures. 

 

Erin continues to nurse and eating 3 meals of solids a day.  She started eating Mum Mums and puffs as well.  Still no teeth! I am definitely ready for her to some relief, so hoping she gets some teeth soon!

She loves her big sister and wants to play wherever Ellie is.  Erin loves playing with Ellie's Legos and Kitchen stuff.  Ellie is very patient with Erin, especially when she takes apart Ellie's Lego creations.  We lovingly call her Baby Godzilla.

The other day Ellie said "We need to teach Erin how to share toys like big girls do."

Very wise coming from a 2 1/2 year old.

 

Erin is doing lots of babbling and mimicking with sounds.

She is a sweetheart but not afraid to let you know when she is upset about something ;)

She was done with pictures!  Off to explore.  Erin is working on trying to pull herself up to stand. 

We love that sweet smile!

Dear Friends Moving Away

This blog entry is long overdue (partly because I didn't want to face reality).  But I couldn't not do a blog entry of a dear friends The Kerrs who moved away a couple months ago :(

Meghan and Alex have been such wonderful friends of ours and it was such a blessing to have them living right down the street.  That's the great thing about the Army, it takes you places you never imagined you would go and brings lifelong friends into you life.

 

I am so thankful to have Meghan as a friend.  We went through our first pregnancies together and a long deployment as new mommies with our little baby girls.  Ellie and Natalie are just weeks apart and the sweetest of friends.  Ellie affectionately calls her "Natty".

I still remember this day when the girls first meet each other.

All of these pictures definitely speak for themselves.  We enjoyed countless playdates, lunches, dinners, book club mom's night out, walks (especially our endless walks on the Black river trail), and so much more. 

 

Bathing Suit Twins

 

Swim Classes

Hugs

 

Strawberry Picking

St. Patrick's Day Run

Sledding with the Dads

Sweet girlies

Beach Fun

 

We could not have gotten through these first 3 years in New York without the Kerrs! I especially could not have gotten through it without Meghan's friendship.  They are family to us and I know that we will always keep in touch.  I'll never forget saying goodbye after getting dinner and ice cream with the girls.  Hugging and crying together. Such wonderful memories that we will always cherish.

We miss you!!