Outside.

Ellie insisted on spending the entire morning outside, which was fine with us. We wandered around the front yard for awhile, then hauled ourselves to the park for an hour of swinging, sliding, and chasing after every dog who happened to pass by. When we got home, she helped me sweep the patio a little, ate an orange in the backyard, and stomped around (which helped shake some of the sand out of her clothes, thankfully.)

I'm so glad to have such a cute little outdoorsy girl.

Here's a couple of pictures that didn't get posted over the weekend, from some more backyard fun at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

While Tim and Jake were playing bags, Ellie was pushing her car car, and generally standing in the line of fire.

Then the boys worked on their juggling skills.

And then moved on to inventing new rules for how they were going to play bags. "Okay bruddah, this time we're going to throw sitting down without bending our elbows." "Okay bruddah, that sounds so fun!"

Ellie got Tim to do some baby tossing. The problem with baby tossing is that she wants you to do it for hours on end, and she's a fat little medicine ball.

Who wouldn't love a little time outside? Thank goodness for our beautiful weather!

Happy Birthday Grams!

Today was our fabulous Grams' birthday, and Itty Bitty and I spent the day celebrating with her. We had middle eastern feast for lunch, mom and I escaped the house for a few hours and left Grizz to babysit (thankfully, Ellie was down for a nap for all but a half hour that we were gone) and then we had some good outside play time.

I mean, who wouldn't want a dustpan ride?

And who wouldn't love a little crown action? (even if she isn't the birthday girl.)

This morning I brought Ellie with me when I picked up the cake. When we got back to the car, I said "this is Grams' cake. It's made of ice cream," and Ellie burst into tears, yelling "ice cream! Ice cream!" and reaching for the cake. She was not pleased about being put into her car seat, away from the cake. We made it up to her after bath time.

Except... we didn't let her eat herself sick. And at one point, dad dripped some ice cream on the floor. When I wiped it up, THIS happened:

It was REALLY SAD you guys. Sad enough to require actual tears.

But as you can see, a little bit of love from Grams fixed all that sadness, as it so often does. We love you Grams!

Melonhead Play Date.

See? Ellie's hair is not as bad as I made it out to be. I think she actually looks a little like Audrey Tatou in the movie Amelie. Plus all the knitters told me she looked cute, and I trust their judgment.

Today she and Clare walked with us in the morning, and then had a play date in the afternoon. While the girls were wrassling around and chasing the dog, Cara and I had a glass of wine. I am finally living my Real Housewives dream. We are just a couple of highballs and a pack of cigarettes away from being some sweet 1950s ladies who lunch.

Though we weren't able to catch it on camera, suffice to say that the two toddlers giving each other a happy smooch is the cutest thing ever.

Milestone.

March 5th, the day that mama screwed up her hair by trying to trim it for the first time. I meant to only cut her bangs so that they were above her eyebrows and out of her eyes. They won't be in her eyes for awhile now, as you can see. I made her look like Lloyd from Dumb and Dumber.

The Name Game.

Ellie is really picking up the names of her loved ones right and left, and it cracks me up. Right now, she's got mama, dada, Lulu and Rah-rah (Rocky) as well as "Sah" for Sara. After much prompting she's also begun to call Grizz by Dizz. This leaves out poor Grams, who puts up with her crap AND my crap every day. Poor thankless Grams. But I realized the other day that she's started making a specific noise every time she sees a picture of Grams - she says Maw. I wonder where that comes from, because she's not even trying to say the G, and we call her Grams, not Grandma. Then I wondered if she's calling her Maw because she hears Sara and I call her mom all the time. Time will tell. The other fun thing is that after some great skyping the other day, she started calling Grandma Rosie "Ro," and has continued to do it when we look at pictures. The funniest thing was yesterday while I was cleaning the kitchen, Tim and Ellie were looking through her baby photo albums, and Ellie started yelling out "Lah!" and pointing at the picture of her friend Lexi. We have a date with Grandma and Grandpa tonight, and I'm interested to see if she starts trying to call them by name.

Last night we had a great baby party. One of the ladies just moved into a new house, and they have a great backyard for playing. Now that most of the kids are walking, it's like observing a bunch of wiggly puppies together. They go and wrassle with each other, steal each other's food, but thankfully don't bite each others ears.

...Then Ellie stood up, started crying and begged to be picked up.

Ellie, supervising Tre and Hunter

Too Smart for her Own Good.

This kid, she amazes me left and right. And when she is not amazing me, she is frustrating me. She has a memory like a steel trap, and a will of iron.

Observe: the other day I was getting dressed. I'd already given her the two pictures of her that I keep atop my dresser, but she was still crying for more baby. So I took a little photo album out of my dresser drawer. It features pictures of me, but what does she know? One beautiful baby looks much like the next beautiful baby (funny though, because she does recognize pictures of Sara as a little girl by calling them Sara. If it's me though, she thinks it's her. She fails to notice that I have REAL brown eyes, and she only has PRETEND brown eyes.) A couple days later when she was in our room, she started crying for the baby and pointing to my dresser drawer. She'd only had the album ONCE.

This morning her stroller was in our entryway from yesterday's walk. Having strolled 10 miles yesterday, I decided to take a break this morning. Ellie started pushing the stroller and crying about "a walk," so I took her outside for a bit, figuring that maybe seeing some caw-caws would be enough. She took off walking around the corner, and I followed. She eventually took my finger and kept strolling in her little lavender footie pajamas. Then I realized she was saying "slide. Slide. Wheee! Slide." Oh no kiddo, we are not walking the half mile to the park in our pajamas. Or at least, we're not doing it if mama is barefoot. Following a shower, I did take her to the park, which made her morning.

I am constantly amazed with her. On the drive home from lunch today I was treated to the noises that all the animals make in the barnyard. She has gotten big enough and figured out how to open the doors in our house - no more privacy for mommy! She's starting to call all the cats by their own names, and the way she says Lulu is the cutest thing. She's also starting to put one or two words together, and I feel like our first sentence is just around the corner.

Nap Nanny.

"Oh yeah, I put her to sleep for you. I used my giant butt to smother her. You're welcome."

Petunia is a good babysitter.

For those of you about to freak out about an infant and a cat having a nap together, please read the following article and set your souls at ease. Cat smothering is an urban legend.