Embarrassing things my child says

I normally love having such a verbal child, but sometimes not so much. A few examples:

• "Mama going poop in the potty!" She says this - loudly - ANY time we enter a public restroom, no matter what the purpose.
• "Mama wearing BLUE underwear!" This was yesterday at the YMCA as I was changing after going to the pool. She narrated every little thing I did - loudly - during the changing process to the whole locker room. I'm sure they thought it was hilarious!
• "Daddy hurts Mama." Well, this one has yet to be used in an actual embarrassing situation; she just said this at home in front of the two of us. We have no idea what she meant (she continued on to say something about the sun being bright??), but we tried to convince her that no that's not true, and that Mama and Daddy love each other. REALLY hope she doesn't repeat that one in public!! That might be hard to explain.

She still loves the basket

Remember this?

(13 months old)

Well, Eleanor rediscovered her love of reading in a basket today.

She's grown a little bit, hasn't she? :)

Baa Baa Black Sheep

Well, she's not exactly singing yet, but she knows all of the words...sort of! That's a (clean!) wipe that she's playing with...I have no idea why she finds them so fascinating.

(And I promise, she does own other clothing besides this shirt.)

My funny girl

This is Eleanor's latest game.  She has a little yellow toy car that she was playing with in the car the other day (yes, a car in the car), and she started asking these questions and answering herself.  When I started answering her and playing along, she thought it was hilarious!  Here she is later, talking about that same little car.

She has this little jar of plastic animals that have provided her with HOURS of entertainment.  The other day she made them walk one by one over to the jar and then sit on top together.  Maybe this isn't cute to other people, but it was pretty funny for me to watch.  Notice how all of the animals on the jar are facing in the same direction.

Doing her all time favorite thing

Riding on Buela's back!

Buela was nice enough to read multiple Curious George stories to Eleanor.

Father's Day

For Father's Day, Hunter wanted to go to the beach for a few hours.  Sadly I didn't take my camera, but we had a wonderful time.  This was definitely the most fun I've had at the beach with Eleanor because she is now old enough to have a healthy fear of the water.  She played with her bucket and toys, and every once in a while she would run down to the water to fill up her bucket.  We watched her very closely and were ready to run after her if we needed to, but she knew where to stop and she would fill up her bucket and run back...spilling the majority of the water on her way.  :)

I really wished I had my camera for the video function at one point though.  The beach has a pretty strong slope, so to get back to us she had to climb up a little hill of sand.  She went down to the water once just to wash the sand off her hands and then climbed back up the hill...only to fall a little bit and catch herself with her hands.  Of course, this meant her hands got sandy and she wanted to go wash them off again.  Repeat.  Repeat.  Repeat.  I was in tears from laughing so hard by the end of this, but she didn't seem frustrated and was having fun.  It was great to relax a little and watch the dolphins in the water, the pelicans eating the fish that were jumping out of the water (Hunter tried unsuccessfully to catch one with Eleanor's bucket), and see Eleanor having a blast.

This was the same beach where we scattered Ada's ashes, by the way.  Hunter specifically wanted to go there for Father's Day.  It was a beautiful day!

Fun with Eleanor

It's amazing how many funny little things Eleanor does.  I know I can't remember everything, but here are some of her more recent funny sayings:

• The other day I gave her a choice about what shoes she wanted to wear.  Of course, choices have never really worked with her, and she just said, "No!  Want to wear barefoot!"
• A song from her music class called "dancing with teddy" came on the other day in the car.  Her 'Buela (my mom) was in the car with us too, and Eleanor started singing, "Dancing with Buela".  She's been kind of obsessed with my mom too - on the first day of her visit if she left the room, Eleanor ran around going "Where's Buela?  I want Buela!"  Of course my mom loves this!
• Since my mom has been here, Eleanor has started trying to get my attention by going, "Beth!  Beth!"  It's funny, but feels a little weird!
• Yesterday my mom and I were talking about purses and I was showing her where I ordered mine on Etsy, when out of the blue Eleanor came over to us and said, "Want El-nor purse."  So I went into my closet and found an old purse for her to play with, which she promptly filled with play corn and potato chips.
• She was drinking juice and said, "Sweet little baby drinking juice."  She referred to herself as a sweet little baby for about the next 30 minutes.
• She is developing quite the imagination.  This morning I heard her wake up on the monitor and she started listing off all kinds of food: "Green salad, and hot dogs, and egggggs, and..."  I went up there, and she had her blanket spread out in front of her.  She said, "El-nor making food on the blanket."  She proceeded to "make" salad, avocado, eggs, etc. and we pretended to eat them together.  Then later this morning she put her doll in her little doll high chair, brought it over to our dining room table, and pretended to cut up avocado for the baby.  I'm loving this stage!
• One morning last week she decided she was done with her breakfast.  She started rubbing her belly and said, "It's too much!  Too much food in the belly!"  This is particularly entertaining to me because she eats SO much food!
• Using a public restroom with Eleanor in the stall with me can be quite the embarrassing experience because she likes to announce to the world what I'm doing - or what she thinks I might be doing.  The funniest thing she said one time was, "Good job pee peeing in the potty, Mommy!"  I guess I should just be thankful for the compliment.  :)

And here's a little video of Eleanor drinking water in the bathtub - she reminds me of a cat.  My favorite part is around :16 when she says "got water in the nose".

My new favorite thing

This is a berry smoothie and it is delicious.  It's funny - I don't particularly care for blueberries or yogurt of any kind, and it's not often that I just drink a glass of milk, but when you combine those in a blender with some strawberries I LOVE it!  That makes me happy, because I know how good these foods are for you and now I've finally found a way to enjoy them.

We have a bunch of frozen blueberries left over from our blueberry picking experience, and last week I found strawberries for $.99/lb so I stocked up.  I cut them up and froze them, which is great because it makes the smoothie thick.  Just add some skim milk and vanilla yogurt (I like the Stonyfield Organic), put them all in a blender, and you're done!  I don't really measure anything - I just add stuff until I get the right consistency.

Hmm, 3 food posts in less than 2 weeks - can you tell I'm pregnant?  ;)

Night #4

She went to bed without a fuss (unlike last night...but that's another story!) and I went up to check on her and found this:

LOVE how she has her head on the pillow!

Mexican Spaghetti Casserole

Tonight I was going to make Hunter's all time favorite, Taco Casserole.  Unfortunately I forgot to buy tortilla chips, which are kind of crucial to the recipe, and I didn't realize this until the meat was already cooking.  So, I looked through my pantry, looked through several recipes online, and came up with my own variation.  It was an experiment but it actually turned out really well, and Eleanor LOVED it.  So, I thought I'd share the recipe partly so I can look back at it and also in case anybody else is interested.

Oh, and I definitely think this would be a good recipe to freeze and cook later.  I have a list of meals I plan to make in the month before I'm due - I plan to make two of these casseroles at once (using a BIG skillet!) and cook one and freeze one for later.

About 7 oz (half a box) of whole wheat spaghetti, cooked
1 lb lean ground beef
1 C chopped onion
1 clove garlic
1 packet taco seasoning
1 can black beans (15 oz)
1 can tomato sauce (15 oz)
1 can corn (15 oz), or about 2 cups of frozen corn, thawed
Grated sharp cheddar cheese - maybe 1/2 cup?  (Or Mozzarella cheese for a more low fat version)

Cook the spaghetti.  (I broke mine first, not that it matters.)  At the same time, cook the beef, onion, and garlic together in a large skillet until the beef is brown.  Add the next 4 ingredients to the meat and let everything simmer for about 5 minutes.  Mix the meat and vegetable mixture with the spaghetti in a 9x13 casserole dish and cover with grated cheddar cheese.  (Sorry, I don't know the exact amount - I just made sure everything was covered.)

Cook at 350 for 30 minutes.  (Well, at least this is what all of the similar recipes that I read called for, but I took mine out after 20 minutes because I had a very whiny and hungry toddler.  I'm not sure if 10 more minutes would make a difference.)

She was DEFINITELY a fan!

Pictures!!

A friend of mine has a photography company and took some pictures for us at a local park.  I love them!

Success!

I only had to go in her room twice to make her put a book down and get back in bed.  I'm not sure how she was planning on reading in the dark anyway!  (This picture only looks so bright because of the flash.)

Eleanor's new room!

Eleanor's new room is almost finished!

Every single piece of furniture is from IKEA (some via Craigslist).

Just a different angle and lighting

She loves her tree on the wall and likes to point out all the different animals.

I contemplated adding a picture of the inside of the closet because I'm proud of how well it's organized...for now. ;)

This is the only part left to finish in her room.  I'm going to make a French bulletin board to hang over her bed horizontally, and then I have some other framed stuff (baby pictures and her artwork) that I guess will go on the rest of the wall.  I'm just not sure how to arrange them yet.  I had planned to hang her artwork over her bed, but Hunter didn't want it where she could stand up and knock it off the wall.  She's also getting a doll house for her birthday, so that will fill up part of that floor space at the foot of her bed.

Sad news

My great-aunt Peggy and great-uncle Bill, both age 74, were killed in their condo this weekend.  Nobody knows why, and police aren't releasing many details at all about what happened.  Even though I didn't grow up near them, it is still shocking and such a huge loss.  Who on earth would murder two of the nicest people you've ever met?

My grandfather was the 4th of 16 children, two of whom died very young.  When his father died, he dropped out of high school (and finished later) to help raise his many younger brothers and sisters, including Uncle Bill.  My grandfather was killed by a drunk driver in 1990, and today 9 of his siblings are still living - the youngest is about 70 years old.  The Stephenson family is a good, strong, healthy, hard-working family who loves and looks out for each other.  Hunter and I both admire them so much that we are naming this baby Arthur Stephenson.  Hunter has met them on three different trips to Kentucky, and just last year Eleanor got to meet her great-great-aunts and uncles.  I remember that Aunt Peggy couldn't get over how much Eleanor can eat!  ;)

I've been following all of the Cincinnati news lately, and I just wanted to share a few stories that stood out.  This is a great story from the newspaper about them, and here is a video of an interview with my uncle done in 2000.

Aunt Peggy and Uncle Billy will be greatly missed by many, many people.