The Birthday Girl and 24 weeks along

Here's Elle the day before her big day, jumping for joy just because she had a skirt on!
...a few seconds later, I told her to give me a big smile, close enough!

Ellison playing with the birthday present we got her, a new water table.

hours of fun and wetness!

The day of her party, in her party dress from Grandma Marcy

The birthday girl and birthday boy, their birthdays are just 3 days apart!

blowing out the candles on her pink cake!

She did it (with a little help)

Ellison and her Grammy. Elle put on her new swimsuit (from Grammy and Grampy) as soon as she opened it!

A new Backyardigans sofa/chair from Patty and Dave - Uncle Timmy helped her break it in!

Hiding in her balloons the day after

2 short, amazing years ago...

-These pictures were taken in the hospital the day, and the day after Ellison Leigh was born. Check out the outfit the hospital staff put on her...it was size 0-3 months, but looked huge on our little 5 lb 11 oz baby girl.

Now that the big sister (to be) is 2, let's talk about the baby! I'm currently 25 weeks along, (pic below is at 24 weeks) and still feeling great! My most recent check-up was at 23 weeks and I was officially measured for the first time, I was 25 cm - which was good! They say that the centimeter measurement and the week you are on are supposed to be close to the same number. Anyway, looking back to my pregnancy with Ellison, I measured 21 cm at 23 weeks! Yes, I'm bigger, 4 cm bigger to be exact -I feel like it too!
I'm still exercising (5 days cardio, 1-2 days of weights a week) and still teaching my group exercise classes (which are ending soon). The baby's activity is also going strong throughout the day and night. I feel like the activity level of this baby is very similar to the action I felt when I was pregnant with Elle, the only difference is that with this baby most of the movements are felt lower than I can remember with Elle. I know this really means nothing, just different positioning, but it is the only difference besides being a little bigger.
I have no feelings one way or another on the gender of this baby (I didn't with Elle either), however, Elle has stayed consistent with her prediction of it being a boy! We will see in about 15 weeks!

The Zoo, and Panda Bear book video

Jonathan, Ellison, Marcy, and I went to the Lincoln Park Zoo last weekend. Elle absolutely loved it, you would have thought that it was her first time there. Ellison enjoyed the giraffes, rhinos, and swinging monkeys (sorry no pics), and also loved getting up close to all of the fish! She also talked about the baby lions a lot - however they were far from being babies, just too far away to notice their actual size.

Here she is showing her Grandma the fish. She counted all "3" of them!

The (baby) Lions!

- I guess the distance along with the large rocks they sat on might make their actual size deceiving. Anyway, we hung out by them for a while since the male kept standing up looking like he was going to roar, but unfortunately we just watched them enjoy the lovely day quietly.

More fish! Again, she counted 1-2-3!

The best part of all, the Merry-Go-Round! Elle specifically picked out the panda bear eating the bamboo (she has watched a Wonder Pets episode where a baby panda bear was stuck up in a bamboo tree with a belly ache from eating too much bamboo)! She loved how she was going both up and down, as we went round and round! Ellison has raved about the Zoo/Merry-Go-Round all week...talking about how she rode the panda bear and that Grandma sat with her, and Mommy rode the zebra!


This video is from the morning before we went to the zoo - Even though we didn't see any real Panda Bears at the Zoo, it seemed to be a theme of the day.
Elle was taking longer than normal on the toilet, so I brought her some books to occupy her as I was getting ready. I stopped in my tracks when I overheard her reading the book "Panda Bear, Panda Bear, What Do You See?" This was already her 2nd time through and I just caught the ending, then she paged through backwards.

If you are unable to hear/understand here is a translation:
"...turtle, panda bear, that's what I see. Oh, I missed a page. That's a spider monkey, that's a water bufla alo, that's a ... that's a ...that's a eagle, that's a panda bear, that's what I see. Mommy!"

I wished I would have recorded her reading the whole thing, I was frozen just listening to her with a huge smile on my face. Then I thought, I have to get the camera and record this so Jonathan can see (he was out riding his bike). So happy I caught this little bit.

Here are 2 funny stories that I HAVE to share:
1. Elle was playing with some keys she found a while back (she says the keys are for Grandma's house). She goes to get a laundry basket, which she flips upside down to stand on, and proceeds to lock and unlock our bathroom door (she can actually do it, and the keys aren't even made for any of the doors to our house). Any way, I should also mention that she had been watching an "Abby-ca-dabby movie" -spell? recently (if you don't know Abby-ca-dabby, she is a little fairy friend of Elmo's from Sesame Street). After having a little trouble unlocking the door, after locking and unlocking for over 30 minutes, she said to me... "if I only had my wand, I would poof my way in"!

2. Elle was in the tub the other night coloring with her bathtub crayons. The colors we had out happened to be blue, red, and yellow. She is very good with her colors, with exception to yellow - she gets it mixed up with green sometimes. I had colored Elmo (in red), Cookie Monster (in blue) and Big Bird (in yellow). Next, I went down the line and asked her what color each character was, she got red/Elmo, blue/Cookie Monster, then she was stumped at Big Bird. Soon she answered... "lemon flavored"!

She has really been cracking us up lately with the things she says! It's crazy, she is turning 2 in 5 days, and she already has quite a vocabulary! Some of her other famous lines that we hear often are:

• "I have an idea"
• "Mom/Dad, that's not right"
• "I'm too big" (when she is actually too small to do something)
• "I'm mak'in some" (when she is on the toilet)
• "there's rain-deer poop outside" (talking about the deer droppings in our backyard)
• "the ladybug/spider won't get you" (when she is worried about an insect/spider near her)
• "I want to do it by my self"!

Late Easter post, 22 weeks, plus more

We spent our "Spring Break"/Easter in Wausau this year and had a blast playing around the yard (with grass stains to prove it), walking down by the river (Elle even went fishing w/ Grampy), and going to the parks. The fishing report wasn't good, but Elle had a great time watching the bait swim around looking for fishies! When we asked Elle about fishing she said "we didn't catch any, may be tomorrow"...what a good sport.

Here she is, locating her basket. We had to give her some clues on where it was since she was so distracted by all of the eggs she was seeing along the way.

-You might also notice the new hair-cut ("snippy-snip") that Grammy gave Elle...but please keep in mind she just woke up, so the styling isn't up to par this early in the morning.

Checking things out...not bad!

Finding the eggs.

The good eggs had money for her piggy bank, but there were bad eggs too - we will have to tell the Easter Bunny to not try to be so healthy next year (the bunny stuffed some of the eggs with dried berries, what was he thinking)?!

Time w/ daddy...

Elle is always around when we want to get our push-ups in. She is very helpful in adding that extra 23 (or so) pounds to give us the extra challenge.

She even wiggles around a little helping with balance/stability training!

Jack and Elle...

getting ready for nap time

Jack loves watching everything Elle does. He was very entertained while Elle took her tubby the other morning.

Ellison has also been improving on her sharing and showing things to Jack for him to touch!



Fun times!

Jack fell asleep during story time. He also enjoyed cuddling with Minnie Mouse.

Tyrone, Elle, and Jonathan -nice face Elle!
22 weeks!
Yikes! I can't believe I took a bare belly shot, post work-out, I'm apologizing in advance!

Despite the not so flattering pic, I am still feeling great all of the time and loving being pregnant!

Jonathan measured me weekly when I was pregnant with Elle, not the way the OB does, but around the belly at the biggest part. Well, we have not been keeping up with it the best, but did take a measurement today to find I'm 34". Looking back, I was 34" at 27 weeks with Elle! I am not only feeling bigger this pregnancy, I AM bigger! Yikes again!