We had to come home for Ellie to take her nap, much to Anne Marie's chagrin. To ease the transition, she got to paint. Much fun.

Just for fun:

Then, so mommy could start this blog and get some chores out of the way, quiet time ensued. Here she got to play with blocks, read books, color, and listen to music. Sounds like fun to me.

After quiet time, Anne Marie got to watch a special movie so Mommy could get a little College Gameday in while deep-cleaning the kitchen. Ellie ate a leisurely lunch to keep her contained.

Movie and a banana left her thirsty so she got to have water with a straw and free reign to blow bubbles.

Lunch was then served for Mommy and Anne Marie. She had pieces of american cheese that she decided were bandaids - kinda gross to me, but that's ok. She put them on her handprints from her placemat and then on her own arm. Then she ate the bandaids off her arm. Ewww. She thought it was funny.

Then on to some after-lunch reading time. I wish we had more of this delightful, dual self-entertainment on a daily basis. It didn't take too long for this scene to devolve into one of grunts, whines, "mines", and a little pushing and pulling. One day they'll get along perfectly, right?

After it was discovered that Mommy was not in the playroom, I was summoned to read with them. We opened Gram and Papa's gifts (not sure why we had Ellie wait until Anne Marie's birthday for her gift, but it didn't seem to bother her). Discovering her gift, "Helping" to open Ellie's.

Mommy was taking so many pictures that Anne Marie had to take one too. For her first try with my camera (I think she's used Aunt Ruth's before), I thought she did pretty good. Wowee, I should probably wash that hair! :)

While Mommy put Ellie down for her nap, Anne Marie got to "do ABCs" on mommy's computer (the starfall website). Then it was off for naptime herself. Since she's three today, she doesn't need her paci anymore (or so Mommy and Daddy say, at least). So with surprisingly few tears and delays, she fell asleep for her first intentionally paci-free nap of her little life.

Mommy also finally got to do something about that greasy hair - ahhh, a shower - that's better!

After a refreshing two hour nap (nice for Mommy, too), Anne Marie had her celebratory I-napped-without-my-paci popsicle proving that while three is too big for a paci, it's not too big for the high chair when a popsicle is available!

More special movie while Mommy watches the vols play.

Some sad Vol watching later, and Daddy was home. Time to go to Anne Marie's choice of dinner. Cheeseburger at Five Guys followed by birthday ice cream, having already celebrated with cake and ice cream, cupcake-disaster strawberry cake and blueberry muffins - and as many parties with people to sing to her - we're keeping it low-key and low-mess today.
** I forgot my camera when I went out - super bummed about that. So these were with my phone.

After practically mainlining sugar into her, we made it home for a quick bath.

She was so hyper we allowed her just a few minutes of movie to encourage some stillness. We were getting her jammies on her when we noticed how big her belly was. Between the big cheeseburger and the big ice cream cone, she had eaten a ton - I'm not sure when she last ate this much!

After her ten minutes, it was off to bed to read with Daddy.

A quick snuggle with Mommy, a few last ditch efforts to get out of her bed, and she's down. There you have our day. Thanks for reading this far! Aside from those items or activities marked as "special" it was really not that much unlike many of our days.

Anne Marie is transforming before our eyes. It's almost as if the change from two to three has been a switch. She's able to communicate and think about things in such a new way. I've been trying to put my finger on the changes. It's as if everything she could do two months ago has been amplified. Her ideas, conversations, songs, understanding, and abilities are just more, but in a way that almost daily causes me to stop and think something along the lines of "did she just do that" or "I can't believe she said that". She's beautiful - looking so much more like a little girl everyday, no more toddler chubbiness or awkwardness. She's loving and compassionate. She's good at pushing boundaries and trying my patience, but does love to please. She's making me find out so much about myself - some good, some bad, and some just plain ugly. I look forward to this next year and the discoveries it will hold for both of us.

Happy Birthday to my sweet Anne Marie. Three years ago today I was holding a tiny, soft, beautiful girl in my arms and marveling that my journey as mother had begun. So much as happened in these three years that I feel as though the time has flown and yet, as I think of all the fun, joy, frustration, learning, discovering, consternation, and love that has taken place, time since Anne Marie's birth seems longer than time before her. I love you, darling girl.

The last "way" that I'll discuss about Ellie is her burgeoning advanced communication - more advanced than crying, that is. She's starting to parrot sounds and today has been particularly intrigued by "ba" and "ma". She will say "duck" and I think she tried to say "balloon" today. When she wakes up from her nap, often she'll say "ma ma" which melts my heart and sends me running back to her room. She will wave "bye bye" on command and knows signs for "all done" and "more" and has her cute versions of them. I just realized what her "more" sign was today... she got huge applause and many "good job, Ellie"s which filled her with obvious pride. She might be my more eager-to-please child, but that remains to be seen.

Two Sets today: Eleanor's First Walk and Eleanor's One Year Photo Shoot

Happy Birthday Dear Ellie - Happy Birthday to You!! I love you sweet girl.

One of the sweetest things she does (other than the big, huge smiles and wet, open-mouth kisses) is patting my back. When I hold the girls to comfort them, I've always held them up to my shoulder and patted their back. They've both reached the point, at about a year, when they notice this and seem to assume that this is what people do to show love. When I hold Ellie up in this position, she'll often snuggle her face into my neck and pat my shoulder. Alternatively, and just about as cute, is that she'll play with my hair. She's a hair girl and plays with her own often (thankfully she's never been bald) but seems to really like to get her hand up into mine, too.

Secondly - she's a curious and adventuresome girl! She's all about walking, climbing, running, and chasing big sister! She loves to find trouble and seems to do it easily. One of her pleasures seems to be walking down the hallway when she's not really supposed to be there - and usually getting chased by the end of it. She's different from Anne Marie in this sense, but it's hard for me to put my finger on it. Anne Marie was very active and walked even earlier, but where Anne Marie would sit and read for what seemed like hours, Ellie is not as into books. She's on the go, yet can still entertain herself somewhat - especially if she's doing something she shouldn't. She's not that enthralled by the TV - no matter how much I wish she'd watch on long car trips. Speaking of which - she's certainly a worse car rider - and I think it has to do with the fact that she wants to be on the move on her own terms - not strapped into ours.

In the spirit of two ways, here's two photo sets for you to look over if you choose. Eleanor's 11 month photo shoot (with obvious help from big sister) and one day from around the house. I almost lost my sanity during the 11 month photo shoot so I'm glad I got at least a few good ones.

Here she is at the beach last week. We had a wonderful time but she's not the born beach-baby that her sister is. She enjoyed the tent and chair. Though, at one point she did heed the siren call of a shovel and pail, picking it up to join big sister and cousin in their play.

During her earlier trips to the beach, she was more of a baby. She went where we took her and either seemed to enjoy it, or, at least, didn't have much opinion on the subject. She's now master of her own little person (and often asserts herself in many areas of her life) and decided that she did not really like the sand nor salt water on her toes, legs, hands and face. I put a few inches of water in a baby pool on the back deck. Now that was grand fun.

Check out some more beach pics here. I think I'll be adding some to this set later - can't remember what pics are still out there.

Before our trip, AM picked up the phrase "working hard". Namely, she told me that she cleaned the house and was working hard. In actuality, we were having our house cleaned and she was eating lunch and watching our wonderful housecleaner, Magda. Here, before I got the camera out, when she was slurping her noodles, she told me she was working hard.

Some Beach Shots:

Here are some pics from at home. These I took of her today. I walked by her with the camera while she was eating lunch (the mark on her forehead was from chocolate chip cookie making earlier in the day). She requested that I take the pictures and so I did. In this order.

Serious:

Cheese:

Silly:

And now our littlest explorer. She full fledged crawling and into everything!

And big smiles:

Love you, Ra-Ra.

She just requested some chicken nuggets and that worked for me so I was preparing them. I had cut them and was going to transfer them from the hot microwave plate to her plastic plate. Before I did though, I put a dollop of ketchup on the side of her plate. When she saw it she said, "Oh, beautiful, Mommy!" My wonderfully sweet daughter thinks I'm a terrific ketchup artist! How much better does it get?

Since I knew that a post without pictures might be a severe disappointment to many, I uploaded these two from our zoo trip this morning. I took over 100 pics, so as soon as I can "catch up" - you'll see the rest. Enjoy.

Anne Marie loves to run, especially up and down "hills". She found this "hill" on the playground at the zoo.

Ellie has taken a liking to this babydoll and will chew her hands, poke her eyes, and very lovingly bestow kisses to her forehead.

My own dear mother requested a picture of the girls in their matching dresses - that is, she requested that they be brought straight up to Tennessee to see her, but if that was not available, a picture would do.

I love you Mother! As well as all the wonderful mothers in my life. I thank you for your execellent friendship, care, and love. I could never be who I am without you all. I thank God for each of you (and all your precious children).

Well - I'm running a few weeks behind, but when is that not the case? We had a lovely Easter, even though we missed our family. We decided to stay here since we'd be heading to a family wedding the very next weekend. It turned out to be very relaxing and, after a beautiful service at church, we were at no loss for food since we met up with several friends (at Katie Jane's house as you can tell from the video) and stuffed ourselves silly.

I indulged my crafting obsessions and made the girl's dresses this year. I made up the patterns, but later found a pattern that is very close to what I did, so I could have saved myself the trouble, but, oh well, we'll chalk it up to a learning experience. As you will see, Anne Marie's dress ended up being more like a size 5T rather than 3 or 4T - but I guess she'll just be able to wear it next year too. Overall, I was very happy with how they turned out.

The Easter playgroup party was chaos as usual, but even more so for me it seemed. Ellie wouldn't sleep and Anne Marie has a breakdown as soon as we entered the house. Her genius mother had let her carry the basket with the eggs loaded up for the hunt, into the house. I had also not had the forethought to put extra eggs in there for her to be able to keep after having to surrender the hiding eggs. That was her first meltdown, to be followed by several more that day. After lunch she couldn't hold it together at all, and when she gets like that she just needs some alone time. I put her in the car for a minute. I asked her if she wanted to go back in to play, and she said no, she just wanted to sit in her carseat. So I went in to gather our things and for some reason, I handed her the Easter basket right as I left her in the car thinking she could play with the eggs and stickers. I came back out to find her COVERED in chocolate. Needless to say, she was then having a much better day. I was so shocked when I got back to the car and saw it all over her, that I ran and cleaned her before I got a picture of it. Too bad. But here's a video of her "hunting for eggs" (sorry for the bad videography) followed by a video of what she really enjoyed at the Easter Egg Hunt.

A belated, but heartfelt, Happy and Joyous Easter to you all!

And here is a set of Ellie's around-the-house pictures.

Enjoy.