Walking, Talking & Teeth!!!

I've been getting really bad about updating recently.  Partly because we're almost ready to launch Dave's photo blog, Facebook page and a host of other things keeping us swamped...which is really exciting! 

We also were blessed with an insurgency of Slaugenhoups! From all points, Alaska, Maryland, and Clarion County. Very fun.

And...the purpose of this blog...to track our sweet baby girl's first year...has lots of updating to do!  We are finally walking (Well, Ellie took her first steps at Erin Vanderbeck's parents' house on September 25th.  She took a few steps toward Erin's cracker).  Shocking, right?

At breakfast last week, Ellie was eyeing up Killian (the dog) in the dining room while she sat perched in her high chair.  She blurted out as clearly as an adult would say it, "Doggie". Dave and I looked at each other and tried to replicate it, but she was entirely consumed by her breakfast at that point. The "Hi" and "Hey"s are back regularly too.

Finally!!!!!!! a tooth! After a very restless night in the pack 'n' play in Aunt Molly and Uncle Michael's house, I felt a pointy part on her lower left gum.  After months of applying the 'she must be teething' label to a bad night's sleep, we finally made it!  We can stop saving for dentures. Dave can stop losing bets to me about when a tooth will pop. And yes, she walked before she had teeth.

Clearly, I owe better posts on all of these things, since they're all such a big deal in kid terms, but I need to grab some photos too.

Hope everyone's doing well and enjoying fall! 

Just a quick moment to say thank you. To God, my husband, my family and friends

This week I've been reminded of how short and fast life is. We all need this little reminder. Even if it only has me telling people that I love them more often.  I need that.

The other stabbing reminder from this week is how lonely the world can be.  I memorize very few quotes, but one from Mother Teresa sticks out.  "The United States is the poorest country in the world, because it's the loneliest."  She went on to talk about how the old, the homeless and the diseased live alone. They tend not to commune and families don't pay enough attention.  Don't get me wrong, life is busy and hard just as of is.  I just feel grateful and appreciate the inner push to reach out and give "warm puzzles" to more people, more often.

*ask my Dad about the "warm fuzzy" reference. It's a good one.

Daddy day

Chips, pizza and beer. Oh and football.

Sweet girl

Getting older is such fun!  We ran tons of errands and drove almost an hour to drop something off and she was perfect.

My sweet baby girl...so much fun to take her out!

9-month Doc Appt.

Height: 27.5 inches (50th %)
Weight: 17 lbs. (25th %)
Head Circumference: 45 cm (55th %)

And here's the sleeping viewpoint.

Oh, the joyful faces we get when we look into the backseat.

Food Club - without the Original

So Heather started this food club - Here's the post: Food Club from Poblete Post

And she gave me the nod that I would get an invite to the next club meeting...so when she mentioned it was Philly Restaurant Week and she had already made reservations, I was over the moon excited! Well, she had to cancel (for very good reason) and Laura (another original) had already bowed out, so it wound up being Meghan and my dearest friend, Ally (a fellow city foodie).  We showed up at Zahav in Old City for our 7:30 reservation.

I was so giddy for this treat out for girl's night that I could hardly contain myself!  Restaurant week has the set menu (for any out of towners) $35 for 5 courses here. Wahoo! Love it. OK, clearly I miss city dining! haha.

Here's the link to their Restaurant Week Menu: http://www.zahavrestaurant.com/

We dined on the following: An amazing spread of the 'house salads' I wish that I knew what came with these, I should have taken my restaurant critic flip notepad to jot them all down, but a 2 tiered stand of 3-4 dishes contained on each layer made up this course (also accompanied by an ever delicious large bowl of hummus and fresh made pita.)  Highlights from the cold salad course were: the seemingly roasted eggplant, (I personally liked the okra, although I think I sat alone on this fav.), beet and walnut, a julienned carrot with just the right sweet and tang, tabouleh with the whole parsley leaf.

The Salatim - Salad Course

For our next course, we enjoyed: the crispy haloumi (Israeli cheese) yum with a date glaze; the chilled corn soup, which was good, but must have hit us with a dose of cardamom, so not the most natural of flavors for the night; the fried cauliflower (wow!); fried lamb (kibbe) also yum; and my personal (isolated) favorite of crispy sweetbreads...ooh so good. Meghan was brave and tried them? I think? Ally admitted they weren't so bad. :)

The main dinner course (which came out as more of a small plate, much to our delight, because we were beginning to slow down!) was compiled of the hanger steak (too rare for Meghan - and I'll admit, it was far more rare than I prefer my cow.) The branzino, which was pretty tasty; and an Israeli traditional dish, the Merguez, a lamb sausage. This course was good, but nothing spectacular. 

Finally, dessert (we were nearly stuffed!) We chose one of each. So the waiter adorned our table with: cashew baklava - incredible!;  almond semifreddo (rivaled the baklava - imho); and hte halvah mousse with chickpea praline and berries - now that I think of it - I could down a bowl of the mousse right now! Delish.

We opted out of coffee and tea, but we did try the muddled mint lemonade.

Overall, a nice little Israeli feast - we sent Ally home with leftovers.  Ahhh...how beautiful it was to get dressed up and enjoy a night out with the girls.  We missed you, Heather!

*A special thanks to my amazing husband who, along with my mother-in-law, made it all possible.* xoxo!

Overdue

Wow - sorry for the overdue posting here - I'm going to have to make it short, since Ellie's on her way up from a nap. 

I realized it's been almost a month since I last posted!  Crazy. Quick synopsis of the big things that have come and gone:

• Trip to Germany and Austria (basically the reason I went missing on the blog for a month). Lots of funny stories from this trip that deserve their own post.
• Baby play dates that get so much better each week!  Because the 'play' date actually involves 'playing.'
• Dave has been shooting a LOT. So there's lots of post production that I need to get on - thus, my time normally spent blogging went toward my 'other job'. Which I enjoy just as much, albeit keeping me away from my fun social avenues. :(
• Switching rooms around in the house so that Ellie now has almost an entire room to be safe and play in.  I'm sure the commitment to the kid is much to Annie's chagrin, but it's nice that I can be in the kitchen and keep an eye on her destruction.
• David has been super Dad.  He took on watching Ellie all day yesterday from awakening to nearly  sleeping - he was exhausted when I got home and said, "I don't know how you do it every day." (HUGE GRIN HERE)
• She's started sleeping through the night!
• Nana visited and saved Mama on a few occasions.
• Oh yea, and we're pregnant!

All of these items deserve their own post, so I'll have to get on that!

Glad to be back!

xoxo

Counterproductive to sleep

The following things have been proven sleep enemies(some may appear obvious, but you likely don't plan to prevent them until you're sprinting to the door, chasing the dog or flailing to find that ringing noise:

-hunger
-barking dogs
-sirens
-smoke alarms
-mailmen
-FedEx and UPS
-Hispanic Jehovah's Witnesses (no offense to anyone)
-census workers
-cell phones
-toys that take on a mind of their own
-garbage trucks

I'm sure I'll add more. :)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Sleep Regressions and Transgressions

I was talking to a friend of mine who's 10th child is 14-months-old now.  She described herself as a perpetual optimist with her example being, "What, teething keeps them up at night? I don't remember." She's so lovely that we laughed it up.  I declared my sister, Annie, to be in the same memory loss camp. 

About 2-3 weeks ago, Elizabeth had roseola.  I didn't know it at the time.  I excused the initial high fever as teething.  Finally Heather diagnosed her and we confirmed it with the pediatrician later that day.  Incredibly high fever (average of 104.9 degrees); fever breaks and a rash appears to spread all over her tiny body.  My niece had the same thing, around 8 months, and Annie said, "Oh yea, I should've realized that it was roseola." Humph.

With the high fever, I was terrified that I was going to not watch her carefully enough, so I rationalized pulling her into bed with us.  Bad move in hindsight.  I should have just stayed in her bedroom and slept on the floor.  But when they're sick, you put everything on hold and it doesn't matter. You do whatever you need to do to survive.   Well, she got better health-wise, but lost her better sleep habits winding up with me doing whatever we all could to get some sleep and respite. 

You have to undo what you do to get through it all.  And so there were some tough nights there - we called in back up, Nana Slaugenhoup, to the rescue.  And she gave me some much needed rest.  She was wonderful - nearly throwing me out of the house.  I got a haircut and joined a gym.  I felt bright eyed once she was ready to leave.  Sad to see her go, and Ellie misses her for sure! 

Lesson of the Day

Try not to feed your child once he or she is tired. (yes, I know they have to be fed before bed) Put off other things to let them eat earlier than later. Otherwise, you will have eyelashes, brows and lids caked with the dinner special.

Rubbing eyes with food on hands=not a fun clean up for either party. :)
Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Today. I found out how strong I am.

Disclaimer: this post is not for the weak of stomach and should not be read within an hour of eating.
We were supposed to go to Connecticut to visit Annie's house. My Mom, Dad, Ellie and I were scheduled to make the trip today; but after a miserable weekend of teething and sleep deprivation, I had to make the decision to stay home.

Now what made this a particularly hard decision to make was that I've been struggling with feeling like a shut in recently. Elizabeth, as we just had diagnosed (thanks Heather!), had roseola. The fever was insane, but she's on the mend with the fever gone. Just the rash, which isn't contagious. Oh, and a fantastic bout of teething. All of this has turned our usually amulet sweet angel into a terribly cranky, achy, child at times wailing in searing pain. Yup, it's been a fun weekend. :) poor girl. So with having cancelled so many of our outings last week and putting just about everything on hold to comfort our baby, yes, I began to feel depressed. Because frankly, it was depressing! Who wants to feel sick! Shout out to Heather who felt the same way with Pippa's cold last week.

Alright, so back to the strength finding.

No Connecticut, but yes to a Wegman's trip in Mount Laurel. Also, we have had pictures at the adjacent Costco for almost 4 months. (I figured I should pick them up.) with an itemized shopping list, good spirits and sleepy baby, we headed out after our first nap.

About midway down 295, Ellie started smiling at me and being playful. I told her how much I love having my happy daughter back and singing to her in the rear view mirror.

I got a faint whiff of a number 2, so was thankful I'd added baby wipes to our shopping list. After pulling into a clutch parking spot, I was greeted with a huge grin and laughs as I opened the rear door. Ellie was returning to her giddy self, finally! Her face was covered in chunky orange goo. I thought, oh, poor baby! She threw up! And I quickly recounted what I'd fed her for breakfast. Oatmeal and applesauce. Hmmm... Not orange colored. Dreadfully, I looked down her body and discovered, to my horror, some of that same chunky orange goo peering out of her pink cloth diaper.

Oh. No.

It's poop. There's poop on her legs. There's poop on her arms, hands, feet, neck, mouth, eyebrows, eyelashes, up her nostrils, inside the ears, hair, sippy cup, pacifier. The carseat.

So rallying my senses and reminding myself to avoid breathing deeply, I grabbed the carseat, the diaper bag and my purse. The brisk walk to grab a shopping cart offered a lovely dripping from the carseat onto my right foot. Awesome.

A beeline down the baby aisle and snagging a box of diaper wipes, we were off to the restroom. We'd pay for them after. As we opened the bathroom door, I caught a glimpse of a woman in her Mid-eighties teetering toward the only handicapped stall, of course housing the changing table we were after. Most older women are so cheerful; sadly, this woman was as unhappy as she could be. She turned around to ask why I was allowed to bring my cart into the bathroom. She said her husband was waiting outside and they got into a fight because he wouldn't come into the restroom too. Then she asked me how old my baby boy was. (I mentioned she was in a pink diaper, right?) Ellie must've thought it was a ridiculous question because she showed her displeasure by (truly) vomiting on me. The older woman said, "oh, she just threw up on you." Ellie thought that assessment was equally dumb and vomited again. Now, with vomit running down the inside of my shirt, my arm, hands, and a baby smeared with poop, we watch the woman continue the inch by inch, foot, then cane, then other foot, then cane again move into the stall. I gave up, (judge all you want) and decided the sink was going to have to do.

Tearing open the box of wipes, I started with her face and hands, then tackled her body, then opened the diaper. The irony, the diaper didn't capture much of the poop, it was almost empty. Ha!

Finally cleaned up, the woman finally comes out of the bathroom stall, just as I'm dousing Ellie from head to toe in antibacterial lotion. (side note: it made me laugh when the same older woman walked out without washing her hands, but there couldn't have been anything dirtier than what we put into the trash can. Ha!). I scrubbed the carseat, bagging the clothes, diaper, pacifier and sippy cup. I wedged the carseat on the bottom compartment to air out while we shopped.

Ah, what do they say? Cleanliness is next to Godliness? At that moment it felt it! I marched over to the coffee bar and treated myself to a large latte. Yum!

For some reason, I felt surprisingly happy. I felt like if I could avoid vomiting, find remarkable patience and actually rouse some humor out of this, then I really can take on this motherhood thing.

Who knew I would discover my inner Mama strength in a ration of diarrhea? (dealing with the notion that my daughter may have attempted to consume her own feces? Well, I'll save that for another day.)

Items I Previously Thought Were Useless

1. Baby Bathtub - so many people said that I'd never need/use them.  I would end up bathing her in the sink, etc.  I registered for a $15 ultra basic sling for the baby, but then returned it right before she was born after the advice that it'd go to waste.  Lesson:  BUY ONE.  I wound up not bathing her  (very often at all) because it was such a complete ordeal to bathe her for the first month.  First of all, you need four hands when they first come out since they need 2 hands just to support their bodies and head.  Then you need another two hands to soap & wash quickly! And the reality is that they do NOT love being held out under a faucet or anywhere outside the cuddly loving arms being hosed or lovingly poured upon.  No matter how gentle you are, they just don't like it.  My advice: crank up a space heater, have a nice luke warm water awaiting the baby in the tub that has a sling for the infants in it; get everything you need right next to you and settle in for about 20 minutes on your knees.  Now that she can sit up, she doesn't need the tub, but I don't know how she would ever have gotten clean within the tub in the first 6 months.
2. Thermometer - I always figured I'd be able to feel her head and know if she had a fever.  Not true.  When the first cold comes along, you're suddenly at the drug store thinking the $80 instant thermometer seems reasonable.
3. Bibs - I thought it was just for food, so I'd only need one or two.  Reality check.  They drool. A lot. And they do it early and often.  I wasn't prepared to 'bib' her just to keep her clothes from being soaked (especially in the winter).  Buy extras from the dollar store. Granted you take them off when you're trying to impress someone with how put-together you kid seems, but you keep it on right up until you make your debut.
4. More than an average of 3 onesies/day for each week - I remember thinking, how many outfits can one child wear!?! And then she came along...(with ownership that I just don't love laundry...so that might factor in...somehow) and somedays she'd go through 7-8 onesies in one day. Spit up, poop, pee, more spit-up, drool, a bath, hopefully no more poop and you're averaging 5 outfit changes.  Now I had a spitter, so that could be it too.  I remember being grateful for the dozens of clothes she had early on.
5. Swim Diapers - Always figured the regular disposables would be just fine.  What I didn't account for was the triple sized blow-up the diaper experiences once you're in the water for more than 3 minutes.  Heather and Meghan (mama friends) couldn't stop laughing that Elizabeth instantly quadrupled her body weight with the swollen diaper - making it nearly impossible for her to even move her legs. There should've been a picture.

Boppy's main resident these days...