Ziggy the Baby

Sorry if this is the way you're finding out but this is now going to be Scooter's Blog and Ziggy's Blog. That is, Ella's going to be a big sister sometime in late May!

Me when I first found out I was pregnant

That life-changing second line.

So I've just finished the first trimester, which was pretty uneventful. Feel good, though tired. I've been going to sleep with Ella at night and taking her nap with her (except, inconveniently, on Mondays and Thursdays when I have to teach during naptime).

Ella knows there's a baby in mommy's belly and may be the best-informed two-year-old in America when it comes to babies and homebirth, since she has spent countless hours in the little birth and babies exhibit at the Science Museum and watched the lovely homebirth video they have over and over.

We are so excited to be adding the last member of our family in May. We'll use this blog to keep you updated on any news about Ziggy (who, like Scooter, will remain genderless until her or his birthday leading to many awkward pronoun slashes in blog postings!) because we're obviously incapable of maintaining more than one blog.

So Many Things Happening Part 2-4: Halloween, Nashville, Dentist

Ok, yeah, it feels wrong to be posting about Halloween and our first trip to the dentist in the same posting, like they should cancel each other out. But seriously, I only have one picture of the dentist, so it's not worth it's own post.

Part 2, Halloween

Ella was a kitty!

She loves this costume so much. It has a little tail on the back and if you ask her where her tail is, she bends over and tries to reach between her legs to get it. She especially loves putting the nose and whiskers on. Her voice gets an octave higher and she admires herself in the mirror saying "ooh, I'm a little kitty."

She got to show off her costume twice. Once at a Halloween party where she got to eat yummy cupcakes (kitty's favorite food):
And then on Halloween night. We went trick-or-treating with her best friend, Elizabeth. Together, they were the Owl and the Pussycat:


I dressed up as a kitty mommy, which meant wearing this silly fluffy sweatshirt my mom got me that's super warm and having kitty whiskers:
Ella kept giving me hugs and telling me I was so soft. It was awesome. Here they are traveling home from the festivities in style:

Elizabeth and her mom, Kirsten (who had wings to match Elizabeth's),
and Ella with Seth, dressed as a thug, I guess.

Any ideas for next Halloween's costume are welcome. The goal this year was to make a costume that could be worn over super-warm clothes in case it was freezing.

Part 3, Nashville

I don't really even want to say anything about our trip to Nashville except that it was professional instead of pleasurable, which was especially true because the weather was crappy the whole time we were there right up until a couple of hours before we had to leave. If you care about a life-size replica of the Parthenon or the largest statue in the Western world, ask Seth about them!

The highlights were a place called the Monkey's Treehouse, this big indoor playspace where Ella could have fun, and down the street the Loveless Cafe, which makes the best fried chicken and biscuits I've ever had.

We went to those two places twice. I don't think it's worth going all the way to Nashville just for their biscuits and chicken, but if you have to go there, definitely definitely skip lunch, get good and hungry and order creamed corn as a side even if you don't normally like it. Yum. And save room for pie. Ella tried to put the entire piece of Fudge Pie in her mouth at once. I don't blame her. It was soooooo good.
The only part of this trip that was better than the trip to California was that to get there only takes two 1 1/2 flights. So fast. On the way back it was pretty late at night, but Ella just chilled and had a nice time after we ate a million dollars worth of poor quality airport food.


And last and also least, Part 4, The Dentist

Finally, I no longer have to carry around guilt about the fact that I've never taken Ella to the dentist! He said her teeth were fabulous and tickled her mouth with the funny brush and painted her teeth with melon flouride. This picture is completely misleading, because she did the entire exam in my lap and with her mouth mostly closed as she tried to chew his instruments or eject them from her mouth with her tongue. But it does show off the excellent glove balloon he made her:
And that's it! Other than the horrific stomach bug that Ella and me and my mom got last week (and which we did not document with photos), you are basically up-to-date on our hectic November so far.

Have a fabulous Thanksgiving! Safe travels and many helpings of a variety of pies!

So Many Things Happening Part 1 1/2: Snow!

In that list of upcoming posts, I forgot to mention that we have pictures of playing in the first snow! Straight from the beach to the snowpants. You may remember the storm a few weeks ago--it was pretty snowy some places, but we only got about a half inch here. First thing in the morning, at 7:30 am, Ella insisted that we dress her in full gear so she could go out and play:

In the background you can see a puffy mommy putting on her "adult snow pants" (technically ski pants, I guess?) over pjs to go outside.

Sure the green grass was poking through the snow, but this was perfect snow-balling snow. First we made a tiny snowman with a little pepper for a nose (they grow these decorative peppers in planters outside our building):

Then Daddy came with our breakfast and took over the snow building. He had much grander plans:


The next day all the snow had melted except for the fort, which lay scattered in ruins across the lawn. That's the way I like my snow: fun today, gone tomorrow. Here's hoping for a winter full of that.

So Many Things Happening Part 1: California

So last month we took our second long trip with Ella, this time to California to go to our friend Abby's wedding.

We flew into San Francisco and spent the night in Fisherman's Wharf where some of the highlights were playing on the beach with a view of the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance:


Going to the Musee Mechanique, which is this cool old warehouse full of player pianos and coin-operated marionettes and stuff. And eating this ginormous bear bread:

mmm, San Francisco Sourdough

Then we took a long and treacherous and awesome ride through vineyards and mountains to Point Arena where the wedding weekend was being held on this gorgeous off the grid farm in the valley of the mountain.


We spent the weekend doing crafts and prepping for the wedding, hanging out and making friends with some awesome kids around Ella's age. We stayed in the first floor of this wacky two-story cottage heated by a wood-burning stove.

It was an amazing wedding. Here we are all dolled up at the wedding:

Sorry, we only have blurry action shots of the beautiful couple getting married that don't do them justice. We knew that a friend was taking gorgeous pictures, so we sort of slacked.

Here's another family portrait down by the stream running through the property:

We drove home along the coast, which was equally terrifying and beautiful and flew home the next day. We've decided that we need farms like that to be part of our normal life.

Stay tuned for equally hasty blog postings on Halloween, our trip to Nashville, and Ella's first trip to the dentist!

Things Ella can do: Part IV

Read books!

OK, not "real" reading, of course, but she can memorize them and say them back to you. And if you happen to read a favorite book a little differently than its written, she'll correct you:

Me: "Pip Pip Cat ran away, afraid he might get stepped on."
Ella: "... stepped UPON."
Me (checking): "Oh yes, stepped UPON. Excuse me."

She can do this even with books she hasn't read in a month. It's pretty amazing how little brains a made to memorize stuff.

Here she is reading an old favorite:



PS: Sorry for the delay in postings. We're just wicked busy this semester. Lauren's teaching; I'm dissertating; we're both writing jobs applications; and we're traveling a lot. Just got back from Abby's wedding in CA (look for it in an upcoming post!) and next week we're off to Nashville for a conference. We'll do our best to put things up when we can!

Things Ella Can Do: Part III

Jokes? Yup.

Songs? Yup.

Is that all? Heck, no!

You forgot fabulous talent number three: make up a story!

The day before we took this video (back in August), Ella made up a story all by herself. It was kind of an odd one:

"Oh! I have snot in my mouth ... and I can't sneeze at all ... and my truck is broken ... and I can't go home to see my mommy."

I have no idea where the inspiration for that one came from. This next one we made up together. It's harder to do on camera because it can make one feel bashful.




But when we get over feeling shy, we do pretty well.



In case you didn't catch that part, the mousey said, "Squeak! Squeak! I like to play a little bit with me!." ("Me" meaning "you." Pronouns are hard.)




Still, it can be hard to concentrate when your teeth hurt.
(A side note: all 20 baby teeth are now present and accounted for. YAYY!)




And, no. We don't generally play in the street. Ella knows all about how to walk on the sidewalk and not on the street, but this mousey apparently does not.

Things Ella Can Do: Part II

Jokes? "Oh sure," you say, "but what other kinds of stuff can Ella do now?"

Well how about sing a cool song!

Ella is a talented musician as everyone knows, but recently her compositions have taken a new direction. She's focusing more on lyrics now (mostly improvisational with some slight choreography mixed in).

Please don't mind the egg on her face. That was lunch: poached eggs with cinnamon! Her very own creation. Yum! (Cooking! Yet another talent.)



She also does many of the old standards including "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" (which you've seen before) and some new ones:

"Flee Bine Mice"




"The Wheels on the Bus"




"The Tomorrow Song" (Grampa Steve-o's favorite!)




and the "ABC song" (almost) perfectly!
A B C D A F G Q R J K L M N O P Q R S and T U V W X Y and Z!
The ending part ("... won't you sing with me ... again ... tomorrow") was added here for the first time, but has since become standard, as has skipping right from G to Q. (Whatever, she's two!)

Things Ella Can Do: Part I

In the spirit of the last posting, I thought we would do a short series highlighting some of Ella's awesome 2-year-old skills.

Awesome skill #1: Tell awesome jokes!

Ella has already been able to tell one knock knock joke for a while:

Knock! knock!
Who's there?
Ella!
Ella who?
Ella-vator!!!

(That one usually required some coaching.) Recently, I tried to teach her my first joke:

Knock! knock!
Who's there?
Banana!
Banana who?
Knock! knock!
Who's there?
Banana!
(Repeat ad nauseam)
Knock! knock!
Who's there?
Orange!
Orange who?
Orange-ya glad I didn't say banana again!!!

(Side note: My friend Violet tells this joke very well!)

Well, she got it OK for a minute ...

Knock! knock! Banana and orange!!! Who-Who!

(all lines said by Ella in rapid succession)

... but by the time I picked up the video camera she was already on to bigger and better versions.



And before too long things really started getting intense! (A-mutt-a-mutt-a-mutt!) But overall I think she's really taking comedy in some daring new directions.



As you can hear, she kills with this crowd.

Ella is 2!!!

Remember this little baby?




Well she's not a baby anymore!



She's a big two-year-old girl. And she can do so many many things, like ...

Ride a Horse!



Decorate her own Apron!



Wear Mommies Flip-Flops!



Do the Dishes!



Not Fit into her Old Baby Carrier At All (but try anyway for a joke)!



Chase Daddy with a Tickle-Stick!



Look Cool at the Park!



Or Open the Chocolate Door and Find the Bus Inside.


(Don't ask me. I don't know either.)

And best of all ... Have a birthday party!!!

Tiny Vacation

Our CSA farm is out in Amherst, MA and last year we were really disappointed that we missed our chance to go pick strawberries there for free. So this year we planned a little mini trip out to Amherst to visit the Eric Carle Museum of Children's Art and pick strawberries. Here are some highlights:

The first day was the sort of fabulous day that gives you a fuzzy happy feeling. When we first got off the highway we stopped for a cider-donut-sundae lunch (as good as it sounds!) and then headed to the Eric Carle Museum, which was beautiful and deserted. They have some art and stuff, but more exciting is the awesomely hungry caterpiller/bench-tunnel/bookshelf:

They also have a cute little art studio at the museum where mommy made Ella a very creative collage lamb-dog-wolf while Ella made a "meadow" out of tubes and blocks and rubber farm animals with daddy:
Then we frolicked in the real meadow outside in perfect summer afternoon weather:

Next it was on to Amherst to our favorite restaurant, Judie's, where they make these amazing popovers with homemade apple butter. Scrummy!Then back to the hotel to bed. End of "I-told-you-this-trip-was-a-good-idea" portion of the trip and on to the "whose-idea-was-this-trip-anyway" part.

At 4:30am a train decided that it was super important that everybody know that it was coming, so it honked its horn 57 times. It's a good thing it did, because if it had done it fewer times, we might have slept through it and I might have continued in my delusion that it was either a train or a boat. But thankfully, it woke us all up completely!

So we decided to get an early start picking strawberries, so that we could be sure to get there during the exact window when it was pouring. Fortunately, the nice ladies at the bakery where we ate a million pastries to fortify ourselves gave us a nice garbage bag to put over Ella because we didn't bring our raincoats because weather.com lied to us.

Here she is with a kitty we met in the barn at our farm. This kitty was definitely one of the high points of the trip for Ella. Also the strawberry eatin':Not just wet, but cold too! Underneath the custom-made garbage bag raincoat, please note the dragon PJs layered over most of her other clothes to keep her warm.
Although our neighbors went the week before and had an amazing time picking strawberries and found it rejuvenating and all that, we had a new-found sense that the price of strawberries is totally fair and that it is lovely to have someone else pick them for you and deliver them to you in Cambridge!

Makin' Faces

Ella truly is a girl of a thousand faces. Ok, slight exaggeration. But she's definitely a girl of at least three or four. Some examples:

Of course everyone is familiar with ...

Gorgeous Face:

And many of you have probably seen ...

Baby in Repose:

But she has currently been working on a new one called (believe it or not) ...

Happy Face.

Now, this is not just an awkward action shot. This is the face she makes on purpose when asked to show her Happy Face.

Some variations on the theme:

Happy face with Mommy

Happy Face with Ball

(I don't know what this one is called, but the composition was her idea.)



She is also working on some others, including ...

Window Face

Make that one thousand and ONE faces! Of course, none of this would be possible without the help of her Face Coach, Nunkey Monkey. Now that's some face makin'!

Hummus

Ella likes hummus. Sometimes she'll eat it with a spoon. Other times, when you're doing dishes and not looking, she'll do this.


And who can blame her, really? It seems the logical course to the uninhibited among us.

(Note the awesome counting! She can go all the way to 12 sometimes, but never says 5, ever. She's clearly lacking the math gene. No surprise there.)



And it's just not a party until it goes on the head.



... and she got one. The water was cloudy with hummus and there were little bits of pita floating around in it. Most delicious bathwater ever!



ALL CLEAN!!!