One-year wonder!

There’s so much to report on our thriving Ellacub! She started walking a few weeks before she turned one, following a couple cautious months of standing from a sitting position and just looking around. Luke took his first steps at nine months, but they were from a standing position after pulling up on a piece of furniture. When Eleanor was ready to walk at almost twelve months, she just stood up in the middle of the floor and did it! For a few weeks she transitioned from crawling to walking and now she rarely crawls. I love the way she swings her legs out to the side as she steps and firmly plants them down.

Recent Milestones

Talking! In the right mood, she’ll repeat any simple word for you but she also has a whole list that she uses spontaneously. These include the typical mommy, daddy, hi, and uh-oh. Other common words include, yes, no, this, dog, up, out, and everybody’s favorite: please! ‘Please’ is actually her most used word! When she wants some of what I’m eating or a refill, she looks at me and sweetly says ‘pease?’ with a smile. Sometimes it’s ‘pease, dis?’ with her finger pointing. She also uses this phrase when she wants an out-of-reach item. I think our please and thank you prompts to the Luke-boy may have had better results on her than on their intended audience! (:

Ever the girly-girl, she quite favors accessories. She delights in finding hats and putting them on herself, trying to put on shoes, and donning rings and bracelets. I hope this bodes well for all the darling hair clips I’ve accumulated! Her hair is just long enough to start using the tiniest clips. She also has four teeth and four more poking through her gums.

Likes/Dislikes

She is so proud to be able to travel forward and backward on ride-on toys by pushing with her feet. She’s watched Luke race around this way for so long, she delights to be able to do it too. Thankfully, the new ride-on car from Nika and Papi has made this new skill much less contentious in our house!

She’s losing interest in having food fed to her, much preferring to finger-feed herself. Her current favorites include cheese, blueberries, carrots from beef stew, and pasta. Pasta happens to be at the tip-top of Luke and Erik’s food lists too, so it’s a frequent meal plan.

The play kitchen that she and Luke received from us for Christmas has been a big hit. How cute she is stirring food in pots and pretending to eat it. She also loves any toy she can push or pull around the house, pushing cars back and forth with darling ‘vroom’ noises. In the past month she’s become a zealous book reader, toddling up to me with a book several times a day and beaming with delight when I sit her on my lap to read.

Sibling Report

With all these delightful new stages has come a little more competition on the sibling front. Luke and Ella both struggle with grabbing each other’s toys and then throwing angry fits over having their toys taken. Of course Luke bears the bulk of the blame since he’s older, but there are times when Eleanor merits a reprimand and instruction too. I’m sad to say that they do their share of pushing and grabbing, but thankfully there’s never any real injuries from their squabbles. It mostly just produces the type of whining and wailing that stops immediately once a child gets his or her way. Teaching them to share and care for each other is ever a challenge and prayer request here!

Of course there are also times when they share and play together marvelously. It thrills my heart when Luke excitedly exclaims, “Eleanor ‘wake!!” as he hears Eleanor waking and joyfully rushes in to see her after her nap. He also negotiates for her when we announce her bedtime: “Eleanor go to bed in two more minutes.” They both love playing in boxes, baskets and tubs – climbing in together and giggling contagiously.

Routine

Eleanor’s single-nap routine doesn’t always thrill me. Some days I feel like she could really use another nap but she just can’t seem to nap a second time. And typically her nap is just barely an hour long! But I’ve recently decided to stop fighting it and just accommodate her with an earlier bedtime. Now we try to put her sleepy self to bed by 7 pm and then she sleeps (with 1-2 night feedings…) until ~7 am. Luke has dropped his nap altogether, so he’s been going to bed earlier too (by 8 pm) and sleeping until ~8 am. I love that this schedule puts them in range of their age-based sleep quotas, and sometimes they supplement with little snoozes in the car.

It’s too bad that these earlier bedtimes don’t allow for a lot of evening activities, but I’m excited to be closing a chapter on our naptime battles. For now, Ella’s happy to take just one and Luke has been going down at night so much better without an afternoon nap.  Hurray! But I realize that I’m now a person who can talk about child sleep habits FOREVER so just in case you don’t share my fixation on them, let’s get back to the topic at hand…. the Ella-Wonder!

Looking back

Want to look back on old Eleanor milestone posts like I do? Here are more notes on our Bella-babe.

• Nine months – crawling & cruising, first words, kissing & 9 states
• Seven months – sitting herself up & solid food
• Five months – self-swinging, bumbo-punting, & rolling both ways
• Three months – rolling over & scooching
• One month – heart-stealing smiles

We love you Ella-belle and it’s such a joy to watch you grow and flourish!

East Coast road trip

After celebrating Christmas and Eleanor’s birthday in North Carolina, we loaded into my parents’ car and drove up to New Jersey. On the way we got a little reminder of how light the traffic is in New Mexico. And Uncle Jack got a little window into the complications of kiddos (he drove up with us). But all things considered, the drive went very smoothly. Our first stop was Millburn, NJ for a Christmas gathering with my extended family.

Luke and Eleanor adored playing with their cool older cousins! How sweet H, G, and J were to them. They had so much fun playing with toys and at the park.

Later that day, the whole clan arrived for a lovely get-together.

Complete with games,

music,

presents,

and guns?

What a wonderful visit, especially having everyone meet Eleanor for the first time and catching up with relatives that we haven’t seen for a while. The previous photo displays Grandma’s fun side but this is a better one, showing how caring and thoughtful she is!

First birthday

It’s hard to believe that Ellabelle is one already! Where did our tiny swaddled bundle go? And who’s this big girl?!

The birthday princess decided that she did NOT wish to wear a party hat. We granted her a birthday veto, but they were non-negotiable for everyone else.

Her obliging big brother blew out her candle,

Eleanor reached for her cake,

Ate, mashed,

And gave it a cheer!

Luke couldn’t wait to taste his piece.

Yum!

We all delighted to celebrate our sweet Eleanor, the shining light girl! Even after a year I still can hardly believe that I’ve been given the incomparable joy and privilege of being her mother. What a treasure!

~ More bday pics here, and a one-year milestones post coming soon!

Sharing air space with Santa

Christmas Eve we awoke in a flurry of departing, having missed our alarm. Thanks to a ride from a friend, we made it to the airport just in time to check our mountain of baggage and board our flight. Our layover in Baltimore was much more leisurely, allowing for a reindeer PJs photo shoot and lunch.

Finally we reached our destination, delighted to see Nika, Papi, Auntie C, Uncle Jack and Uncle Sam. Nika’s Christmas decorations are always lovely, and this year was no exception. Christmas morning we opened stockings.

And the munchkins reprised their holiday formalwear for church.

The never-sick Nika was under the weather, so the B-team collaborated on eggs benedict for brunch.

Then we opened gifts. Here Luke takes a break to show off his belly button at Uncle Jack and Auntie C’s request.

I’m hoping this sandwich set teaches Luke to make us dinner.

We were all delighted when this little princess awoke from her nap and joined us. Here she meets Frosty, the singing snowman.

It was so much fun to celebrate the Ella-belle’s first Christmas, to have Luke understand that we were celebrating Jesus’ birth, and to be with our Ferry family.

But we missed our Nielsen family, and were glad to have been able to celebrate an early Christmas with Grandma and Grandpa a few weeks earlier. I love Eleanor’s expression in this photo. This was one of the first presents opened – it didn’t take her long to gain an interest in them!

Here she opens one herself.

And this may be Luke’s most-cherished Christmas gift. Luke named him James, and Eleanor’s matching reindeer pillow was dubbed Coach J. While we were out of town, Luke reminded me daily that James was crying because he missed Luke. Next time James is coming with us!

What loved and blessed grandchildren Luke and Eleanor are. But even the lavish showers of love that they enjoy can’t compare to the lengths that our heavenly Father went to for us to be welcomed into His family. We begin the new year filled with wonder and thankfulness for His perfect gift.

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Ferry Christmas pics here, Nielsen Christmas pics here.

Christmas, lite

Last Christmas, end-of-pregnancy nesting instincts compounded my excitement to have Christmas in our own home for the first time and I decorated our house like I was born in the North Pole. Here are some photos from my first phase of decorating, then I continued adding green garland and other embellishments even after December 25th had passed.

This year, without any nesting hormones or holiday hosting, my Christmas decorating drive has ebbed to an all-time low. As I’ve dreaded the packing that an early 2012 move might bring, we didn’t even take our Christmas boxes down from the attic, much less put up a tree. I tell myself that it will make seeing Nika and Papi’s grand tree all the more magical for Luke and Eleanor on Christmas Eve. And that less packing and disorganization in January would be better for everyone. Plus it’s nice not supervising two curious kiddos amidst the perils of a cord and ornament-laden tree!

Lest you think I’m a complete Scrooge-mom, we did add a few seasonal touches to our home. First we made a darling Christmas canvas and hung it over the fireplace.

Luke layered green handprints in a tree shape, and then I painted a trunk at the bottom. I tried to let him put the potato star stamp on top, but that resulted in the smudge on the left. So after wiping that off as best I could, Mommy got to stamp the star on top of the tree.  

Luke has also been busy crafting ornaments this month. I searched for a giftable craft that he could accomplish “by Luke self” as he says sometimes. These wreath ornaments made by stringing buttons on a wire seemed like just the ticket. I ordered some button lots on ebay, and Luke did a marvelous job carefully stringing each button in the order he wished on the wire. Then we bent the wire into a circle, twisted it off, and tied a bow on top. Here he is (still looking sickly from the eye/sinus infection that he has shared with our entire family) showing off some of his masterpieces. They look so happy hanging above our table!

Of course, I couldn’t pass up Christmas cards as an easy, personal source of Christmas décor. So I strung ours up above the windows, along with some green crepe paper that Luke found in a craft box.

Finally, I couldn’t resist one new Christmas purchase. I loved these glitzy trees in Target, and popped them up on our cabinet along with some candles and a plant.

Here’s a zoomed-out view that also shows a green Christmas canvas I printed and a clearance reindeer that Erik soldered back together for me.

Other Christmas staples that I don’t have pictured include our Christmas pillow covers (seen here), Erik working from home in his Santa hat, and our ‘Little People’ nativity playset. Well, it’s off  to elf-duty for me! Merry Christmas!!

Cultivating an Artiste

I’d like to pass on an enthusiasm for childhood crafts to Luke and Eleanor so we can enjoy hours of magic-making together. Art has long been a staple in our activity rotation, but usually I just let Luke color an abstract masterpiece. Recently I realized that Eleanor’s ready for the coloring and it’s time for art projects to begin with Luke! So we’ve been working on adding toddler-friendly crafts to our days.

Of course, we started strong , since it’s always easiest at the outset of a resolution! We did an art/science project, outlined by my friend here. A toothpick becomes a magic swirler when pre-dipped in dish soap and stuck into food coloring drops floating on milk. I found that a shallow layer of milk in a big bowl or pan is the best way to maximize the playtime and minimize your need to run out and buy more milk.

Another lesson I’ve learned is that taking in-progress photos poses a serious risk to the cleanliness of everything in your child’s vicinity. So we’ll have to settle for after shots for the rest of these. You might notice that I’m partial to toddler stamping projects with parent embellishments. Here are a few from a few months back. We just did a Christmas variant on this theme which I’ll post soon, but I had to put up the autumn pics first!

Fingerprint pumpkins – just have your child make orange fingerprints (side-by-side for a big pumpkin, or separate for small ones). Then the parent or child can add smaller green prints on top for the stem.

Fingerprint spiders – purple prints plus marker-drawn legs and faces.

Potato-stamped autumn leaves – it was fun to use a potato from our big Costco sack of them to make leaf-shaped stamps. I drew the trunk with a marker and then Luke printed leaves on top.

I hope we can branch out into other art concepts soon. Luke likes scissors, but he has proven that even pairs which are too kid-safe to cut paper can still be used to clip hair. Maybe gluing will be our next phase?

Christmas card outtakes

Weeks ago we did a Christmas photo shoot but the actual card has yet to be made. And the 25th and our holiday travel is fast approaching! I may just have to make it a New Year’s card (as is becoming my custom), so I’ll share a few of the blooper and runner-up pics while they’re still in season.

It was harder than you’d think to get a shot of them both sitting up.

Christmas miracles… sibling sharing:

Something about the expressions in this one makes me think that Luke’s taking Ella out on a date. “Of course I’ll have her home by 8, sir!”

And finally, a sweet one of my two huggable Christmas elves!

For more L & E Christmas magic, visit our gallery here.