Christmas I

(In our living room on December 22 with gifts from Grandma and Grandpa Sargent)

Thank you, Mom and Dad, for the Christmas gifts. Ellie had a wonderful time opening them and has had and even more wonderful time playing. I love her angel ornament - it is her first ornament - and it is perfect. Thank you also for the Nativity set! I've often admired them and they will look beautiful in our living room next Christmas.

Mom, the jingle bell topper to those stacking cups is perfect. It has definitely taken over the duties of Ellie's previous jingle bell. This one rings much better! And, it's a bit bigger. She has taken to crawling around with it in one hand, just like the other one. I love the simplicity of all the toys you sent. Ellie is already playing with them energetically, but I see there is a lot of learning and growth to be had with them in the future. We love you guys and miss you a lot. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Wrapping

Wrapping Christmas presents was a lot harder this year than it has ever been before. I suppose you can guess why: Ele-monster. I neglected to get pictures of the real chaos when she had wrapping paper, bags, bows and ribbon out everywhere, but she remembered the fun and tried hard to get into it all again later in the evening.

P.S. We are on our way to Billings, Montana this morning in preparation for our trip to Iowa City, Iowa for Christmas. We plan to do a bit of shopping today and hope to get to bed early. Our plane leaves Billings around 6 am tomorrow. I am a bit nervous about this trip with our Ellie-girl, but it will probably be fine. We are looking forward to seeing Seth's family!

Growth Spurt?

Ellie wasn't feeling particularly well last week, and that may have been the biggest factor, but for whatever reason, she hardly ate any food at all - even her nursing was down. I don't think that is the problem of this week... maybe she's making up for lost time... maybe she's growing quickly again. Seth fed her lunch yesterday and she ate 2 jars of sweet potatoes, 2 jars of peas and a jar of carrots. No joke. She just kept going and going. We just had to take some pictures of the carnage.

Pulled to Standing

Our Eleanor Bugger just doesn't stop! On Sunday she was running a low-grade fever and was kinda fussy, so I gave her some Tylenol and decided to give her a bath. I put her down on the bath mat and reached up to turn on the water. She then immediately reached up and grabbed the side of the tub, pulled herself to standing and tried to get into the bathtub head first. She kept pulling and pulling, trying to get over the side!

So, I turned off the water, picked Ellie up and headed downstairs to tell Seth. He said, "I know she won't do it again, but I want to see!" So, we all headed back upstairs and I set her back down on the bathmat. We turned on the water and up she went again!

So, Seth went to grab the camera. Of course, once the camera was out, things got a bit stickier, but she still did it again! I'm just waiting, with held breath, for the next thing she'll decide to pull up on. I'm glad for this one that I was sitting right behind her the whole time.

And now, as you all witnessed yesterday, Ellie is pulling up on everything she can... knees, coffee table, bath tub, crib, laundry baskets, chairs... oh what fun... if your Christmas presents don't get finished in time for Christmas, this is my excuse!

Our Day in Pictures (This One's for Daddy)

What do you say to us lowering her mattress another notch or two when you get home?

The Christmas Fairy

Merry Christmas! What fun it is to be a Christmas fairy!

Our Little Virtuoso

I began practicing the piano again a few weeks ago in order to play background Christmas solos for a MOPS gathering. Eleanor was awake for a lot of the practice and I was thrilled to find out that she actually seemed to enjoy playing around at my feet while the music was going on. She even had a few "favorite" pieces and if she started fussing I could abate the Grand Fuss for awhile if I switched to one of those pieces. She would start gibbering away, smiling and giggling if I played Patapan.

Part of this greater introduction to live music also involved an inspired sense of interest in the piano itself. She now loves to sit in one's lap and pound away at the keys (really, what child doesn't?). But, she will even move her hands to where you are playing, or have just been playing, when she's really into it. So, she can be pounding away and I can get her to move up and down the keyboard by playing/pounding away with her. Pretty fun.

I just love this series of pictures! It looks like she's really into her playing - even like she's checking her music to make sure she's on track. :)

Yum, Mashed Potatoes!

I intended to leave this picture as the entire blog post... but I'm suddenly feeling self-consciously like it needs a disclaimer: no, Ellie DID NOT eat any of these potatoes. It's just a funny picture. Seth and I made a HUGE pot of potatoes for a VA Psychology Department Christmas party and Seth was spooning the potatoes from the cooking pot into a cute serving pot and was left with this huge spoonful that wouldn't fit. I was holding Ellie, and in true Ellie fashion, she looked at the spoon and opened her mouth - because you know that should totally be one's response to a huge spoonful of yummy, garlic rosemary smashed potatoes! Seth then figured we really needed a picture. So here it is.

A Little Bit Grouchy

Or a lot bit grouchy...

I know a post already went up today, but I need a place to rant this morning. Ellie's been "sick" for the last couple of days, as in, running a fever and acting fairly grouchy. I think she's just teething, but today she woke up with a gross nose and has been sneezing bunches and bunches on top of the low-grade fever, drool and wanting to suck on anything she can.

Last night I didn't sleep more than 30 minutes at one time - between Ellie and the cat. Our cat, Pekoe, has not done well in our extreme cold and gave us quite a scare a week or so ago after staying out all night when the temp dropped into the teens. He's since recovered nicely, but now that the temps are in the negative teens, we're not letting him out at all. All last night he whined about it. And knocked things off the dressers. And clawed the bedding. Meanwhile Ellie woke up every hour and a half. Just a priceless night all in all.

So, I'm grouchy, too. Plus, Ellie learned to pull herself up on things on Sunday. That means my planned projects are getting done even slower than usual because our house is not quite Ellie-proofed for her new reach of approximately 2 1/2 feet. For example, I used to put things I didn't want her to have on the coffee table. Now I need a new, higher place for my coffee cup and computer. Along with that, she can now get deeper into the cupboards she likes to frequent. This is fine and fun for her, but then she gets stuck. So, she'll whine about not feeling good and then get distracted by the cupboards and then get stuck and start whining again...

To be fair, I've found a few consolations this morning: teething biscuits, brief smiles, finished Christmas goodie plates to take to the neighbors, strong coffee and leftover BBQ chicken pizza from last night.

The Christmas goodie plates are what I've mostly worked on for the last 3 days or so. I made 12 plates of frosted sugar cookies, chocolate cut out cookies, peppermint patties, caramel corn, mini cinnamon rolls and peanut butter chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. It would have been more fun with my mom or with a group of friends, but I enjoyed myself. Now I just have to get up enough energy to take the plates around... maybe tomorrow?

Blurry Days

This is what taking pictures of Ellie is like right now:





She'll be doing something really sweet and cute, you'll pick up the camera and she'll immediately stop what she's doing and book it toward you. Of course, everything she does these days is blurry, too... it's pretty amazing we get ANY pictures that turn out even half way decent. :)

A Holed Up Weekend

It was a cold, cold weekend. Our window thermometer read -7.9 degrees F, the internet and news said -15 degrees F. We had snow, but not a lot, and we definitely had wind. 55 mph wind!

During all this, our Ellie Bug decided to take an interest in the out-of-doors for the first time. She would crawl up to the sliding glass window and just peer out for some nice long periods of time. The wind was whipping the trees around and blowing dry snow all over the place, so it was a pretty exciting show.

It is really fun to watch Ellie begin to take interest in things on an ever increasing scale.

Christmas Tree

Well, Ellie and I finally got around to making Christmas come to the Tippin household. Yesterday we put on some Christmas music (except I can't find our favorites... about 6 cds are missing... and I don't know which box to look in because I thought the musicish ones were already unpacked), grabbed the Christmas boxes from the basement and decorated! By the time Seth got home from work, we'd finished the tree and added our nativity set, etc to the living room. We also added a few Christmas touches to other rooms around the house. We didn't get to the family room, though. I'm not sure I'll get to it today, either, but that room is in serious need of some Christmas Cheer.

Last night we also began the Christmas baking. We decided to start it out with some traditional sugar cookies. Unfortunately, just as I began to bake we realized we only had about a cup of sugar. So, after this first batch the baking halted and Ellie and I will have to run to the store today. We're getting ramped up to make goodies, goodies and more goodies so we can put together 10 to 12 plates of Christmas Yum for bunches of our neighbors.

Anyway, back to the Christmas tree. Seth, Ellie and I were hanging out in the living room just after Seth got home from work. I had finished decorating the tree earlier in the afternoon while Ellie had a nap and then we hadn't spent any time in the living room. So, this was Eleanor's first real chance to check out the decorated tree. She crawled up to it right away and started pulling on ornaments. Of course, I'd expected this, so there are only unbreakable ones down low. But, she soon realized she couldn't pull any ornaments down. So, she went for the gold beads... of course... but I hadn't really thought this part through. Soon she had a great length of the beads in her hand and she pulled and pulled on them, trying to get more down. Luckily, I remembered one strand hadn't quite been enough to get aroud the whole tree, so I'd added a short length right at the end (this must have been a problem on a previous year, too). I was able to convince her to give me the strand she had and handed her the end of the short one. She thought this was great and preceeded to pull the whole strand off the tree (while I put the other one back on). After that, she played and played and played with the beads. She even got up this morning and crawled right to where she left them last night and started waving them around again like they were the best toy in the world. I wouldn't say I'd choose to give her such a thing as a toy, but as long as she's supervised and as long as they keep her happy - yay (there is no way the strand can come apart or anything, don't worry, there's no choking hazard).

Oh, and while I was decorating the tree and she was awake, she discovered a whole box of jingle bells. It was really fun to watch her figure out how to get the box open. Now she has 5 or so jingle bells hanging around instead of just one - and - a couple are GOLD. Ooooh. So cool and exciting!

No Tree Pictures Yet...

but we do have some Christmas pics with lights.

Seth, Eleanor and I finally went to get our Christmas tree last night. So, soon we will have pics of Ellie with the decorated tree, but not quite yet. We've had a busy couple of days - I've been preparing myself for teaching piano lessons again as well as practicing to play Christmas music at a mom's group meeting Ellie and I are heading to this morning.

So, in the Christmas spirit:
I think Ellie now has so much practice with lights that she'll be a great help this afternoon as we try to get them on the tree. Don't you?