Loyal readers will know that we have been waiting a long time for Ellie to get enough hair to do anything with. Her 2010 new year's resolution was to grow some hair. She's finally making good on the goal and I bought the tiniest hair clips I could find, hoping we could maybe do something with her hair. I got them out the other day and thought I would just put two in to pull her hair back on the side. Just two. Ellie had other ideas. Once she saw the clips, she insisted that each one be put in her hair.
She kept them in all day. Can't wait until she starts dressing herself.
She definitely has enthusiasm for life. Her constant narration of her day cracks us up. She's picked up a few phrases that she likes to try out, though they come out different every time. "Whoopsie daisy" has several iterations, but my favorite so far is "dopsie boop!" And the best "okey-dokey" was "donkey-donk."
By far Ellie's favorite topic of conversation, though, is herself. She constantly carries her "guys" around, which are whatever small plastic toys of animals or old Disney cartoons she can dig out of the toy box, and makes them play while she talks to them about herself. It's a constant stream of "Okay, Ellie, walking, walking, ah-ha-ha-ha, climb up, yay, you made it Ellie, go night-night, oh no, Ellie, get down, Ellie . . . ." I'm not sure if she's naming the "guys" Ellie, or if she just wants to make sure they know what she's up to. Either way, it seems our little girl is very secure with her identity.
It turns out that Ellie takes after her daddy when it comes to cooking.
She can spend forever mixing, pouring, stirring. Nevermind that it's all just water. She is in the zone. Invariably she is always making and pretending to eat "I-cream."
I had never before realized how essential the tambourine is to cooking. Perhaps this is why some of my own attempts lack that "wow factor."
Here he is with his fake diploma, but official doctorhood.
Ellie did pretty well during the graduation, especially since it was an hour shorter than we thought it would be. Grover was a good sport too.
Celebrating with the brothers. We did lots of celebrating last week, which mostly meant a lot of eating.
We had a great party hosted by our good friend Daniel (thanks again) at his awesome house. Good food, good friends, good times.
Ellie making good with Brady's dissertation adviser Brent.
Ellie a little more in her element with cousin Phoebe. These two were hilarious together, chasing each other around the house, squealing every time they saw each other, and here hiding in their "fort" under the desk. It was nice for Ellie to get a little girl cousin time.
Ellie eating a root beer float after being stung by a wasp. She tried to both drink and sit in the bowl of ice water we got for her stung hand, so this ended up being more soothing. She later decided to run through the neighbor's sprinkler, so she rebounded pretty well.
All in all, a pretty good trip with lots of parties (way too much eating) to round out the whole doctoral experience. For those of you out there on the fence about graduating, I highly recommend it.
I'm a bit late to jump on the Harry Potter movie fan blog bandwagon, but it's been on my mind a lot lately. We went and saw the final movie installment opening weekend to celebrate Brady's dissertation defense triumph. I'll spare you all the reviews and spoilers and just say we were satisfied with our final attendance at a Potter franchise event. Afterward Brady showed Ellie this video and they have been singing the song quite a bit. (Warning:if you watch either the original version or Brady and Ellie's below, the song will probably get stuck in your head for days.)
Sorry, my editing is a little jumpy, but she was a bit camera shy at first. Sometimes she has to watch the back of the camera first to see if there is already a movie playing on it, which is why she isn't on screen until partway through.
Attending the last movie reminded me of when we attended the last book party, something that happened before we entered the blogosphere but definitely a blog worthy moment.
Four years ago Brady and I were both busy in grad school. I remember as the arrival date of the final Harry Potter book approached I cancelled homework for that weekend because I knew none of my freshmen would do it anyway (how cool of an English instructor was I?). Brady and I made plans to swing by Wal-Mart around midnight to pick up a copy of the book, grab some treats and then spend the whole weekend reading. Not being big on crowds, we had enjoyed that strategy for the release of the previous couple of books.
Then we found out Brady's then ten-year-old brother Sam would be staying with us for the weekend. Brady's mom gave us money to buy Sam a copy of the book too, so we thought we were all set for our easy, no-crowd, no fuss plan. But then Sam asked if we were going to dress up or anything. Uh . . . no. He said, "okay, maybe I'll just bring my wand or something." Realizing we couldn't ruin his life on the day of the final book release, we agreed to take him to the party at the BYU bookstore. Then there was the matter of a costume for him. We hit both the thrift and fabric stores. Here's what we came up with. Devotees will recognize this as Ron Weesely in his terrible dress robes from the fourth book. (Sam is purposefully looking dismayed with the robes in the picture, though he was a pretty good sport to go with this costume). I think I outdid myself in my sister-in-law and creative duties on this one, especially restyling a mullet-wig into Ron's hair.
Sam won first place the 7-15 age group, the prize being a copy of the book as well as the audio book, among other things. It was a good thing because we spent the money for his copy on the costume. He had several college-age girls asking to have their picture taken with him, something that I'm sure teenage Sam would now more fully appreciate. We ended up having a pretty good time at the party, which goes to show it's probably best to not always avoid the crowds for Kids' sakes. We went home in the early hours of the morning and listened to Jim Dale read to us while we followed along in our own copies. Not a bad weekend. Good memories with Harry Potter. It makes me excited to reread those and other favorite books in years to come with Ellie and Baby Brother.
Not that all blogging isn't really a form of bragging, but lately I think my family has done a bit of achieving worth bragging about.
First up, Brady. Quite a week for him. First, he ran his first half marathon. Here he is coming around the bend to the finish line.
He had some trouble with the tendons in the arch of his foot and ankle the week before the race and was worried he wouldn't be able to do it, but he eased up on the training schedule a bit and was still able to finish feeling great. He got a medal for participating, which I didn't think to get a picture of.
Then, a few days later (Tuesday) he went down to Provo and defended his dissertation. I wasn't able to go with him, so no pictures of this, though I thought he should have worn the half marathon medal to the defense. Turns out he didn't need the medal. The defense went amazingly well and he passed with no revisions of the content (though he did have to make some minor editorial changes here and there, but who cares about that?). In some ways it is hard to believe it's finally over, though he's worked so hard for it, it certainly is easy to believe he would do so well. His committee complimented him on how well-written the document was and how well-prepared he was. I really can't gush enough about how well he did. And it's all over, just in time to graduate. He just has to wrap up some clerkship hours and walk across a stage next month and then everyone has to call him Doctor.
Ellie is a bundle of energy as always and surprises us with new words and tricks every day. Lately she's been pointing out letters she sees on signs, people's T-shirts, or salad dressing bottles. Apparently PBS Kids has been rubbing off on her. I've been trying to catch her doing her letters on the camera for a few weeks now, but she is a hard one to catch in the act--not much of a performer on demand usually. Finally, this morning at breakfast I got her. It took me a second to get the camera going, so we missed 'A.' And for some reason she won't say 'S,' which is weird because that's what she used to call all the letters.
She can count to ten too, but that's even harder to catch since she really doesn't know what she's doing when she's saying the numbers, just kind of absent mindedly rattles them off at random times.
Not to be left out, Baby Brother is as wiggly and active as ever. I'm at 21 weeks along now. I remember reading that at 15 weeks a fetus can flex his fingers into a fist. That seems pretty remarkable to me. In less than a semester's time, he went from being a single cell to being able to bring his hand from a splayed-fingered position to curling it up in a ball. I don't think any of my college students made such advances in a single semester (not that they weren't smart, but c'mon). We're six weeks past that mark now. Who knows what this kid can do? He's probably worked his way up to differential equations by now. Genius.
(p.s. Not sure why this is saying this post is written by Brady. It isn't. He's not bragging about himself.)
The other day Ellie was amusing herself by pointing to and naming the different parts of my face. She started at my mouth and worked her way up to "beeping" my nose. Then continued with, "eyes, eyes, bonk, hair."
It's little wonder that she would call someone's forehead a "bonk." Ellie usually has a few small bruises scattered across her forehead. To Ellie, the world is one big jungle gym. She will climb anything that holds still. She climbs onto chairs so she can climb onto the table. She climb on the piano bench so she can climb onto the piano keyboard. Probably the most oft-repeated phrase around here is, "Ellie, get down!" Here she is climbing up the twisty slide at my brother's house (it was a little slippery from rain earlier that day).
This past weekend I heard my sister helping Ellie with sunscreen saying, "Hold still, we gotta get your bonk now." Apparently the term is sticking.
And here are some recent Ellie pics.
She demands to wear Brady's hat whenever he has it out.
So on the go during our 4th of July festivities that I couldn't get a decent picture of her.
Riding the gondola up the mountain at Sun Valley. This is the way to do hiking if you have a toddler and/or are 20 weeks pregnant.
And riding in her new favorite toy with her cousin Jon. She lives for bike rides with Daddy. And if this whole dissertation defense doesn't go well next week, Brady does have some good practice to be a rickshaw driver.
And here's a quick wave he gave to all his adoring fans out there.
This kid is a wiggler. Constant motion during the whole ultrasound. He might just give big sister a run for her money.
Jury is still out on name selection, though we had a better pool of agreed-upon names for boys than for girls, so hopefully we'll settle on something soon. For now, it's nice to be able to tell Ellie about "Baby Brother."
