oops

slackers. life gets in the way....

Summer 2011

North Carolina


Florida


Pickathon


Sauvie Island


Hood River

sunny days

East coast here we come!

Preparing for Battle- er, Travel

We are hopefully under a cease-fire in our household (Battle: Parents vs 3 Year Old) for the duration of the trip to Florida. Each day lately brings a series of fights with Ellery as she is apparently skipping years 3 through 12 and moving straight to the turbulent teens.
Fight 1: Go to the bathroom when you get up (response: "NO!!").

Fight 2: You may watch 1 cartoon before school (response: "MAH-AHM!!").

Fight 3: I made you eggs for breakfast (response: "I wanted yogurt!" "I wanted cereal!" "I wanted (whatever Mom/Dad did not make!")- you get the picture.

Fight 4: Let's get your shoes on (response: "I don't want these shoes/socks/clothes/etc".

And so on....You have to visualize that these situations occur all in the span of about 20 minutes, are accompanied by screaming, stomping, and often throwing of whatever is close at hand, and are so predictably repetitive that Scott and I feel as though we are banging our heads against a wall when we try to curb them. And those are just the morning ones- the evening dinner/bath/bedtime is not fit for this blog, because I can't describe it without a litany of four-letter words.

So, in a nutshell, I am super excited to get on a plane and sit in close proximity to the whirling dervish of a child that Scott currently refers to as "La Diabla". I am hoping that traveling with her aunt Lubelle and cousin Ruby will help, and maybe we will get lucky and sit next to an oblivious teenager who spends the entire flight plugged into an i-whatever and doesn't notice that his row-mate is lobbing half-chewed goldfish crackers at her mother and infant sister.

We love her, so dearly, and she is an amazing and creative and intelligent child. And we cannot wait to hand her over to her grandparents.

Oh, and Merritt is good.

Waffle Sunday

FFF

Forced Family Fun! Our first hike as a foursome- see how excited Ellery is! Not really a flattering shot of any of us (I think my eyes are closed), but Ell did actually have a good time. She was certainly in her element, as she is an avid collector of sticks and rocks, so there were fine specimens at Mt. Talbert for her to gather. She is the only kid at school who has a cubby full of dried up leaf bits and small stones from the city streets (the teachers ask that she leave the larger sticks outside, so there is also a pile of her treasures by the door to the school). It was a nice walk, 2 miles being about what it takes to get our rambunctious 3 year old to nap.

 

Play Date!

My friends from Prenatal/ Mama&Baby Yoga got the babies together this week- below is the video. Not much moving or action, just cuteness. They are all wearing hats that Dot's Mama Abby made. (Well, Merritt is wearing her "stand-in hat" until she grows into her real hat.)

(L to R) Asa Leoni, Dot Houston, Talia Shapiro & Merritt. Merritt and Dot are just a few days apart- apparently the Love family only makes peanut-sized babies!

Morning chat with Ellery

Where we discuss Peter Rabbit and sprinkles and Ellery mugs just a little bit for the camera.


YouTube link here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dpGJ8ujbDU

Merritt chats with Jermy Giraffe

Not a typo; Jermy is just much funnier than Jeremy. Merritt has discovered her voice this week, and is highly amused by screeching at herself. She is fascinated by Jermy, but hasn't figured out that the appendages hanging on the side of her body can in fact bring Jermy to her. (Note: she does have 2 hands although it appears otherwise).



Click here if the above video doesn't play.

3!!!!

Happy birthday to Ellery! I am still not brave enough to invite her whole class to a party, so we just had our close friends over. The littles decorated cupcakes and the adults drank Unky Joe's Mai Tais. It is amazing how the young ones are slowly catching up to us in numbers; our group is like a farm- every spring we seem to have a new crop of babies!

3 girls

 

bath time

The nightly bath lineup, which looks very similar to my bath time circa 1979 (minus the avocado green bathtub of course). I can't believe some of these toys are in their 3rd decade of life!

 

Sick day

January 14, 2011

2 weeks ago:


Today:


Happy Due Date, Baby Chick!

love

 

One week

I suppose this is now the Ellery AND Merritt blog, because I certainly am not going to attempt to maintain 2 blogs, as slack as we are with this one. So, here is a recent photo shoot with the Baby Chick on her one week birthday.

I'm a big sister!

Ellery has been so great since Merritt came home and will be a great big sister