I remembered to bring down Ella's growth record tonight. I was close last time. She weighed in at 17 pounds even, and 28.5 inches in length. Her head circumference was again at the very top of the "safe" growth curve, at 17.75 inches, which again caused a little concern. Not much, just enough that her doctor is keeping a close watch on it. I asked what a "too big skull" can mean, and she said it can indicate water on the brain. Ella's hitting all her milestones on time, though, so she just likely has a large head...like her daddy. Just room for more brains.

Just one more quick note. I got some alone time on Friday night, which was lovely. I spent about 45 minutes wandering around JoAnn's, then went to BabiesR Us to finally get Ella's hand print thing that we have for the other two (which was imprinted at about one month old for the other two...but anyway...), then I went to Barnes and Nobles and got a white hot cocoa and walked around browsing through books and magazines. It was a quiet, relaxing evening, something going shopping at these places never is with kids in tow. So it was nice "alone" time, but it struck me as funny that only as a mom of three could I so relax and enjoy my "alone" time at a store so very much...with a baby strapped to my chest. So I wasn't QUITE alone, but it was close enough.

May 24, 2007
This has been a busy week for us! I don't even really know what all we did, but here it's suddenly Friday, so I guess it was busy. Oh, I did have a dentist appointment on Monday. The two older kids went to Phil's office for the duration and I took a sleeping Ella with me. She woke up as soon as I got to the dentist, and proceeded to cry every time I had to put her down, or even worse, when she had to go behind a wall because I was getting x-rays. That was a fun experience. On the plus side, I have no cavities, and even after going over a year since my last visit (I had missed the previous scheduled appointment because of my morning sickness, then I just didn't get around to scheduling one again...) they told me that my teeth and gums were "very healthy". Yay.

Natalie had a dentist appointment last week too, and she also had no cavities. As of last Friday, she also has one less tooth. She'd been fussing with it all day, and then as she ate her lunch it really started bothering her. Her dentist told her to bite on an apple, but she was having trouble doing that so she asked me to try to "wiggle it out"
for her. As I previously mentioned, I felt pretty squeamish about pulling out loose teeth, but a mom's got to do what a mom's got to do. I sat her head down in my lap, and wiggled it around a little. I wasn't really sure how to go about it, but my sister Sarah was here, and she reminded me that our mom used to get her nail under the bottom of the tooth and pull up. (She's only 20 so she's closer in age and memory to teeth-pulling years!)  So I wiggled it forward and sure enough, saw the bottom of the tooth. I pulled and pulled again; then POP (sorry, that's a reference from one of the books we read very frequently - The Enormous Potato) out it came. It just bled for a few minutes, and Natalie looked pretty proud of herself, even with a bloody napkin hanging out of her mouth.  She's been telling everyone, every where we go, that she lost her first tooth. (This statement has currently replaced the previous "Do you know, I'm FIVE?")  I just find it hard to believe that my little girl already has lost a tooth. Even more, I can already see the edge of her grown up tooth popping through the gum. Next time I blink we'll be going out to buy her a bra...<shudder shudder>... Her second tooth, the one right next to it, also could probably come out by now, I just haven't pulled it yet. It's hanging on for dear life, but looks pretty awkward. Even her pediatrician, at Ella's checkup this morning, saw it and said it's barely hanging on.

Yes, the Tooth Fairy did come to our house, but I "had a talk" with her/him and said that Natalie wanted to keep "just this one". So I have it in a little white box in my room. I insisted that if it is to be kept, it's going to be in my room so that it doesn't become a toy. (Yuck...) The tooth looks so very small in that very small box. It's amazing that such a small tooth looks so big when it's Ella's tooth. Natalie got a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin under her pillow. We were hoping for it to be one of the gold colored dollar coins, but apparently the post office that our local Tooth Fairy frequents doesn't give out those kinds. Maybe she/he will have to stop by the Gahanna location in the next couple days and stock up, for future visits.

Ella had her 6 month checkup today, and she had three shots and her last Rotovirus dose. Poor thing. She slept a lot of the afternoon away. I don't have her stats here in front of me right now, so I'll post those later. I think she was 17 pounds even, though, and something like 28 inches long. Still off the charts on her height, but around 45th percentile on weight. 

Oh - I know what else we did this week! I went over to my friend Allie's house, and we made (actually I just assisted her...) a new baby carrier for me. Yes, it's almost becoming an addiction. I don't know how many baby carriers I've now owned. This one is an Asian-inspired soft carrier, called a Mei-Tie (pronounced MAY); very similar to my Moby wrap, but it has a non-stretchy center that can't be squirmed out of, especially nice when the baby is worn on your back. It turned out SO very pretty. I'll be posting pictures of it soon.

May 15, 2007
Half a year! I can't believe that in six more months we'll be having our last First Birthday party! I've got her new photo posted on the Ella's First Year page. There are several more pictures that I took this morning, though, so they are posted on Flickr. Her best smiles came when I forgot to include her sheep, so I had to do a whole other round with the sheep.

She's such a cutie these days. Yesterday she discovered the joy of playing peek-a-boo. I've done that with her several times, of course, but yesterday she had her pink receiving blanket and she was pulling it over her head. Then she pulled it down enough to peek out at me, and she gave me a big grin. It's amazing just how much I'm simply enjoying having a baby this time. (Especially now that I'm not feeling that depression all the time that hurt my ability to enjoy ANYthing...) I anticipate every milestone, and they're coming fast and furious these days, but I just love watching every stage so much. No worry about when she will accomplish what -- she wants to keep up with her brother and sister so much, there's no need to worry.

We moved her up to size 3 diapers last weekend, which makes it harder to grab a diaper out for Ella or Ethan. They are identical, except for the small 3's and 5's on the front. And the fact that Ethan's are MUCH bigger. But when they are wadded up in the diaper bag, size is hard to tell. We are likely going to start potty training Ethan in earnest here very soon. He hasn't shown too much interest in the potty yet, but he shows all the physical signs of being ready. We played around with it for about a year with Natalie, but I haven't had the inclination or the energy to do that with Ethan. Despite all that focus and time on Natalie, she pretty much trained herself a month before her third birthday. I hope that will be the case with Ethan. I can't imagine being able to sit on the floor in the bathroom for 30 minutes reading books, waiting for him to go. Yes that's what I did with Natalie. M&M's worked pretty good, but it was still hit or miss until that month, when she suddenly got it, and had very few accidents after that.

Ella has her 6 month checkup next Friday, so I'll find out her growth then.

May 14, 2007
Where was I? Oh yeah -- very far behind in updating.

There have been many things happening over the last couple weeks, but I'll try to just get the highlights. 

Ella will be six months - SIX MONTHS!!! - tomorrow. I'll post specifically about her later.

Natalie still hasn't lost her bottom front teeth, but they are looser than ever, and will likely fall out momentarily. I guess in Phil's family his mom never pulled his loose teeth out, and just let them fall out on their own. In our family, once they were hanging by a thread, mom put us down in her lap and wiggled the tooth out. So I don't yet know what approach we'll be taking. The idea of wiggling out teeth is not an idea I relish doing, given my pain tolerance and ability to vicariously feel other people's boo-boos just by looking at them, but I remember how it hurt more to have the loose tooth always moving around when eating, than it did when mom popped it out. We'll see. Mom did finally give me some tips on the inner workings of the Tooth Fairy, so I think I'm ready for that now, when the time comes. 

Phil turned 34 last Tuesday. For his birthday, I mowed the lawn. I write that down here because it was a significant event. I haven't mowed the lawn since high school. I turn bright, bright red when I mow the lawn, and I sneeze and itch so much that I have trouble breathing. (Hence the bright red face, I guess!) So you know it really was a labor of love. I just popped Ella into the Moby, put the other two in front of a movie, and headed out right after Phil left for work. 

We're going to fly to Virginia for my birthday in June! The kids, Ethan especially, have really wanted to fly in an airplane, but the cost of flying five is usually way, way out of our budget.  But I got us introductory tickets on SkyBus, which just started out of Columbus, for $10 per ticket. So we jumped at it! We're just going for two days - we already had a vacation this year, after all -- but we're all very excited. After I bought the tickets, Natalie asked me, "Mommy, is your birthday TOMORROW?" We'll be leaving one month from today!

Yesterday was my sixth Mother's Day. I actually had a Mother's Day weekend. On Saturday, I got a pedicure, and while I was there, Phil took the kids and got me some white chocolate covered strawberries. They were gone before we got home, but we were out all afternoon and I just couldn't leave them out to melt, after all! Yesterday we got together with the whole family after church for lunch at O'Charley's. It was my sister's first Mother's Day, and really neat seeing all the kids together. Ella didn't want to sit still during dinner, but that's normal these days. It was a MUCH better dinner than last year, when all I could eat was a few bites of pineapple between the waves of nausea!

I got some very interesting news this afternoon concerning my left ankle. Remember that I fell down, yet again, back in January. When I went to the ER and had x-rays taken, I was told it wasn't broken. Meanwhile, ever since then my ankle has remained swollen and throbbing constantly, especially if I walk for more than a few minutes. On top of that, my right foot, right by my big toe, had started having sharp, shooting pains in it. So last week I went to a podiatrist for a second opinion. She took more x-rays, and found what looked to be a broken bone chip on my left ankle. My right big toe now has a bunion on it, caused by my overcompensating for my bum left ankle. So I was casted for orthotics (Yay! At age 31!), and sent for an MRI on my left ankle. That was last week. Today I went in for my follow-up for the results. Turns out my left ankle is a complete mess. There is a bone fragment, which ordinarily wouldn't be a big deal, except that it's located in a "pocket" on my ankle that keeps rubbing against my cartilage and bone. If it were to remain there, it would continue to irritate my ankle (hence the swelling that never goes away), but it's also digging away at my cartilage, which doesn't re-grow in the body. So the chip has to be removed before I lose my cartilage. On top of the bone chip are three other problems. I have lots of scar tissue built up around my ankle, which she called "cotton candy", which has to be pulled out. And BOTH ligaments around my ankle are stretched completely out, so much so that they are useless in keeping my ankle from turning. Which explains why it turns several times a week - thankfully just not always when I'm walking down stairs. (And the more times I do this the more damage my ankle will continue to get.) So both ligaments need to be shortened and retied to my ankle. I'm looking at a 2 hour long surgery, and a 6 to 8 week recovery time. She said I'll be completely off my foot for about 4 weeks. All of which will be very complicated taking care of the kids...but it's either that or I continue to get worse. We have it tentatively scheduled for late June, after my birthday. In the meantime, I have a serious ankle support that I have to wear all the time so that my ankle stops falling over. I really don't relish the thought of surgery and even more so the recovery from it while trying to take care of my kids, but it will just continue to get worse if I don't. Yippee.

Ella is quickly becoming mobile. (All the better timing for ankle surgery!) She is now popping up on her hands, arms outstretched, and trying to get up on her knees. When she makes it up, she rocks back and forth until she manages to scoot a few inches. (Usually backward!) It's so cute to watch. You can tell she's just itching to start keeping up with Natalie and Ethan!

I'll try to remember to post a 6-month update for Ella tomorrow.