Ellie's Second Birthday: Part 1

This is the first half of Ellie's birthday post. It is her actual birthday, but next week we will be celebrating a family birthday, so that will be part 2.

Part 2 will be more exciting.

Last night, before Ellie went to bed, I realized that when she woke up, she would be 2. For some reason that was a lot for me to process and after putting her down for the night I had a mini breakdown. My baby is 2. Will promised me that at 5:11 a.m. (the time when Ellie was born), I would be just as out of it as I was 2 years ago. Unfortunately Ellie woke up at 4:30 with a bad dream and I did happen to be awake at 5:11.

2 years ago I was starving, exhausted and in a decent amount of pain. I had not eaten anything or really slept for 36 hours. My epidural did not work properly. For a while I couldn't stop throwing up. Ellie's feet were kicking me in the lungs the entire time. I fell asleep between pushes, for a full 5 minutes with no contractions, and if you know anything about labor, that should tell you how exhausted I really was. When they finally handed Ellie to me, all I could think was that my arms didn't seem to be working properly. They were very heavy. When they finally wheeled me out into my suite, the nurse joked about seeing me again in 9 months. I wanted to punch her in the face. Good thing my arms weren't working properly.

After a little nap, I got my first real look at Ellie. She was absolutely beautiful. For the next several months it was all I could do not to stare at her the entire time and I didn't want anyone else to hold her.

And that is a pretty good representation of my relationship with Ellie. Sometimes she drives me absolutely crazy and sometimes I get so tired that I can't think properly. But in the end she is my beautiful girl. A good example of this happened today. She was in the bathtub and I needed her to stand up so I could clean her. She wouldn't. I tried to hold her up with one hand and clean with the other. If you've ever tried to hold a slippery, naked 27 pound toddler with one hand when they don't want to be held, you'd know that didn't work. I did everything from say pretty pretty please to threaten to spank her. Finally I lost my cool and yelled at her. She looked up at me and said, "Momma happy? Momma happy? So so happy see you Momma!"

How are you supposed to stay mad at someone like that?

Anyway, that's kind of how it goes. She's a good girl most of the time, and I think it makes me spoiled. When she starts to be nasty, I have a hard time keeping my patience.

Anyway, that's a long precursor to Ellie's birthday.

We started the morning with Ellie letting us sleeping, probably because she got up during the night. We had breakfast and then gave Ellie a choice: she could open a present, or she could go play in the sprinklers. She chose the present.

Uncle Brook, Aunt Lindsay and Caleb and Peter were kind enough to share this rocking lion. They boys had it when they were little, but now that they are older, they don't use it. When I mentioned we were looking for some kind of rocking toy, they said we could have this one. It's pretty cute, for a lion, but I was concerned she would be afraid of it. Not a problem.

After showing her a couple times how to climb on it, she was climbing all over it like a pro. In fact, it took me over half an hour just to get her to change out of her pajamas. The most common phrase we've heard today:

"Wite Yanon!"

Translation: Ride Lion!

She LOVES that lion. In fact, when we put her down for the night she gave her dad a hug and a kiss, gave the lion a hug and a kiss and said love you, to both of them. Momma did not get a love you or a hug or a kiss. Instead, she licked me several times.

That is her swim suit. I was trying to get her ready to go play in the sprinklers while Daddy dug for the septic tank (no, we haven't actually found it yet), and this is how it ended up. For a while she was trying to get the lion to wear the swim suit. The lion also ended up wearing her underwear and several tutus over the course of the day.

So after that we played in the sprinklers and decided that we were willing to pay someone else to dig up our septic tank. Then Ellie got in the bath (see several paragraphs above) and we had lunch. Ellie had mac and cheese, which is her absolute favorite. Then she took a nap, and so did I. Will played video games. I think that was win-win-win.

After the nap (and riding the lion, again), we went to Walmart to get Ellie some bubbles. She loves bubbles, but she had broken her last bubble machine. So Daddy and Ellie played with bubbles while Momma wrapped presents for our party next week.

Probably the cutest part of the day was Ellie walking around saying "Happy Birthday!" over and over again.

Anyway, that was pretty much it. No cake, no ice cream, no unwrapping of presents. She did get a couple of fun things though and we gave her a few allowances that we wouldn't normally, like letting her watch more TV. The lion was definitely the highlight of the day.

So to end my not-so-exciting birthday post, I will post the video I made of the last year. I did the same thing on her birthday last year, but the video didn't do well on the blog. So now I am trying something new.

I tried to get all the pictures of family in there that I could, but either we didn't have any good pictures or we didn't see some of the family members, so I apologize for the people who didn't make it on there. I will be better with taking pictures for the next year.

And here is the one from last year, in case anyone is interested.