Football & Wine?

This weekend we went to a football party/ playdate with some friends in Ladera Ranch.  The poor husbands hardly got to watch the SC game because the babies were crazy all over the place!  For me though, it was the perfect way to watch football...with girlfriends, lots of food and lots of toys to entertain the kids! ;)

After that party, we left Ella with Alex and went to a wine and cheese party at our friends' house.  It was such a great idea...everyone was told to bring their favorite wine and cheese pairing (ok, Gary and I know nothing about wine and cheese pairings so we just brought a cab and brie).  They put brown bags around all the wine and numbered them, and then numbered the cheese.  Everyone tasted the wines and cheeses (you were supposed to taste a wine then go taste the coordinating number cheese), gave each a score, and then voted on their favorites.  The couples whose wine and cheese got the most votes got a prize!  Really cute idea, and Jen made a bunch of amazing appetizers like prosciutto wrapped asparagus, tri-tip on crostini with mustard sauce and blue cheese and bacon wrapped dates.

Sunday, grammy and pop-pop came to visit Ella and take us out for Gary's birthday to Lucille's BBQ (yum!).  They brought Ella's birthday present from great-grandma since she won't be able to make it out from Arizona to Ella's party.

Ella was very excited about all the pink tissue paper...


She read the card, and slowly took out each piece of tissue paper...


She looked up at grammy and pop-pop to make sure it was ok to rip into the gift, and then immediately started playing with the fun Melissa & Doug puzzles...


She thought pop-pop was pretty funny...


And she like playing puzzles with grammy...


Great-grandma got her 5 puzzles, but we only opened 2 of them, both of which she loved...

What is Going on Over Here???

Um, can someone please bring back my regular baby?

First, Ella has woken up at 5 a.m. (but fallen back asleep) 3 days in a row, and yesterday, she woke up at 10:30 p.m. and whimpered for about 20 minutes (this from the kid that NEVER wakes up between 7:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.).  Yesterday, she only napped for 40 minutes in the morning and screamed bloody murder before finally falling asleep for her second nap (after I went back in her room and drugged her up with Tylenol).  Since yesterday, her nose has been running like a faucet (but she's not sick- no fever, no cough, nothing), and she screams when I try to do the aspirator.  This morning, she woke up with a runny poop that leaked from her diaper and got on her sheets (I think that may have been from giving her whole milk yesterday for the first time).

What is going on?!  The only thing I can think of is that she must be teething...and here I thought we escaped the bad teething experience since all the teeth so far have not affected her at all.  I don't feel any new teeth though so who knows.

HELP ME.

Edited to Add: Now she has a diaper rash on her girly parts!  She has never had diaper rash...not even when she was a preemie and newborn...what the heck???????

Edited Again to Add: So she had another poop that was normal, but when she woke up from her afternoon nap, I had to aspirate her nose about 20 times because there was so much snot in it, and she LOST IT.  Crying uncontrollably and would.not.stop.   She then threw up 3 times while sitting in the family room!  However, I *think* the throw up was crying induced.  UGH.

Edited AGAIN to Add: We took her temp, and she does have a fever...the rectal thermometer is so wacky though...it said 100.9 then 101.9 then 99.9.

And one MORE Time to Add: Before bed, temp was only 99.6 (which is not even a fever when taken rectally).

Happy Birthday Daddy!

This was Gary's birthday weekend (his actual birthday is Monday), and Ella and I had nothing planned...in my defense, I threw him a big surprise party last year!  I asked him if he wanted to get a babysitter, go to a fancy dinner, buy something nice, do something fun...anything.  He said, "I just want to watch the Penn State Game with Ella, have a beer and eat Cannelloni."  Silly boy. He didn't even want a cake or apple pie...just rice krispy treats!

Ella was a little too fond of daddy's beer bottle...


The rest of the weekend went like this:

Ella had her friends, Kaitlyn, Hannah, Ryan and Quinn over to play.

She woke up from her nap looking like Kate Gosselin (pre-extensions)...


While Rylee was innocently sleeping in her DOG bed, Ella (who has decided the dog bed is her favorite place to chill) got annoyed that Rylee dare fall asleep in her own bed and did this (notice the hand on the hip in the second photo)...


And life AS WE KNOW IT is gone...Ella has finally learned to do this...

Which led to this...


Ella went to IHOP for breakfast in her pajamas (and tutu!) early Sunday morning and had pancakes for the first time. Then we went to Costco where Ella had chocolate and vanilla frozen yogurt for the first time.

We went to grandma and grandpa's house for a birthday dinner on Sunday night. Ella flew with grandpa...

Helped Rylee eat a dog treat (I know, gross)...

Helped daddy open his present...

And blew out the candles on the apple pie...


HAPPY BIRHTDAY DADDY, WE LOVE YOU!

Some More Cuteness (Birthday Hats, Dresses & Little Feet)

Look at the adorable birthday hat I made for Ella!  I actually made it for the little photo shoot we're doing during our family photo session on September 26th (more on that later), but if it stays nice, I think I may *try* to make her wear it at her birthday party.

 Thanks to my friend Christina, I just ordered this adorable pinafore from Lassie Girl:

Isn't it so cute?!  AND it can be worn as a dress and then a shirt when it's too short for a dress.  AND it's reversible so it's like having 2 dresses and 2 shirts.  AND it was really reasonably priced! 

Yes, I could make it myself, but you know what, (a) sometimes I just don't feel like it, (b) I haven't seen that fabric anywhere so technically I couldn't make it, and (c) I love to support other small home business/work at home mom operations so I still buy lots from other people on Etsy and small websites like this!

And finally, I just love little feet.  I love how when Ella takes naps, she always props her little piggies up on her bumper, and sometimes, one little foot escapes through the slats of her crib...

We Made the Finals! PLEASE VOTE!

Little Chicken Baby Made the Finals of the "You've Just Been Spotted" OC Awards!!!!  PLEASE vote for Little Chicken Baby just one more time!  Here is the link:

http://www.just-spotted.com/2010/09/youve-just-been-spotted-oc-blog-award-nominees-2/

All you have to do is go to that site, and click on where it says HERE in the first paragraph (it says it 3 times in the first paragraph).  Go about half way down the next page to where it says "Which is the Best Etsy-ish Shop in OC?"  Little Chicken Baby is the 9th one down, and you just click in the circle next to "Little Chicken Baby" then go down to the bottom of the page and click where it says "Continue".  That's it!  You don't have to vote for any of the other sections unless you want to so it should only take a few seconds.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!!!!

11 Months Old

Ella is 11 months old today!  I can't believe she will be ONE YEAR OLD in a month.  Crazy.

She gets more fun, more active, more mischievous, and more independent every single day.  She is babbling up a storm, but she STILL doesn't seem to say mama or dada in relation to Gary or I!!!  What the heck?!  We *think* she sort of says "ball" (ba), "up" and "uh oh".  Who knows.  She vehemently shakes her head side to side when she doesn't want or like something.  So she definitely gets the concept of no even though she can't say it (and doesn't obey it!).

She loves the pool- probably because it's the only place she can walk!  I think her favorite game is playing ball- she loves throwing the ball to you...she could do it for hours.  She LOVES watching Rylee play fetch with a ball- she cracks up.  As for her 8 million toys...she's "eh" about those.  I swear, we might as well give her a phone, a piece of paper, a spoon and any other random object that she isn't supposed to have.  She loves to climb the stairs (AHHH!) and always heads straight for them (so we have to lock her in the kitchen/family room now).



She is a master crawler and cruiser and pull herself upper but still does not have any inclination towards standing on her own without holding onto something.  She likes to push things, but if you try walking with her while holding her hands, she tends to sit down!  We may have a very late walker on our hands.  She waves "hi" and "bye", claps and gives high fives...it's so darn cute.

She is eating three 8 oz. formula bottles and solids 3 times a day 8:30, 12:00 and 5:00.  She won't let us feed her anymore, which means meal times are VERY messy in our house.  She likes yogurt, cheerios, puffs, baby cheetos, string cheese, sliced turkey meat (she LOVES meat), broccoli and eggs.

She naps twice day.  9/9:30-10:30/11 and 2:30-4:00.  She is an amazing nighttime sleeper and never ever wakes up in the middle of the night.  We are so lucky in that respect.  Even vacations or missed naps don't affect her.  However, she does always wake up at 6:30 a.m., so she's definitely an early riser!  Right now that works really well for our schedule (or Gary's schedule?), but if I ever don't work, I'm going to have to have a serious discussion with her about sleeping in.

She still wears a size 3 diaper.  She is in 12 month clothes, and I even put her in 12-18 month sometimes.

She is just overall a really good baby, and I'm so proud to be her mama!

Crazy Labor Day Weekend

It was a very busy but fun long weekend.  On Friday we went out to dinner at RA with our friends Sarah and Joey and one of Ella's boyfriends, 4.5 month old Logan.  It's great going out with another baby because every time Ella saw Logan, she got super excited and happy!

Saturday we went to Geoff and Michelle's house for dinner.  It was TEN degrees cooler at their house- it felt so nice!  [Next on the To Do List...move to beach].  Ella loves being with Peyton and Logan, and they are so sweet with her.  They only call her "Baby Ella"...never just Ella...it's so cute.  Apparently Logan also calls her baby dolls "Baby Ella", and at night they both ask if Baby Ella is asleep yet. ;)

Ella could just stare at them for hours...


Look at Logan just staring at her...


They have a play slide, and Ella LOVED it. She was like a little monkey crawling UP the slide (she didn't like going down as much though!). I think Santa may have to bring her a slide for Christmas...


On Sunday morning me and the girls had brunch at the Waterfront Hilton Hotel in Huntington Beach to celebrate baby girl #2 for Tracy...of course I forgot my camera, but it was so nice to sit out and have mimosas by the beach!  On Sunday afternoon, Gary, Ella and I went to a big pool party with our neighbors at one of the pools in our neighborhood. It was so great! There were about 10 families and tons of kids...Ella was in heaven (even though she was the youngest one there).

I made these adorable brownie hamburgers (which were gone in about 10 seconds BEFORE dinner once the kids saw them)...I didn't try them, but according to my 6 year old neighbor, they were "DELISH!" ;)

Ella ate watermelon directly from a whole piece for the first time- it was SUPER messy but so cute!

I know when Ella gets older she'd kill me for posting this, but this is her new thing (and she looks so cute!)...not sure why she does it???




The only thing I hate about holiday weekends is they seem to go even faster than regular weekends! Is it really Tuesday tomorrow already?????

Ella Sweet Shoppe Part One- Lollipop Invitations are OUT!

Party planning is in full force, and the invites are out! Although they took me forever, I'm so glad I made them because I think they came out so cute and exactly how I wanted!

I lined the envelopes and included scalloped edged directions...



The stick is in between card stock so it has a 3-D effect...


In case anyone is interested, here are the supplies I used:

The pink backing is just any kind of card stock or heavy paper. The multi-colored striped backing is scrapbook paper. I printed the wording onto plain white card stock. I cut all the circles using the Fiskars circle cutter, which cuts circles from 1" to 8"! I taped the wording part to the striped part then used the glue gun to attach that part and the pink backing to a lollipop stick. I used super small grosgrain ribbon and tied them into tiny bows- they are attached to the stick with a glue gun.

As for the actual invitation part, since I'm completely Photoshop challenged, I had to use Word, which is a total PITA. If you know how to use Photoshop, I think it would be much easier. I used WordArt Style 37 to create the circular dotted border- you just type periods instead of words then adjust the size and color to your specifications. You then click within the circular border to insert text.

To line the envelopes, I traced the flap of the envelope onto a piece of paper then went in about a 1/2 inch on each side and made new lines before cutting out the template. You can decide how long you want the lining (like all the way to the bottom of the envelope). I then glued the lining into the envelope.

It was actually easier than the cupcake toppers (I almost started crying making those), which I'll post about after the party!