yay for a relaxing saturday!

happy 11 months to ella baby!! she had a daddy and me day - daddy went to gymboree with her. doesn't he looked absolutely thrilled to be there?? ;-)

then we went to the cheesecake factory for lunch - by the way - best place ever to take a baby out for a meal. as soon as we were seated, they brought over a plate of bread and banana slices just for el. she even gave roger a kiss over lunch. sorry the picture is blurry - i bet the iphone takes better pictures...

then mimi joined us for dinner and even ended up feeding ella her carrots and chicken. thanks mimi!! ella loves dinners with you.

you gotta know when to hold 'em; know when to fold 'em

this is a picture of ella during our home inspection. unfortunately, the four hour long inspection was about as unsettling as it was boring for ella. after much consideration, we are going to back out of the deal on our new house. :-(

and somehow throughout all of the mess with the negotiations on both homes, the burglary and everything else we have had going on, i realized at 11:30 p.m. last night that i've done absolutely nothing to plan ella's 1st birthday party and it's 3 weeks away. hi, worst mom ever. so i spent my day trying to pull together invites, find a place to hold it and calling friends and family in chicago to let them know about it. the theme: grab at least 3 boxes and a few pieces of furniture and load them onto the moving van. happy birthday ella!!

oh, and the woman at the nordstrom cafe asked me today: "do you need a highchair for him?" HIM? dude, she was wearing a bright yellow cardigan and she totally does not look like a boy... bows are coming out tomorrow, el.

honey, i'm home!

i have to admit, after being stuck in the house all day (we forgot to move the car seat base back into my car), i was excited to go to yoga. but i just about melted when i got back. when i walked in the door, ella was sitting on the kitchen floor; she crawled over to me, pulled herself up and made kissy faces. love it!

did i just call cincinnati HOME??

i'm freaking exhausted, but wanted to post a picture of my new, beautiful niece!! we loved meeting isabelle and had a fabulous time in new york.

it's great to be back home with ella - we missed her like crazy and i couldn't help myself from waking her up in the car on the ride home so i could say hi to her. :-) she had a great weekend with her grandmas - thank you mom and jill! thank you for my picture text messages that i received throughout the weekend.

a few lessons learned:

1. know where you put all of your belongings as you go through airport security. roger freaked out because he couldn't find his wallet in our suitcase so we had to go out of the terminal and back toward the security line. of course, 3 feet (literally. and in front of the tsa agent) beyond the "secure area" he finds it in his jacket pocket... she still made us go all the way back through again. the guy checking boarding passes goes "oh, you guys are back? had that much fun the first time through, huh?" yes, yes we did. we like removing half of our clothing in public, placing it in nasty bins that i'm positive are never cleaned, and walking through a metal detector only after being beckoned.

2. don't attempt to eat pizza from every freaking place on 1st avenue if you're only in new york for 2 days. it's just gross.

3. i'm still trying to decide if i should feel guilty or not because, until jill called jeanne at 6.00 p.m., the thought of calling to check on how my 10 month old baby was doing my first time away from her had not occurred to me since 10:00 a.m. that morning.

4. apparently, i was more excited to meet little isabelle than i thought. there we are on 5th avenue and roger says "i never got your valentine's day present. where do you want to go?" my response: "i'm okay. let's head up to mike and danielle's." i'm a dumbass... hey, roger: is that offer still good??

weekend at granny's

ella will be spending the weekend with both grandmas while roger and i go to new york for the weekend to meet our new niece! this will be my first time away from her - i'm going to miss her sooo much. i hope she behaves; otherwise i'll be out 2 babysitters....

i took this picture the other morning - ella was sleeping with her head up against the crib bars with her arms and legs tucked underneath her.

i {heart} ella

ella baby got up on her hands and knees and crawled (to gigi) instead of army crawling!! and happy first valentine's day el! we love ya.

take it or leave it

it's been a while since i've blogged, but i swear i have a good excuse. last thursday (i think it was then, i've lost count of what the hell day it is), roger and i were packing to go to chicago on friday morning so we could do the electrical repairs that were required from the home inspection. around 10:30 p.m., we received a call from our next door neighbors, pat and jess, who are also very good friends of ours. pat had been taking out his trash and noticed that our basement light was on. when he looked closer, he saw that our basement door was open so he called the cops. our home had been broken into and several items stolen. pat boarded up the door so that nobody could get back in before we were able to get home to repair it. on top of that, while the door was open, the pipes froze, so when the door was closed and the basement warmed up, the pipes burst and we came home to water gushing out of the wall in the basement. um...yeah. but in the spirit of my newfound happiness and freedom from stress, here are my thoughts on the whole crappy situation:

1. when you're going through something shitty, people are there for you in the most amazing ways. within an hour of us getting home to discover all of our missing items and the rapidly flooding basement, we had the fire department, 2 guys from the village water department, a plumber, an electrician and 2 carpenters at our house and working on the issues in our house in the areas of their respective expertise. pat and jess are amazing neighbors and friends and have done so much to help us. ella spent the entire weekend with my mom (mom - let me know when you recover) and my dad helped me pack up the whole house (what was left) so i wouldn't have to go back to the house and pack alone. and our realtor, scott, showed up with margaritas and cupcakes. i could not have asked for anything more!

2. we had very considerate (albeit odd in their choices of what they took) thieves. no vandalism or real damage to the property and (relatively) little was stolen. i hope they enjoy the flat screen tv (the small one - we still have the 60"), my swimsuits (seriously?), the dehumidifier (again, seriously?) and one rather expensive clutch purse. thank god we removed all of our valuables when we left in september. oh yeah, and they took a ginormous safe that was bolted to a basement shelf - it was there when we moved in and we never knew the combination. i hope it was a gigantic pain in the ass to remove it, heavy as freaking hell, and i hope they spend hours frustratingly trying to pry it open to find nothing. :-) oh, and between them and the 2 floods from this past summer, there was definitely less to pack.

3. the police sergeant who took the report decided to share his thoughts on the benefits of self-protection (a.k.a. gun ownership). he asked me what i would do if we had an intruder who had roger on the ground and bleeding out and i was standing there holding ella. my reply: cry. he thought i should do something more proactive than that.

all in all this sucked. but it could have been so much worse. i'm so thankful for everyone. i'm so thankful we're safe. i'm so thankful for my margaritas.

our proposed new schedule

upon closer inspection, ella had not one, not two, but three teeth errupt in a period of a few days. no wonder she's been so miserable. but she's getting back to her normal self. today at gymboree, she scooted herself to the middle of the circle and was smiling and waving at everyone, clapping, and stealing toys from the other kids. welcome back el...oh yeah...and please sleep in until at least 7 a.m. tomorrow. i did not appreciate my 5:15 a.m. wake-up call the morning following superbowl... especially when i went back to bed to discover that george had happily taken my spot.

teething is a bitch

oh - poor ella. so it wasn't so much a cold as a new bottom and a new top tooth. at first i was encouraged that she had bounced back so quickly from her cold, so we were off to yoga and gymboree this week. but then she had a fever again last night and was soo crabby. today she just wanted to be held all day. i'm exhausted now but it was actually nice for her to take her nap with me this afternoon like she did when she was a newborn. i miss that sometimes.

it's been a crazy week on the home front. we are into negotiations over the inspection reports (our attorney might just fire roger from her clientele) and we are officially under contract for our house in ohio!! keeping our fingers crossed that things continue to go well (or just ok is acceptable too).

great expectations

i met with my career counselor today and it got me thinking. this, all of this, is definitely not what i would have imagined 6 or so years ago (before i met roger). in lieu of the apartment overlooking the chicago river, we're looking for houses in reputable school districts in the suburbs of cincinnati (yay! spelled it right). in place of the cute little european sports car is my little SUV complete with a carseat and stroller in the back. i'm in the midst of a hiatus from climbing the corporate ladder and instead spending my days pureeing sweet potatoes and singing nursery rhymes that, as of a year ago, i couldn't remember the words to. there are no manolos and the martinis are few and far between. but my career counselor pointed something out that was very interesting. she observed that i looked happy and stress-free. and she's right. i am freaking happy. my hubby rocks and i can't even begin to articulate how much i love this kid. it's just interesting how you can have all the plans in the world (god knows that i still try anyway) but things work out better than i might have imagined otherwise.

oh, and apparently snow makes ella fat too. jeanne bought this gorgeous sweater coat for her and it's huge everywhere but barely buttons across her belly. i wonder if they make baby spanx? :-) we WILL make this coat work...

this is NOT like playing monopoly...

we continue to negotiate over the inspection of our forest park house and are in negotiations over an offer for a house in ohio. i will go out on a limb and say i loathe this process. typically, i like negotiating. there was far less stress involved when i was 8 months pregnant and the lead negotiator of a 4 month long collective bargaining agreement negotiation and the union was threatening to picket and i had to explain to top executives how exactly i pissed them off so badly. i haven't slept well in a week. i jump when the phone rings. i'm arguing over less money than what is owed in a (um, ok, my) typical credit card bill.

but now i understand why realtors exist. they are serve as the buffer and reply with such statements as: "we appreciate your offer, which my clients are seriously considering and we will definitely circle back with you within the next 24 hours with what we anticipate will be a very positive outcome for both parties." how it came out of my mouth: "eff off, you delusional dumbass."

in ella news: she's feeling better (yay!) and now weighs in at 15 pounds and 14 ounces. oy, almost a year old and still weighing less than some bowling balls. and she gives kisses now!! if you ask for a kiss, she opens her mouth and presses it on your cheek. soo sweet.

what does a bear say?

here's a short video of ella growling. i've had issues posting videos and roger has wanted me to post this for forever.

which direction are you going? FORWARD!

the title of today's post came from the question my parents posed when i was learning to drive. they were intending to elicit a response in the form of a cardinal direction. me, having absolutely no sense of direction, responded "forward." that said, ella is finally army crawling forward!! yay!! we've had to tape up the fireplace, put away jill's guitar and no matter how many fun, colorful toys are available, she always goes after the big, black, ugly, rubber dog toy.

ella and i are meeting more mommys and their babies. when i was working, i exchanged contact information with colleagues whose background and experiences i thought would be beneficial to the development of my own career. now, i exchange contact information with stay-at-home mothers whose childrens' socks my child chews on.

in other news:

i had a cold last week and now poor ella has her first cold. :-(

the (first) inspection of our forest park home went well! we're still on track.

in great news:

ella has a cousin!! welcome to the world, isabelle kate bissmeyer. we can't wait to meet you!