The Bright Spot.

Easter Weekend 2009

2009-04-12T16:23:00.008-05:00

I don't want to hear it. I know I've been a little... absent lately. I'm back with a lot of pictures from this weekend. On Saturday Ellie attended her first Easter Egg Hunt. My parents joined us at the annual Easter party was at Lakewood on Saturday morning and when Ellie first got there, she was hesitant because of all of the commotion. But when she got outside at the hunt she came to life and knew just what to do. The Easter egg hunt was at the driving range and her age category was 4 and under. We had to show her that she was supposed to pick up the eggs and put them in the basket, but she caught on really quickly and started picking them up.

After the hunt, Ellie spent some time at the bunny petting zoo and with the giant Peter Cotton Tail. Lee's parents joined all of us for a late lunch and then Ellie enjoyed a 2.5 hour nap.

We celebrated Easter by going to the 9AM service at our church with my parents. Ellie was really good the entire time which... was a change from the previous week. But in Ellie's defense, last weekend was Palm Sunday so the service lasted forever. Forever for a toddler is longer than 5 minutes especially when they're supposed to be sitting still and quiet. We came back to the house for a while after the service and then met the Brights at the Petroleum Club for brunch. I had one tired kiddo after all of that activity this weekend.

In other Ellie news, she can count to 12 and sign the entire ABC song without messing up. She learned it faster than I thought she would. Her biggest sentence is now "No, no Daddy. I don't like that." They teach them to say "I don't like that" at school so they can say it to another child instead of hauling off and hitting the other kid. My little genius also surprised me the other day when I was reading a book to her. It was an Easter book about hiding eggs and one egg was hidden in a bird's nest. I pointed at it and asked her what it was and she told me "a nest". Then I asked her what was in the nest and she said "a baby birdie". Kiddo already knows that baby birdies come from eggs. Genius. She's also all about getting the mail now. Every day when we get home, she runs to the stairs to see if the mailman has delivered anything. When there's not any down there she holds her hands up and shrugs and says "No mail?". I'm constantly amazed with the speed at which she learns things. Here she is saying "cheese".

Baby Emme

2009-03-12T22:33:00.000-05:00

Ellie got to meet her new buddy this weekend, Emme Guerra. Emme was born to my friends Meg and Ruben on February 25 and she's so sweet. As I'm sitting here writing this, Ellie is in my lap pointing to the picture of Emme saying "Ellie's baby". So she must have liked her even though I think she has more fun with Ruben and the dogs. This is the best picture I could get of the two of them together...

We didn't do much the rest of the weekend. Since I'm going to be the Technology Chair for the Junior League next year, I met with the current chair and the new webmaster to start the transition. My parents kept Ellie again this weekend so Lee and I could go out on Saturday night. We saw Slumdog Millionaire, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture a few weeks ago. I was not as taken with it as I would have hoped, but it was still pretty good.

This last shot is one of Ellie on Friday night. She's getting to the point where she wants to have a little more say in what she wears. I don't know what she is going for with this look...

Chocolate Rain

2009-03-04T13:00:00.013-06:00

I'm going to go ahead and tell you up front that I did not put Ellie down for a nap with a Jello chocolate pudding cup. While Ellie was supposed to be taking her nap, I was making our airline ticket reservations for Florida this summer. The ticket lady, Evelyn, was so nice and she started asking me all about Ellie and I said ," Oh, I hear in her her room now. She's supposed to be taking a nap, but she's started crying... let me check on her... OH MY GOD THERE IS CRAP EVERYWHERE! She has smeared poop everywhere!". And poor Evelyn was like ,"Oh no! Okay, honey. You go on and clean that up and call me back." So of course I hung up the phone and grabbed the camera. Most mothers would run to their child and start wiping, but not this mom. If Ellie smears poop all over the place, I am taking pictures of it and blogging about it. So now I have two confirmed pictures for her rehearsal dinner slide show: Ornament Boobs and Chocolate Rain. Keep it up, Ellie.

Last Wednesday was Ash Wednesday so we all got our ashes. Ellie could not figure out what was on our heads. I cannot wait until the weather warms up. It was sort of cold and windy around here this weekend so we stayed inside most of the time. That means finding indoor activities - like the mall. And apparently everyone else had that idea too because it was packed. We went so Ellie could watch the ducks and turtles at Northpark, but we wound up letting her make her own bear in the Build-A-Bear store. They have about 20 to choose from. She took her time evaluating all of her options and decided on a pink bear. They start out as unstuffed little shells and then you add everything. Ellie helped add the stuffing and then spent time playing in the accessories area. She did not let go of the bear for the next 24 hours so it created quite a lot of drama when Morgan decided to claim it as her own. Here she is stuffing the bear.

And here she is with the fully stuffed bear appropriately named "Pinky".

Ellie was so funny this morning. She grabbed her fingernail clippers, laid down on the changing table and held out her little hand with her fingers spread out as if I was her little Vietnamese manicure lady. And she's not even 2 yet. Ellie can now say the alphabet up to G and then she glosses over the other 19 letters and goes straight to "next time won't you sing with me". If you help her, she can do "QRSTUV". She can also count to 7. I hear her practicing in bed at night. We've been working on on teaching her who Jesus, Mary, and Joseph are, but I'm not sure she has all of the relationships straight. She knows that we go to church to see Jesus. As far as other religious teaching go, we're also teaching her how Obama is robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's important to distinguish the sinners from the saints.

On a sad note, my parents had to put their dog, Abby, to sleep last Thursday. They adopted her 10 years ago and she was a wonderful dog, but developed diabetes a few months ago and it was just too much for her little body. Ellie called her "Abby dog" and we're all going to miss her. She and Trudie were such good dog pals. I imagine they're happy to see each other again.

Class Photo

2009-03-04T12:46:00.002-06:00

We just got back Ellie's class photo. She's on the right and she's not smiling. Her teachers are Kelsey, on the left, and Irma, on the right. Irma is her main teacher and Ellie loves Irma. Her good friend is Georgia. She's third from the left in the glasses. She's tiny. Ellie is probably a full head taller than her. Ellie has to hug her when we leave every day and talks about her at home. A character in one of Ellie's books wears glasses and when get to that picture, Ellie says ," Georgia glasses!". The little boy in the overalls is Liam and he tries to steal Ellie's food at mealtimes. My mom dropped off something for Ellie last week and was there during snacktime. When Ellie turned around to look at my mom, Liam grabbed her snack off her plate. Georgia grabbed it from Liam and gave it back to Ellie. Don't mess with a girl's food.

Future Aerobics Instructor

2009-02-28T09:34:00.000-06:00

Happy Ash Wednesday!

2009-02-25T18:38:00.000-06:00

Ellie's House

2009-02-24T16:23:00.000-06:00

The camera drama continued this week, but I think I've resolved everything. I hope. As it turns out, the previously owned camera that I was using didn't have a flash that was operating at 100%. The camera would work if I was outside, but if I wanted to use it inside, I was going to have to buy an accessory flash. I tried taking it to several places to figure out how to make it work, but it was going to have to be repaired. So I sent it back and luckily the lady I bought it from was nice enough to take it back. Sort of a bummer because I liked the camera a lot. That left me with no camera again. So on Saturday, I decided to bite the bullet and purchase a brand new Canon EOS Rebel XS. I actually only had to purchase half of it because my parents were nice enough to pay for the other half as a late Christmas gift. So now I have my dream camera. And it works. And it takes the great pictures I've always wanted out of a camera. And I'm going to love it forever or at least until I leave it at the mall again. Just kidding, Lee. I won't do that.

After we got home from swimming lessons on Saturday, Ellie had a surprise waiting for her in the backyard. The sister-in-law of my co-worker, Jennifer, was looking to get rid of her daughter's play house so on Saturday, Lee and Jennifer's husband, Andy, picked up the play house and brought it over to our house. When we rounded the corner of the house and Ellie saw it, she sat in her stroller for a second speechless and then started screaming "Out! Out! Out!" for me to unbuckle her so she could play with it. She loves it. The only problem is that it's a bit hard to get her into the car in the morning because she sees it and wants to stay outside playing in "Ellie's house". That's what she calls it. I need to get her a little tea set so she can play house in it. Right now she runs in and out opening and closing the door and the windows.

My parents came over on Saturday and we went to the park to fly a kite. I bought a Sesame Street kite and was so excited about Ellie's first kite flying outing, but she was pretty uninterested. She was interested when the kite was on the ground and she liked the green tail attached to the end of it, but once it made its way into the air, she ran off. Out of sight, out of mind. So we made our way to the playground after about 5 minutes of kite flying. She is so over the little kid playground equipment and only wants to play on the park equipment that is designed for children five and older. This causes me anxiety, but she prefers the big slide much more now.

Saturday night my parents kept Ellie at their house while Lee and I went to Fort Worth to celebrate Katy's birthday at Cantina Laredo with about 14 other friends. Before dinner, Lee and I stopped at Wine Thief, the wine bar in the brand new Omni hotel. It was really nice and I had a great time at dinner catching up with everyone. Sunday we met one of Lee's high school friends from Chattanooga for lunch at Mi Cocina. She, her husband and her three kids were in town from Boston for a wedding. Ellie had her usual - a quesadilla - and surprised us when we asked her to say it and she could repeat it. It's funny hearing her little voice say "quesadilla". She can also put back on her shoes now... she's been taking them off for a while, but now in the mornings I get her all the way dressed except for her shoes and tell her to put them on. And she does it. I really like this picture I took on Saturday at the park - I think it's one of my favorites.

Valentine's Weekend 2009

2009-02-15T13:18:00.011-06:00

I'm starting to think that 90% of good picture taking is having a good camera and the basic knowledge of how to use it. I snapped two pictures of Ellie at the park this weekend that are two of the better pictures I've taken of her in a while. Of course, it took me about 100 pictures to get these two, but I guess that's the beauty of digital photography. It's also nice to have a subject who is too young to scream, "Stop taking my picture, mom!".

Not much to report this weekend. It was Valentine's Day on Saturday. I'm not really a big celebrator of the holiday so we mostly stuck around the house. We had swimming lessons again on Saturday morning and my mom came to watch and she took some pictures. My dad was busy performing singing Valentine telegrams which he does every year with his singing group to raise money for Cooks Children's Hospital. Here's Ellie reaching for the stars - literally. You might not be able to tell, but she is kicking. I discovered a more advanced program taught by a private lady so I may start Ellie in those lessons this summer or even earlier. It would be nice if Ellie could swim to the side of the pool by herself.

That afternoon, I took Ellie to the park and then we stayed here for Valentine's Day dinner. Lee and I made a pact not to get each other gifts, but I went ahead and got a gift for both of us - Coldplay tickets. They're coming back in concert on July 21. The radio station Mix 102.9 was giving them away all week to the 20th caller, but I was every caller BUT the 20th. I was the 19th twice. This is the radio station that I won a ski trip from 4 years ago. It seems my luck for winning radio contests is slipping a bit.

In other Ellie news, she gave me her first unsolicited "thank you" this week. Since she started talking, I've been trying to teach her to say "please" and "thank you". Usually I have to prompt her for one or the other, but this week as we were getting ready for school, I handed her a cup of milk and she gave me a "sank ooh". Very cute.

My Best Friend

2009-02-12T19:34:00.010-06:00

I was practicing with the settings on my new camera tonight and got some pictures of Ellie with her best friend...

Ellie LOVES the baby that I got her for her first birthday. She treats Baby like a real baby. As you can see, she blows her nose.

She reads to her.

Then she and Baby read to us.

Then she puts baby to bed.

She's already a good mom!

Our Grocery Getter

2009-02-12T18:27:00.000-06:00

I got it!

2009-02-10T21:04:00.009-06:00

Our blog is picture perfect again! I purchased a "new" camera this week. Actually, it's second hand, but that makes it new to me. I really wanted a super fancy new Canon Rebel SLR camera, but I decided that it would be a good idea for me to purchase a second hand one first for practice for a few years. And the one I got is perfect... it's just not the total latest and greatest technology. But that's okay. It's a great learning camera. I've always been really interested in photography, but have never made any steps to become a better photographer. Now I have and I'm really happy about it. I've got a book and I'm learning and I may even take a class once I exhaust the "SLR Camera for Dummies" book. So over the next year or so, you'll see my progression of photo skills... at least I hope that I progress!

The pictures I have on this blog are from a few nights ago when Ellie was feeding her fish. I really haven't had a chance to take many pictures outside of that lately. We started swimming lessons again this weekend, but I couldn't take pictures because I was in the water. Minor detail to taking pictures. Every time we go to the gym, Ellie has to go see the pool. I always have to keep one had on the back of her shirt just in case she has an immediate urge to swim. But I underestimated Ellie's excitement for the water. I got her dressed in her suit and walked her out to the pool, but once she realized that we were actually getting into the pool, she started screaming and squealing. Her favorite thing to do now is crawl out of the pool and jump back to me. Again and again. She gets these crazy eyes when she's about to jump so I was getting a kick out of watching her. I've never seen her so excited about something and I mean that. All of this excitement caused her to take a 2.5 hour nap.

I practice swimming strokes with her by throwing something out in front of her and then have her use her arms to pull it toward her. She's been putting together one or two words lately, but she's yet to make a full sentence. That changed on Saturday. I threw a football out in front of her and she grabbed it. I said, "did you get it?". She excitedly replied, "I got it!". I don't know if I was more happy that her swimming stokes were spot on or that she made a full sentence.

Other than the swimming lesson, we actually had a pretty busy weekend. I attended the Junior League's Volunteer fair this weekend and worked at a booth with my friend Elizabeth answering questions for a while. Then that night, we attended a wedding for our friends David and Amy. It was a beautiful wedding and instead of leaving the reception by the usual limo or classic car, the couple decided to leave the wedding via helicopter amidst fireworks. We weren't there to see it because the party wrapped up at midnight and we left around 11:00, but I heard it was spectacular.

It was also Ben's birthday last Wednesday, so we met for lunch at El Phoenix on Sunday to celebrate. Afterwards, we drove around looking at houses. We can't quite decide if we want to remodel the house we're in or move. Both are stressful decisions. I have to shut this down because I hear the tornado sirens going off. Hope we're not blown away!

Happy 2009!

2009-02-01T21:02:00.004-06:00

Happy new year to everyone and yes, the sentiment is a full month late. If 2009 continues the way it's started, I'm going to buy a DeLorean, build a flux capacitor, and go back to 2008. I actually started this post 2 weeks ago, but just never got around to finishing it. And then the pressure built to write this enormous blog and I kept putting it off. But no more. I am back to blogging after this. One of the reasons I haven't been blogging is because I've been so busy but the other reason is because I lost my camera. We went to the Galleria about 3 weeks about to have dinner with the Hardemans and afterwards, we went to the third floor to the play area. As I was putting Ellie's shoes on to leave, I took the camera off my wrist and put in on the bench next to me. Ellie ran off and I jumped up to run after her and that was it. It was gone. I realized that I didn't have it on the way back to the house so I called the security office, but no. So all of the pictures in this post are courtesy of Stephanie since she did get some of Ellie that night. But the good news is that I bought another one so new pictures are on the way. Really and truly, I am back to blogging.

So what have we been doing... Ellie has two new pets. We are now the proud owners of two goldfish named Dorothy and NoNo. We bought a little 2-gallon aquarium for our new friends too. For those Sesame Street fans out there, you probably know that Elmo has a pet goldfish named Dorothy. So of course Ellie had to name one of the fish Dorothy. I have no clue why she named the other fish NoNo. I think she might have named it that in homage to her favorite word. She stands on her little stool and watches them swim and occasionally she tries to feed them a cracker through the glass.

She's been quite a character lately. About two weeks ago, we put Ellie to bed and I thought she had gone to sleep, but she started swalking after an hour. I went into her room to find her sans pajamas - but still in a diaper - thank goodness. I guess she's woken up and gotten undressed? We'll never know, but I was more than a little confused when I walked in the room and she handed me a pair of pajamas and I found a naked Ellie. We were a birthday party for Cooper, her school friend, last weekend and Ellie tried to jump in the pool. It was covered with a mesh leaf cover, but she still tried getting in. This resulted in a very wet Ellie since the pool cover only prohibited her from sinking and not from getting wet. I think she is very excited about swimming this summer because this afternoon I found her in her bathroom playing in her toilet (the real one) screaming "pool!!". If you know how much I am bothered by germs then you know how much this bothers me. We had to have the "potty is only for poo-poo and tee-tee" talk AGAIN. She's also learning new words exponentially and putting them together more. Like today I cut myself chopping onions so I put a bandage on my finger. She saw it and I told her that I was hurt and she pointed to my finger and said "mommy hurt". Or when I "forgot" to replace the batteries in her Elmo Live for a few days she would tell me "Elmo night-night". Yes, that's right, Ellie. Your very annoying talking animal is sleeping.

What else has happened... I hosted dual showers last weekend. A group of girls hosted a morning wedding shower at Meg's house for Bonnie and then in the evening we hosted a baby shower for Meg. I am learned that I am going to be on the Junior League's Leadership Council next year as the Technology Chair. Very excited about that one. I've been touring new schools for Ellie. I think where she is right now is okay but I may want to put her someplace else.

My good friend and college roommate Debbie had her second baby this week, a little girl named Sadie Scott. The delivery was fine, but Sadie was born with a genetic condition called Pfeiffer Syndrome that effects the appearance of her skull and eyes. She's going to have to have several surgeries, the first of which will be coming up in the next week or so. They've set up a site so that we can follow her progress. It's called Sadie's Site. I added it to my list of "Links" on the sidebar too. Debbie is such an amazing person and if God had told me he had a very special baby and asked me who should be her mother, I would have told him Debbie would be the best person for the job. I am asking that everyone pray for Sadie and for the Bono family.

Christmas 2008

2008-12-31T16:45:00.000-06:00

If there's one thing I learned this Christmas, it's that being the first and only grandchild on both sides of the family means you score huge in the gift department. On Christmas Eve, we met the Brights at St. Michael's for the children's service in the basement. Ellie has a Little People Nativity Set and a book about Christmas that we've been reading, but she obviously hasn't figured out the whole birth of Jesus thing yet. She knows there was a baby, a star, an angel, and a donkey involved, but that's about it. After church, we went back to the Brights for dinner and opening presents. We let Ellie open all of hers first since she had to go to bed. Once she figured out that she was the recipient of many gifts, she started going nuts and screaming "Ooooooo!!" as she opened each gift. She got two babies, a stuffed doggie, some blocks, crayons, a puzzle, and a beautiful bracelet. Uncle Ben set up the train set which was a big hit with Ellie. It only took Ellie two hours to go to sleep... then the adults opened gifts downstairs.

We woke up at our house on Christmas morning. Santa brought Ellie a ride-on Elephant and an Elmo live. She really likes the elephant. It sings four different songs while she rocks on it. We made it over to my parents by 11AM where there were more festivities and she hit the motherload with the Elmo Restaurant, a gift from Grammie and Grandi. She LOVES the Elmo Restaurant. She saw it and immediately started cooking up a storm and has not stopped cooking since she received it. She has taken to putting her new baby in the oven which is troublesome, but maybe she thinks it's nice and dark for baby in there. She also likes handing out the money in the register to everyone.

We spent the afternoon of the 26th at the Dallas Museum of Nature and Science and the next day, we saw the Trains at Northpark. It is a nerd paradise of miniature trains. That have the trains running through scenes of Dallas, New York City, Washington DC, a forest, and a western town among other things. Ellie really enjoyed it and they had some trains at her level . Mom and I saw the movie Doubt on Saturday afternoon. It's getting lots of nominations for awards and such but it was sort of slow and disturbing.

Lee and I spent Sunday surveying what Ellie does and doesn't play with and making two piles - save and give to charity. The problem is that I would get something out she hadn't played with in six months and she'd act like it was the long lost toy she'd been missing and start playing with it. Half of her stuffed animals are getting the boot. Sometimes I wish we lived in the 1800s when children had a corn husk doll and a block of wood to play with. And they liked it. Now everything makes noise, is the size of a baby hippopotamus, and requires 4-AA batteries which have to be inserted using a Stewart Little-sized screwdriver.

So here we are at the end of 2008 and I am exhausted. I think I aged 5 years in the past 7 days. I feel like I'm recovering from Spring Break 1997 without all of the beer, vinyl pants, dance offs, and midgets. I don't know how I'm going to do it year after year... and especially the years when Ellie starts getting up at 5AM. When that starts, I'm going to stay in bed, set up the camcorder, and tell her to hit record when she gets up. At least I have 11 months to get geared up for the next season.

The Bright Family wishes you a happy and healthy 2009!

The Science Place

2008-12-26T18:08:00.008-06:00

I took the day off the day after Christmas and Lee took the afternoon off, so after Ellie's nap, we took her to The Museum of Nature and Science in Fair Park. In the downstairs area, they have a ton of things for little ones to do. She loved driving the fire engine with Dad....

Picking veggies at the little farm...

Milking cows...

Harassing turtles...

Sailing boats...
It's all fun and games until we have to leave.

Poor Ellie.

December Events

2008-12-23T20:39:00.003-06:00

I have to get a post in before Christmas or else I will be totally behind and stuck writing a 10,000 word essay on December 31. I'll start with Deck the Hall, the annual children's Christmas concert at the Meyerson on December 13. We went last year and Ellie had a great time then, but an even better time this year. Dallas native Lisa Loeb was the entertainer. We started off with Breakfast With Santa which included a picture with Santa. That didn't go well. Ellie had NO interest in meeting Santa. We have Santa all over the house so she knows who he is and she'll even say "Ho! Ho! Ho!" if you asks her what Santa says, but was not so interested in actually meeting him. I expect that this behavior will continue until she's about 3 or 4.

After breakfast, there was a lot of great lobby entertainment. Ellie enjoyed listening and dancing to a one-man band, watching a magician, getting a reindeer balloon hat made, and was particularly interested in watching a string quartet play. By the time the concert started, Ellie was operating at a level 10. She sat fairly still during the concert, but was ready to get out of there when it ended at noon. Too much stimulation.

Front row at for the one man band.

The String Quartet.

She's had enough of Decking the Halls.

When we got home, she was being pretty cranky so I fed her and put her down for a nap - which she would have none of. It marked the first time she's never taken a nap during the day and it's not something she's going to repeat anytime in the near future. I tried for 1.5 hours to get her to go to sleep... patting her back, singing, more books, and at one point I rocked her which is not easy any more because she's 5'6" now. So eventually we got up and made the cookies that I wrote about in the last post. That night we met our friends, the Hardemans, for dinner. Ellie and Cooper kissed each other on the lips when we left and I about fell over I started laughing so hard.

This past week, we celebrated the holidays with more fun - I met my college girlfriends Meg, Debbie, Annie, Bonnie, Jenny, and Kristine, for dinner and an ornament exchange at Olenjack's in Arlington on Tuesday night and then Ellie and I went to the Dallas Women's Club with Beth and Elizabeth for a Mother-Daughter-Granddaughter Tea. Santa came down from the North Pole again for the Tea and again Ellie was steadfast in her determination not to take a picture with him. She was much more interested in the ladies in a little band that was playing Christmas music. They brought instruments for the kids to play with and Ellie had fun shaking a tambourine.

We met my parents at the Gaylord Texan on Saturday morning to see the Ice! exhibit. It is a hugh exhibit of ice sculptures... really a lot more interesting than it sounds. They had a 15 foot slide... which Ellie could not ride because she wasn't tall enough, a giant Santa, a huge angel, gingerbread men, and a life sized nativity scene. The only problem is that they kept the entire exhibit at 9 degrees. That's about 60 degrees colder than I like to be. They give a parka to all of the visitors, but it's NINE degrees. My ballet flats didn't hold up. I think Ellie's favorite part of Ice! was jumping into a huge barrel of teddy bears at the end. After lunch, my parents took Ellie home with them because Lee and I were supposed to go to a holiday party on Saturday night, but we hadn't had a free night with no kiddo in... forever... so we decided to stay home. I made chili and Mike came over to watch the final Cowboys game at Texas Stadium which they lost.

I picked Ellie up on Sunday, and according to my Mom and Dad, Ellie was pretty good. She only threw all of her food on the floor once. They kept a lot of my old toys so she has plenty to do when she's there. While I was working around the house on Sunday, I forgot how productive I could be when she's not there. I got 6 hours work done in about 2. And I took a nap and went shopping. But it was strange not having her around and I felt like something was missing the whole time.

I'm really looking forward to Christmas this year because I know Ellie will be excited when she opens her gifts. There's such a small window when children are genuinely excited about Santa, the reindeer, the elves, the gifts, the cookies, the lights, the tree... I am going to soak it all up while it lasts.

Merry Christmas.

Christmas Cookie Time

2008-12-14T20:23:00.007-06:00

We did a lot this weekend, but one of the highlights was making cookies with Ellie. My mom always made cut-out cookies with me when I was little so I have been looking forward to making cut-out cookies with my little one almost since the day I found out I was pregnant. I bought the cut-outs even before that. I'd never made cut-out cookies by myself... and by no means would I consider myself a great "baker", but I used the recipe that my mom used when I was little and they were quite good.

I rolled out the dough, cut the cookies, and Ellie decorated them. I was surprised that Ellie really did decorate the cookies. She sprinkled the red and green sugar on the cookies and patted it down like she knew what she was doing. Then we put them in the oven and I turned the oven light on so she could watch them bake. Beth gave us a little snowman cookie jar and she knows just where they are now.

In the end, she discovered that the sprinkles taste the best.

Thanksgiving 2008

2008-12-09T21:25:00.000-06:00

I know I've been a little absent from blogging, but this happens every December. I cannot find the time to sit down for a few minutes and gather my thoughts because of the holiday specials on TV or Christmas parties or taking Ellie to see the lights someplace. The big problem with extended lapses in blogging is that I usually can't remember what happened yesterday so trying to write about things that happened 10 days ago is difficult. I was home by myself this weekend because Lee went hunting at the ranch with Matt and Ronnie. I thought I was going to have time to blog then, but I actually have less time when Lee is away because there's so many other things I have to be doing when Ellie is asleep.

Ellie had her 18 month appointment last week and these were her stats:
Weight: 26.9 (80th percentile)
Length: 34.25 inches (95th percentile)
Head: 18 inches (25th percentile)

Since birth she has been in the 95th percentile for height but this is the first time she's broken the 50th percentile for weight. Looks like she needs to go a little easier on the Cheerios.

We went to Tyler for Thanksgiving this year. We arrived on Wednesday night and about 30 minuted from the Bright's house, Ellie decided that she was through being in the car and threw a fit. I think she was a little hungry too, but it wasn't pleasant. We swung by a party that the neighbors were having and then relaxed. The next day my parents came to Tyler to celebrate with us. Ellie and I spent the morning at the park while Lee helped his dad get some items out of storage. That afternoon while Ellie was asleep, I saw the movie Twilight with Ben. I felt sort of bad dragging Ben with me to the movies, but there was nobody else who could go with me.

For Thanksgiving dinner, we had Tee, Beth, my mom and dad, Elizabeth, Ben, David and Lissa, and our family. This year Ellie could actually eat the turkey, dressing, and all of the extras, but I think most of the dishes were too flavorful or spicy for her because she didn't seem to like most of it. On Friday, we came back to Dallas and picked up our Christmas tree.

Ellie established a new favorite word - "no". She's known this word for a while, but now uses it with great gusto. I took her for Christmas pictures on Saturday and the poor photographer had quite a time. Ellie, do you want to smile? NO! Can you sit here? NO! Show me your teeth. NO! Or at home: Do you love Daddy? NO! Can I have a hug? NO! Please give me the remote. NO! Did you just poo-poo? NO!! Are you sure because I smell it. I poo-poo? Yes, you did. NO! Seriously, let me change your diaper. NO! Anyway, the pictures were somewhat of a disaster, but the guy got one shot I could use so that's what we're going with. I was worn out by the end of it. We finished up the morning by walking around the Galleria to look at the Christmas tree on the ice rink and visiting the American Girl store. I can't wait until Ellie is old enough to get into the American Girl stuff. I think I'll probably like it more than her. That night, Lee went to poker while I put up all of our decorations and watched part of WALL-E with Ellie. Such a cute movie. She called him "Wah-wee" and she called his little cockroach friend "bee" mostly because she thinks every bug is a bee. She saw the DVD in the grocery store the next day and started screaming "Wah-wee! Wah-wee!".

As I mentioned, Ellie and I were home alone this weekend while Lee went hunting. I had big plans for us to go to the Adolphus Children's Christmas Parade in downtown, but she started coming down with a cold on Friday night and was running a low-grade fever so I thought it would be best if we stayed home. My company Christmas party was Saturday night at a nearby co-worker's house and it was quite possibly the most fun I'd ever had at a Christmas party. It was out of control. We had an ugly Christmas sweater contest and since I helped plan the party, I made an executive decision on Tuesday to rent a karaoke machine and our office parties may never be the same again. Everyone got so into it. I spent most of the night holding my sides because I was in pain from laughing so hard. Some people actually want to buy a karaoke machine for the office so we can sing during the lunch hour. I don't know if I want to take it that far. But I may want one for home enjoyment.

Needless to say, it was hard getting up on Sunday morning for Katy's Christmas brunch. Ellie had fun playing with the three other children at Katy's house and had even more fun carrying around the pink bag that Katy gave her. She showed it off to the whole party. That's my wallflower. We have so many events planned for the upcoming days until Christmas arrives... I'm going to do my best to work in some blogs!

I Poo Poo?

2008-11-24T18:45:00.000-06:00

We had a big moment at the Bright house this weekend. Ellie has finally gotten to the point that she realizes that she is about to poop and tells us. This is big because she was telling us after she went and now she's telling us before she goes. I celebrated this big event by buying Ellie her own potty. And no, I don't seriously expect to start potty training her because she's only 18 months and she can't get her own pants off yet, but I wanted to buy her a little potty so she could get used to seeing it and it wouldn't be a big event when we finally do potty train. When I brought the potty ("pah-ee") home on Sunday afternoon, she was very interested in it. We told her that it was "Ellie's potty" and that big girls poo-poo and tee-tee in the potty. She pointed to it and said "poo-poo". I told her no pressure - she didn't have to use it yet, but she wanted to take it for a test drive, so I took off her diaper and let her sit on it. Nothing happened, but Lee coached her on how to relax and I half expected him to give her a newspaper to read.

We went about our afternoon activities of going to the park, feeding the dogs, and eating dinner. I was in her room making her bed (which takes 15 minutes and is harder than passing a camel through the eye of a needle) and she was in her chair reading when she looked at me and said, "I poo poo?". I asked her if she poo-pooed and again she said, "I poo poo?". I checked her pants and there was nothing there. I told her that she hadn't gone yet, but reminded her that big girls poo poo in the potty. With that, she ran out of the room. I continued making her bed and when I looked up, she had carried her potty into the living room where Lee was watching TV. Then it went a little something like this:

Lee: Tiff, she just brought her potty in here.

Ellie: I poo poo?

Me: Yeah, she just told me that she went but there was nothing in her diaper.

Lee: Well, maybe she has to go?

Ellie: I poo poo!

Me: I don't want to pressure her. Maybe we just let her sit on the potty and poop in her diaper to start out with?

Ellie: I POO POO!

Me: Or maybe I should take it back into the bathroom? I don't want her to think that she can poop on her potty in here.

Then Ellie stood up, let out a loud, frustrated scream, and started stomping her feet. I checked her diaper, and there it was - the poo poo. Poor kid. And you know she was thinking something along of the lines of, "Okay, let me get this straight - three hours ago, you buy me a toilet so I don't have to soil myself anymore, but when I tell you I have to poo poo and physically BRING you my toilet, you stand there and discuss me taking a dump with each other until I crap my pants?! I am starting to think I am the smartest person in this room." I guess she's going to have to potty train ME.

At the Zoo with Grammie and Grandi

2008-11-18T13:41:00.007-06:00

As I mentioned in my last post, my mom and dad looked after Ellie while we went to Wurstfest two weekends ago. Their big outing was to the Fort Worth Zoo. I've attached some pictures from the zoo and from their house. She looks like she had a great time!

Grandi and Ellie look at the giraffes

And elephants

(The elephants were very interesting)

Ellie and Grammie play in the sandbox

A movie and drinks with Elmo before bed

Wurstfest is the Bestfest

2008-11-15T17:20:00.000-06:00

When Lee and I got married, someone gave us a book called 1001 Things to Do Before You Die. Wurstfest is not in there, but it should be because it's the best festival ever. I've never been to Octoberfest, something I've always wanted to do, but I'm pretty sure this is the Texas version of it. As we did 3 years ago during our first trip to Wurstfest, we stayed in Das Flus Haus #3 at the Gruene Mansion Inn. It's a cute little bed and breakfast overlooking the Guadalupe river. My parents were nice enough to keep Ellie for the weekend so it was just the two of us. On Friday night, we walked around the stores in Gruene, which is all of about two blocks, ate some Mexican food, and saw Cory Morrow at Gruene Hall, the oldest dance hall in Texas. If anyone remembers the movie, Michael with John Travolta, there's a scene from that movie that was filmed there and pretty much every Texas country star has played there. It's a cool piece of Texas history.

On Saturday, we did a little more shopping before meeting up with some of my college friends. Marcie's parents retired to New Braunfels and have a great house along the river. If I was retiring, it's exactly where I'd want to retire because the Texas Hill country is so beautiful. This year we spent most of our time in the Wursthalle kicking back with pitchers of German beer, dining on all things German, listening to "Czech and Then Some", chicken dancing, and watching professional clogging. It's more fun than it sounds. I think Ellie would have had a really great time because all of the little kids are running around and dancing and playing on the rides... but I think she still may be a little too young to enjoy it. We also bought a 48th anniversary commemorative beer stein and some outstanding new aprons. Something we totally didn't need, but had to have.

Around 5PM, we headed back to the Ahren's house for dinner. I always enjoy time with Paul and Judy especially because Paul was an engineer and we can talk about all things engineering together. Our topic de jour this time was global warming, which we both agree is a load of crap but that's a whole different blog. I guess a few hours of German beer drinking will do strange things to you because all of the guys decided to try on the bark collars of the Basset Hounds that were there. I think there was some weird peer pressure at play because all five of the guys did it. It was entertaining to watch and it reinforced my belief that women are the smarter sex. That night, we met the group again at Gruene Hall for more Cory Morrow.

My parents brought Ellie back on Sunday and we all went to the kick-off party for Deck the Hall together. I was the kick-off party co-chair so I had to attend. It was a fundraiser for the upcoming event and for my Dallas readers with kiddos, it's a must-attend Christmas event at the Meyerson so please consider supporting the Symphony and attending. I think that Ellie had a spectacular time with Grammie and Grandi. Their big event was a trip to the Fort Worth Zoo. My mom also took Ellie to mass and endured the first hand torture that is taking an 18 month old to church. The only difference is that her church has a luxurious "cry room".

In other news (because I have failed to blog in several days), Ellie is officially obsessed with Elmo. This is great for me considering that she's getting a new Elmo for Christmas, but it's also bad news because we have an "Sesame Street Greatest Hits" CD and we have to listen to the Elmo theme song nonstop in the car. When I ask her if she wants to watch Elmo, she starts singing "La-La-La-La", the Elmo's World Theme Song. I guess that's a milestone because it's the first song she's singing. It's a good thing I like Elmo so much. It finally clicked with her this week that "more" can translate to things other than food. I read to her every night before I put her in bed and now after I tell her that we've read the last book, she gives me the sign language for "more" (she uses her left index finger and points to her palm" and says "more!". Then I usually give in for another book or two before putting her down.

We attended the Dallas Junior League's Auction and Casino on Thursday and I think that we were the highest bidder on the trip to Florida silent auction item. We left without checking out so I'm still waiting to hear. All of the items were a steal because of the economy. There was a $5500 Valentino leather jacket for bid in the live auction that went for $250. It was nuts. On Saturday, Ellie, Beth and I toured the Luxe Home. It's being billed as the most expensive house ever built in Dallas at $40 Million and at 21,000 square feet, it was every penny of it. I kept on thinking what an outstanding party I could host at the house. We'd better start saving up for it!

Beer Goggles

2008-11-08T17:27:00.000-06:00

Seriously - beer goggles.

I Couda Have Been A Contender"

2008-11-08T16:14:00.000-06:00

Greetings from Wurstfest

2008-11-08T12:50:00.000-06:00

Budding Artist

2008-11-07T13:22:00.000-06:00

Halloween 2008

2008-11-06T22:04:00.000-06:00

I must say that we had the cutest poodle on the block on Friday night, and getting Ellie into her costume was not as hard as it was two days before at the Lakewood party. I think that's due in part to the fact that I snuck up behind her and pulled it over her head before she could see it coming.

She had a really great time on Halloween. Aunt Elizabeth came over to help hand out candy with Lee while I took Ellie around. We started out atour next door neighbor's house where Gracie - also babysitter to Ellie - was handing out candy before the football game. Ellie took the piece of candy from her and then gave it back. Gracie told her she could keep it and that made Ellie very happy. Ellie then ran from house to house collecting candy saying, "tick teet". Her trick was that she would run up to the house, collect her candy, run halfway down the sidewalk, and then return for a second treat in hopes that she would not be recognized. The pink poodle costume gave it away because there were not many running around in the neighborhood.

About halfway through trick or treating, Ellie met up with a group of girls from the neighborhood who were about 3-6 years old. When they'd go to a door, she'd be in back at first, but by the time candy was being handing out, she was in the front row. We ended the evening with some pizza from Campizis. There weren't as many kids out this year as there were last year. I think that was due to the fact that there was a home football game being played.

On Saturday, Lee and I had plans to go to a Barnett Vineyards wine dinner at Lakewood. We'd plans to go for about three months. We love Barnett wines and it was our favorite winery when we visited Spring Mountain when we visited there in 2006 so we were really looking forward to the wine dinner. Our babysitter, who had never sat for Ellie before, was scheduled to come at 6:00. I started getting nervous around 6:10 when she hadn't shown up so I started calling and texting her. Nothing. She no-showed. Honestly, if she'd called two hours before and faked an illness, I'd be somewhat forgiving... but no-showing? That's inexcusable. When I realized we were not going to have a babysitter, Gracie from next door came over immediately. Thank goodness she was home. We wound up having an awesome time... the wines and the dinner was fabulous. The onlyproblem was that Saturday night was daylight savings so Ellie woke up at 4:30. I stayed in bed while Lee got up to check on her. He changed her diaper and maybe due to the wine dinner, he put her diaper on backwards. It could have been worse, he could have put it on inside out.

Ellie got in her first fight this week. That's right - fight. I picked her up on Tuesday and Irma told me she, "wasn't too good today". According to Irma, she didn't see the fight start, but when she looked up, Ellie was clawing at some girl and pulling her hair. My girl is smart to go for the hair since it's not an advantage any opponent has on her. Irma said she pulled Ellie off the girl (they don't name names at daycare) and then Ellie ran back to for more. Ellie usually plays well and shares better than I ever did so I'd like to think that the other girl started it, but who knows.

In other news, the election was this week. I didn't vote for the guy who won, which was Obama. I recognize that the election was historic in that he will be our first black president, but I don't think that he was the right person for the job, and I think our forefathers are rolling over in their graves because of the ideas and beliefs that he espouses. I'm a worker and I always have been. I went to work on the day of my 16th birthday because that's the first day I could legally go to work and make money. I believe that hard work is the way to get ahead in life and the government has no right to step in and redistribute my wealth. If you want money, work for it. I didn't get here by sitting on my butt and collecting welfare checks. I got here by spending thousands of hours studying. If you looked at McCain's resume versus Obama's it was a no-brainer. People wanted change and they're going to get it on my dime. I'm trying to look at the bright side and that is that many people were motivated to vote in this election. My hope is that this makes more people interested in our government and that they become more active participants.

Tennis, anyone?

2008-10-30T22:03:00.001-05:00

Thanks to our friend Mike, we saw some great tennis this weekend. His company was sponsoring a tennis tournament at SMU and several well-known pros were there. Lee and Ellie met Anna Kournakova on Saturday afternoon while my mom and I were at the St. Thomas mother's association market. I got there just as Anna was leaving the meet and greet party so I didn't get any one-on-one time with her like Lee and Ellie did. We had great box seats for the match - right at mid-court. We watched a mixed doubles match with Anna and then a match between Jim Courrier and Ferreira. Ellie was good the entire match, but right at the end as Courrier raised his racket to serve, it was pin-drop silent and Ellie let out a "Whhheeeeeeee!". Courrier stopped his serve and looked right at us. He knew it was her making the noise because there was nobody in the tables to the left of us. I should have been mortified, but I couldn't stop laughing. I stopped Courrier after the match to apologize and Mike got his autograph for Ellie. Mike recorded the match and watched it when he got home. He fast forwarded to the "incident" and said the announcer calling the match said in a hushed voice, "...Courrier to serve... Courrier stops to look in the stands... aaaaannnnd Courrier serves". We returned on Sunday for more tennis and Courrier went on to win the entire tournament and took home $75,000 for his efforts. Something is telling me I should have played tennis.

Our other big fun this past week was attending a Jason Mraz concert. I had been looking forward to it for months and was a little disappointed. He sounded good, but I can't stand people throwing politics in my face. I don't spend money to have a celebrity give me his views - I spend money so he'll stand up on stage and play his little guitar and sing. I'm so over it all. I would have been fine with him had he not created a stained glass window backdrop during the song "Live High" and overlaid the face of Obama on Jesus' face. It was too much. Obama is not Jesus. At all. Maybe he's a half-witted community organizing version of Robin Hood who thinks it's okay steal money from someone who her worked her butt off to get a bachelors and masters in engineering only to give that money to people who illegally crossed our borders or won't get off welfare, but that's as much as I'll give him credit for. But Jesus? Spare me. So we left.

Lee also caught an (un)lucky break this weekend - he tore the ACL in his right knee... or so we thought at first, which would have meant surgery. But we found out today that it was more of an up-and-down tear rather than a side-to-side so he may not have to have surgery after all. That's the lucky part. He's limping around and is a lot of pain, but the doctor that will go away and he'll have to do some physical therapy.

Last night, we attended a Halloween party at Lakewood. We met Jenny, Brandt, and Garrett there. Garett is about 4 months older than Ellie and is such a doll. When we arrived, I took Ellie in a bathroom to dress her in her costume - the pink poodle. She's had it on twice before, but decided two times was enough. She started screaming immediately when I took it out of the bag. I almost had to hold her down to get it on her. All of this while she was crying in this guttural voice, "Mama! Noooooooo!". It was very dramatic. This little Hispanic cleaning lady watched it all unfold and I felt like an A+ parent. She calmed down after I got the costume on her.

The six of us ate dinner and then went on a hayride around the golf course. On the hayride, Brandt asked Garrett if he would give Ellie a kiss, and he leaned over and planted one on her. There was also a "Monster Mash" with dancing inside. All of the kiddos were running around having a great time. One little girl was dressed as Elmo and Ellie couldn't get over her. She pointed and screamed, "Elmo! Elmo! Elmo!". I discovered that if you want to be treated like a celebrity at Halloween, dress up as Elmo. We're trick-or-treating tomorrow night. I can't wait to take her from house to house and let all of our neighbors see her. It will be much different than last year!

Happiness Is...

2008-10-30T16:53:00.002-05:00

An Elmo Balloon (captured on Lee's cell phone)

The Exclamation Point!!!

2008-10-28T11:12:00.005-05:00

After receiving a few comments on the “Tag, I’m It” post, I’m issuing a formal statement on the exclamation point. I am not opposed to the use of the exclamation point, rather I am opposed to the blatant overuse of the exclamation point. Some people end every sentence with an exclamation point. I found the following in a grammar guide on the internet:

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Use an exclamation point [ ! ] at the end of an emphatic declaration, interjection, or command.

"No!" he yelled. "Do it now!"

An exclamation mark may be used to close questions that are meant to convey extreme emotion, as in

What on earth are you doing! Stop!

An exclamation mark can be inserted within parentheses to emphasize a word within a sentence.
We have some really(!) low-priced rugs on sale this week.

Note that there is no space between the last letter of the word so emphasized and the parentheses. This device should be used rarely, if ever, in formal text.

**************************************************************
My main peeve is with respect to the last sentence – the use of the exclamation point in formal text. The exclamation point has no business in business communications. I would not send an e-mail or letter correspondence to a client with an exclamation point in it because I work with 99% men and I think it undermines the credibility of my writing.

My stance remains firm on smiley faces :P.

Tag, I'm It.

2008-10-24T08:42:00.004-05:00

Nicole sent me a "Tag, You're It" message with a challenge to write seven things weird or random about myself that other people may not know. Then you're supposed to tag other peoples blogs. I'm not going to do that, but if you're reading my blog and want to play along, please do (Meg this will give you a topic for you new blog)! Nicole tagged me about a month ago and I've been thinking about my list ever since. So obviously I'm putting way too much thought into this. Here it goes... I'll be surprised if anyone gets a seven out of seven:

1. When I was a junior in college, I almost changed my major to meteorology because I love the weather. Weather is so interesting to me and when a storm comes in, I always watch it on the radar. So what would I have done with this meteorology degree? I would have been the weather girl. And most days, I wish that's what I was doing... pointing at a green screen, smiling, and making weather puns with the anchorman. But I know I'd probably be doing the weather in Duluth or something, so maybe it wouldn't have been that great.

2. Speaking of career aspirations, my first ambition was to play the accordion just like the man on Hee-Haw. I was 4. I started taking piano lessons when I was 5 and about a year later, my parents discovered that our creepy neighbor had an accordion, so he lent it to me. I tried to play it, but it was really difficult. It ended my dream of becoming a professional accordion player, but I am still secretly fascinated by the accordion.

3. One of my biggest pet peeves is the overuse of the exclamation point! Or the double use!! Or triple use!!! REALLY?!!??!! Every sentence needs an exclamation point??!!! What are people trying to convey?!! Are they excited, yelling, or crazy?!!! A girl that used to work here would e-mail clients and every sentence in her e-mails ended with an exclamation point or a double!! I eventually told her to stop because it didn't look professional! My friends said I was crazy, but I couldn't help it! She had to be told! And this ":)" - or any variation - drives me nuts too.

4. I took my baby blanket to college with me, and I really don't care who knows it because I've been out and proud about my blanket for a long time. My mom tried to "lose it" when we took a trip to visit my grandparents when I was 7 or 8 because she thought I was too old to have it, but then I "found it" when I ransacked their house looking for it on a return trip 6 months later. Why would she want to take it away from me? Maybe she had some strange fear that I would still be sleeping with it when I went away to college? That's crazy talk. I still have it, but it's sealed in a bag because after years of wear, if it's exposed to the air, it will fall apart. It's like the Shroud of Turin.

5. Before Ellie was born, I didn't know any lullabies to sing so I downloaded "Que Sera, Sera" by Doris Day from iTunes and memorized it. It was the first song I sang to her, and it's what I always sing to her when she cries.

6. I'm the most inartistic person you'll ever meet. I can draw a smiley face and stick figures, but that's it. Art class was my least favorite class in elementary. My stuff was NEVER picked to go on the bulletin board. It's like the left side of my brain ate the right side of my brain and I have no ability to create. Well, I shouldn't say I can't create because I feel like I'm pretty good at writing and I've been dying to take a continuing ed class on creative writing. In fact, I have a funny book idea floating around in my head that will most likely never find its way to paper.

7. I'm not a picky eater, but I do not eat raw tomatoes. I never have, but for some reason I can't remember to say "no tomato" whenever I order a sandwich. So every time I order a sandwich, I have to pick the tomato off. I'll end this little exercise with a word problem: Assume Tiffany orders a sandwich every week and has been ordering sandwiches for the last 25 years. How many tomato slices has she picked off? If you said 1,300 slices, you'd be correct. Writing that makes me feel like a genius.

That is everything interesting to know about me that you may not have known. I don't have 6 toes, I can't play the flute with my nose, I have no tattoos, I'm not a secret agent, and I haven't hiked to the highest mountain in North America, but I did sleep with a baby blanket until I was 25.

Where have we been?

2008-10-21T20:47:00.009-05:00

So I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been a little absent from blogging. The crazy thing is that the last time I blogged was over 2 weeks ago, and I can't really remember what I've been doing since then. And the only reason I know it's been two weeks is because Lee keeps reminding me. October is proving to be one big blur. And I've been so bad at photographically documenting this blur... the only pictures I've gotten in a while were this past weekend. The weekend before last was poker weekend at our house. Lee had all of his poker friends over for the big game and since the weather is so nice, they played outside. That's actually the only way it can happen with Ellie asleep because they get pretty loud. The game lasted until past 2AM. I forgot to take Mike's picture... he really wanted to make the blog. Maybe next time, Mr. Steele.

I do remember what happened this past weekend. Lee was out of town hunting. We dropped him at the airport on Friday morning on our way to work, Tee picked him up at the San Antonio airport and they headed south to the Herradura Ranch. It's the same trip that they took this time last year. So Ellie and I were by ourselves for the weekend. On Friday night, I stopped at Target on my way home to get some dog food, but I also got one of the most coveted toys of the holiday season... Elmo Live. Apparently this is the holiday item that people will be stampeding each other for this Christmas. In fact, the doll came out on Tuesday, and I got the last one in the store on Friday night. That night I stayed in and watched a girlie movie, Becoming Jane, but on Saturday, I had a whole girl's day planned.

I started off with a trip to the gym where Ellie got to play and then we met our friends, the Hardeman's at the Arboretum for more pictures. Yes, we had been there a few weeks ago, but there was a professional photographer there. I couldn't decide if I wanted to dress in her cute fall jumper or Halloween costume... I went with costume. I don't want to let the cat out of the bag yet on her costume so I'm not going to post any of those pictures just yet, but I'm certain that Ellie is going to deeply resent me for this year's costume when she is old enough to realize what I dressed her as. I will say one thing this about the costume - it nearly paralyzes her so she stands there motionless. This makes it easy for me to pose her, but doesn't make it easy for her to smile.

After pictures, Stephanie, Cooper, Ellie and I ate lunch outside at the club. The weather was great. I think Ellie is recognizing Cooper more now because as we were leaving, I told her to tell Cooper goodbye and she started saying "Bye! Bye!" and waving at him. Then I told her to give him a hug. She did and they both fell over in the process. After a big nap, Ellie and I participated in some retail therapy.

On Sunday, I went against my better judgement and took Ellie to church. By myself. It's really all one can do to keep up with her when we don't have to be quiet and still. We made it through the gospel and then she pooped so I gave up and went to the club for breakfast. Maybe Jesus will give me double credit for the effort I put in while I was there. I don't know how single parents so it. Lee got home around 4:00 and Ellie was so excited to see him. She saw him getting out of the car, ran up to him, and gave him a huge hug and kiss. Then she was beside herself with excitement when he made it upstairs. She was running around giggling and screaming. She definitely missed her daddy.

We've gotten a few new words out of her lately. She can say owl, Morgan, Lucy, Irma (her teacher), airplane (pronounced "eh-pane" though it would be much funnier if she screamed "da plane! da plane, boss!" when she saw one - Fantasy Island reference), buzz like a bee, and she's really been working on "please" a lot. If she sees me eat something she points to her hand and says "mo! mo!" meaning "more". Then when that doesn't work, she gets this pitiful look and says "peas?". How can I say no to that?

Here she is trying to put on her favorite shoes... they'd be my favorite shoes too if they came in my size.

The 2008 State Fair of Texas

2008-10-06T19:49:00.010-05:00

October means one thing - the State Fair of Texas! This was Ellie's first trip, but it was also my first trip. No, I'm not kidding. I've lived here my whole life and I've never been to the State Fair. We got to the fairgrounds around 10AM and they were already frying up the Fletcher's Corny Dogs so Lee had to get one right away and let Ellie have her first taste... it was a hit! There was also fried ribs, chicken fried bacon, fried Snickers, fried oreos, and fried grilled cheese, but the corny dog was the only thing we tried.

Our next stop was the petting zoo, which was also a big hit. There were goats, a giraffe, emus, an ostrich (which tried to pick my arm off), some things with horns I'd never seen and a lot more animals. At first, I was feeding the animals with my hand, but then Ellie tried to do the same and I was afraid they'd bite her hand off so we switched to the little shovels.

There was also some sort of a rabbit competition there which they were judging when we were in the exhibition hall. Whichever rabbit wins must win based on the talent portion, because they all looked the same to me. White with pink eyes, white with pink eyes, white with pink eyes. I hope she never asks me for one because she'll get a quick "no". The only pet we'll ever have will be a dog... *maybe* a fish, but that's pushing it. Still to this day, I'll never know why my mother ever bought me two gerbils, but it taught me three valuable lessons: 1) Never swing a gerbil buy the tail because it will come off in your hand and no amount of therapy can make you forget that. 2) Gerbils can have heat stroke if left in an enclosed garage in August. 3) No exotic pets. Ever.

Around noon, I noticed her putting her head down on her stroller and about 5 minutes after that, the meltdown occurred. The corny dogs, zebras, airbrushed t-shirts, midway, and car show had finally worn our little munchkin out so we headed for the car and she was asleep before we hit the highway. Later in the afternoon, Lee met Mike to watch some football and we stayed in on Saturday night.

The pumpkin patch is back at the Arboretum this fall so we went to church and then there for a photo op. Ellie did not want to cooperate with picture taking so I didn't get one picture of her sitting there with the pumpkins like I did last year. She kept saying "ball!" and wanted to play with them. I had her dressed in a pink striped dress, bubble gum tights, and hot pink shoes, and at lunch, a lady at the club still told me what a cute boy I have. Are you kidding me? Does anyone have a son who dressed him like that? Pay attention, people.

I also played a whole round of golf for the first time ever this week. Some guys asked me to play on their team for the Society of American Military Engineers scramble. I am NOT GOOD. There was a lot of whiffs and missed putts, but I am interested in playing and I thought it was really fun. Now to get some lessons... Lee told me that he can teach me, but that may be more of an exercise in frustration for him.

New words in the past two weeks: Yellow, bracelet, please, thank you, slide, swing, fish.

Our Trip to Tennessee

2008-09-24T20:32:00.016-05:00

What a fun weekend! I can't believe that it's all over. You wait and wait and wait for a vacation to come and then it always seems like it's over in the blink of an eye. We had a whirlwind trip and got to see a lot of our Tennessee folks. On Thursday morning, we flew to Birmingham and then drove to Chattanooga. We were originally scheduled to take the second leg of the Southwest flight on to Nashville, but Lee came up with the idea to deplane early in Birmingham and it saved us a few hours of travel time. Ellie was no problem on the plane at all *thankfully*. She was glued to the window of the plane for the first 20 minutes and then crawled back and forth between us in the seats. Thank goodness we had the DVD player because she spent the last 30 minutes of the flight watching Sesame Street. Elmo always calms her inner beast.

As soon as we arrived in Chattanooga, we met Lee's aunt Judy for lunch and then an outing at the Creative Discovery Museum, which is a children's museum - maybe one of the best I've ever been to. We have one in Dallas, but it's nowhere near as nice as this one. There was an area called "Riverplay" which was set up for kiddos to play in the water. I've never seen Ellie so excited about something. We stayed in that one area for about 45 minutes and when we left, she turned around and ran back in the room. Didn't want to leave. I took a ton of pictures and you can see all of them here. She also loved the player piano and all of the scorpions and millipedes they had in the "Excavation Station" area.

After the museum, we had a meeting with our financial advisor where he told us that he had not lost us as much money as the overall stock market had. Thank you? I did not like to see him pointing to a number and telling me we'd only lost "this much". But I guess everyone has, right? I think I'm going to start investing in telephone poles or marbles or something that is at least tangible. After the "you've only lost 10% of your net worth" pep talk, we headed to the big party... Lee's grandmother, Mimi, turned 90 on Thursday. When I planned the trip, I though that maybe she'd like it if we were there on her birthday. After seeing her with Ellie, I'm so glad I planned the trip around her birthday. Mimi lives in a retirement community on a mountain and it is beautiful. We ate in the dining room and then we were treated to a tour of the facility. Later that evening, Lee met up with his friend from high school, Ronnie, while I stayed with Ellie at the hotel.

When we woke up the next morning, Ellie looked like she'd been slapped in the face. I still haven't figure out just exactly what went on... I can't decide if it it was some sort of a respiratory thing, a reaction to the padding on the pack and play the hotel provided for us, or an outbreak of eczema. We'll never know. She was acting okay and eating fine so we took a trip to the Tennessee Aquarium. Again, Dallas has an aquarium... but it's nowhere near as nice. The great thing about our outings to the museum and aquarium was that we were there on school days so we practically had the whole place to ourselves. Ellie couldn't get enough of the penguins, butterfly garden, king crabs, river otters, and giant turtles. There's so many other fun things to do and see in Chattanooga. I would suggest a trip there for anyone - especially people with kids.

On Friday afternoon, we drive to Knoxville to meet up with Nicole, Wayne, Miles, and Audrey. For those of you who don't know, Nicole is my cousin, Wayne is Lee's friend from college, Lee and I were bridesmaid and groomsman at their wedding, and the rest is history. Audrey is 9 months younger than Ellie so they're not really hanging out too much yet. Miles is three and Ellie was more into playing with Miles and his toys, but Miles was not so much into having Ellie play with his toys. I warned him that in about 9 more months, he was going to be back in the position that he was with Ellie there, but for now, he's happy living in denial. Miles is really into his trains and all things power tools. He even has a jackhammer, drill, and welding equipment. I was half expecting him to show me his little Union badge. Audrey may be the best baby ever (well, second to Ellie). That sweet child was so quiet, I forgot that she was even there most of the time. We had dinner at a nearby Mexican food restaurant on Friday night and then put the kids to bed. One of Wayne and Lee's college buddies, Hunter, came over and the five of us proceeded to have way too much wine. Way. Too. Much.

Saturday was "The Big Game" between Tennessee and Florida. Nicole planned a fun football watching party and I got to meet fellow blogger Erin and her daughter Eileen. It's strange to read all about somebody's life (as many people do about mine on my blog) and then actually meet them. It sort of felt like stalker meeting stalkee. Too bad I couldn't meet Raven too! Tennessee could not pull out the game and they wound up loosing 30-6 so in the end, Lee and I were glad we weren't there to witness the butt whipping in live technicolor. Nicole was such a great hostess and made the best pork chalupa. Even Ellie was a fan.

Nicole was so nice to buy Ellie and Audrey matching UT pajama outfits. Those will be great pictures to bring back out when they're 30. On Sunday, we went to brunch with the Erwins and then headed to Nashville for our flight. When we got to Nashville, there was go gas anywhere so we couldn't fill up our rental car. It was weird. Apparently, Atlanta suffered the same fate this week. Now I hear rumors that it's headed to Dallas... anyway, the trip home was without incident except for the slight kicking and screaming breakdown that Ellie suffered going through security. I had three bottles of opened drinking water with me and the guards just waved me through. I guess they thought I did not look like I had it together enough to pull off a well-planned terrorist attack. So Monday, it was back to reality... back to work, back to daycare... thank you Erwins! We had so much fun!

Hurricane Ike

2008-09-16T21:07:00.002-05:00

Yikes - I could not believe all of the destruction that Ike did this week as it hit the Texas coast. It's so strange to watch all of the news video, and think "we were just there" every time they broadcast from a location along the seawall. I was really hoping some of my friends would agree to a joint vacation to Galveston next summer, but that possibility is not looking good now. Most of my Houston friends are okay except for the ones who still don't have power. We didn't get as much rain as we expect around here... but it's just as well. I didn't feel like being underwater. And with the cold front that blew through on Sunday, it finally feels like fall here.

I'm short on time this week, so I'm going to let the pictures do the talking. I'm so glad our friends Debbie, Justin and their little girl, Molly, moved back to Dallas. And they're so close! On Friday night we met for a wild dinner at Mi Cocina. While we were waiting for our table, Molly and Ellie met another little girl who lives in our neighborhood who is one month younger named Bessie and Ellie fed her Goldfish.

Since it rained Saturday, we mainly used it as a football watching/inside day. I need to figure out what to do with Ellie when it rains because unless we pack her up and take her somewhere, there's not a lot to do around out house. Lee had his perfect day of football... I like to call this picture "Touchdown Vols".

Sunday was beautiful so we took a long walk and went to the park. We live close to a great park with a pond that has a ton of ducks so we took some of Ellie's stale Cheerios and went there. The ducks were a BIG hit. Ellie had seen them before from the comfort of her jogging stroller, but had never gotten up close and personal. There was a huge white swan there and a black one too. Lee got them to eat right out of his hand, but I'm sure these ducks have a lot of experience being around people. We went to a park after we fed the ducks and let Ellie swing for a while. Every time we took we out of the swing, she'd run right back to it. We have big plans this coming weekend - I can't wait!

Word of the week: Turtle.

Hi! My name is...

2008-09-08T21:05:00.000-05:00

It's amazing to watch kids develop when they're really little because they have big milestones like sitting up or crawling... but I think it's almost as amazing to watch Ellie develop now. It's especially interesting to listen to new words that she breaks out. It's seems like we're getting a new one almost every day now, and the one she blurted out on Sunday was "purple". I've been working on red, yellow, blue, and green, but she chose a color out in left field and went with purple. Then I wondered what she would say if I asked her what her name was. I'd never thought to do that. She pointed at herself and said "Eeh-yee". Those L's are proving difficult, but I was still impressed that she knew what I was asking her. She also added the words "bird" and "up" this weekend. She's really into talking on Lee's cell phone now. It's not on, but she holds it to her ear and says "Hi! Hi! Hi!". She was doing this on Saturday while carrying around my purse, so I went to Toys R' Us at lunch on Monday and bought her her very own pink purse and a baby stroller too. As you can see, they were a big hit. Her other new trick is that she learned to put her dirty clothes in her hamper. Next we'll work on dusting and pouring mommy a glass of wine.

Ellie played with so many friends this weekend. Mom, Ellie, and I went to The Heldebrandt's house on Saturday morning to visit with Henry, who is 9 weeks now. Grace is 3 and Ellie has so much fun with her - mostly emulating what she does and trying to eat Grace's play food. Ellie also has a thing for babies now and wasted no time giving Henry a kiss. She was pretty good right up until she bopped him on the head. She also tried to give him a drink from her sippy cup.

After the briefest of naps, Ellie and I went to to the mall so I could buy her some new fall shoes. We went to the sale at Nordstrom's and that's where I saw the cutest girl shoes I've EVER seen. They're shiny hot pink ballerina flats with a little strap across the top of the foot. Had to get them. That night we met our friends, the Hardemans, for dinner at Zushi Sushi. It was sort of slow at the restaurant, but that was good because it meant they didn't have to sit anyone within a 15-foot radius of us. It's always nice to go to dinner with other parents. They came back to our house afterwards and put Cooper to sleep in a pack and play in our study, but not before Cooper and Ellie had a bath together. Then we all watched Florida beat Miami. On Sunday, we celebrated Grandparent's Day by taking Ellie's grandparents to Lakewood for brunch. Unfortunately, my dad couldn't make it because he was traveling for work.

I've discovered the key to getting Ellie to eat vegetables - blend them up and put them in mashed potatoes. On Sunday, she had broccoli, spinach, and cheese mashed potatoes and loved them. I'd like for her to just the broccoli and spinach by itself, but it's not going to happen. And finally, Ellie is 100% paci-free now. I'm really glad I just did it. I was dreading it, but it turned out to be a case of me building it up in my head too much. Since I last wrote, she hasn't had any trouble and is sleeping through the night. But I may take it on our upcoming plane trip just in case...

Apparently I have too much time on my hands

2008-09-05T07:00:00.001-05:00

I made some more "yearbook photos" yesterday. I can't stop myself. It's fun to make pictures of myself and Ellie, but it's even more fun with Lee. I like to call this one "Hair God Lee".

Some of you may know that Lee used to work at the Moon Pie Factory in Chattanooga. The next picture is one I like to call "Moon Pie Lee". In my mind, it's what Lee would look like if he was still working at the Moon Pie Factory.

Like Mother, Like Daughter

2008-09-04T09:04:00.007-05:00

Seems like every day more and more people are telling me that Ellie is starting to look like me.

I don't see it. Do you?

Update - In case it is not apparent (because it was not to my mother), the photos above are of me and Ellie with our heads superimposed on 1960's pictures. Yes, those are our faces. I created these fun little diddys on Yearbook Yourself. More to come.

Galveston and Gustav

2008-09-02T21:38:00.002-05:00

I have the perfect reasons to blog tonight - we had a wonderful trip to Galveston this weekend and all that's on TV are political conventions. It's not that I hate politics or anything, I just hate conventions. This is because in 1988, I was staying at my grandparents house while my mother was in Hong Kong. For the week they were taking care of me after camp, the only thing that was on all four channels they received with their rabbit ears on the one television they owned was the Democratic National Convention. I defy you to find me one 12 year old that wants to watch 4 hours of Michael Dukakis for 5 straight days. So that pretty much ruined me. When I hear "___ National Convention", the only thing I can think of is unwaxed eyebrows and I want to run screaming. And By the way, if you ever said to yourself, "I bet Tiffany never posts a picture of Dukakis on 'The Bright Spot'", I just proved you wrong.

As I said before, we went to Galveston for Labor Day weekend. Before we left, we knew that there was a possibility that we may have to cut our stay short because of Hurricane Gustav churning in the Gulf, but we went anyway. Galveston is only about 5 hours away, so it's the perfect distance from Dallas when Ellie is napping for 2 of those hours. We stayed at the San Luis Resort, which is right across from the beach. We stayed in a one bedroom condo, and it was great because we could put Ellie to bed at 7:45 and then watch TV in our living area. I would not say Galveston is the greatest of places to visit, but it's got a beach and a fun pool so that's all that mattered to Ellie. When we arrived on Friday afternoon, we hit the pool. There was a water slide that Ellie could not get enough of and we bought some floaties for her so she could kick around in the pool.

On Saturday morning, we went to the beach. Lee took Ellie into the water, and my poor kiddo got stung by a jellyfish. The only reason I think it was a jellyfish is because her arm was red when she got out of the water. Lee got stung too. By Sunday morning it had started to blister and then by that night the blisters opened. It got her pretty good on her left hand and it's about the size of a quarter. It looks bad, but it doesn't seem to bother her. It bothers me. She didn't even notice it until I sprayed some Bactine on it. Now she has started poking at it. When she does I tell her to quit it and authoritatively she waves her finger back at me and says something in Ellie language. I'm afraid that someone is going to see it and think that I burned her with a cigarette or threw hot water on her of something. We'll see how the daycare ladies react when I tell them this tomorrow. Part of me is expecting a call from CPS.

After a Ellie had a good nap on Saturday, we took a shopping trip to the Strand where I bought my Christmas ornament. I have to buy two things wherever we travel: a silver charm for my already full charm bracelet and a Christmas ornament. I could not find a charm so I had to settle for the ornament. After an early bite to eat, we all went back to the pool. Ellie is turning into a water baby because she put up quite a fuss when we decided to go up for the night.

We left one day early on Sunday because we could tell Gustav was going to hit around New Orleans and did not want to get caught in the evacuation traffic. It took a little longer to get back as we were leaving because there were a lot of Louisiana people on the road. One of my co-workers was driving back from Houston at the same time and noticed something strange about the Louisiana folks - when they want to stop, they just pull over on the side of the highway. No need for a rest stop or a McDonald's - they just pull over. It's weird. We made it back fine, but it was just sort of a bummer that we had to leave early. I would like to go back again next year with a group of friends.

Right before we left for our trip, we found out that we were accepted as members of Lakewood Country Club so actually by coming back a day early, we we able to enjoy the last day of summer there with my parents. It's too bad we finally got our membership late in the summer, but we're already looking forward to next fall. When Ellie was in the kiddy pool, three little girls were playing with her, but started screaming "gross!!" when they saw her hand. Poor Ellie didn't know what was going on. I tried to tell them what happened to her, but they just looked at her like she had leprosy.

In other news, September 1 marked the drop dead date for Ellie loosing her paci. The doctor said she had to loose it completely between 15-18 months. I'm trying the cold turkey approach. She only has it at night now for about 6 months, but she's still had it. She was fine on Sunday night, but Monday night and tonight were a different story. She doesn't mind getting into bed without it at first, but she notices that it is absent after about 5 minutes. Then she gets MAD. I don't think it'll take long for her to forget about it and the sooner we loose it, the easier it will be. Another big pet peeve (in addition to baby talkers) is kids walking around with a paci hanging out of their mouth when they're 3 years old. I just want to snatch it out of their mouth. So I told myself Ellie is not going to be one of those kids. And she's not.

Fifteen Months

2008-08-20T21:00:00.003-05:00

Ellie had her fifteen month check-up yesterday which could only mean one thing - more shots. Three to be exact. The good news is that she gets one more shot at 18 months and since she's right on time for everything, the next shot she'll get will be when she's four years old. I'll send Lee with her for that appointment because she'll actually be able to remember the shots at that point. Here are the vital stats:

Weight: 22 pounds 8 ounces (50th percentile)

Length: 32 5/8" (95th percentile)

Head: 17 3/4" (25th percentile) (I had to assure Lee this does not mean she has a small brain)

So she is tall and thin with a petite head. Life could be worse. I couldn't believe her weight - with all she eats, I thought she would weigh more. As we were waiting to be called back for our appointment, Ellie was fascinated by the fish in the aquarium. A little boy about 3 years old walked up to her and very sweetly started to pet Ellie's bald, little 25th percentile head. She reeled back, swatted him, and gave him her best "oh no you didn't" look. He ran off crying to his father and she turned around to continue to watch the fish like nothing had happened. My girl is fierce! I wanted to scold her, but I was laughing to much (which for the record makes you feel like a really great parent if you start laughing when your girl has made a boy cry). When we saw the doctor, I asked him what to do about her hitting, because it actually has become a problem lately. He told me that when she hits, hug her back and say "we hug, we don't hit" or if she bites, kiss her back and say "we kiss, we don't bite". We'll see how his hippie "make love not war/hugs not drugs" method works.

It was tax-free weekend in Texas last weekend so we took advantage of the sales and hit the stores to shop for Ellie's fall clothes. After shopping, we went to Sam's. This is were I met The Baby Talker. For those of you who are lucky enough to be around me on a daily basis, you know that I talk to Ellie like she is a Harvard graduate with an MBA. I DO NOT babytalk and it freaks me out when people talk like that. So I was making my way through the awesomeness that is Sam's Club when I encountered her. "Ooooooooo! Oook at ooouuu! Ou are oooo ute! How ode r ooouuu?!". When people ask Ellie how old she is, I usually give it a minute to see if she'll answer "fifteen months". When she doesn't, I have to pick up her slack and answer for her. "She's fifteen months", I said. "Ooooo! Big girl! BIG GIRL! Ou pretty girl! Ou PRETTY GIRL!". All right lady, move out of here. I don't want her to start talking ike ou.

On Saturday afternoon, we met Brandt, Jenny, and little Garrett at the club to swim. Garrett is the cutest boy - he's 19 months and looks like a little man. He was wearing giant water wings that were the size of his head. He didn't mind jumping in the pool and kicking around one bit. I think Ellie needs a pair. My mom and dad babysat for Ellie that night, so Lee and I went out to dinner and saw The Dark Knight. I was totally unimpressed, and I really wanted to like it. It's hard for me to sit through a 2.5 hour movie, so if I'm doing it, it had better be worth it. And this just wasn't. Heath Ledger was good, but Lee and I were both sort of bored. Since the weather was so awesome this weekend, Ellie and I went to Lee's soccer game. She loved to run around and meet everyone and is even pretty good at kicking a soccer ball. I know Lee will be so excited when Ellie is old enough to play on her own soccer team.

So that was out weekend - a diva, a baby talker, and the dark night. Where else but on the Bright Spot do you get characters like that?

"Bubble"

2008-08-13T20:23:00.003-05:00

The floodgates are starting to open. Ellie said her first two-syllable word this weekend. On Sunday as I was putting the groceries away, Ellie went into the bathroom, grabbed her bubbles, came into the kitchen, handed them to me and said "bubble!", I just sat there and looked at her for a second thinking "did she really just say that or was that an accident?". But then I decided that it was too much of a coincidence that she was saying the word "bubble" and handing me the bubbles at the same time. She's also repeated it many time since so I know she knows what it is. She also has this strange ability now... (the video is a little dark, but hang in there)

The Olympics started this weekend so we watched the very impressive opening ceremonies. I've been glued to Michael Phelps, women's gymnastics, and everything else in between ever since Friday night. I wanted to start screaming when he was swimming in the 4X100 freestyle relay, but didn't want to wake up Lee. That guy is really amazing. I fell sort of bad for him though because the expectation is that he'll bring home 8 gold metals. That's a lot of pressure. We may have our own budding Olympian because Ellie is now able to jump from the side of the pool into my arms. She actually more hurls herself at me rather than jumps. I'm not trying to brag, but there aren't any kids in her swimming class that will do that. Okay, maybe I'm bragging just a little. Even if she gets a mouthful of water and submerges a few inches under, she comes up smiling. I see some more advanced swimming lessons in our future... the girl is getting past the point of singing "The Wheels on the Bus" while I twirl her in a circle.

Meg and Ruben got to meet Ellie this weekend. The last time Meg saw Ellie, she was one day old. We met them for lunch while Lee was at soccer practice and I thought Ruben was going to try to take Ellie home with him. It's good practice for Meg and Ruben since they're expecting one of their very own in early March!! So excited for them. I told Meg that she needs to get her own blog now so her mom can have daily stories of the little bambino...

We didn't do much else this weekend. I got a new phone which I'm loving. It's a Palm Centro. I would have gone with a Blackberry, but I've had a Palm since 2002 and all of the information in my life is in a Palm system so I'm sort of stuck. I can even check my new Facebook account with it! Lee thinks that's totally nerdy, but I think he's just a bit jealous. That facebook is addictive... I've already found a ton of lost high school and college friends with it. I wish it had been around when I first graduated from high school and college and that way I would have never lost touch with anyone.

Let the games begin!

2008-08-08T07:00:00.004-05:00

HAHA! I love this picture. Doesn't she look like she's posing and ready to take off? I'm so excited that the Beijing Summer Olympics start today. 08-08-08 is supposedly a lucky number in China which is why they picked that date. The athletes are going to need some luck making their way through all of that air pollution.

It was always my dream as a little girl to go to an Olympics. When I had delusions of grandeur, I thought that maybe I could be an athlete, but after realizing that I could run and swim - just not that fast - I settled on the dream of being a spectator. We almost went to Athens for our honeymoon four years ago (and looking back probably should have), but that's as close as I've come. So now, my goal is for our family to go to the 2020 games. That's in 12 years so Ellie will be 13. If we went to the 2024 games, she would be 17 and most likely very embarrassed that I was her mother so that may not work. According to Wikipedia, the location of the 2020 games will be announced mid-2013. I'm going to start my planning then!

Kicking and Screaming

2008-08-05T19:10:00.001-05:00

There she is... my sweet little Ellie. Having a meltdown. Last Thursday, I witnessed Ellie's first full-blown temper tantrum. I got home after picking her up at school, Lee came home, Ellie didn't get something that she wanted - whatever that was - kicking and screaming ensued. She got so mad that she stood behind the clothes hamper in the corner of her room and yelled her little head off. I tried to coax her out, but she would have none of it, so Lee and I sat on the sofa in her room and watched her. There was nothing else to do. After 2-3 minutes, she came out and put her head in my lap. I guess sometimes everyone just needs to stand in a corner and scream.

This happened again on Saturday while I was getting my hair cut. Ellie fell asleep while we were on a jog, so she only got a 45 minute afternoon nap. That always spells trouble. Lee was watching Ellie during my 3:00 appointment, and about 30 minutes into my cut and color, Lee called:

Me: Hello?

Lee: She's doing it again. She's screaming and flailing around on the floor.

Me: Just ignore her. She'll stop.

Lee: She's not stopping. She's been doing this since you left.

Me: Well, try distracting her with something.

Lee: LIKE WHAT?

Me: I don't know... take her outside and fill up the pool.

Lee: I don't know where her swimsuit is or anything!

Me: Then just take her outside and turn the hose on her.

Lee: This isn't normal, Tiffany. I think she has autism.

Me: She does NOT have autism. She's just tired and she's having a tantrum.

Lee: (BIG sigh) Okay.

When I got home, the pendulum had swung the other direction. She was in a great mood and was so sweet for her mom with lots of hugs and kisses. I think we're hitting the terrible two's 9 months early.

One of her favorite things to do now is to wait for her jack-in-the-box to open. Over and over again. And it's not enough for me to crank it - I have to put her hand on the crank and we both do it together. Every time it opens, this is the surprised face she gives me:

Then she says "Ooooohhhhh" and giggles and that makes me laugh because it's the same surprised face every time. Then we put him back in the box. And do it all over again.

We didn't really do much this weekend because it was so hot again. We met Lee's mom for dinner at R&D Cafe (overrated) on Friday night. On Saturday morning, the YMCA was hosting a kids triathalon near our house, so Ellie and I ran by during our jog to check it out. I was expecting to see kids riding around on their Dora the Explorer bikes, but not so. These kids had legitimate triathalon gear - speedos, road bikes, those aerodynamic bike helmets that are shaped like door wedges... and I swear I saw a seven year-old who had more muscles than Lance Armstrong. It was crazy. After scouting out the competition, I know I would have come in dead last in the "six and under" category. Ellie also had a swimming lesson, and I can almost get her to jump into my arms from the side of the pool. She'll stand on the first step and jump to me. I can't wait to take her to the beach - she's going to love running through the waves!

Side note: the little blue outfit she's wearing is what I was sporting this time 31 years ago. Yep - it was mine.

Fun at the Lake

2008-07-30T21:37:00.001-05:00

It's so hot. I love living in Texas about 85% of the time. The rest of the time, it's July and August. I watched the forecast last night and they're saying it's going to be 102 every day until Saturday. The should forgo the displaying the actual high temperature and just show a little man with his hair on fire because that's what it feels like. The only thing that's making me feel a little less cranky is the new Jason Mraz CD I got last week. Love it. I think I'm going to burn a hole in it before the end of the summer. Listening to it makes me feel like I'm on a tropical island far, far away. I bought pre-sale tickets for his October concert this morning and I'm so looking forward to that. I'm starting to think of Texas summers as a bad "fun tax" we have to pay to get to college football season and awesome weather.

We had such a good time this weekend going to Cedar Creek Lake with the Hardeman's. Stephanie did a great job of capturing the whole weekend on her blog. It was actually a lot cooler there than it was here on our urban heat island. I think all of the trees and the breeze had something to do with it . The Hardeman's son, Cooper, is 2 weeks older than Ellie, so they're pretty developmentally even. It's nice to have friends who also have a small child because they don't care if your child has a meltdown, throws food on the floor, poops in her pants, or requires a nap at an inconvenient time because it's very likely that their child is doing the same thing.

We got there right before lunch and naptime for Ellie on Saturday. After the kiddos woke up, they were full-on playing outside. Ellie doesn't really play "with" other kids yet so much as she plays next to them. I think that's a skill she's still learning. She's also learning to share... something she hasn't learned from being an only child. Poor Cooper - Ellie thought every sippy cup and toy was hers. She missed her Saturday morning swimming lesson so we took her swimming in the lake. Lee and I would throw her up in the air back and forth and catch her. She loved it. We cooked out for dinner that night and after all of the kiddos went to bed, we took the boat out on the lake. Late night, Lee and Danny played each other on the Wii. I had never seen one before, but it was quite entertaining. I really wanted to see Lee and Danny box each other, but they stuck with golf. I think Lee may want a Wii, but we talked about it on the way home, and at this point in our lives, I don't know how much we'd really use it. I can't see us virtual bowling with each other that much. Thank you, Danny and Stephanie - we had a great time!

Ellie has been fairly cranky for the past few days. I think she's getting some more teeth added to the fact that she has a cold. It's been tough to get her to go to sleep at night. Ellie has a new boyfriend at daycare (sorry, Cooper). His name is Aiden and he's very cute. Today I picked her up and after I got her out of the classroom, Ellie and Aiden stood there at the window that opens onto the hall just looking at each other. Ellie blew him kisses and he just waved. I took her hand and lead her away, but she turned around and ran back to blow more kisses. Oh brother.

I have a new time filler - Facebook. If any of you out there are members, add me to your list! I'm under the e-mail thebrightspot@yahoo.com. Lee is on there too.

Making Deals With Elmo

2008-07-24T21:25:00.002-05:00

I want to thank everyone for all of their kind words about Trudie. I miss my little pal, but I'm sure every day will get a little easier than the last. I especially had a lot of nice notes from the east Tennessee folks and I can't wait to meet all of you when Lee, Ellie, and I visit the Erwins this fall to watch some Vol football. I picked up Trudie's remains yesterday from the vet and they came in a nice little cedar box. I may get a just keep her for now.

On Monday morning, Ellie gave me further proof that she is a genius. When she woke up, the little brown fairy had not yet made a deposit in her diaper bank, so I changed her diaper and got her dressed for school. When we were getting ready to leave, she ran to me in the kitchen and I could smell that she needed her diaper changed. I told her to hang on because I was fixing my lunch when she ran over to her diaper bag and started rummaging through it. One of her favorite games now is drag everything out of the bag/purse/cabinet/toy box. I told her to get out of the diaper bag because I didn't want to pick up everything before we left. She then grabbed a diaper out of the bag, opened it up, walked over to me, spread the diaper out on the ground, and sat there next to it waiting for me to change her. At first, I thought surely she is not asking me to change her diaper... but I'm pretty sure that's what she was doing. This almost makes up for her pooping on our bedroom floor after her bath on Sunday night.

I looked up potty training on the internet and most sites say not to start trying until 18 months which is 3-4 months away. I think I'm going to start working with her to give a name to being wet or dirty so she'll be able to tell me. If she can tell me that a cow can "mmmoooooo", she can tell me that she just "ppppoooooooo". If that doesn't work, maybe I can figure out the sign language for it. I'm also going to get her a little play potty to get her used to the idea of a toilet.

Lately, whenever Ellie sees my cell phone, she has to have it. Nothing else will do. And she loves punching all of the buttons, so if you ever get a strange call with heavy breathing, it's Ellie - not me. I decided that she needed her own cell phone, so I bought her an Elmo cell phone on Sunday and it's so cute. It has this function that allowed me to download Elmo saying her name from a website and then use a mini USB cable to put it on the phone. It's so funny. Elmo says in his squeaky little voice "Hi Ellie! Can Elmo come over and play?" or "How are you today, Ellie?". She loves it. She holds it up to her ear and then puts it to mine so I can talk to him. I usually tell him I'm busy driving or making dinner and that I'll have to call him back.

When I dropped off Ellie at daycare on Monday morning, the kids were just sitting down to have breakfast and the ladies at day care asked me if I feed Ellie. Um, yes. At this point, I looked over at Ellie and they had given her a banana half. So then I turn around to talk to Miss Chelsea and she told me that every morning when Ellie gets to school she is so hungry and when they give her food, she eats like she has never seen food before. I told her I don't know why that is because on her way to school she has an entire cup of Cheerios. I turned around to look at Ellie, and the banana was GONE. My child took an banana half down in a minute flat. "See! That's what she does every morning!", Chelsea said. Then on Wednesday morning the kids were eating again when we got there. Ellie say down next to Grayson and I watched Chelsea cut a muffin in two and put half on Ellie's plate and half on Grayson's plate. Ellie reached out, grabbed both muffin halves at once and tried to put both in her mouth. I wonder if she's just going through a growth spurt? I really do feed her. I swear.

This is amazing...

2008-07-24T11:03:00.004-05:00

I just found out that one of my pledge sisters has QUINTUPLETS 4 weeks ago. And she has a blog! I'm going to link it to my blog roll so we can keep track of all five of her kids... and most days I think ONE kiddo is a lot of work!

Goodbye, Miss Trudie

2008-07-20T21:10:00.006-05:00

I had to make a really hard decision this weekend and that was to put my little dog Trudie to sleep. Over the past 6 months or so, I became aware of the fact that it would be a matter of when and not if I was going to have to do it. And over the last week, I realized that I was keeping her alive so I wouldn't have to be hurt by her loss, but she was suffering because of that. She and I were both used to her blindness, but about two years ago, she lost her hearing and she developed mammary cancer since whoever had her before me had not had her spayed. Years before, she could memorize a room and know exactly where she was going, but lately, she couldn't get around at all. She always had a wagging tail for me, but I could tell my friend wasn't having a good time anymore.

I guess it would be silly for every dog out there to get an obituary, but I feel like she at least deserves for me to tell everyone what a great dog she was. I found her on Tuesday, January 25, 2000 at the Brazos Valley Animal Shelter in Bryan, Texas. All of my friends had graduated and left College Station, and after my first semester in graduate school, I was lonely. I thought about buying a puppy, but I went to the pound instead. The first dog I saw was a little dachshund, and I pulled her card, but decided that I should probably give all of the dogs there a fair shake, so I kept looking.

As I was leaving, I noticed a kennel that was separate from the rest of the cages and saw a little scraggly white dog in it with cataracts. I asked the people at the pound what was wrong with her and they told me she was blind. They also said she was somewhere between 3-5, but looking back, I think she was closer to 5. I got her out of the kennel and took her outside and when I did, she jumped up on me with both paws and started wagging her tail. I could tell she wanted to go home with me. How do you say no to that? When I went back to get her the next day, the dachshund had been adopted so that was good. I remember getting in the car and she jumped in my lap. I told her we would always be together and I would always take care of her.

I took her to get fixed and then brought her home. I can remember how excited I was. I had gone to the crappy College Station mall and gotten her a dog bed, bowls, and a little Cookie Monster doll. I opened the door and literally showed her around like she was a new roommate saying, "Here's your bed! Here's the kitchen! Here's my room!". She probably thought some unstable freak had adopted her. But in no time, she was my best buddy. We took long walks together every evening and I came home at lunch every day so I could see her. I had a strict "no dogs in bed rule" for the first two weeks, but somehow she changed my mind on that. When I would go up to the lab late at night to finish my thesis, I took her with me. On the acknowledgements page of my thesis, she's listed right below my parents. I thought it was only proper since she put in so many hours too.

When we got moved to Dallas, I started volunteering as the SPCA and heard about a pet therapy program. I told Trudie she needed to get a job so she became a licensed therapy dog with the Delta Society. It was a win-win because I got to volunteer and hang out with my dog at the same time. We used to visit a retirement home and everyone loved her except for the woman who would always yell at me to get "that dirty dog" out of "her house" and the other one who thought she was a cat. But she didn't mind. She was always friendly and would let anyone pet her. Once I started working, I saved a little bit of money every month so I could get her cataracts removed, but when I finally took her in to the specialist, they told me that she had degenerative retinas and would never see. That broke my heart because I really wanted to be able to do that for her.

It was remembering all of the good times recently that factored into my decision on Saturday. She wasn't happy anymore. Since she had incontinence problems, most of the time she stayed in the bathroom or in her kennel, and that wasn't fair. I didn't want to her to go on how she was, and I wanted her to die with dignity. I kept hoping that I would wake up one morning, and she would have passed quietly, but it didn't happen that way. As I was waiting for the vet to come in the room, I thanked Trudie for being such a good dog and for always being so sweet. I thanked her for being my best friend for the year and a half when nobody else was around. I apologized for not being able to get her eyes fixed, but I told her that in doggie heaven she would finally be able to see and she would get treats every day. I also told her that there wouldn't be any cats there to drive her crazy and that her cousin, Abbey, would miss her a lot. And so would I. I clipped a little hair from neck where it was curly because I always thought that was so cute. I had her privately cremated, but haven't decided where I will spread her ashes.

Trudie leaves behind her mom, dad, and little girl, Ellie, two sisters, Morgan and Lucy, two dog grandparents, and dog cousin Abbey.

I found this poem on a blind dog website a few years ago and saved it. I'm not sure who wrote it, but I've always liked it.

The Blind Dog Poem

I cannot see you Mommy, when you cuddle me so near.
And yet I know you love me, it's in the words I hear.
I cannot see you Daddy, when you hold me by your side
But still I know you love me when you tell me so with pride.
I cannot see to run and play out in the sun so bright
For here inside my tiny head it's always dark as night.
I cannot see the treats you give when I am extra good
But I can wag my tail in Thanks just like a good dog should.
"She cannot see. The dogs no good" is what some folks might say
"She can't be trained, she'll never learn She must be put away."
But not you, Mom and Daddy You know that it's alright
Because I love you just as much as any dog with sight.
You took me in, you gave me love and we will never part
Because I'm blind with just my eyes, I see you in my heart.

Goodbye, sweet Trudie. I love you. You're a good dog. I hope we meet again one day.

Tuesdays at The Little Gym

2008-07-15T18:00:00.001-05:00

My mom has been taking care of Ellie on Tuesdays this summer so Ellie only goes to day care 4 days a week. She calls it "Tuesdays With Connie" as a play on "Tuesdays With Maurie". Do you see where I get my keen sense of humor?

I signed Ellie up for classes at the Little Gym so Mom takes her there in the mornings. I met them today to see what the Little Gym was all about (it helps that my boss is out of town). Ellie had so much fun... they all sit in a circle and sing a few songs and then they run all over the place and play on the equipment. Ellie liked walking on the balance beam.

She also liked playing in the parachute...

And doing backflips...

And playing basketball...

And then helping clean up.

Keep in mind this is a 45 minute class. No wonder she gets a good nap on Tuesdays! Afterwards, we had a girls lunch together. Very fun!

Eee. Mo!

2008-07-13T21:04:00.012-05:00

Lee told me that I absolutely have to blog tonight. Well, he didn't actually say that, but the mere fact that he reminded me three times this weekend that I hadn't blogged in two weeks spoke volumes. He made me feel a little guilty with all of the "I've seen a decline in the number of people looking at your blog" and "you know... having a blog isn't any good if you only write once every two weeks". Sheez! He suggested that I write shorter blogs with more pictures. Apparently he thinks my readers have the attention span of a fruit fly (or maybe it's just him). So I will try... but no promises.

Last weekend was the Fourth and we took Ellie to the Park Cities Fourth of July Parade. I can't believe she was such a little thing when we took her last year and this year she was running around picking up the candy and other things thrown off the floats with the rest of the kids. Maybe soon she'll be one of the kids in the parade. We didn't know if all of the sirens at the beginning of the parade would scare her, but she didn't seem to mind. She really like seeing the horses and bands and as I said... loved running about to pick up the candy. She's never eaten candy so I have no clue how she know what it was. That afternoon we went to one of Lee's friends parties where Ellie tried to jump in the pool fully clothed. I think she's been missing the water. Every night when I give her a bath, she plunks her head into the water and starts blowing bubbles. I was encouraging this until she did it in the dog's water bowl last week. So we're starting up the swimming lessons again next weekend. On Saturday, we went to Tyler to visit Lee's parents. They have a pool and Ellie loved splashing around in it.

Ellie has added two new words to her vocabulary. We've been working on "more", but it comes out "mo". If she wants something like goldfish or milk, now she'll point at it and say "mo". Today she also mimicked me after I asked her if she wanted to eat. She got very excited and said "eee!". I imagine it will only be a matter of time before she puts the two together and wants to "eeee mo". I've come to the realization that we are getting to the point that she is starting to repeat so I'm going to need to do a better job of censoring myself.

I always feel like I have to do twice the work after a holiday weekend because I get off on my routine. We had a pretty uneventful weekend this weekend and just stayed around here. There's not a whole lot that you can do when it's 102 outside. We got out the pool for Ellie to splash around in and she liked it. We got a babysitter Saturday night and had a date night. We went to Perry's and then for drinks at Trece. The girl from next door sat for Ellie and called me "ma'am". There's nothing that will make you feel older than a 15 year old calling you "ma'am". She might as well have called me grandma. I tried to play cool by talking about the Jonas Brothers and High School Musical, but I'm sure it didn't fly.

One last picture... when we dry Ellie off after her baths, we still use those baby towels with the hood on them. When I open the bathroom door, she bolts down the hall with the towel still attached to her head flowing behind her like a superhero cape. We call her "Super B".

And last but not least... congrats to Debbie and Justin who are expecting on February 14. So excited for them. AND they're moving back to Dallas!!! I was very happy to hear both bits of information this weekend.

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2008-07-04T09:37:00.001-05:00

Happy fourth!

Ellie's Year One Photos

2008-07-02T12:40:00.000-05:00

The photos are in and they're awesome! We are getting an 8X10 of this picture...

And then we're going to frame a collage of the following four photos:

How cute is this kiddo?

One more for good measure.

All photos by Stacy Bratton.

The Daddy Badge of Courage

2008-06-30T20:41:00.000-05:00

We've had quite a time the last 24-hours. When I went to the doctor last week for Ellie's fever, I asked her about the amount of food Ellie eats and told her she could put down some serious quantities. The doctor looked at her chart, looked at Ellie, and told me that if Ellie was hungry to let her eat. And eat Ellie did on Sunday. She had a normal breakfast and lunch, but her dinner was a little over the top. We went to my parent's house for dinner where Ellie ate ham, green beans, mashed potatoes, Gerber pasta, strawberries, and washed it all down with milk. And after all of that, she still could have kept going. Sometimes I'm afraid that she has that disease where you can't tell how much you've eaten and the parents have to padlock the fridge so the child won't eat herself to death. I saw it on Inside Edition.

We made it home and she seemed okay, but then around midnight, she started crying... well, screaming actually. I went in there and could tell she had pooped, so I changed her diaper. Same thing happened at 1AM. At 2AM, she woke up again, and I did something I never do - I brought her into bed with us. She was being quiet, but all she wanted to do was stick her finger in my nose or poke me in the eye. And when I say "poke me in the eye", I mean she actually uses her thumb and index finger on her left hand to pry my eyelid open and then pokes me square in the eyeball with her right index finger. So she had to go back to her bed. Not happy.

I had a meeting in Arlington at 8AM so Lee graciously offered to take my car (where the car seat is) and drop Ellie at day care on his way to Denton. When he got her out of the car, poop streamed out of her diaper, into her shoes, and all over him. They dressed Ellie in her spare outfit (a pair of skin tight pajamas) because I had forgotten to pack a legitimate spare outfit, but Lee had to go back home to change (and he missed his meeting). Around 9AM, the day care called to tell me that Ellie had "round two" and I needed to come get her. This sounds great - but not so fast - I had to drive from Arlington to find Lee in downtown Dallas and switch cars to get the car with the car seat. And I should mention that I am am walking with a limp today because the back is worse.

I finally got to daycare only to find Ellie running around outside with all of the other kids in her skin tight sea foam green pj's and red and black one size too big aqua socks (she had pooped in her shoes). Awful. All she needed was a tinfoil hat to complete her crazy baby look. I'm glad she's not old enough to know she looked totally ridiculous. By the time I got there, they told me she was a lot better and hadn't had any more "problems". She was fine the rest of the day, so that's where she stayed. When I picked her up, her teachers said she had three servings of ravioli for dinner so she must be feeling better. Poor sweet Ellie. First she had the virus and now this. I will be monitoring her food intake much more closely now.

Aside from Ellie's chronic illnesses, Lee and I had a really nice anniversary last Thursday. He surprised me by taking me to dinner at Fearing's. It's a beautiful restaurant, but everyone there (including the waitstaff) takes themselves a little too seriously. Our waiter had a specific way that he poured our wine every time - very robotic with three movements. At the end of the evening/bottle, I asked him if that was the way the restaurant instructed him to pour wine, and he told me he didn't know what I was talking about. That's just the way he poured wine. Really? You naturally pour wine like Rosie on the Jetsons? That's weird.

I also ran into a bit of (un)luck last week depending on how you look at it. Lee bought me the cutest tunic from Tory Birch. When he got it home, he noticed one of the little mirrors on the sleeves was coming loose so he took it back to have it sewn. When we returned to pick it up, they couldn't find it. Apparently they had re-sold it. I was so ticked off. I called their corporate offices, and now I get to go back and pick out any item in the store. This is going to require some thought... I honestly just wanted the shirt back, but they couldn't find it at any store. As they say, the squeaky wheel gets the grease.

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2008-06-28T09:23:00.001-05:00

Walks are hard work.

Happy Anniversary, Lee!

2008-06-26T14:08:00.005-05:00

I want to send a very special Happy Anniversary greeting to my hubby... I love you, Lee. Happy #4! This picture is from our engagement photos. It always makes me laugh because I think it looks like some sort of print ad for a perfume.

Ellie woke up with a fever again this morning so I am staying home with her today. Poor kiddo - she just can't shake it. Her temperature was 102.2 this morning, so I took her to the doctor. By the time we got to the doctor, it was 98.5, of course. The doctor said exactly what I thought she would - Ellie has a virus and keep giving her Tylenol to bring the fever down. So that's what we're stuck doing. At home... not the way I want to spend a vacation day, but that's okay.

I also had an appointment with a chiropractor this morning because my lower back has decided that it wants to be difficult. And by difficult I mean spasm and become totally inflexible to the point that I can't bend over to spit in the sink when I'm brushing my teeth. She fixed it momentarily, but it's hurting again now. I guess that's what doing 32 will do to you. After the pediatrician and chiropractor, Ellie and I had a mother-daughter lunch at Celebrity Bakery. She's finally to the age where I can sit her across from me in a restaurant and feel like I'm having lunch with her instead of constantly wrangling her. It's fun.

Thirty-two

2008-06-25T21:26:00.002-05:00

I turned 32 yesterday. Generally, I'd say there's nothing really significant about turning 32; however, my mother had me on her 32nd birthday, so yesterday, I was exactly half her age. And for one day only, we were a mathematical wonder because my age was 2^5 and her age was 2^6. Mom noted that she will not live to see 2^7 because she'd have to live to 128. Did I just loose you back in Algebra I? I don't know how old I was when I first knew how old my mom was when she had me (maybe 4?), but I knew it sounded like she had a lot of years under her belt. And I always wondered what I would be doing on my 32nd birthday. Maybe having a baby too? When I was younger, I wondered if having a baby on my 32nd birthday would get me into Guinness Book of Records? But which record would that be breaking? At the very least, it would get me one the news. But thank God for unanswered prayers because when I had Ellie, I weighed more than a baby elephant and wasn't wearing makeup... not exactly a look I'd like all of Dallas-Ft. Worth to see as they sit down to dinner. It all worked out for the best.

So how did I spend my 32nd birthday? The birthday I'd been wondering about since I was 4 or so? My mom has been keeping Ellie on Tuesdays this summer so she showed up early so I could go to work. She seemed okay when I left, but after 30 minutes at the Little Gym with a listless Ellie, my mom took her temperature and it was 103.5. Ellie slept most of the afternoon, and when I got home, she was doing better, but still sick. My dad came over after work and we were all going to go out to dinner, but Ellie just wasn't up to it. So Lee and my dad picked up dinner and we ate at our house. Mom brought over a little cake and then we opened presents. And of course, I gave my mom something she already owns so I'll be making a trip to the mall to return it... and that was it. There were no babies being born unless, of course, you count the work baby I've been having every day this week since I have so much crap to do lately.

Ellie was better this morning (temp was 101), but she was obviously not 100% so my mom came back over to watch her again. Poor Ellie. I hate it when she's sick. She conquered all of the infant room germs and now she has to battle a whole new round with the toddler room germs. At least she got sick on a day when my mom was taking care of her and not when she was at daycare. I was trying to keep her calm this morning so I let her watch Sesame Street in Daddy's chair. She just sat there with her Pedialite. One time she dropped her cup, squealed and pointed at it for me to come pick it up. What a life. The other thing that Ellie has been doing quite a bit of lately is reading by herself. If it gets really quiet in her room and I sneak in there, this is what I find... What? You say I'm raising a genius? I already know.

We had a pretty relaxed weekend since Lee burned the midnight oil all weekend getting ready for a trial that settled on Monday morning. Ellie and I went shopping on Saturday morning at Southlake Town Square with my mom and then went to my parents house for lunch and a nap. I got to the shopping center early so Ellie could spend time in the Barnes and Noble children's section and when we left it would have looked like the picture above if I hadn't cleaned up. She loves to grab every book she can get her hands on. As you can see, it totally exhausted her. The following picture was taken literally 30 seconds after she made it into the car seat. Shopping is tough work!

Eek-A

2008-06-19T21:24:00.003-05:00

I have done an absolutely horrible job at taking pictures. In fact, since our trip to the zoo, I've only taken three pictures. I'm not doing such a great job as the official Bright record keeper. It's bothering me. And while we're on the topic of things that bother me, has anyone heard the new song by Kid Rock called "All Summer Long"? It's the song where he samples "Sweet Home Alabama" and then proceeds to sing all about Michigan. I keep a radio on low at my desk at work and every time I hear this song it sound likes they're playing "Werewolves of London" by Warren Zevon. So then I hear it and I spend the last half of the day singing "Aaaa-OOOOO werewolves of London..." and if you've never had that song stuck in your head before, it's super annoying. And it's not cool to quietly hum it to yourself either.

Things have been pretty uneventful around here. I picked up Ellie's proofs of her one year pictures and they're so cute. I love almost all of them which surprised me because she was rather uncooperative during the shoot. Now I just need to decide if I want one big one... the proofs... who knows. I'm glad I splurged and had a great photographer shoot her because I think that in 30 years, I'll appreciate it even thought it's expensive now. On Saturday afternoon, my company had a picnic. I really love where I work, but our office is one of those offices where half of the people are gung ho about getting together and doing stuff and the rest could care less. I'm on the office's activity committee, so it's discouraging when only a few people show up. But I guess that's true for most things, isn't it? At any rate, we had a really good time at the park and Ellie got to meet a duck close-up. Unfortunately, it bit her about 30 seconds after the above picture was taken. She is recovering, but we fear she will never eat pate.

Sunday was Father's Day and Ellie slept until 8PM. We went to church and then got the house and yard ready for dinner. My dad and mom came over along with Ben and Elizabeth. Lee's parents were out of town. My mom brought an appetizer and carrots, Elizabeth made a salad, and I made a pork tenderloin, spicy veggie cous cous, and a jello poke cake. The poke cake was interesting - you bake a cake and then poke holes in the and pour jello over the top. It was all very good. I made a special dinner for Ellie, but as it turned out, she loved the cous cous, so I could have just fed her that.

Ellie's teachers tell me she is totally used to her new toddler routine and even has a friend named Angie who is tiny. She may be a midget. I can't tell. Ellie is at least 4 inches taller than her. I wanted to take a picture of them the other day, but then the teachers told me something about not being able to photograph the other children because I didn't have a release form from their parents or some such nonsense. I can remember they days when there were no release forms... they were better. Anyway, she and Angie always sit together when they eat and apparently they eat the most in the class so it takes them the longest. Long after the all of the other children have finished, Ellie and Angie are there at the table together. Eating. The other day Grayson's mom told me that she was watching the children at breakfast and Grayson started walking around and taking food off of the other kids plates. Ellie gathered up all of her pancakes and held them to her chest until he passed. That's my girl.

Ellie added to her four-word vocabulary on Saturday night. I was reading a book from the Erwins called Peek-a-Who? There's a cut out that goes through to the next page of the book, but you can't see what's behind the first page until you turn it. Make sense? So there's Peek-a-Moo, Boo, Zoo, Choo-Choo, and You. I can now officially say I've memorized a book from cover to cover. So we were reading the book and as I was about to say "Peek-A... Moo", I heard this tiny "eek-a" from Ellie. Then I turned the page for Peek-a-Boo, and before I could say anything, she did it again - "eek-a". Then I called Lee in to hear it, and she quit doing it. But she's done it since then, so it wasn't a fluke. When you show her the book, she'll start saying "eek-a". I don't know that you can find "eek-a" in a Webster's, but I'll take it!

This paragraph is probably going to gross most of you out... don't say you weren't warned. For the past 2 weeks, we have had to completely strip Ellie's bed, wash her sheets and pajamas, and give her a bath because every morning a little brown fairy comes to visit her. The best morning occurred when I gave her blueberries and it turned her poo blue. The second best morning occurred when I gave her kidney beans, and I won't tell you what happened then. I don't know how to stop her. When I'm giving her a bath at night, she stands there with her skinny little legs and giant potbelly and I know where the contents of her belly are going to be in the morning - all over her crib. I have tried different diapers and different sizes. I wonder if they make a Ziplock bag for the waist down?

For all of you Dallas folks, you should try Cool Thursdays at the Dallas Arboretum. We went with the Hardemans on Thursday night for Danny's Birthday and had so much fun. We took a picnic and wine and saw a band called "Reality Bites" which played covers of 80's and 90's songs. There's a Billy Joel and an Eagles tribute band coming up soon so we may have to go back.

A Trip to the Zoo

2008-06-10T21:04:00.009-05:00

Sometimes writing the blog is a lot of fun and I have a ton to say and other times, it feels like a job. And sometimes I have no time to write. I think a combination of those three has led to my late blog entry. I have two weekends to catch up on...

Last weekend, Ellie had her first year photos taken and I wish I'd had the chance to take some pictures of the scene, but she was totally non-compliant and only wanted to bury her head in my leg, so I didn't get a chance. I don't know what got into her, but she was not excited to be photographed. I have not gotten the proofs back yet, but I'm hoping that we got at least one good one so that we won't have to reshoot. After her picture, we went to Grace's third birthday party. Look at how cute that dress is with the three candles on it. I don't know where Leslie gets Grace's clothing, but she always looks so cute. Ellie ate pizza at the table with all of the kids and had cake too. Poor kiddo was so exhausted from the photo and the party that she I didn't even get to the end of Leslie's block before she conked out.

Ellie is doing a lot better with the toddler room, but she got pink eye AGAIN last Thursday. She's in a class with kids aged 1-2 so some of the children in there have a vocabulary larger than Ellie's which isn't hard since she only says mama, dada, ut-oh, and dog. When we got there on Monday, a few kids ran over to Ellie, started petting her and saying "baby! baby!". Since she's bald, I think they must think she's 3 months old or something. Then the lunch lady brought the breakfast in and they all started saying "eat! eat! eat! eat!!". It was so funny. They all sound like little birds chirping excitedly. Ellie can't say the word, but she knows what it means because when I ask her if she wants to eat, she runs to her high chair. Her teachers find her amusing because she can put down so much food. Yesterday they told me that she ate five fish sticks, mac and cheese and some green beans for lunch. Then she tried eating other kids' lunches. She must have been born with Lee's metabolism and my appetite.

This past weekend, we had planned on going to the Dallas Zoo on Saturday morning, but Lee came down with food poisoning from something he ate on Friday night so we kept it low key on Saturday. So low key, in fact, that I can't really remember much about what we did other than Ellie and I went on a long walk and then in the afternoon, we went to the pool. Late that night, Ben got sick so Lee had to help take him to the emergency room and didn't get home until 2AM... so it was sort of a rough weekend.

We did get the chance to go to the Dallas Zoo on Sunday. If you're in Dallas or visiting Dallas and looking for a good zoo, I would go to the Fort Worth Zoo. The Dallas Zoo doesn't even have any elephants and the Dallas SWAT team shot the gorilla in an unfortunate incident about three years ago (actually Jabari committed suicide by cop because he acted aggressively). But Ellie didn't really care because in the children's area, she got to see fish and ducks, pet a guinea pig and a rabbit, and harass a large pig. We got to see a cheetah almost eat a squirrel so that was pretty cool too. The zoo also has an exhibit called "Stingray Bay" and we got to touch some stingrays (minus the barb) and Lee fed one a frozen minnow. The best thing about big outings like this is that Ellie takes an awesome nap afterward. Her nap was so long that I got to watch an entire Lifetime movie called "She's Too Young" without interruption while I cleaned the closet. Awesome. Love Lifetime. This weekend is Father's Day so Happy Father's Day to all of you dads out there (especially mine)!

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2008-06-10T18:38:00.001-05:00

I have been a bad blogger... Ellie at dinner

Memorial Weekend 2008

2008-05-29T20:37:00.007-05:00

Summer is here! I feel a little behind on my blogging, but the long weekends always mess up my sense of what day it is. So here it is Thursday and I'm just now getting around to blogging. Feels like Wednesday. We had a really fun weekend this past weekend just relaxing. I looked at my calendar and the last totally free weekend that Lee and I had was March 29. We almost went to the lake this weekend, but then we thought about how nice it would be not to have to pack everything up... so we stayed here. As an added bonus, Ellie slept until 7:45 on Sunday morning. 7:45!

Our community pool opened this weekend so we went there once on Saturday afternoon and once on Monday. I'm so glad that we started Ellie in swimming lessons early because she had a lot of fun splashing around with all of the other kids. I think we're going to be at the kiddie pool at least until next year because children have to be potty trained to go in the bigger pool. It's nice to be at the kiddie pool because you get to meet a lot of other moms. I got a little floaty to pull Ellie around in and she really liked that because she got to float around in the "deep end" of the kid pool, which is only two feet deep. The great thing about the pool is that it wears her out. She willingly took three naps on Saturday.

On Sunday, we went to my parents house for a cookout. We spent some of the afternoon outside letting Ellie play in the baby pool my parents had set up, but she liked going down the little slide and swinging on the swing set they have set up in the backyard more. My dad grilled out hamburgers, which Ellie didn't like very much. I think it's because they had that grill taste. She likes chasing my parents dog all around, but lucky for Abbey, she can still run faster than Ellie.

Ellie has had some big changes this week. We got her a new car seat so she's been having a lot of fun sitting up higher and looking all around. She is also switching classrooms this week into a toddler room. In order to advance, a child has to 1) be wearing shoes all day, 2) drink only from a sippy cup, 3) be walking, and 4) be at least a year old. I wish that's all I had to do to advance. She's been doing the first three things since she was 11 months so we just had to wait for her to turn a year. Poor kiddo. Her friends Tanner and Jackson are moving to another room and Simon's mom is going to stay home with him, so Grayson is the only little boy she'll know in her new class. Ellie is really friendly, but I remember how it is to go someplace new and not have any friends. It's a little scary... and it happens your whole life! We also completely did away with her bottles when she turned one. She was only taking one feeding from them in the morning, so I don't think she even noticed when we took them away. But she still has the paci... what to do about that. The doctor told us she has to loose it by 18 months. She uses it mainly at night and during naps now, but it's going to be hard to get her to give it up at bedtime.

After a year, I am finally getting back into the swing of working out. I kept on thinking that somehow it would work out that I would be able to workout after work, but I feel too guilty about leaving Ellie in another daycare situation while I'm off having a great time at a step class. So that only left me with the option of working out on the weekends and the dreaded mornings. I had been going just on weekends - well, mostly just on Saturdays - but one Saturday morning workout a week isn't cutting it. So this week, I started morning workouts. It's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. Getting up an hour before the crack of dawn is not my idea of fun, but it's my only option. I made the unfortunate mistake of telling my midlife crisis spin instructor my name this morning so he yelled at me for the full hour. "Let's go, Tiffany!", "Tiffany - How are you doing?!!", and "Tiffany, we've been climbing for a 20 minutes! You know what that means?!!". Yes, Rick. It means I'm about to throw my water bottle at you. I don't know if his name was actually Rick, but he looked like a Rick. Not going back to his class.

I'm having Ellie's one year photo taken on Saturday and she has Grace's third birthday party to attend. Such a busy social schedule!

Grace and Ellie

2008-05-23T08:38:00.003-05:00

My friend, Leslie, just e-mailed me a picture that she took last weekend at Ellie's party. It's of Leslie's daughter, Grace, and Ellie on the slide together. I have to share it because it's so cute!

Grace will be the birthday girl next weekend when she turns three.

Have a fun and save Memorial Day weekend!

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2008-05-21T21:34:00.002-05:00

If you look really closely you can see Sting. Greetings from the Police!

Ellie's First Birthday Bash

2008-05-20T22:12:00.000-05:00

I can't believe my sweet little potato is officially a toddler now. They say time flies, and it really does. Next year she'll be TWO? Surely not. Ellie had a fantastic birthday and we were so lucky to have so many special family members and friends there to celebrate with us. We had sour cream chicken enchiladas, beef tacos, and chicken quesadillas from Maria's Catering. If you're looking for someone to cater an event in Dallas, I highly recommend them. Dessert was cupcakes. We had the party outside, so I had three tables set up in our driveway in back with bright pink tablecloths. For someone who is not a party planner, I think that everything came out really great. I haven't figure out if #2 (our yet-to-be-conceived second child we call "Dos") will get an equally as large party because this was a pretty big effort on my party to get it all together and an even bigger effort from Lee to get the yard together. Ellie, please do not expect another fiesta for Birthday #2. You will probably be celebrating in the side room of a McDonalds.

Ellie did really well with the cake and loved it when everyone sang to her and cheered for her. She had a pretty big cupcake as you can see from above and ate about 90% of it. It was impressive. She loved the frosting, but once she got past that, she started shoving handfuls of cake into her mouth. If you watched the video that I uploaded on Sunday, you might have seen that she ended the show by urinating on me. She was quite a mess with pink and purple frosting all over her face and in her hair.

Ellie was so tired by the end of the night that she almost fell asleep during a diaper change. Poor kiddo - too much excitement. Everyone left by about 7:45, but Bonnie and Brett hung out for a while and then Mike and Shanon closed the night down with us out in back with a bottle of wine. At about 10PM, the topic of shot gunning beer came up. I really wanted to see Lee shotgun a beer so I said, "Do you even know how to shotgun a beer?". Doubting my husband's ability to do anything is equivalent to the triple dog dare. Faster than you can say "cheap fraternity stunt", he had poked a hole in the bottom of a can and got 12 ounces down. It's like taking candy from a baby. Works every time.

For my first birthday, my parents gave me a rocking chair and a baby doll. Ellie already has a rocking chair, so we gave her a slide and I kept the baby doll tradition going. I think she was a little underwhelmed at first, but since she's had some more time to play with the baby doll (we've named her Emma), I think she really likes her. She gave her kisses on Sunday and it was so sweet. She likes to poke Emma in the eye but this may have taught her some bad behavior because on Monday, Ms. Rosa had to corral her for the last half of daycare due to the fact that she was poking the real babies in the eye. She really likes her new slide, and I'm glad I had it for the party on Saturday because the few kids that were there really enjoyed it. I have a feeling we're going to be spending a lot of time in the backyard this summer.

On Sunday we unwrapped the rest of Ellie's toys and gifts. I've got some video of that I'll try to share by Friday. I'm not going to say that Ellie needed anything, but she was actually lacking in age-appropriate toys and things to play with. It was starting to look a little like the Yearning for Zion FLDS ranch in her room, so the birthday came at just the right time. She got some really great books, a Dr. Elmo doctor kit, a ton of cute summer dresses, a piggy bank, some little People, and one of my personal favorites was Abby Cadabby. I play with this little doll more than Ellie does.

Ellie had her one year checkup on Monday. She's 20 pounds 10 ounces (50th percentile) and 30.25 inches long (85th percentile). I asked my mom to look up my statistics in my baby book and by comparison, I was 24 pounds 13 ounces and 31 inches long. I'm convinced that she was feeding me a human growth hormone. That's pretty big. I feel good that I was not as big as Ellie's classmate, Pork Chop. She's 11 months and 29 pounds. She's one big kid. Ellie had to get her one year shots, but now it's more traumatic because I have to hold her down and she's old enough to know I'm not helping her. She also had a vision test and a blood draw, which was more traumatic than the shots. The doctor called us today to tell us she's slightly anemic so she's on these vitamins now that look and smell like iodine. I mix it in applesauce and she doesn't know the difference. I can't imagine Ellie with more energy because she's already pretty energetic.

So that was Ellie's big birthday weekend. All of the pictures from the party are posted at our Shutterfly account, so enjoy. I think we're going to use this weekend to fully recover. It's a lot of work turning one!

Our First Video

2008-05-18T22:20:00.000-05:00

We had such a GREAT time at Ellie's birthday party and I hope everyone else did too. I'll try to write all about it when I get a free minute this week. My dad helped me figure out how to get video from my video camera onto our computer and now I'm attempting to upload it to my blog.

My first video entry comes from the party on Saturday night when Ellie was eating her birthday cake. Take note of my face around 30 seconds into the video. You may have to watch it more than once. Drum roll, please - I now present to you "Ellie's Birthday Surprise"...

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2008-05-15T10:15:00.001-05:00

There is a man outside my office window sitting on a swing. Awkward.

Mother's Day 2008

2008-05-13T21:48:00.003-05:00

We started off our Mother's Day weekend with some sad news. Lee's grandmother, Adeline Likes - or Mammy to most, passed away on Friday. She lived in Tyler and was 90. Ellie was lucky enough to be born with three great-grandmothers, and while Ellie never met Mammy, I'm sure she would have enjoyed getting to know her. The picture of Mammy here is from the Tyler Rose Festival in 2002.

I was again not great about taking pictures (mostly because my dad was there to take pictures all weekend) so I'm going to use some from late April that never made it on the blog because I was too busy with Kyle's wedding, the trip to Austin, and Jenny's wedding in Cabo. I spent most of Saturday morning getting ready for Ellie's upcoming birthday party. This thing is taking on a life of its own. We are having it catered... which means I had to rent tables, chairs, linens, and a margarita machine. Lee has spent countless hours on our backyard (this includes tilling the entire backyard to plant new grass) and last night was busy until the wee hours making an "Ellie mix", which is basically a mix tape on his iPod for the party. Then there's the cups, napkins, CAKE, table toppers.... the list goes on. But I am SUPER excited about the party. I am so thankful we have so many friends and family members to celebrate Ellie's first birthday with us. It's going to be great!

We went to a beautiful wedding on Saturday night for a family friend, Catherine. Mom and Dad were able to babysit so I did not have to seek out Number Ten. At the end of the ceremony, a bagpipe player came down the aisle to lead them out. Very cool - I'd never been at a wedding with bagpipes before. Their reception was at the same place our was, the Dallas Petroleum Club. There were a ton of people in the lobby trying to get up to the reception so we were all crammed into the elevators together. As it worked out, we got onto the elevator with the bagpipe player, who was still wearing his bagpipes. I was standing directly in front of the guy with my back to him so when the elevator got quiet, I took the opportunity to ask the bagpipe player if that was his bagpipe or if he was just happy to see me. Ba-dum-ba! Thank you! You guys have been great. I'll be here all week.

Ellie got us up at 5:45 AM on Sunday morning to wish me a Happy Mother's Day. We tried to get her to go back to sleep, but it didn't work. Lee got up with her so I could sleep in a little... which means I slept until 7:20. We went for bagels and then had more fun at church with Ellie. She is totally uninterested in any books or toys that we bring to keep her busy. I really think she sees church as her time to entertain the people in the four surrounding pews by playing peek-a-boo or waving. This Sunday, her game was blowing kisses with a "Mmmuuuuuooooooaaahhhh!". I heard people behind us giggling. It's almost like she'll do anything for the thrill of a cheap laugh. I have no clue where she would learn that type of behavior, but on a hunch, I'm going to keep her away from bagpipe players.

After church, The Brights, Ben, Elizabeth, my parents, and the three of us were back at the Dallas Petroleum Club for lunch. Ellie was really good and sat there at the table with us eating the same food we were eating. Lee even gave her some cheesecake for dessert. I wish she liked vegetables as much as she likes dessert. While we were in the bathroom, Ellie met another little girl, Laura, who was about 10 months old. It was there that I had a really weird exchange with Laura's mother who looked to be in her early 40's.

"Oh look at Laura! She is so excited to see another little girl. Can she play with Ellie?", she asked. I put Ellie on the floor and told her to walk over there, which she did. She and Laura were laughing and just beside themselves. Laura's mother asked me if Ellie had other been around other children, and I told her that Ellie was in day care, so yes. She even has a boyfriend. Several, in fact, but I didn't think it was appropriate to brag since we just met. Then she told me that Laura was really excited because she'd never seen another child. Stop the bus. "Never?" No. "Ever?!!" No. I'm sure my bad poker face had "you're nuts" written all over it.

"You know you're raising a serial killer, right?", is what I wanted to say, but I toned it down and told her that she should enroll Laura in Mother's Day Out or find a play group. For the love of all things holy, find something for the kid. Seriously, if Ellie was stuck at home with me all day without ever seeing another child, she would have packed her tiny suitcase and bolted last week when she figured out how to walk. Poor Laura. She had "my mom is going to breastfeed me until I'm 10" written all over her face. When we walked off, I told Ellie she'd better thank her lucky stars that I don't keep her in a closet like Laura's mom does. I think it's good to scare some gratitude into children every once in a while.

In case you were wondering about the doves on our window ledge, Margo gave birth to twins right before we went to Cabo and when we came back, they were gone. I think she had actually given birth to them long before we actually saw them because after a while, we noticed she was sitting on them. We named the doves Walker and Texas Ranger. If they were sissy birds we would have named them Dr. Quinn and Medicine Woman.

The Crawl/Adventures in Babysitting

2008-05-05T20:50:00.001-05:00

About 4 hours after I penned my last blog, I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst itching I've ever had. It was awful because my jellyfish stings had gone all hivey and they were spreading. The worst was that I had three stings on my chin so it looked like I had some weird lip herp. At 2AM, Lee told me to rub vinegar on my stings (this is what you're supposed to do when you're stung... not 6 days later). But I was desperate so I did. I didn't have any white vinegar so I used apple cider and wound up smelling like a rotten apple. For the record, it doesn't take the sting out 6 days later. Ice made it better. The doctor took me first thing in the morning and gave me Zyrtec and some steroids, which she warned me would give me extra energy. And they did because at Fancy's step class on Saturday morning I was using three risers and yelling things like "turn up the music!" while I made up additional "special" dance moves. For those of you wondering, the Dreamcatchers are still there, however I haven't seen them dress alike in a few months. But they do have a new cheer they yell when they like something. I can't make this stuff up.

The Crawl for Cancer was this weekend, and we almost didn't get to go because on Wednesday morning my babysitter dislocated her knee and didn't think she could watch Ellie while on crutches. This sent me into a babysitter tailspin. I called nine people and by Friday night at 7PM had heard "no" from all but one. All of my eggs were in Number Nine's basket. She was the co-worker of my co-worker's friend, but since I was all out of babysitting options, that practically made her family.

This poor girl probably thought I was nuts because I had e-mailed, voice mailed and then texted her. Number Nine finally called me while Elizabeth and I were on our way to Chelsea Handler's book signing for Are You There Vodka? It's Me, Chelsea. "Hi Tiffany - it's Number Nine. I'm so sorry I didn't get back to you earlier. I was traveling for work and then last night I was at the Kayne West concert." We talked for a bit about Ellie, where we lived, when I needed her, etc. At the end of the conversation, she asked me I wanted to know anything about her. Oh God - I should be asking her some really tricky babysitting interview question. Ask her if she knows the number for 911 - no, that's a gimme... ask her if she's ever been convicted of a felony - no, that's weird... "Uh... so you've babysit before, right?". She replied a confident "Yes". Yes! "Well, Number Nine, I think this is going to work out great. We'll see you tomorrow at 12:30."

Nine showed up right on time, and she was actually a really sweet girl, about 26, UT graduate, lots of experience with kids, and most importantly she and Ellie hit it off. Ellie was eating when she got there, so when she was finished, I took her back to her room to change her diaper and show Nine where everything was. I asked Lee to clean her high chair tray. About two minutes later in the middle of my instructions, Lee came into Ellie's room, showed me and Nine a spotless tray and said, "Look at how clean I got Ellie's tray!". This is odd. "That looks great, honey. Thank you". Then Lee blurted out, "I just gave it to the dogs and they licked it that clean". No. You. Didn't. But I knew he probably had. I tried to ignored him and continued my nursery tour. Thankfully, Nine did not run from the house screaming.

We made it to the pub crawl right on time and had a lot of fun. Team "Nun too Drunk" (Catholic school reference - my idea, but was a little slanderous so I didn't think Katy would honestly sign us up as that) consisted of me and Lee, Katy and Joe, Veronica and Chris, Sandy and Jason, and Kennemer. Maunder bailed on us so there was just nine on our team. The event was held on lower Greenville and it was pretty big - there were 250 teams with 10-12 on each team. Every team got to pick their shirt color, and we were in gray tees. From what I understand, the event sold out in only two days, so if you missed out, register early next year. The idea was to go to 5 bars in 5 hours, but we only made it to 4. Lee and I are lightweights. We made it home around 6PM, and Ellie and Nine were playing. I will definitely use her again (if she will come back).

Every day, Ellie gets more skilled at walking. This means that she wants to practice all the time including while we're at church. This Sunday was by far the most challenging day we've had at church so far. We really can't let her crawl/walk all over the place, but holding her angers her inner beast. Lee and I took turns taking her to the back of the church so she wouldn't squeal. It was a full time job trying to wrangle her. Her other favorite thing to do now is slam doors, cabinets, drawers, etc. She hasn't gotten a finger caught yet, but that day is coming, I'm sure.

Later that day, we all went to Cooper's first birthday party at The Little Gym. You would think that with the word "gym" in the title, I would have gotten out of the little black dress I wore to church, but I didn't so I was Stephanie's inappropriately dressed friend in the low-cut black dress who was still crawling around on the floor. And I had no tissue paper for Cooper's gift so he got the tissue that the dry cleaners had shoved into the sleeves of one of my shirts. Class act.

Ellie had such a good time at the party. At first, she sat there taking in the rainbow-colored walls, padded floors, and jumping children, but after 2-3 minutes, she was up walking around and trying to climb on everything. The thing she liked the best was the parachute. Loved it and was hysterically laughing the whole time they had it out. They also had this thing that was like a bounce house minus the top. There were about eight to ten 2-4 year olds there running and jumping on top of it so I thought Ellie would be scared, but she wasn't. She wanted to walk and jump on it just like everyone else. I was trying to keep her close to me so she wouldn't get creamed, but little Miss Independent would have none of it. In between activities, they would play music while the kids ran around and Ellie would shake her little butt to the beat of the music. She even sat in a little chair at the table with the other kids and had cake. Halfway through the snacks, she took her plate and dumped everything on the table. We haven't worked on manners yet.

We had my parents over on Sunday night to thank them for keeping Ellie last weekend and to celebrate my dad's promotion. I grilled a steak and some chicken kabobs and made a salad and mom brought an appetizer and pie for dessert. Ellie was pretty worn out by the end of her big weekend. We were too. I think between party planning for Ellie's birthday, buying gifts, Mother's Day, and the wedding on Saturday night, next weekend will be more of the same. By the way - we still need a sitter for Saturday night... Number Ten, are you out there?

Jenny's Cabo Wedding

2008-05-01T21:54:00.001-05:00

I don't know how coherent this blog is going to be because I'm all hopped up on Benadryl right now for the jellyfish stings, but I'll give it a shot.

I think the saddest thing about going on vacation is waiting and waiting and waiting for the vacation to get here and then it's over in an instant. Last Thursday, we left for four days and three nights of fun to celebrate Jenny and Brant's wedding. I took a ton of pictures and now I just have to organize them. I had never been to Cabo before, and I was not disappointed. It is so nice there and I would recommend it to anyone considering a beach vacation. It's not tropical and humid like so many other Mexican cities - it's very arid so most of the area is covered with desert-type plants except in the resorts where there is a lot of landscaping. We stayed at the Sheraton Hacienda Del Mar and really enjoyed it.

Bonnie and Brett were on our flight and sat in our same row on the airplane. As soon as we got there, we put on our swim suits and were out by the pool with margaritas in hand by 2PM. If only I could be out by the pool every day with drink in hand. Ruben, Meg, Tim, and Chrissy arrived a little later and we got ourselves ready for the shuttle to take us to the welcome party at a beachfront restaurant called Sunset da Mona Lisa. We had cocktails, hand-rolled cigars, pasta and took pictures during sunset. Following that, we all decided to go to a bar in downtown called "Squid Row" where the music was seriously bad. It was in the "what Mexicans think drunk American tourists like to line dance to" genre. They seriously played "Baby Likes to Rock It" but the Tractors. I think I insulted the DJ because he told me to stay out of his booth. We decided to pack it up and headed to Cabo Wabo, which is Sammy Hagar's bar, but left shorty after we got there because it was totally seedy and Bonnie needed to go home. Coincidentally, Bonnie was #1 that night.

We got up on Friday morning and decided to make it our day by the ocean and the pool. Ruben and Meg tipped us off that there was a giant squid on the beach so Lee and I had to find it and of course Lee had to poke it. The eyeball on the thing was the size of a golf ball. So gross. The picture doesn't do it justice. It was about 2-3 feet long. We walked down to a rocky part of the beach and there were crabs all over the place. I like to eat crabs, but they're a little freaky live. They look like cockroaches that can move sideways. We had a great time relaxing and even played a little sand volleyball.

Saturday night was the rehearsal dinner at Cabo del Sol Golf Club. We had cocktails on the patio followed by dinner and the toasts. There were a lot of speeches. Since we were going snorkeling the next day, we called it a night after dinner because we had to in downtown by 7:45 to catch our boat at the marina.

The whole marina area really surprised me because there is high-end shopping there. It's all new and very nice. Total 180 from the Bahamas, if you've ever been there. We had a private sailboat take the eight of us out to snorkel. Occasionally, I will have motion sickness on a boat, and I did on our little boat, but I never ralphed. After 2 hours of almost loosing my breakfast, we got in the water to snorkel. We had only been in a few minutes when Meg started screaming that something was biting her. I looked under the water and there was nothing around her. Totally confused by her freak out, I continued to swim, but then it started to happen to me too. I looked in the water again to see nothing, but eventually figure out that there were all of these floating worm-like things in the water. Jellyfish (or water fleas as our tour guides called them). It felt like fire ants biting. Instead of just swimming through them, I grabbed my arms and legs and started rubbing them thus rubbing more flesh-eating acid into my skin. Five days later, I am STILL all red and bumpy so I may go to the doctor tomorrow. Afterwards, we shopped with Meg and Ruben and then grabbed a bite to eat before heading back to the hotel.

Jenny got married on the beach at the One and Only Palmilla. This place really was the one and only. It so fancy that when staff walked by you, they placed their hand on their heart and bowed. Seriously. I mean one or the other would have been sufficient. I'm going to start making Lee do that. Jenny and Brant were married outside overlooking the ocean and then we had drinks and appetizers adjacent to the ceremony site after the wedding while the wedding party was taking photos. Her reception was a seated dinner and then there was a dancing with a band inside an adjacent building. Everything was so gorgeous and there were so many flowers. The whole weekend was absolutely perfect and I'm so glad we were able to attend. I think destination weddings are the way to go!

My parents were nice enough to watch Ellie while we were gone. We were so glad to see her when we returned. I missed her a lot, but I think Lee really missed her. Daddy's girl. She was taking 2-3 steps at a time before we left and now she's walking about 20 feet at a time. I'm going to try to get a video of it this weekend and post it.

Congratulations and best wishes to Jenny and Brant!

We're still here...

2008-04-28T08:15:00.002-05:00

I know I've fallen down on my blogging duties lately, but I have a really good excuse - we went to Cabo San Lucas for my friend Jenny's wedding this weekend. I was going to have to go to Austin tomorrow, but that got changed and I'm so glad because I'm so tired. I took about 140 pictures this weekend and I can't wait to get those posted so everyone can see them.

My mom and dad kept Ellie and... she's walking now. She was taking 2-3 steps before we left, but she can do 5-7 now. We were so excited to see her when we got in last night.

I'm going to try to get a posting up by Wednesday, but no promises. Back to work... they switched my computer to Office 2007 while I was gone and it's made me grumpy. Change bad.

I can save you money.

2008-04-18T11:08:00.003-05:00

On Wednesday, I attended a sustainability conference put on by the North Texas Association of Environmental Professionals, and it was fascinating. This whole post is a little nerdy so hold onto your pocket protectors. The topic of sustainability is like nerd crack for me. But I did want to share one thing that I learned at the conference.

I'm sure the last time one of your bulbs burned out, you went to the store and saw all of the incandescent light bulbs right next to the compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs. They're the ones that look like cork screws. And maybe you even thought "hey - I'll do something great for the environment and buy one of the CFL bulbs", but then you looked at the price and saw that the incandescent light bulb cost $0.50 and the CFL bulb cost $4.00. What you may not know is that over the lifetime of the incandescent bulb, it will cost about $80 for the electricity to light the bulb and cool the room because of the additional heat it puts out. The CFL bulb? About $16 over the life of the bulb. Now multiply that by every bulb in your house. And the CFL bulbs last twice as long.

So if I told you that if you gave me $4 today, I'd give you $60 in two years, you'd do it right? This is the same thing. AND as an added bonus, you're doing something good for the environment. I'm not saying that you need to go out and replace all of your bulbs, but next time one of your incandescent bulbs burns out, consider buying a CFL bulb. Make sure it says Energy Star on it or else the same savings may not apply. They're sold at Wal-Mart, Target, and Home Depot. If everyone in the Dallas-Fort Worth area switched out just one of their light bulbs for a CFL bulb, that would reduce the need to build one additional coal-fired power plant. And trust me - we don't need more of those.

The rest of the conference was pretty good. This one architect talked about building green homes, which was really cool. The second presentation I went to was about future energy sources and this guy from the EPA spoke. I'm not kidding - he had Tourette's Syndrome. Added to this problem was the fact that he could not pronounce the letter "r". I was actually quite impressed that he was publicly speaking. Then at lunch we had the former Dallas Mayor Laura Miller speak to the group. At the end of her presentation, she asked if anyone had any questions and I wanted to raise my hand and scream "I have a question!! WHY DID YOU LET TO COWBOYS GO TO ARLINGTON?!!!". But I didn't want to be drug out of the luncheon screaming "Dude, don't taze me", so I kept it shut.

Going on the the background of all of this was me trying to figure out if the person sitting next to me was a man or a woman. You're going to think I'm making this up, but their name was Pat. I swear on a Bible. Actually, the name tag said "Patricia", but I think it was a man who added a "ricia" on the last part of his name. Pat was also carrying a purse, but that doesn't really mean anything these days since there's a man in Oregon having a baby.

That is the summary from my nerd conference. Have a good weekend.

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Update: I had a comment/question from Andy on mercury and CFL bulbs. Answer can be found here.

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2008-04-17T15:21:00.000-05:00

Mullets. They're even at 20,000 feet.

Kyle's Wedding

2008-04-15T22:14:00.002-05:00

I think I'm going to be doing pretty well if I squeak out another 2 blogs in April because we're so busy. I may have to resort to the newly-discovered cell phone blog to communicate. We have had a huge whirlwind of 5 days - Ellie came down with a weird virus, we drove to Memphis, Kyle got married, Audrey got baptized, and on Thursday morning Lee was a total dumb ass and drove off with the his keys on the roof of his car so I had to spend an hour and a half driving around Dallas to try to get him where he needed to go. Lee has a keyless ignition so the key only needs to be within a few feet of the car to start it. He threw the keys on the roof of his car and took off. When he got to where he was going, he could neither restart his car nor could he lock his doors. That meany I had to leave work and go home to pick up his keys (10 miles and two school zones), drive to him (35 miles), and back to work (20 miles). He's pretty sure that the keys fell off the roof somewhere along the highway because he heard a thud. I guess we will be sure if our house doesn't get burglarized.

I picked up Ellie on Thursday afternoon from day care, and she felt warm. She really didn't want to eat much at dinner so I went to get her ready for a bath and decided to take her temp. 103.2. I immediately called the doctor and told him that we were leaving in the morning for a wedding (of course) and he told us to come in. He told us that if she had a good night and was okay in the morning to go ahead, but if she had a bad night and woke up sick to stay home... so we almost missed the wedding festivities entirely. For the record, she was 19 pounds and 15 ounces fully clothed. She woke up like she was totally fine (and she actually was) so we went drove on Friday morning to Memphis.

Ellie was really great in the car and slept pretty much from Dallas to about 30 minutes on the other side of Texarkana. We had lunch and shortly after we got on our way, the person driving in front of us kicked up a retread and knocked it into our car. It made a loud thud but it was only after we got to Memphis that we realized the bumper to my car was dragging on the ground and the plastic part covering the undercarriage was hanging on the ground. We looked like the Grizwolds driving into town. I've called the insurance company and the car is going to have to go into the shop. Damn 18 wheelers.

It was there at the hotel that Ellie met her new bff for life, Audrey. I looked after Audrey and Ellie while Nicole got some things out of the car and Ellie tried desperately to see her new cousin. A short time later, Ellie was able to meet Miles too. Miles knew exactly who she was and was so excited to meet her.

Nicole and Wayne took advantage of all of the family being together and had Audrey baptized before the rehearsal. Ellie was at the baptism and the entire time, she tried to climb into the baptismal font. I think she thought it was a swimming pool. Afterwards, we took her back to the hotel so my second cousin, Katherine, could babysit for her. Katherine is so great and is a special ed teacher so she loves kids, but likes to march to the beat of her own drummer. I hadn't told Lee this. "Um, listen... about Katherine. I don't know how many tattoos are going to be visible so just be cool". Wrong thing to say to hypie the hypo. As it turned out, only two tats were visible so in my opinion, he sort of overreacted.

The rehearsal dinner was at a really lovely place on the Mississippi river called Currents at the River Inn. As we have sat for many years, all of the cousins dined at the "kids" table where many an inappropriate joke was told. My cousin Shannon, who is ten years younger than me, told me that when I was 21, she was too young to hang with me and Nicole, but now that she's 21, I'm just old. That's the thing about family - they'll give it to you straight. My uncle Gus was nice enough to drive all of us back to the hotel.

The big day was on Saturday and we started off the day with breakfast with the Erwins and then lunch with my grandmother and aunt. The wedding was really beautiful and Kyle and Megan were nice enough to ask me to read. The priest (who because we're Catholic is somehow related to me) was moderately irritated because I was a little tardy. Fr. Val, YOU try dressing an 11 month old. Because I was a reader, I had to sit away from Lee and Ellie. Ellie was pretty well behaved and waved at me during the wedding. So cute. I have some funny pictures of the reception, but I'm going to save those for another blog because this one is WAY long. Since Kyle got married during prom season and limos were in high demand, his and Megan were whisked away in a bright yellow stretch Hummer. Awesome. Because every girl dreams that she will be carried away from her wedding in something that looks like a banana on steroids. Kyle, I'd like to take this time to public apologize for Lee crawling into the Bananamobile and waiting for you and Megan. Inappropriate.

We left Memphis around 9:30 on Sunday morning for the long drive home. Along the way, Lee and I got into the conversation about how we are going to celebrate Ellie's first birthday. I want to do a party in the backyard for close friends and family. Lee told me he has another idea. He wants to do a combination First Birthday Party and wait for it... Texas Hold 'Em poker tournament. Not kidding. He wants to commemorate sweet Ellie's first year of life with a POKER TOURNY. I can just see the invitation - some cute little cartoon forest creatures sitting around a table smoking cigars. I told him "no" and now he's calling me "Buzz Kill" and "Power Down Tiffany" (he calls me that and then makes this noise like the nuclear power plant is shutting down). We're still in talks about the "theme" of the party, but if I have my way, it's not going to be Clowns and Casinos.

Ellie was really good the whole way home, but started to loose it about an hour outside of Dallas. She would be okay for a few minutes and then started squirming and whining. She was so glad to get out of that car seat and be back at her house. Lee picked up the dogs from the kennel and when Ellie saw them, she started squealing. We had them behind a gate in the kitchen and she stood there for a long time reaching out for them, laughing, and petting them. The "petting" mostly involves grabbing their ears and ripping their hair out. Lucy and Morgan are nice enough to stand there and take the abuse. She loves her dogs.

So that was it. What a whirlwind - it was fun.

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2008-04-10T14:31:00.000-05:00

I just found out i can blog from my phone!

Jenny's Bachelorette Party

2008-04-07T21:46:00.002-05:00

This weekend, I spent my first night away from Ellie. I traveled to Austin to celebrate one of Jenny's last weekends as a free woman. There's nothing like a full weekend of debauchery to help your body remind you that you're over 30. Also reminding me I'm over 30 - road tripping in my friend Kristine's car and sitting in the back seat next to her two and a half year old daughter, Mary Margaret, while she shows me how her lambie can poo-poo and tee-tee in the play toilet and watching Elmo and Dora. Back in college, we didn't take toddlers on road trips with us. And if we did, there's a good chance we would have been arrested for taking them to Mexico and selling them in exchange for beer money. But don't worry - MM wasn't sold for cerveza. She was dropped off at her grandparents house in Austin.

As soon as we left Dallas, I realized that I left my breast pump. I'm still nursing Ellie at morning and at night, so I sort of needed it. I told myself I could deal - I would just have to be uncomfortable. Then about halfway to Austin, I remembered that I had left my outfit for Saturday night hanging on my closet door. Awesome. So after dropping MM off, we stopped at Target so I would have something to wear. I'm sure Jenny and Kristine wanted to kick me because they just wanted to get there, but they were actually very patient. Jenny is good at putting outfits together so she grabbed some stuff and brought it to me in a dressing room. I sort of felt like I had my own personal stylist... but I don't think stylists usually shop in stores where you have to take a number for the articles of clothes you take back to the dressing room. I made it out of there with a black top, jeans, and a metallic belt.

We finally made it there around 9:00. We stayed on the south shore of Lake Travis in a house called Waterstone Lodge. When I grow up, I want to live there. It was right on the water and so beautiful. In all, I think that there were 18 girls there so it was a pretty big party. After dinner, Meg, Bonnie, Debbie, Jennifer, Kristine and I sat by the fire on the patio to drink wine and laughed hysterically at some college photo albums I brought. We really knew how to rock a jean jumper. The party continued onto the hot tub where we stayed until 3AM. There was one awkward moment where Meg asked us all who we were voting for. A headed debate ensued. After about 15 minutes, we finally had to switch the subject, and I told her that next time she's at a party she should stick to a less divisive topic like abortion or religion.

I tried to sleep in on Saturday, but only made it to about 8:30. I think I'm so used to getting up early every morning now that it's impossible for me to sleep late. We all laid out by the pool for most of the day and relaxed. I read my book by Chelsea Handler which kept on making me laugh out loud. After we all got ready, we had a lingerie shower for Jenny. Her sisters made this cute video of her future husband where they'd ask him a question and then pause it to see if she could guess what he would say.

Since we were pretty far away from downtown, we had a party bus take us to dinner at a fabulous restaurant in Austin called Kenichi. For some reason, we thought it would be fun for us to take some serious "modeling pictures" after we ate. I don't know where we come up with these weird ideas. After dinner, we started off on the patio of The Belmont, but it was a little lower key than what we were hoping for, so we moved onto Cedar Street Courtyard, a place with a live band and dancing. Since we had four pregnant girls with us, the bus got us around 12:15 and took us back to the house. I was in the back of the bus so I could see the road in front of us. I thought the driver was going to wreck trying to avoid the deer. Better him in the bus than us in one of our cars.

By the end of the weekend, I was EXHAUSTED. We headed back to Big D on Sunday morning. For all photos, you can look at my shutterfly account. Very sad to say goodbye to everyone, but we'll be together in two more weeks for the wedding. So where were Ellie and Lee during all of this? They drove to Tyler on Saturday morning to visit B.B. and Doc. According to Lee, Ellie got adventurous and tried some some bacon. I was so glad to see both of them when I got home. He was exhausted on Sunday night and went to bed at 9:00. Taking care of the little one is hard work (and acting like your 18 again is equally hard). We have another very jam-packed weekend coming up... Kyle's wedding. Can't wait to see the fam!

I'm Still Standing

2008-03-31T21:00:00.002-05:00

Again, I was not a great photographer so I'm posting more photos from Easter weekend.

Ellie is one step closer to walking because she can briefly stand by herself now. I've only see her do it once and that was on Friday night, but the ladies at day care tell me she's doing it more often. When I saw her do it, she was squatting down and then slowly stood up - stayed there for a few seconds and then grabbed the sofa. Quite daring. It's hard enough for me to keep track of her now... I can't imagine what it will be like when she starts running through the house.

I took Trudie to the vet on Saturday morning because she was having some eye troubles (as if being blind wasn't problematic enough). I've wondered about her quality of life lately, so I discussed euthanasia with the vet. The doctor said she probably still has a few good months left unless the tumor on her tummy, which is likely cancerous, spreads to other areas of her body. They're not going to do a bunch of blood work or biopsy the spot because they don't want to upset her. She's not in pain right now, she's still spunky, she's got a good appetite, and can find me wherever I am. She's dropped from 10.5 pounds to 9 pounds in the last 6 months, so I'm just going to try to keep her as comfortable as possible and enjoy my friend while I can.

After Trudie's trip to the vet, Ellie had another swim lesson. She's starting to be able to associate a name with an action so she waves and blows kisses on demand and will actually kick when I tell her to kick now. It's not a swimmers kick though - it's more like a frog kick. She brings both heels up toward her and then kicks them out. I'm expecting a full scholarship to Stanford one day from those frog kicks so she'd better step up her game.

Ellie has been trying to venture into our cabinets lately so Lee installed some child locks on them Saturday. I cannot get my fat little finger between the cabinet door and the lock so now I have to use a knife to break into my own cabinets. I keep forgetting the locks are on there, so I almost rip the hardware off the cabinets every time I try to open them. I'm sure that one day... in a month or so... I will remember to use the knife.

The rest of the weekend, Lee tilled up our backyard because he's going to plan all new grass. It's a big job... we're hoping it will look for the big first birthday party. We also watched The Kite Runner on DVD. If you haven't seen this movie, it's definitely one to rent. We really liked it - it was probably one of the best movies I've seen in a while. We also opened some of the wine that Lee made last year. It had the aroma of cherries with a subtle hint of earthiness followed by an overwhelming taste of Robitussin. Sorry, honey. We only had a few sips and then threw the rest of the bottle out. So if we gave you a bottle for Christmas - let this be your warning. On Sunday, my mom came over to visit Ellie and stayed with her while I ran some errands. Ellie was so tired that she went to bed at thirty minutes earlier at 7:30 that night. I thought that was great until she woke up thirty minutes earlier the next morning.

I wish Ellie was a little older so she could enjoy what is going on outside of our window - we have a pair of doves nesting. Lee and I decided to name them Todd and Margo after our favorite couple from Christmas Vacation. Margo has been staying in the nest lately so we can't tell if she's already laid her eggs or not. Todd usually stays in the tree out front. I can't wait to see all of the baby birdies! We'll give you updates as Margo and Todd's family grows.

Springtime Swingtime

2008-03-25T15:05:00.001-05:00

I got this picture of Ellie on my phone when I visited her at day care during lunch this afternoon. We had the whole playground to ourselves because all of the toddlers were taking their naps. It was her first time in a swing, and she loved it. I pushed her from the front so she could keep an eye on me. When she would swing toward me, I'd give her a funny face and a sound effect to make her laugh.

This weekend, we taught her to blow a kiss and now she is pretty proficient at it. When I left, she waved bye-bye and then blew me two kisses. So sweet.

Easter 2008

2008-03-24T21:49:00.000-05:00

What a beautiful weekend! The weather was absolutely perfect on Saturday, so Lee and I met our friends, the Hardemans, at the Dallas Arboretum for Dallas Blooms. I guess I didn't give it much thought because spectacular weather + the day before Easter + everyone on Spring Break = the perfect storm of arboretum overload. The arboretum had chartered buses and was literally bringing in people by the busload. One of the main reasons I wanted to go on Saturday was because one of the local photographers was taking Easter pictures with a live bunny. The bunny may as well have been stuffed (or tranquilized) because he didn't move the whole time - even when Ellie tugged on his neck. We dressed Ellie up in her Easter outfit, bonnet, and the locket I wore as a little girl for photos with the bunny. She did really well.

After the bunny pic, we walked around the arboretum with the Hardemans and got some great pictures of Ellie in the tulips. If you want to see all of the photos, they're on our Shutterfly collection. I also finally uploaded all of the ones from January and February. That night, Lee went to his friend Kevin's church because Lee was Kevin's RCIA sponsor. This means I got to have a movie night so I chose to watch Enchanted. So cute. I can't wait until Ellie likes princess movies. I may have to buy Enchanted for Ellie. She may not be into it now... but I am!

Lee got home pretty late from the Saturday evening and then we got up and went as a family to 11AM Easter service. Poor Lee - he had enough church for a whole year this weekend. We met my parents, Beth, and Ben at church and then had lunch at the Petroleum Club. We had to get there 30 minutes early for a seat and I'm glad we did because halfway through church, I got up to change Ellie's diaper and people were standing out he sidewalk outside because it was so packed. Sadly, Lee's dad could not join us because he was visiting his mother in Chattanooga who has been sick with pneumonia lately. She fell ill during her trip to Dallas for Christmas and never fully recovered. Elizabeth was on a girl's trip to Brazil with her friend Mimi.

I swear Ellie spoke her first word on Monday morning. She already says mama a lot, but she said it indiscriminately before she knew what it meant, so I don't know that that counts. I dropped her off at day care and as I was leaving, I waved at her and said "bye-bye". She looked up at me, waved, and said "bye-bye" back. I stood there and looked at her for a second to see if she would say it again, but she didn't. I'm going to wait until I officially claim that this was her first word just in case she was actually sounding off some really intelligent sounding babble.

If you're in the Dallas area, you should take a trip to the Arboretum... it's absolutely gorgeous right now!

Who Wore It Better?

2008-03-22T22:14:00.010-05:00

I love celebrity gossip magazines. They are so fabulously smutty, and I don't even care. I'm going to play off a popular column that some magazines have called "Who Wore It Better?" where they show the readers one item of clothes worn by two different stars and the readers decide who wore it better. Example:

The same Herve Leger blue dress is worn by both Amanda Bynes and Kim Kardashian's sasquatch sister (who in all odds is probably shorter than me). Who wore it better? Clearly Ms. Bynes. So let's play "Who Wore It Better?" Bright Spot style.

Who wore this white Janie and Jack Easter bonnet better? Ellie?

Or her Daddy?

You decide.

The Worst Name Ever

2008-03-21T12:42:00.002-05:00

I had to go to Office Depot yesterday to pick up some binders for one of my projects. I got into like behind a guy paying by credit card. The cashier took the credit card, asked for ID, and then took a long look the ID and credit card. "Is this your real name?", the cashier asked. The man said that it was.

So now I have to make the decision - do I mind my own business or do I ask this guy what his name is? I knew that I would forever wonder if his name was Dwayne Pipe, Bill Ding, Chris P. Cream, Noah Ho, or Chris Anthemun so I asked. It was Rocky Rhodes. I'm sure he got the "are you kidding me?" face from me. "You'll never forget my name, will you?", he said. You're right about that, Rocky. Seriously, what parent thinks that's a good idea? For 45 years, this guy has gotten the "are you kidding me?" face from everyone he's introduced himself to or who's looked at his ID. That would be like us naming our kid Rainbow.

UPDATE: Check out the second comment I received... they are not playing around.

Kibble and Bits

2008-03-20T10:58:00.004-05:00

Every morning, Lee's job is to take care of the dogs. This consists of letting them out to go to the bathroom and feeding Trudie. Because it's easier, he fills Trudie's bowls first and then takes all of the dogs out. Ellie was with me in the bedroom while he was taking the dogs out, but I turned around for a second and she was gone. I heard her in the bathroom messing around with Trudie's bowls and ran in there to find her digging around in the dog food. "Ellie! No!", I said and pryed the dog food from her hands to wash them.

I noticed that she needed her diaper changed so I took her into her bedroom, partially undressed her and changed her diaper. Then I sat her down to put her socks on to go... so now it's been about 2-3 minutes since she got into the dog food. Lee came in her room and I told him we needed to keep it off the floor or close the door. He looked at Ellie and said, "She's got something in her mouth". Somehow, I had missed the fact that my beautiful little girl had shoved a handful of kibble into her mouth and had been chewing it while I was diaper changing. I stuck my finger in her mouth and scooped it out which made her mad that I was taking her food away so she started screaming. Let me get this straight... She won't eat peas anymore, but dog food is okay? So gross. I'm just glad we don't give Trudie canned food. When she turns 30 and starts dating, I'm going to tell boys this story so they won't want to kiss her.

Meg sent me this link this morning. It made me laugh.

10 Months?!!

2008-03-19T21:20:00.002-05:00

How is it that our little Ellie has already been here for TEN months? I found myself wondering that in church on Sunday, her 10 month birthday, while Lee and I struggled to wrangle her during the longest gospel reading in history. Ever since I was little, I've always immediately flipped to the gospel to figure out how long I'm going to be standing while they read it. Sunday was no exception and I knew it was going to be a battle when I saw that it was 8 pages long. Palm Sunday tricks me every year. I never remember that's the weekend they read the Passion.

Ellie has really gotten to be a handful at church because she doesn't want to be held, but you can't put her down and let her crawl all over the floor. The best position for her is to let her stand on the pew facing the back of the church so she can wave at everyone. And that's what she does. We just stood her up and let her make friends for an hour. She has foregone the usual open-and-close the hand baby wave and now uses more of an elbow-elbow-wrist-wrist pageant wave. This is the wave she gives everyone in the neighborhood when I pull her around in her red wagon. She looks like the queen of her very own parade.

We started off out weekend by going to the Knights Of Columbus Fish Fry at our church. I think that there were 1,000 adults there and every adult brought three kids. Out of control. There was a huge line just to get into the cafeteria, the Knights brought out beer and wine on trays to tide us over. Lee joined recently the Knights so when I got there, he was in the kitchen serving fried fish with this big chef hat on. He took it off before I could get a picture... there's always next year. This is where Ellie had her first taste of ice cream. The cold bothered her at first, but she quickly got over it. She hasn't been eating her veggies for the last couple of days, and I'm starting wondering if it's because she had a taste of Blue Bell ice cream.

On Saturday, Lee took Ellie to her swimming lesson while I went to a wedding shower for Jenny. I got to see a lot of my college friends and catch up so that was fun. Kristine snuck out before I could get her in the picture too. We are all looking forward to Jenny's wedding in Cabo in a few weeks. We never made it to the zoo as we had planned this weekend because when Ellie woke up from her nap on Saturday, she had a fever. I think she was just tired from all of the activity because she was over it the next day. It's hard to plan anything because Ellie strategically has her nap in the middle of the afternoon. And on Sunday, she decided to sleep from 12:30-2. We were able to take a really long walk on Sunday so that sort of made up for our missed zoo outing. I'm hoping to make it to the Arboretum this weekend... with everyone else.

I got to see Katy on Tuesday night to celebrate her belated birthday. Veronica met up with us too. I'm surprised I didn't have to take a boat since it rained about five inches in Dallas yesterday. We had dinner at a semi-new restaurant in Mockingbird Station called Urban Taco. Ellie made a brief appearance, and then Lee picked her up so she could go home to refuse all foods but ice cream. If you're in the Dallas area, I highly suggest Urban Taco. Their roasted corn con lime crema was awesome (but not low fat). Go try it.

Crawl for Cancer

2008-03-18T10:31:00.005-05:00

I'm going to give my friend Hanna some publicity. When I walked in the Dallas 3 Day, she rallied several co-workers and her mother to financially support me. So... I hope that maybe a few of you can help her out. On May 3, Crawl for Cancer will take place on Lower Greenville in Dallas. CFC is basically a pub crawl that raises money for cancer. The idea is that you create a team of 10 people and spend an afternoon having fun and drinking for charity. That's right - drinking for charity. Brillz idea. If you're not in Dallas, there might be one near you so check out the link below. So.... get your team of family members, co-workers, church group, volunteer organization, sports league, or college buddies together and
Get CRAWLING!

Peas and ham

2008-03-14T09:43:00.007-05:00

I have been SO BAD about taking pictures this week. That's the main reason I haven't blogged - I have no pictures! I promise to do better this weekend. It's going to be beautiful so we're planning on taking Ellie to the zoo. I took this picture with my camera phone last night. Ellie had her first meal of table food. She had peas, ham, and cheerios. She ate all by herself - in fact when I tried to put some ham in her mouth, she refused. She has to do it herself. That's fine with me!

I am so concerned about something I read this morning. If you're going to vote, please educate yourself and read this article. People who espouse beliefs like this are dangerous to our nation. Everyone have a good weekend!

You met who?

2008-03-10T11:39:00.001-05:00

I had the strangest conversation with Lee on Thursday night. Or maybe it wasn't? He was so excited to call me to tell me who he had met at happy hour and I just didn't get it. Maybe one of you will be equally as impressed. Here's how the call went...

Lee: (very excited) Hey! I'm on my way home, but you are NOT going to believe who I met tonight!
Me: Who?
Lee: Okay... um, how do I explain this? Name a specialty food - any specialty food - just the first thing that pops into your head.
Me: ...Risotto?
Lee: Okay good - Risotto. So how would you feel if you met the guy who created the risotto website? I mean like the risotto website?
Me: ...uh... I don't know how I'd feel about that.
Lee: Tiffany - THE RISOTTO WEBSITE
Me: Yeah - I get it. I just don't know how cool I think that would be. I mean it's risotto.
Lee: Okay - forget that example. Are you ready for who I met?
Me: Yes.
Lee: The guy who started pizzamaking.com!!
Me: ...
Lee: Hello? Did I loose you?
Me: No. I'm still here.
Lee: Did you hear me? I met the guy who started pizzamaking.com! PIZZA MAKING DOT COM, Tiffany.
Me: ...
Lee: I can't believe you don't think that's cool.
Me: I don't even know what that is.
Lee: It's a website totally devoted to pizza.
Me: I figured that.
Lee: I'll explain - the guy who started it is retired and runs this website now. He knows everything about pizza. In fact, he taught me how to reverse engineer a pizza.
Me: Reverse engineer?
Lee: Yes - reverse engineer. In other words, if you have a certain kind of flour and a certain type of oven, he can tell you how best to make a pizza. And he travels around the country reviewing pizzas.
Me: Oh.
Lee: I can't believe you're not impressed at all. Basically, I met the Robert Parker of pizza making.
Me: Who is Robert Parker?
Lee: Ohmygod. He's the most famous wine critic ever.
Me: I guess I don't get it.
Lee: (completely defeated) I'll be home in a few minutes....

Has anyone else heard of this website? I don't want to be that girl that nothing impresses, but I just wasn't that impressed. Maybe if I liked pizza more?

Snow Day!

2008-03-07T09:23:00.001-06:00

Or not. Again - precipitation disappointment at the Bright house. It snowed 6-9 INCHES about 50 miles north of our house and even 2-3 inches about 20 miles north of our house, but at the Bright house? Zero. Zero inches of snow. As you can see, the cold weather does not bother Ellie... she was as snug as a bug in a rug this morning when I dropped her off at day care. Maybe Ellie will see her first snow next year.

Super Annoying Tuesday

2008-03-04T21:38:00.006-06:00

Today is the big day. Will Texas pick Obama or Hillary? I generally don't care much for politics (it's not that I don't care), but I'm excited that Super Tuesday is here because that means the political commericals will finally stop. Every third commercial is a political commercial. The hands-down winner for worst commercial comes from Hillary. It's the one where the commercial fades in and you hear her voice saying, "Every morning when I get up, I ask myself, 'How can I help someone today?'". Really? That's what you ask yourself? I'm totally calling BS on that. I guarantee the first thing she asks herself is #1 - "I wonder where Bill slept last night?" followed by #2 - "How the hell did this guy get ahead of me in the polls?!!" And maybe after today everyone will stop using the word "caucus". One of our VPs called me today as I was leaving and he asked me if I was on my way to caucus. I started giggling. Because I'm 12.

It snowed in Big D last night... which is amazing because you can see by the pictures we were outside in short-sleeved tops on Saturday afternoon. It started snowing as we were going to bed and was sticking, but had melted by the time we woke up. That's disappointing. I wanted to see some snow. Lee and I were just discussing this weekend how we couldn't remember the last time that it didn't have at least one snow/ice day in a winter. I also wanted to dress Ellie up in the snow suit that I had when I was little. It's seriously A Christmas Story style snow suit. My mother saved it for me just in case I had a little girl one day and we lived in the Arctic tundra.

Did anyone else have a totally off-whack February 29th? Based on my Friday at work, I'm convinced that day is cursed because it's a fake day. I seriously think that everything that could have gone wrong with one of my projects did. An unfortunate series of events involving some buried underground utilities left me on the phone with our legal department at 4PM wondering why I'm not smart enough to carry a flask around with me. I wish I could say, "It's not my fault", but as the project manager, it is my fault even though I've done everything I can. Since my cold was coming on strong, I was in bed asleep by 10 PM. Goodbye and good riddance, Leap Day.

On Saturday, we did the usual swim lesson followed by long nap. It was so nice outside that when Ellie woke up, we decided that we needed to get outside. We called up Elizabeth and picked her up for a glass of wine at Times Ten Cellars. We don't make it there as much as we used to and I miss it. After a glass or two on the porch, we met my parents and Beth for dinner at Matt's Rancho Martinez. Ellie was really good and had fun reading some Easter books that my mom's friend, Kathy, sent her. We did the usual Sunday church thing and then Ellie and I went shopping for some new spring clothes at The Loft. They are having a great sale right now and I earned four coupons for "spend $50 and get $25 off" so I see more shopping in my future. Ellie got a new inflatable tub that fits inside our tub because I feel like she's finally outgrown the infant tub.

I am so glad that we saw Van Halen back in January because they cancelled their second Dallas show for Monday night. Van Halen according to their website, Eddie is "undergoing medical testing" which is code for "he's back on the hooch and headed to rehab." I just hope the Police stay together long enough for us to see them in May!

Welcome Audrey McLean!

2008-03-03T11:51:00.003-06:00

Ellie has a new cousin. I am so excited for Wayne, Nicole, and Miles! Audrey McLean was born this morning weighing 8 pounds 8 ounces and was 20.5 inches. Ellie and Audrey are going to be great friends.

Leap Day Blogging

2008-02-29T13:31:00.001-06:00

I figure I can't blog on February 29 for another 4 years so I'd better take advantage of it. I woke up in the middle of the night with a sore throat, so I think I'm coming down with a cold. Ellie had a sore throat mid-week, so I think that I picked something up from her. As long as we don't all get the flu, it will be okay. Nicole has not had her Leap Day baby, but there's still 10 hours left in the day.

I was having sort of an eeehhh day on Wednesday, and I happened upon a link to Jersey. No, not New Jersey. How did I go so many years and not know that there was somplace on earth this beautiful? If I had to make a list of places I wanted to visit in my lifetime, this would place would take up the top 10 spots. I have a link on my internet browser and during lunch for the past two days, I've been looking around the island and dreaming of traveling there. Maybe someday...

Have a good weekend!

There Will Be Date Night

2008-02-27T20:45:00.001-06:00

On Friday, my mom and dad offered to baby sit for Ellie while Lee and I went out, so I jumped on the offer. I wanted to see Juno, but we wound up watching There Will Be Blood. And really, there was not as much blood as I thought there would be. It was good to have at least seen two of the movies nominated for Best Picture since the 80th Academy Awards were on Sunday night. We have Michael Clayton at home so we'll be watching that soon too. I can understand why TWBB was nominated, but I didn't much care for it because it just wasn't my type of movie. I start loosing focus and checking my watch after two hours in a theater. Daniel Day Lewis was really good though, so I wasn't surprised when he won the Oscar for Best Actor. After the movie, we had a late dinner and then caught the last part of the Memphis-Tennessee basketball game.

Ellie slept until 7:30 AM on Saturday morning and 7:45 AM on Sunday. SEVEN FORTY-FIVE. For those of you who do not have children, this is like sleeping until noon. Lee and I were trying to think of the last time we slept that late and could not remember. This almost makes up for her waking up at 4:15 on Monday morning. I went into her room because she was screaming, and I found her standing up in her bed clutching the crib rail. She knows how to get down, but I think she just needed to be talked off the ledge. As soon as I gave her the paci and blankie, she was fine and went back to sleep until 6:45.

Ever since we let her "cry it out" for three nights back in December, Ellie has been really good about falling asleep. In fact, I put her in bed totally awake last night, and she didn't make a peep. We read every night before she goes to bed, and right now her favorite books are Touch and Feel Puppy and Brown Bear, Brown Bear. These may not be her favorites, but I get a kick out of reading them to her. When we read Touch and Feel Puppy she has to feel both of the noses of the dogs on the last page - first the left one and then the right one. Then when we get to the goldfish while we're reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, she pokes it right in the eye. Every time. It makes me laugh.

That was it for our weekend. Lee's back has been bothering him, but it didn't slow him down out in the yard on Sunday. He's been planting a lot in preparation for spring because he wants everything to look really good for Ellie's first birthday party. We also installed a new baby gate this weekend at the top of the stairs and Lucy is afraid of it. She will not come up the stairs now. This morning, she bolted past the gate and frantically tried to paw her way into her kennel in the other room to get away from it. This is the dog we refer to as our "smart" one. And we now have another concert to look forward to... on Saturday we bought tickets to see The Police and Elvis Costello on May 21. Very excited. They came through a few months ago at the American Airlines Center and tickets were outrageous, but Lee and I got lawn seats for this show for only $40 apiece. I thought that was good considering who is playing.

I was asked to join my high school's alumni advisory board, and I went to the first meeting on Monday night. The topic came up that the school now has an Engineering Club and it would be nice to be able to have some sort of a search tool to find alumni who could speak to the group about careers in engineering. I immediately envisioned myself helping to meld the young minds of the best and the brightest at my school with a rousing speech on the joys of science and engineering. Beaming with pride, I perked up a little because look no further ladies and gentlemen - there is a board-certified engineer in your midst. "I'm an engineer. I would be more than happy to speak to your Engineering Club", I said with a touch of smugness. Then I went on to add, "I'm very important. I have many leather-bound books and my apartment smells of rich mahogany." (Okay, I didn't say that last part - Ron Burgundy Channel 4 anchorman did.) Pat, the alumni director, said "That would be great! Let me check with the club sponsor because I know that it's not 100% an Engineering Club. Sometimes they just play ping pong. It sort of alternates between an Engineering Club and a Ping Pong Club". Background - we used to have a club at our high school for the D&D dorks called the Gamers Guild (picture Anthony Michael Hall's nerd friends in 16 Candles). It doesn't take my years of book learnin' to know that it's now morphed itself into the Ping Pong-ineering Club. Distance yourself... "Um, yeah... that sounds neat. Just let me know if I can assist you guys with anything".

Nicole's due date was Sunday and still no baby. Little Evelyn Molly McLean Haley Mary Alice Dijonaise Erwin should be here any day though. My mom had a thought the other day - what happens if E.M.M.H.M.A.D.E. comes on Friday, Leap Day? Her birthday will only come once every 4 years! Stay tuned...

The Class Photo

2008-02-21T09:28:00.006-06:00

I have been dying to get this so I could post it:

Here is Ellie's class photo. I don't know how the photographer got eight infants to look at the camera. In the front row there's Isaiah, Jackson, Tanner, and Simon. In the back row there's Mason, Matthew, Ellie and "Madeline Flowers". Ellie's teacher, Tinisha, is in the back left, and Rosa was out the day of the picture so the other teacher is a stand-in from another class. Ellie's buddy is Tanner, the little boy in front of her. He's 11 months, but developmentally they're at the same place so I think that's why they're buddies.

Ellie had her 9 month appointment on Tuesday. I can't believe she's nine months now. I wish my nine month (and one week) pregnancy would have been as fast as the last 9 months. Ellie is 18 pounds 8 ounces (45th percentile) and 29 inches long (92nd percentile). By comparison, I was 22 pounds 4 ounces at 9 months, but I was um... tall for my age. She didn't have to get any shots, but they did a urinalysis. Since it's really hard to make an infant pee in a cup, they tape a bag to her hoo-hoo and wait for her to pee. It's as weird as it sounds. The doctor said that she needs to start transitioning to table food over the next 3 months so that by the time she's a year, she'll be eating what we eat. She's mowing through her Stage 2 foods, I think she's ready for something more. I tried to give her a pea off my plate the other day and she spit it back at me. She's doing well with Cheerios so we'll stick with that for a while.

The Baby Wrangler

2008-02-14T20:50:00.002-06:00

First of all, CONGRATUATIONS to Anne Marie and Brett who had a 9 pound 5 ounce baby girl today. Caroline Elizabeth was a wonderful Valentine's Day surprise.

This is going to be long because I haven't blogged in a while. I've been in a project management training class all of this week and it's killing me because it means I've had to use 100% of my brain, and that still isn't enough. Everything has an acronym and there are all sorts of flowsheets and charts with arrows pointing up, down, and around in a circle. And every component has a subcomponent. All the while, the guy sitting behind me coughs and sneezes on my back because he came down with the bubonic plague on Monday. I can't tell if I'm getting sick or if it's all mental. I also haven't been able to go see Ellie at lunch all week, which is a real bummer. I'm so used to seeing my sweet girl every day at noon. But on the bright side, the class has also been really motivating - it has rekindled my desire to become a full time aerobics instructor. If only the pay was the same.

I knew that this weekend was going to be a little different when on Friday morning, I went into Ellie's room and she was sitting up in bed waiting for me. I fed and dressed her and put her down to play in her room when about 30 seconds later, she crawled into my bathroom, grabbed the tub, pulled herself up, and just stood there looking at me. In the short span of a week, I've gone from having a kid who sits there and looks pretty (okay... really pretty) to having the kid who wants to explore every square inch of our house. I should explain the photo - if Ellie gets tired when she's eating, she starts rubbing her eyes and usually a carrot unibrow ensues.

On Saturday, Lee wanted to take Ellie to her swimming lesson. I didn't tell him he was going to have to sing "Twinkle, Twinkle", "One Little Speckled Frog", and "The Wheels on the Bus". I think he was expecting some hard core backstroke lessons. I picked Ellie up and we headed to Northpark for the Junior League Community Volunteer Fair and then to meet Grammie at the house who delivered a baby gate to us just in the nick of time. After that, I had my picture taken for another group I volunteer with. Poor Ellie - she didn't get in much of a nap because of all of the running around. We topped off the day with a ride in her red wagon to the park. For no particular reason at all, Lee and I opened one of bottles of wine from Napa that night. It was the 2003 Syrah from Bella Vineyards.

We worked most of the day Sunday and Lee did about 8 hours of yard work. It was at about 8PM that he realized he was no longer wearing his wedding ring. There were plenty of places it could have been because he had planted a tree, trimmed some bushes and cleaned out our garage - but he decided that it was probably in the "yard waste" bag, so after work on Monday, he went through all of the clippings and found it. This is the second time he's done this. He promises he's going to wear gloves now.

We didn't really do anything for Valentine's Day because Lee is lucky enough to have a wife that believes that Valentine's Day is the creation of card companies, florists, and chocolatiers. I think it's a fun holiday if you're 8, but when you get to be an adult, all of the commercials make you feel like you're not normal unless you're in a relationship with someone and that's just not the case. I told all I wanted was a card... well, I take that back. On Wednesday night, I told him that a wonderful gift would be for him not to take a second helping of dinner so that we could have leftovers and I wouldn't have to cook on Valentine's night. What can I say? I'm a hopeless romantic.

I've got to wrap this up because it's turning into War and Peace. A little background first... When I was little, my mom and I would go to the movies in the summer a lot because she was a teacher and she was out of school. We would always pay for one movie and then sneak into another. I don't know how many times we snuck into Raiders of the Lost Ark in 1981, but it was enough to make it my all time favorite movie. Thinking back, I don't know how appropriate it was to take a 5 year old to a movie where Nazis faces are melting off, but that's neither here nor there. So you could say that when I found out they were making a fourth Indiana Jones movie, I was beside myself. It's in my Palm Pilot... May 22... I present to you - Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

Sentenced!

2008-02-11T12:12:00.000-06:00

The jury is back and Al received two 30-year sentences to be served concurrently. From the Dallas Morning News:

"An Allen man convicted of attempting to hire someone to kill his pregnant wife received a 30-year sentence Monday .

A Collin County jury of six men and six women deliberated for about three hours before sentencing Albert Jackson Sterling II to two concurrent 30-year sentences.

Mr. Sterling on Friday was found guilty of two counts of solicitation of capital murder -- one of his wife and one for his then unborn child. The trial, which lasted about two weeks, included testimony from Mr. Sterling's wife, his girlfriend and the would-be hitman who alerted the wife to the scheme.

After the verdict was read, the sentencing hearing began. Mr. Sterling, who did not testify during the trial, took the stand during his sentencing hearing and maintained his innocence.
"Do you still maintain that you are not guilty?" asked Russell Wilson, one of Mr. Sterling's attorneys.

"One hundred percent," Mr. Sterling said, his shackled feet hidden behind the witness stand. "I felt I should give you jurors my story and the reason I was communicating with Jeffrey Thompson," the man he tried to hire. "

I guess we won't be seeing Al at the gym anytime soon.

Guilty!

2008-02-08T11:52:00.000-06:00

For those of you who are not long-time readers of the Bright Spot, before Ellie was born, I taught aerobics at 24 Hour Fitness and had known Al Sterling for about 6 years. I talked to him every Tuesday after my class and attended his classes. Never in 6 years did he mention that he had a wife or child to anyone at the gym and he was pretty "involved" with a lot of people in his classes. I knew this guy was a b.s. artist when one day he told me he had been absent from teaching because he had been on a secret mission for the government "jumping out of airplanes". Spare me. It all caught up with him because he's going to the big house. Don't drop the soap, Al.

From the Dallas Morning News:

"A Collin County jury on Friday found a man guilty of hiring someone to kill his pregnant wife. Albert Jackson Sterling II was found guilty of two counts of solicitation of capital murder -- one for his wife and one for the unborn child. He was accused of trying to hire an ex-convict to kill his eight-month pregnant wife in Nov. 2006 at their Allen home.

The six-man, six-woman jury delivered their verdict this morning after six hours of deliberation over two days. When State District Judge Curt Henderson read the first guilty verdict, Mr. Sterling blew out a breath, closed his eyes and dropped his head.

Prosecutors said Mr. Sterling's motive was to be with his girlfriend and for the insurance money for his wife's death. They said he lived two lives -- one as a Christian family man and another as a single man who claimed to be a Navy SEAL and taught a marital arts class.

The sentencing hearing was scheduled to begin later this morning. Mr. Sterling could face up to life in prison for each first-degree felony charge."

She crawls!

2008-02-07T20:55:00.000-06:00

She finally figured it out. When I went to visit Ellie on Tuesday afternoon, she saw me through the window, so I waved. Then she crawled right over to the door to greet me. I just stood there and stared at her. "When did she start doing this?", I asked. Tanisha told me that she had been crawling around all morning. It's not like she's racing all over the place, but she can definitely get from Point A to Point B now without any trouble. Note to self: babyproof the house this weekend. It's so fun to watch her. Lee will put her 20 feet away from a toy and make her crawl to it. It's like our child-dog has learned a new trick so we have to make her perform it all the time.

I feel like this past weekend whizzed by at lightening speed. We were busy the whole time. My mother-in-law's friend, Fran, was in town from Chattanooga so we met them, Ben, and Elizabeth at Nick and Sam's. Ellie was a sport for about 45 minutes, and then I had to take her home. Lee owes me a steak dinner since I had to leave before we ordered... After I worked out on Saturday morning, Lee played racquetball and Ellie skipped her first February swim lesson to go to a play group with some ladies from my church . We met at the Arboretum because it was so beautiful outside. It got so hot that I was only wearing short sleeves and jeans - pretty good for February 2.

After that, Lee took care of Ellie while I went to a Junior League meeting. Last week, I found out I am going to be the Assistant Community VP for 08-09 and I'm so excited. I e-mailed some of my JL friends to tell them my news and before I did, I had a Dwight Schrute moment.... wait a second - am I the Assistant Community VP or the assistant to the Community VP? I had to look it up, but I was right the first time. We're already working on getting everything arranged for next year, so the meeting on Saturday was with the Issue Area Coordinators to staff the project chairs for the community projects for next year. Very interesting. It's going to be a great year because I already know half of the ladies I'm going to be working with and the other ones I just met are so nice.

This was one of the most uneventful Super Bowls we had in a long time. We watched the game from home and I was busy cleaning and cooking that I missed most of it, but I did get to see the last 2 minutes which was the most exciting part. I was rooting for the Giants because if my man Peyton couldn't make it to the super bowl, I was going to have to root for his brother, Eli. Monday was Ben's birthday so we all met at El Fenix for the celebration. Big #28 for Ben. And I can't believe Lent is already here. I read that this is the second earliest possible start for Lent and the next time it starts this early will be in 2320 or something crazy. Ellie and I got our ashes on Wednesday, and I've decided to give up all sweets for lent. I tried to give up Perez Hilton, but that only lasted an hour. The addiction is too strong.

I got some really sad news last week. The 20 year old sister of one of the ladies who takes care of Ellie was murdered. It's been on the news here - the sister's ex-boyfriend stabbed her and then dumped her body in a field in south Dallas and lit her on fire. I saw her Umicia last week and she was crying, but I didn't know what had happened. Then Ellie's teacher told me all about it. It's so awful and makes me sad for their family. After being gone for a week, Umicia is back at work, and she still smiles more than anyone there. I don't know how she finds the strength to be happy. So if you think about it, please say a prayer for her family.

Van Halen

2008-01-31T21:39:00.000-06:00

For those of you who though that nobody wears acid washed jeans, perms their mullet, or saves concert tee shirts from 1984... well, you'd just be wrong. You'd be totally wrong. The band - Eddie Van Halen, Alex Van Halen, and David Lee Roth - got back together for a tour this year so of course we had to go see them at the American Airlines Center on Saturday night. Interestingly, Eddie's 16 year old son, Wolfgang, took over on bass. And he did really well. Lee and I had a great time and the band sounded awesome. I didn't recognize some of the songs because they didn't play any Sammy Hagar stuff, but they did play You Really Got Me, Hot for Teacher, Panama, Eruption, Pretty Woman, Beautiful Girls (or as I like to call it, the "Schmitt's Gay" theme song), and encored with Jump. D.L.R. wore what can only be described as a matador-style outfit with an occasional top hat, Eddie wore camo pants and no shirt, and Wolfgang (who needs to join Jenny Craig with mom Valerie Bertanelli) wore all black. So much fun and great people watching. I'm now hearing that Led Zeppelin may be getting back together for a tour...

We had a big weekend because we went to the Dallas Mavericks game on Friday night. They played the Lakers so I got to watch Kobe Bryant too. Elizabeth stayed with Ellie on Friday night and then we had an actual babysitter for Saturday night. Our neighbors have a girl who is a freshman in high school so we hired her to sit for Ellie. Lee was way more bothered by the notion of a "stranger" taking care of Ellie than I was. Since Ellie had swimming lessons earlier in the day, she was pretty tired so I think that Gracie only had to really watch Ellie for 45 minutes before she put her to bed. Pretty easy babysitting gig with that one. I can remember babysitting for this stinker boy that always hit me. But then I also had the little girls down the street who loved me because I let them stay up late and watch movies with me, so it all evened out.

Ellie can best be described by one word these days - hungry. She woke up screaming at 6AM yesterday morning because she was so hungry. I took her back to the doctor to have her eye checked again (it's red but just from a cold) and she's gained almost a pound since she was last weighed 18 days ago. She's up to 17 pounds 11 ounces. I've switched her from Phase I to Phase II foods so she's eating some meat now too. Just chicken so far, but she really likes it. Her favorite veggies are sweet potatoes and carrots, but she doesn't like green beans. Who doesn't like green beans? She also has to be standing all the time. When she gets tired, she can't pull up on her Leap Frog table and oh Lord, you'd think the world was about to end. So Lee or I help her get up there to play. She also still cannot crawl. She's just scoots all over the place army man style. I caught her trying to escape out of her room into the hall this weekend. I think she may be getting a third tooth because she's been a little cranky lately, but sleeping through the night still thankfully.

Has anyone heard about this new TV show? I'm aghast. The Baby Borrowers - "Meet the teenage couples as they embark on a fast track into parenthood. Will their relationships sustain the pressure?" So let me get this straight - some parents out there willing gave their baby to NBC to let teenagers raise it as a social experiment for a TV show?!! Is this the best the networks can do now?!! The writers strike has to end ASAP.

If you get a chance, stop by Nicole's blog and help name her baby. I voted for Molly McButter. Very cute. I would have done a name poll for Ellie, but Lee and I came up with her name when I was 12 weeks pregnant after only 5 minutes of discussion. And in other baby news, Anne Marie is set to give birth any day now. She doesn't know if it's a boy or girl and I can't wait to find out! Hopefully a girl so Ellie will have another little friend. She also doesn't have a name picked out yet. Tick tock, Anne Marie.

By the way, that murder-for-hire trial for the guy I taught aerobics with at 24 Hour Fitness started on Monday. Still so strange that I knew this guy. It's been in the newspapers and on TV. I'll let you know what happens!

She's "That Kid"

2008-01-23T21:39:00.000-06:00

Ellie has two big announcements: #1 - she is getting another tooth right next to the first one on the bottom (if you click on the picture you may be able to see it) and #2 - she figured out how to pull herself up to standing. She did it for the first time on Sunday right and we were both there for her big debut. Lee and I both cheered for her and she was so tickled to be getting applause.

When I opened Ellie's drawer at day care yesterday, I found a letter from the school nurse. It was a form letter and I assume that all the parents of all 48 infants got one yesterday. So I gave it a quick look: "Dear Concerned Parent... blah blah blah... it has come to our attention... blah blah blah... one of our infants has recently contracted pink eye." Stop. Surely they cannot be talking about my perfect, sweet Ellie?!! One of the other mothers was dropping off her little boy at the same time and read the letter. "Wow - pink eye. I think that's pretty contagious". Me laughing nervously: "Oh yeah? Um... yeah... that's what I've heard". So my little bitty 17 pound ball of joy caused the school to be canvased with "pink eye" letters leading to conjunctivitis hysteria yesterday.

Speaking of day care, there is finally another girl in Ellie's room. Until this week out of 8 babies, she had been the only girl. One boy advanced to the toddler room so a little two month old girl joined. We'll call her "Madeline Flowers" (names have been changed to protect the innocent). When I went fill out Ellie's paperwork on Monday, there was a big typed out page on the wall with the title "Madeline Flower's Typical Day" and Madeline's picture on it. Madeline's mommy had gone to the trouble of listing her schedule out minute by minute including her likes: cuddling :) and dislikes: tummy time :( as well as the optimal angle to hold the bottle when feeding her and how best to swaddle her. This made me feel a little guilty because when I dropped Ellie off the first day, all I told her teachers was to feed her if she got hungry. Somehow, she has survived. There is another little girl in the adjoining room, but she and Ellie don't have much in common. She's 2 months younger and 10 pounds heavier so the ladies call her "Pork Chop". Pork Chop can't sit up and just sort of rolls around, so Ellie spends her days with Simon, Tanner, Cooper, and Grayson. She's not going to know what to do when she graduates to the toddler room in a few months and there are little girls everywhere. She takes her "class photo" tomorrow and I can't wait to get that up on the blog.

We had a really nice weekend. On Friday night, Lee and I went to dinner with Elizabeth. We ate at one of our favorite sushi places and Ellie didn't make a peep the whole time we were there. On Saturday, Ellie had a swim lesson and then I worked out while she stayed in the kids place. I really wanted to get something to wear to Jenny's wedding shower so all of us went shopping in the afternoon. It was there that I overheard the #1 thing I don't like to hear while I'm shopping: from the woman in the dressing room next to me to the salesgirl ,"Excuse me - this size two is a little big. Could you bring me a zero?". And while you're at it, could you please bring me a tent? Seriously - they should round up all the people who wear a size zero and make them shop someplace else.

As I said, Jenny had a wedding shower on Saturday night and it was really nice. Roger Staubach was there because he's a friend of the family. Since Lee grew up in Dallas in the 1970's, he was a huge fan. Staubach was sort of a football god around here. I can't remember any athletes I idolized as a kid. I liked Mary Lou Retton because she's from my dad's hometown and I liked Troy Aikman because I thought he was cute, but that was about it. Anyway, Ol' Rog was there and Lee refused to take a picture with him. I was going to walk by and casually snap one for the blog, but was afraid I was going to get busted. Roger seems pretty nice so I doubt he would have gone all Sean Penn on me and stomped my camera, but still that may have been annoying for him. Maybe he'll be at Jenny's wedding so Lee can take his 8X10 glossy for an autograph then.

Something weird did happen at the party, however. The hostess had a buffet of Mexican food set up in the dining room. I made a plate, walked out of the room, stopped, and looked back over my shoulder to see if Lee was following me. I heard, "Oh my gosh! This looks so yummy!", and turned my head back around to see some random woman taking a taquito off my plate. I just stood there. As she went to bite it, a younger girl (found out later it was her daughter) screamed "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!!!" The woman looked up at me, jumped as if I had scared the daylights out of her and threw the taquito back down on the plate. "Well, go ahead and take it now", I said. Then she freaked out and ran off saying "no, no, no - I'm sorry - sorry, sorry!". I can't figure out if she thought I was wait staff or what.

I hit some after Christmas sales on Sunday and got Ellie a few outfits from my favorite kids store, Janie and Jack. I got CUTE stuff for next fall and winter. It looks huge because it's for 18-24 months, but I guess that's how big she'll be. Hard to imagine.

Stay tuned for the next blog because I will have a full Van Halen report for everyone!! That's right - it's this weekend and we are e-x-c-i-t-e-d.

Cowboys Downfall

2008-01-22T13:38:00.000-06:00

his is really making me laugh today. I don't know if any of you have seen the movie Downfall, but it's a movie about the last 48 hours of Hitler's life and it takes place in his bunker. I think it was nominated for an academy award for best foreign film. Anyway, someone got creative after the Cowboys lost to the Giants....

Click here.

Bye, Bye Pink Eye

2008-01-17T20:54:00.000-06:00

So I've been a little off my blogging game. But I'm still trying to keep up with that New Year's resolution which was to blog at least once a week. I don't like waiting until almost the next weekend to blog because I almost forget everything that happened the weekend before. But of course I could not forget what happened last weekend because Ellie came down with pink eye. Pink eye. I mean really - what the hell else could she pick up? She's just one lice infestation and a ringworm attack away from a white trash infection trifecta. When I picked her up from day care on Thursday her eyes were all gunky and got worse on Friday. She stayed in the isolation room on Friday and went to the doctor that afternoon. Sure enough - conjunctivitis. They also weighed her and even though she is eight months now, she's still not back up to what she weighed at six months before she got sick. The doctor isn't concerned because she is gaining back the weight - it's just slow. She had to miss her swimming lesson on Saturday because the doctor said the chlorine would have irritated her eyes.

Ellie's big trick now is that she can wave bye bye. She does it all the time - in the car, to random people she sees in the grocery store, and even while she's eating. As I was putting her to bed tonight, she was still waving bye bye. And the look on her face is so funny. It's like, "Oh my gosh! My hand is moving! Look at that! I'm making it move!". Lee and I think it's the best trick ever. We never get sick of it. I think I've told everyone at work five times so they might be sick of it. She's so smart. She's still not officially crawling, but she can move. She'll dig her elbows into the ground and pull forward. She can get onto her hands and knees, but can't move out of that position.

I'm a little disappointed that I only took one picture in the last week. That's absolutely poor. But I didn't really want to take any pictures of Ellie because she looked like Dom Woganowski out of There's Something About Mary. Lee and I went to the Terps Ball and President's dinner on Saturday night while my parents babysat and that's where I took my one picture with my sister-in-law (and Ellie's godmother) Elizabeth:

We did make good on my other resolution which was to get out more. It was so beautiful this weekend that we were able to take Ellie on two long walks. It got so cold today though. I've been used to the the 70's, but I don't think it made it out of the 30's all day today. I try to keep a hat on Ellie, but she rips it right off. More pictures this weekend for sure!

My life in Dilbert

2008-01-08T16:40:00.001-06:00

I usually stay away from work stories on the blog, but this made me laugh. In order to be more "green", my company ordered everybody in the company (over 1500 plus I'm sure a few for clients) green coffee mugs. The idea is that we'll use the coffee mug to replace the all of the styrofoam coffee cups we keep throwing into the landfills.

About 2 hours after I got mine, we received a message telling us to return the coffee mugs because the paint on them contains dangerously high levels of lead (the official word is that the printing was not as high quality as they would like, but I tried to scratch it off with a knife and it wouldn't come off so I'm saying lead). Now they're going to "recycle" all of these mugs. And yes, they are made in China.

The 2008 Resolutions

2008-01-07T21:17:00.000-06:00

“Another year, another chance”. That was the saying I saw written on a church’s message board when I was driving last week. I thought that was a really good way to look at the new year – another chance for me to be my best and make it a great year.

Here are some of my resolutions:

1. Quit obsessing about how much weight I need to loose.
2. Loose the last 10 pounds by April 1.
DAMN IT – See #1
3. Be outside more and inside less.

4. Blog at least once a week (I would say twice, but I don't think that's going to happen).

5. Stay in better contact with friends and family members through phone calls and e-mail.

Ellie’s resolutions are:

1. Quit getting upset when mom leaves the room.
2. Learn to crawl.
3. Willfully eat solid foods.
4. Sleep through the night – every night.
5. Learn to swim…

And that’s what she did this weekend! Ellie can check off Resolution #5 because she had her first swimming lesson on Saturday and loved it. I thought she might like the water because she has so much fun splashing during her bath, and I was right. She kicked and splashed around and even stuck her face in the water by herself three times. I don’t know if she meant to do it, but she didn’t mind it. At the end of the lesson, the instructor told me she thought Ellie had done well enough for me to dunk her. So I did and she didn’t cry at all. I think she was a little shocked, but she was back to smiling in a few seconds. The best part about swimming is that Ellie went home and took a two hour nap. We’ll be continuing lessons through February. I think it's really important to introduce kids to the water early so they don't freak out later.

While Ellie napped, I boxed up all of our Christmas decorations and then I made good on my Resolution #3 by taking Ellie outside to play in the yard because the weather was so nice this weekend. She’s constantly grabbing the leaves and grass and shoving them in her mouth so I have to watch that. When Lee got home from working, we went on a long walk. She’s thisclose to crawling. She’s scooting around, but just can’t coordinate her arm and leg movement. Other big news is she’s officially cutting her first tooth. It’s on the bottom left side. She’s drooling all over herself and will chew on anything you give her. She didn’t have anything to chew on during her walk on Saturday so she took off her sock and gnawed that. It stayed really nice on Sunday so took a picnic lunch to the park.

She was getting a little spoiled (I know – spoiled? Ellie? Never) at bedtime because I was getting her to go to sleep before I put her in the crib. If she would wake up, I would pick her up and rock her back to sleep. After I did that for an hour one night, I told myself things were going to have to change. So now if she wakes up when I’m putting her down, she’s has to get herself back to sleep. Last night that took about 30 minutes. I go in and pat her and tell her it’s okay at 15 minute intervals, but I hate hearing her cry so we just turn up the TV. Just kidding. She also woke up twice last night, but got herself back to sleep both times and we didn't have to go in there. I think some of that may be her teething because I had to give her some Tylenol on Friday night to get her back to sleep. But the way... as you can see on the right, Ellie can hold her own bottle now. Holding her own bottle + drinking formula = very happy mommy.

Ellie actually is doing a little better with the solids and ate about ½ jar of peas and ½ jar of bananas on Sunday. My hope that she does continually better on her Resolution #3 and we have less faces like this when she eats:

By the way, my friend Whitney just started her own blog, so send her some love!

2007 Wrap Up

2007-12-31T21:50:00.000-06:00

I can't believe it's the last day of 2007. I can't even remember what we did for last New Year's Eve, but I imagine that since I was pregnant it involved no alcohol and lots of sleeping. We spent this new years eve at home again... hitting the town on NYE just doesn't sound as fun as it once did (especially since you're pretty much required to stay up until midnight). For those of you who have been following along, I've been downloading all of my blog entries into a book that I'm going to have printed. So you could look at this post as the last page of my first blog book.

Christmas was a big whirlwind of activity. I'd like to say it was "fun", but I think a better way to describe it would be "hectic". And I don't like saying that. Christmas should be about Jesus, family, and friends and not be a giant headache, but there's just so much stress that it creates. Next year, I'd like to to it totally different, but it will probably be the same. Wears. Me. Out.

Our holiday weekend started off with the arrival of Mimi and Judy, Lee's grandmother and aunt, from Chattanooga. Lee and Ellie picked them up from the airport while I stayed home and wrapped gifts. We had a family Christmas dinner with Lee's family and my family on Sunday after a brief power outage that nearly sent the party packing to our house. For Christmas Eve, we went to 6:00 services with Lee's family and then went back to his parents house to open gifts. This meant that Ellie didn't get to bed until after 10:00 so she was sort of cranky on Christmas. Amidst all of this, Mimi got really, really sick (with Ellie's previous ailment) and had to be taken to the emergency room around midnight on Christmas Eve because she couldn't keep anything down. She's doing much better now. Elizabeth, Tee, and Beth all came down with it on Christmas Day. Luckily, we avoided round two of stomach bug hell.

On Christmas, we woke up, ate blueberry waffles, and then opened gifts. Lee gave me a necklace and a wallet and he got VAN HALEN tickets. Woo hoo! That's right - we're going to rock our socks off at the January 26th show. I also made him a photo book of Ellie and gave him Seasons 1 and 2 of It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia on DVD. If you haven't seen that show, it's completely ridiculous and hilarious. After the celebration at our house, we went to my parents house for more presents and Christmas dinner. That's where Ellie received her favorite gift.

Ellie got a big red wagon. I don't know how she knew it was hers, but she squealed when she saw it and was totally tickled when she got to ride around in it. You can tell by looking at the picture that she loves it. I made my parents calendars on Shutterfly, which seemed to be a big hit.

In Ellie news, she has not eaten solid food since December 12. That's when she first got sick with her sore throat and then came down with the stomach flu. It kills me, because she was really liking solid food and now we're back to square one. I try every night to get her to eat oatmeal or veggies and nothing. She sits there with her lips pursed trying to keep every bit of it out of her mouth. She can actually cry with her mouth closed now (which is what she does when she gets tired of me trying to feed her). The doctor told me to keep trying and she'll eventually like it again. However, the good news is that she takes formula now. You know what this means? Good-bye boob and no more pumping! I'm so excited. I have a little guilt about it, but it's just getting too difficult. I'm still nursing her morning, noon and night so at least she's getting some of the good stuff. Her mid-morning, mid-afternoon, and evening feedings are formula. I think that making it 7 months and 2 weeks without buying any formula is pretty good!

So that's the end of our 2007 story. I wanted to end this post by reminiscing about what I'll remember most about 2007, but after the blur of pregnancy, the only thing I can think of is Ellie. Our family was so blessed this year with the her addition that I can't imagine that anything in 2008 could top it.