Our little Sweetheart

I had to take Ellie in to the Dr the 28th for our first ever sick child visit. She has had a rash on her arm for over a week that I was watching and it never got worse or better or grew or bugged her or anything but I figured after about 10 days I should get it looked at. Of course the day of the apt I looked at it and it had started to get a bit better like it always does when you go to the Dr. Anyways, they are thinking she just came in contact with something that irritated her skin and since it had started to heal finally we just needed to continue to wait it out. They did weigh and measure her though and at 11.5 months she weighs in at 20 lbs 12 oz and is 29.5 inches long - with her neck scrunched up cause she was nervous.
So Ellie is normally WAY to busy to have time for little things like giving hugs and kisses, the closest we normally get to these things is a pat on the back when we get her out of bed. There have been a few days that we get kinda lucky though, about a month ago I was having a stressed out day and when I got Ellie up from her nap I think she could just tell because for the next ten minutes she just sat on my lap and gave me big hugs and would turn and give me kisses both the real kind and nose kisses (butterfly kisses, she prefers to give that kind). Isn't she such a sweetie, it really made my day and was exactly what I needed.
We normally just throw Elliette in the shower with us because it is just easier and faster so the other day Ellie and I were taking a shower and I had just washed the towels and forgot to put the washcloth back in the shower so I was just using my fingers to rub the soap around and clean out her ears. She was kind of fighting me because she wanted to be playing instead of getting clean so I was holding her while I did it so she couldn't get away as easy. While I was cleaning her ears she used her little hands and pushed my head to the side a bit and before I knew it there were little fingers in my ear scratching around; it made me laugh quite a bit but was a little weird cause those little fingers can go deeper into your ears than you think. She also likes to help you scratch. If you have an itch and she sees you scratching it she will hurry over and start scratching you and then look at you and smile for approval.

Etsy band wagon

I have posted a few things (4 to be exact) today so keep looking.
So Mandy and I have jumped on the etsy band wagon lately. We just started our little shops so don't judge that they don't look all pretty like the others but Mandy is selling her jewelry and baby headbands and flowers that she makes, they are way cute. My shop is going to be a little bit of whatever but for right now I have started with the washcloth baby bibs that my mom taught me how to make, seriously the best bibs ever - I will have a few more bibs up by the end of the week! Anyways, if you want, check them out littlemotivations.etsy.com (mine) and soprettyz.etsy.com (Mandy's)

Ta-da, sand box, mittons, and babysitters

I know I post a lot about Elliette but she is just growing so much so fast! I would have more pics of me but I am the one behind the camera and well Ellie loves the camera and looking at pictures but she just hasn't learned how to take photos yet so till then they will mostly be of her. Oh, and sorry this is a long one but I didn't want to post 10 times today and I already posted a few so I thought I would throw a few in together.
Elliette cracks me up on a daily basis, she really is just the happiest thing with such a good sense of humor. Lately she throws her arms out to the side to express a few things. She uses it for a ta-da moment (and every once in a whil we get a little "ah-da" that goes with it), she uses it to tell me she is all done with something, she uses it when it takes me a minute to go get her after nap time with a face that looks like she is wondering where I have been, and my favorite lately was the other day when we were trying to teach her how to go down the stairs and Justin was showing her she threw her arms out and had her mouth in a big O shape and wide eyes looking at him like "what?" it made me laugh so hard.
I took her to the playground the other night to give Justin some quiet time to study and give Ellie and I some fresh air. While we were there we used the swings (always a good time) and then just played in the sand. I started to cover her legs in sand and then tickle her little toes that were poking out which was fun for a while and then she decided that she wanted all of her legs covered and started pulling sand all over her legs and helping me cover her all the way up to her diaper. Thankfully not much of the sand went in the diaper and we had a good time.
So, I am not sure what was going on the other day but Elliette's hands were chilly so I grabbed these little play mittons and put them on her. After about 10 minutes I figured her fingers had warmed up so I tried to take the mittons off and she just started whining until I put the mittons back on. She crawled around with these mittons on (it was pretty funny to watch on the tile) all day long, thats my little wierdo.
There is a girl in Justin's class that wanted to come and play with Ellie and said she would babysit for us so we took her up on that a few weeks ago. I don't know if Ellie just knew that we were leaving her or what but she absolutely freaked out and was completely panicked, it was hilarious. I have never seen her so scared ever and she was just crying and shaking and slawing her way up into Justin's arms. We sat with her for about 15 minutes and slowly she would come around and playa little with Tiffany until she felt a little more comfortable and then we snuck out. The next Sat. Justin went and got Tiffany again and I had Ellie sitting in her little seat eating a sandwich; when Justin walked in she was so excited and jumped up and down smiling, as soon as Justin moved to the side and she saw Tiffany she sunk down in her chair and just glared at her. As soon as Justin got close she grabbed him and basically crawled up his arms until he held on and she started crying and shaking again. This time though it only took about 5 minutes for her to warm up enough for us to sneak out. She did start crying again when we got home but was good while we were gone. I don't know when this extreme shyness took over but wow.

Walking, already!

So Ellie has been trying to walk around for about 3-4 weeks now and has been doing really well. She wouldn't walk between Justin and I very well because she had to keep stopping and making sure that we were both clapping and that would throw off her balance. She did the best when she was just off doing her thing and not really paying attention to the fact she wasn't holding onto anything anymore. It was funny though cause she walked the farthest with a bottle in her mouth, Justin called it her liquid courage. Anyways, on the 24th we went from dabbling around with the walking to deciding that was her main means of getting around. I can't believe how quickly she picked it up and how much more quickly the house gets torn apart, and how fast she surprisingly is even though she just started. The video is of her about a week and a half before she decided to walk everywhere, she does still walk with her arms up and waddles like in the video, she is still working on making more smooth movements.

New to us Stroller

There is an awesome website here found at http://blog.cacoastpartentsgiveback.com where people and business donate new and used items to be given to others who need them and we won a new to us double stroller. Elliette wanted to try it out when we got it.

Anyone good with cars?

So we have been getting absolutely horrible gas mileage lately and I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on how to improve it since gas prices are outrageously high. We have changed the oil, the air filter, the pcv valve and I am thinking about trying a fuel cleaner and replacing the fuel filter. We do live in an extremely hilly area so I know that is going to knock the mpg down but I would like to get over 10mpg if possible. So, any cheap ideas on how to fix that?

Our ok 4th of July

So the 4th of July out here is normally pretty sweet, or so we hear. The city decided to cancel the fireworks over the bay due to lack of funds, I totally understand that reason but my question is why didn't they get private donors or businesses - that would have been great marketing even to do a little show. Not only did they cancel the show they banned you from being able to do your own fireworks and claimed it was for public safety concerns and if you were caught you would be fined $1,000. How lame is that, a 4th of July with absolutely NO fireworks. Anyways, I could vent on that for a while so I will just let it go - we did go downtown for the parade that morning and I was SO excited because I really love parades (almost as much as fireworks) so I made sure we left about 1 hr before the parade started so we could get a good viewing spot. Turns out we didn't have to leave that early, but who knew. The parade started out well with some military men and women and police officers -the usual - and then it seemed like we had to wait about 3-5 minutes between each group/float/band or whatever that came through and so by the end even I had lost interest and I am one easy person to please when it comes to things like that so we left early and looked at a seal out in the water instead. - by the way the bow and bracelet are complements of Mandy, thanks!
Since we didn't have fireworks that night, aarrggghhh, we went to the park and just looked out into the bay for a little and then ran to the store for some milk. While there we noticed that they were having a really good sale on their soda so we thought we would stock up so Justin wouldn't have to keep buying them out of the machines (so expensive). We were picking out his sodas and this slightly overweight guy came up and told us that everything we could buy in that isle was totally bad for you and that we really should not be teaching our child to drink sodas because it is really bad for them as well and then he sighed really heavy and ran off. I had to giggle though because we were like the only people in the store who didn't have alcohol in their cart and I don't even drink soda. It was pretty funny and there were no witty comebacks because it was really unexpected and he ran off really quick. So that was our ok 4th of July.