The kids recently had a long weekend and we spent one day at the zoo with my sister in law and her 3 kiddos. As always we have fun anytime we are together. The battery died in my camera so not too many pictures. We are so fortunate to live near one of the top zoo's in the country. There are so many fun extra things to do at our zoo by the time we got around to seeing animals it was so packed we gave up and left. Fortunately we are members and can go back anytime.

She has learned many new English words and often repeats them. She has at least 10 or so words she uses independently and appropriately. The cutest thing ever is in the morning when she first sees someone she will say, "hey, mornin' " . She also says nite nite, bye bye, drink, the appropriate potty words, tickle, mine (which must be a part of every two year olds language bank!), eat, baby, love you, mama (which is said 100's of times a day), dada, go, stop and probably a few others.

She is doing great with pottying and is almost going pee totally independently but still needs help after #2. She is the type to get a routine down and she does it the same way EVERY time!
Yell out ma with a look of worry and grab crotch. As soon as she has my attention run to bedroom. Put Princess Potty seat down, stand on it, turn room light on, lift seat back up, sit on potty, reach for toilet paper roll, roll out a little handful and wait. All done! Hand ma the toilet paper, lean over and all clean. Then she must help me clean the potty!

I recently started back to work in a new position at the hospital. You may all recall  I am a nurse as well as mom, wife, etc. and I started back in a new position as the Coordinator of all the community classes offered by the hospital. It is the perfect job for me, it's PT, very flexible and family friendly. The only problem was the timing to start was bad. I wasn't ready and Ellery wasn't quite ready either. We are so fortunate that her grandparents and dad are able to watch her while I work so we never have to leave her with a stranger. She is doing pretty well with it but she is very clingy to me at home especially if she thinks I may be leaving to go somewhere.

She also had her first Drs appt and it went very well. She is not delayed at all physically and the Dr. was quite impressed with her. No concerns and we will just treat her as a healthy patient unless one day something comes up. For those of you who may not know, Ellery was a Special Needs adoption.
Basically her "need" was growth delay. She was very low on growth charts in some areas. Already we have measured her here and they were either measuring wrong or she has grown a good bit and she went up from the 3rd to 10th percentile but of course that still means she is a peanut ( and that is on the Chinese Girls chart, she honestly might not be on the American Charts).

Her favorite toy to play with are dolls, she loves to ride on the back of my bike. Sellers made this really cool cage out of bamboo for the back of my bike we put her in and she loves it, it is so safe she doesn't even need a helmet. Nah, just kidding. She loves to ride in the toddler seat and of course she wears a helmet. We have to protect that little peanut! It does sound like something Sellers would do though.

She adores her siblings and one of my favorite parts of each day is bedtime. She is so easy to put to bed at night and we have our little routine (you know how she likes routines ;-) ) At bedtime I say, lets go nite, nite are you ready? She nods her head yes and then goes to each and every person and gives them a hug and a kiss and says, nite nite. It warms my heart to see my 14 year old kissing his little sister cause he stopped kissing me long ago. She has taught us all so much about LOVE.
We go in her room, cut off the light (that is southern for turn off the light), grab her two blankets, turn on the stars and musical butterfly and we sit down to rock. Easy Peasy and I am treasuring every minute of rocking my last little one.




And just so I don't leave you with the idea that it is all roses and laughter here, this is a picture of her during a tantrum. She loves to throw a tantrum when I say NO and this is what she does. Drops to the floor, face down and kicks off her shoes. And momma better watch out if I am too close she will try to claw my feet. I have started ignoring the tantrums and they are much better. Less a day and shorter.
And lastly, she is a biter. BAD. Just ask her siblings. She does it out of the blue when she isn't even mad so I don't know why she is doing it. Just this week Lily had a bruise on her face from a bite and Wyatt on the arm, poor things. This is something I am so hoping she will grow out of soon.

All in all I am so happy with how things are going and I really am excited to see her hair growing out.
We are aiming for piggies for summer, right Sara? I know she is too. She keeps bringing me rubber bands to put in her hair. I try but I can't get nothin'. She wants a ponytail so bad like momma and Lily. Soon sweet girl soon.

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We have eaten every meal with Ellery since Gotcha Day and it never occurred to us she would be able to use chopsticks. We had a special family dinner for the Chinese New Year and Lily set the table very festive and gave everyone chopsticks, except Ellery. Well she was the first to be seated, reached over and took Lily's and went to town. We stood there amazed, I just couldn't believe she could do it! Of course by the end she chose another method of eating that cracked us up. Not sure why Lily gave her no chopsticks but did give her a knife.

( and by real food I meant her dinner plate, that was actually left over lunch noodles she brought to the table)

In China, Ellery did not want me to help her go to sleep.

No rocking.

No cuddling.

No holding.

No gazing into one anothers eyes.

I would try to hold her for a moment but she just wanted me to lay her in her crib and she would go to sleep.

Home and she starts letting me hold her.

Only standing.

Still no rocking.

If I try to sit in my rocking chair she freaks.

By one month I am rocking her in my rocking chair, holding her tight, gazing into her eyes.

Baby girl has let mommy in.

Her little heart has been broken so many times, passed from caregiver to caregiver.

But somehow she still allows her little heart to love someone else.

Without really knowing if this is forever or not.

Thank you baby girl for trusting me, I promise to love you forever.

Poppy and Nama gave the grandkids  a trip to GWL for Christmas. The kids love it and look forward to spending time with their cousins, aunt and uncle and of course, Poppy and Nama. Ellery LOVED it. And to think that only a month before she would not even get in a bath tub. When we first got there, she kept trying to take her bathing suit off to get in the water, it was cracking me up. I wondered why she didn't notice nobody else was naked...