The Underpants Caper

Oh, the joys of motherhood!! The last couple weeks Ella has completely regressed in her potty training. The child who was at one time 100% potty trained, day AND night, is now daily pooping and watering (another Ella-ism - "Mom! I gotta do my waters!") her pants. ARGH! So I decided to resurrect the potty prize. I told her that if she had 5 days of clean panties, she could get this Princess Memory game she wanted. So this afternoon she was doing pretty good. She kept telling me she was clean, and we kept up the encouragment and hoorays everytime she went in the potty. As I went to go clean up the bathroom this evening, I looked in the trashcan, and lo and behold, a pair of wet purple tinkerbell panties. Now she's not only STILL having 'accidents' (I'm not totally convinced that's what they are) but she is covering her tracks....

Mollypop

Molly is getting so big! She is such a sweet baby. She hasn't started to crawl yet, but she rolls all over the place to get where she wants to be. She loves watching her big sister. Ella loves to sing "If you're happy and you know it" when Molly starts to fuss, because she knows that will make her smile. As soon as Molly wakes up from nap, Ella runs up there and hops on the crib saying, "Did you wake up, Molly? Did you wake up?" Molly loves to jabber (loudly) and blow raspberries. She is much more serious then her sister is. We just had their pictures taken, and we didn't get a single smile out of her! She loves taking walks, and of course, being held. When you shake your head at her, she shakes her head back at you and smiles. She has also started the wonderful habit of screaming as soon as I am out of view. But she is a wonderful baby, and we feel very blessed to have her!

Our funny girl

Ella has been growing up so fast! She is talking so much and you can really start to see the wheels turning in her head.
In an attempt to get her to eat better dinners and help clean up, we told her that if she ate a good dinner and put her dishes in the sink for two weeks, she could get this Princess doll she has been wanting. Now every time she finds something she wants she tells me, "Eat good dinners, then get this one, okay Mommy?" Why do I get the idea that she missed the point somewhere?
One of her latest Ella-isms: She calls church 'the Jesus store'. At least she knows why we are there!
She is also very aware of "nakedness" these days. She is very quick to point out everytime she sees someone without a shirt on. Today we were in the parking lot, and there was a small family next to us getting into their car. She told me, "Look! That boy has a daddy, just like Ella has a daddy." Then she told me, "Why is his Mommy nakey?" (She wasn't exactly naked, just a very large woman with a very small tube top on). I pretended I didn't hear the question, as they were still within earshot. Unfortunately, this being such an important observation of hers, she decided to ask much louder. "His Mommy is nakey, Mommy!!" So I gave the lady a small smile and a nod, and got the heck out of there. It was almost as bad as the time she informed me that the lady next to us had "Crazy hair". Gotta love her!!

Ella-isms

For those of you who know our three year old well, you know that she uses her own words for quite a few things. As cute as we think it is, it usually takes a bit of translation to get her point across. So here it is, installment number one of what I like to call Ella-isms.

music = nooskit
bracelet = swayswip
cereal = chadoo's
excuse me = noosk me
chips = pizza (I don't understand that one)
All colors are called by their corresponding princess, or in some cases, Disney character. They are as follows:
yellow = Belle
blue = Cinderella
pink = Aurora
purple = Jasmine
white = Snow White
red = Lightning McQueen
green = Shrek
brown or black = Tarzan
orange = Lion King
And just for clarification, she does know her colors (I promise!) I think she thinks she needs to clear it up for Mom!

The Princess

Question: When do you know when the Princess thing has gone too far?
Answer: When people ask what Ella's name is and she says, "My name is Princess".

Yesterday after she was supposed to be in bed, she crept down the stairs into the living room and said, "Did the Princess wake up?" Ah! We're in trouble!

Niagra Falls

We were able to stop at Niagra Falls on our way to Albany also. What an experience! We had so much fun. It is a lot more impressive in real life then it is in pictures. You can see the mist and hear the pounding of the water from miles away. We went on the Cave of the Winds tour. They deck you out in yellow rain slickers and send you up on a platform that takes you almost right into the falls. There is a sign before you go up saying that your clothing may get damp. That was an understatement! A better sign would have been Beware, you will get soaking wet. Water was pouring over the deck, and spraying all over. It was really cool. But as we tried to get closer, Ella started screaming and hanging onto me for dear life, so we decided we had gotten close enough. As soon as we were done though, she said- Wasn't that so fun Mommy? Did we get all wet? It was pretty cute. I guess she wasn't too traumatized by the whole thing!

Sacred Grove

Well we just got back from our vacation to New York to visit my family, and we had a wonderful time! We got to see a lot of neat things. Todd and I didn't realize that we would drive right through Palmyra on our way there. We saw an exit for Hill Cumorah and decided to drive by. While we were there the sweet missionaries told us to go to the Sacred Grove if we had a chance. It was just down the road. So as soon as Ella "went potty in the Jesus store", we drove over to the temple and the Sacred Grove. It was such a wonderful experience. It happened to be Sunday, so we took some time to walk around and think about the amazing thing that had taken place right there. It really strengthened and reinforced my testimony in Jesus Christ and Joseph Smith. The Spirit was so strong and it was a beautiful day. What a wonderful unexpected addition to our vacation!