My walking girl

Had to post this cute video of Ellie walking :)

13 Months with Ellie

So I am a day late...I wasn't sure how long I would be doing these updates...but I figured I would keep posting them as long as I can so that I remember when Ellie does everything! 

 

Development

Big month - Ellie is now walking!  It started a few months ago with her pulling herself up on things, then that turned into cruising on furniture which turned into walking around holding our hands to eventually letting go and walking on her own.  She is still a little hesitant to walk without holding on to things, but she can do about 20 steps in a row without holding on to anything.  It is so funny to see her little body walking on its own.  

She currently has 6 teeth and I think she is starting to get the other ones on the bottom.  I am amazed at how much she can understand now. I will tell her to "go get a book to read" or "give Winnie that toy" and she will go ahead and do it.  We are working on teaching her where her nose, head, eyes, etc are.  

Ellie is really into books now. Like read me 10 books in a row or else I will freak out.  Her favorites are The Very Hungry Caterpillar and anything with Sophie the Giraffe in it!

Feeding

She is totally off "baby food" as of a month or so ago.  She eats almost anything we eat.  Her favorites are cheese, raspberries, and peanut butter toast. We started giving her whole milk this month in sippy cups and she seems to like it.  It is tough getting her to eat vegetables at meals so I usually try to give those to her first before anything else.  She sure does love to feed her food to Winnie and food has started flying off the high chair!

Since we started to introduce whole milk she has stopped nursing as much.  Right now she is only nursing when she gets up and usually a little bit before naps and then right before bed.  I have stopped pumping in the morning and I am down to 1 pumping session at work and plan to phase that out in a week or so.  I have noticed my breasts are not nearly as full feeling in the morning when I wake up, so that is nice.   It seems like my period returning coincided with the introduction of cow's milk.  I still send 2 servings of breast milk with Ellie to my mom's house and I will continue to do that until my freezer stash is gone.  I think I have about 100 ozs left.  

Vacation

We took Ellie to Puerto Rico this month!  My cousin and his wife moved there recently and we couldn't pass up the free lodging and free (with points) flights.  It was tricky keeping Ellie happy on the flight because she did not want to nap and was so overstimulated by everything.  She had to reach "freak out status" before she essentially passed out on me.  Luckily freak out status only lasted about 15 minutes.  

It wasn't easy vacationing with a 1 year old, but it was a lot easier since my cousin's wife used to nanny and doesn't currently have a  job or kids so all she wanted to do was play with Ellie!  It was so nice having an extra set of hands!  She watched Ellie 2 nights while Brian and I got to go out to eat alone together - such a nice treat!  It was also fun to play with Ellie in the pool and at the beach.  I was nervous about how naps on the go would be, but with the warm weather she just fell asleep in her stroller whenever she was tired. 

We drove up to the rain forest and took a hike through it and that was a lot of fun.
All in all I am glad we went, but it wasn't the easiest age to travel with!   It is tough because she doesn't understand reasoning yet like "no Ellie we can't move out of our airplane seat because we are taking off" stuff like that.  

Christmas
Christmas was a lot different this year!  Last year Ellie was only 1 month old and it was all sort of a daze. This year we were still busy, but at least we were getting some sleep!  We drove down to Brian's family in Pennsylvania then celebrated with my family when we were back up in Mass.  

We didn't buy Ellie many gifts because she just had her birthday and we knew she would get gifts from others.  Our house is now jam packed with toys!  It is a good thing, but I quickly took half of them up to the attic so that we can introduce them through out the year.  Half of them were a little too advanced for her at this point anyway.  

Overall it was a great Christmas.  It was nice having some more days off to spend time with Ellie. 

So...I guess I am in the 2 week wait!

So I posted a few weeks ago that I got my first postpartum period and that was pretty surprising.  Well Brian and I figured we weren't going to let a cycle go to waste so we did our best to hit ovulation timing if it happened to occur this month. 

I didn't temp this month because my sleep is so erradic with Ellie and I didn't have a working thermometer at home!  I did monitor my cervical mucus and it did get quite watery between days 17-19. (side note, on the month we conceived Ellie I O'd on CD19).  

So who knows.  I am trying not to think too much about it (although you know how hard that can be!), but rather just be grateful that my cycles started up on their own.  I really didn't expect them too at all really, and even less so with still breastfeeding.  

I plan to test on January 1st. 

1st Birthday Party!

Ok so Chickie really lit a fire under my butt to get this post done!  I had so much fun planning Ellie's birthday party so I wanted to make sure to share the pictures!  I am posting so many so I hope you can see all of them!

So I think I mentioned previously that Ellie's 1st birthday party was Teddy Bear Picnic themed.  I got a lot of ideas from Pinterest!  I was able to borrow decorations or do things inexpensively.  The cake was really my only "big ticket" item.  

We only had family over for the party since our house is a bit tight for an inside party, so we had about 25 people total including kids. 

My mom has collected teddy bears over the years and decorates her house with them at Christmas time, so I borrowed about 15 bears from her and put them all over the house:

 I had the picture I took of Ellie for the invitation and blew it up to a poster size from snapfish and then mounted it on a canvas - cost about $12 total and now we can hang the picture up somewhere in the house

 This was more for the parents...but this bear got into the scotch ;)

 I bought helium balloons and tied them to bears on the front porch to greet guests!

 I printed my favorite pictures of Ellie from each month and hung them on the staircase

 Here is the chalkboard that I used for all my bump updates!

 

 Ellie's high chair with balloons

 This took forever to do but it was cheap and it turned out really good in the end!  Just streamers and balloons tied to the ceiling!

 The family and some bear friends under the decorations!

I bought as many bear shaped foods as I could (gummy bears, teddy grahams, etc) and put them out in bowls

 Ah the cake!  I love how the cake came out!  It wasn't a huge cake but I think it is so fun!  Look at that bear family having a picnic!

 Ellie's smash cake

 

Another view of the cake, I also made little snickers bar cars that were driven by teddy grahams!

 Ellie wasn't quite sure what to make of the cake!

 And she may have cried a little....

Then we opened some gifts!

 Such a cute hat...too bad it didn't last long on her head!

 

This is my favorite picture from the party, Ellie and her cousins!

Ellie had a fun day and I had fun planning the party!  Who knows what next year's theme will be!

She's Baaaaaack

Something surprising happened yesterday.  I got my period.  This is surprising because:
A) I am still nursing Ellie about 4 times a day
B) Without medication I haven't gotten my period on my own in about 14 years. 

So you can imagine my surprise and also excitement.  I am trying not to get too excited thinking that having Ellie "fixed" me and my problems (annovulatory PCOS) but this is definitely a good thing.  I actually logged into my Fertility Friend account on my phone and started a "cycle" wow, that is so weird to say.  I might be cycling.  I know getting my period doesn't necessarily equate to ovulating but at least it is a step in the right direction.  The idea of possibly conceiving another child without having to go back to the RE is exciting, but I am trying not to get too ahead of myself.