Life With Ella

Here is a video of Ella singing “Tomorrow” from Annie. As she was singing, she was looking through her Dora book and she became very distracted when she saw the grumpy old troll. The last part is from a singing session about 2 minutes earlier that was cut short by Bug barking.

First, I need to write about a milestone.  Ella will be 2 in 10 days.  Sunny and I decided to finally eliminate her before bed bottle.  We switched over to giving her water about a month ago so now we just had to switch to a sippy cup.  Tonight when I was putting Ella to bed, she asked for a “ba ba” (bottle).  I told her that we were going to switch to a big girl cup.  She was very upset and screamed “ba ba – you want a ba ba” for about a minute or two.  I explained to her that big girls like Stella and Izze take sips of water at night from a big girl cup.  She lied there for a few minutes regaining her composure and all of a sudden looked at me and said, “You want a big girl cup, I want a big girl cup like Stella” and that was it.  We’ll see what happens tomorrow night, but she took a few sips of water tonight and I think we’re on our way.

I took the next video this afternoon.  After My Gym, Ella had lunch and then we went for a walk.  She fell asleep in her stroller, so I went downtown.  I went into a toy store and bought a very cool bubble machine – Uncle Michael may want this one.  After Ella woke up and we went to the carousel and everything, we came home and heard a sweet knock on the door.  It was Stella and Juliet.  I put Ella out in the hallway with them and told them that I was going to come out with a surprise.  Here it is…

Here is a little video of Ella’s day beginning from going to music class and ending in a wagon with Juliet.

Here we are late at night. We love you. Happy birthday. We hope this year brings you everything that you wish for. Much much love, Lauren and Sunny

Today is one of those days that I will remember for the rest of my life. I was around 3, Jesse was around 5 and he told me that my mom just gave birth to a baby girl named Frank, as in Frankenstein. I thought I was the coolest girl on the block. The baby was really named Jamie and I still was the coolest girl on the block because of so how amazing Jamie is. Today is Jamie’s birthday. Ella will now sing for her AJ.

Today was a beautiful day. Sunny, Ella and I took a walk down the Embarcadero and ended up at the Ferry Building for lunch. While we were waiting for our food, I gave Ella my phone which had one of Jamie’s (AJ) songs playing on it. The song is “The Truth About Suffering” and Ella loves it. I caught Ella really getting into the music on this video.

Here is the news clip that I was talking about the other night. We went to the Opera at AT&T Park. The clip, which is 30 seconds shows us sitting lined up. First is Helen holding Stella, then me holding Juliet, then Sunny holding Ella. We’re on it close to the end of the segment. It’s a sweet memory to have. The audio is pretty soft, but we’re not talking anyway.

Ella went over to Stella and Juliet’s house this morning to do some painting. This was Ella’s first time painting and she loved it. She painted with her left hand and her right hand and the jury is still out about whether she is going to be a lefty or a righty. After the painting fun, Stella and Juliet came over to our house to watch Yo Gabba Gabba (they love it too). They watched the show and danced their little hearts out. We split up for lunch and naps and then met up in the afternoon at Borders. Tonight, Becca came over for dinner and then we all went over to the ballpark to watch the opera Samson and Delilah. It was a free night at the ballpark – they had a live feed of the opera on the jumbotron. It was a cold and windy night – we didn’t stay for long but it was really cool. Stella loved it so much that she stayed with Ron. Becca, Sunny, Helen, Juliet, Ella and I left together. Ron has pictures on his camera from tonight so I’ll get some from him and post them tomorrow. Sunny and I just watched the local 11:00 news and there was a cool shot of Helen/Stella, me/Juliet and Sunny/Ella all sitting in a row and watching the opera. Another beautiful busy day and night.

Below is a video of the painting and dancing. I really like it.