Life With Ella

Not only did Ella make it through her first day of school, but she seemed like she had a really good time!  Ella woke up a few times in the middle of the night last night for no apparent reason – we think she was just excited and anxious.  Sunny and I took Ella to school this morning.  We arrived there at about 8:10.  There are 25 kids in Ella’s class so there were 25 kids and at least one parent for each kid…pretty crowded classroom.  Ella immediately went over to a clump of play-doh and started cutting it with scissors and rolling it with a rolling pin.  We gave her hugs and kisses and told her that we would be back later.  She said “OK” and then went over to another table and started drawing.  We left and couldn’t believe that this day had actually happened.  We both picked Ella up at 2:15 and she was really happy to see us but told us that she had a great day.  We don’t have that much information about the day since we couldn’t talk to the teacher (there were too many parents there) and Ella shared a little bit.  We’ll hopefully get more information as the week goes by.  We did get a really sweet e-mail from Ella’s teacher during the day with 2 pictures attached.  In the e-mail she told us that Ella was doing fine and that she colored a place mat for lunch time. Ella had the same clothes on when we picked her up which means that she didn’t have any accidents at school.  We thought she would be shy about asking for help to go to the bathroom but we were wrong.   After school, Stella came to our house to play.  Every Tuesday, Stella and Ella are going to hang out with each other.  Ella was so excited to see Stella.  They played really well together and had a great time.  Tuesdays will be really special for Ella.  Whew – we made it through the first day!Ella right before we left the house this morning.  She was like, “Hurry up – we have to go to school!”The teacher put this name tag on Ella when she walked in.Play-doh!These are the pictures that Alicia, Ella’s lead teacher sent us.  Ella’s class has 3, 4 and 5 year olds.  Check out the kid’s artwork next to Ella.When we picked up Ella, she was really eager to show us the red bicycle that she was riding during school.More activities!  This is Ella at home.  Ella and Stella watched a Blue’s Clues where they were blending colors and they said that they wanted to blend colors.  At this point in the pictures, Stella was finished painting so Ella took her brush and painted with both hands.

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is Ella’s first day of school.  She will be going from 8:30 – 2:15.  We have visited the school a few times and we’ve been talking about it with Ella.  Hopefully, she’ll have a blast at school, but you never know.  Yesterday she told Faye and Purple Debi, “mama and mommy are going to take me to school and then leave.”  That was good to hear.  We’ll soon see…

Here are 2 pictures from tonight – I wonder if she’ll look different tomorrow night.

Today we took Ella to Great America with the Kim/Arena family.  It was a really fun day for everyone.  The girls were great – they went on rides with us and rides with each other.  The weather was perfect and the environment was something that would be great to do once or twice a year.  Ella was out of her mind when she saw a Dora ride and on the ride, we saw Swiper the fox.  She kept saying, “Swiper, no swiping”.  The girls also saw Dora and Diego in “real life” (costume).  It was a really exciting and really stimulating day.  Ella passed out in the car on the way home and took a 2 hour nap…very rare these days.  We went over to Phyllis’ house for dinner tonight to hang out with the South Side girls.  It was another really sweet night.

Here we are with Blue from Blue’s Clues.  After these pictures were taken, Ella looked at me and said, “I love blue.”

Here we are flying on the Dora ride.

Check out this huge Dora!

The Kim/Arena family riding on a giant coconut.

The girls and Ron with Dora and Diego.

Ella with some other Nick Jr. characters.  I’m not sure who they are.

Ella and Stella having a complete love fest.

Fooling around on the shark.

Ron took this picture of us while we were waiting on line for a helicopter ride.

Riding a snail.

Sisters.

Ella had an absolute blast riding this car with Stella.

This ride went up and down when you pulled the lever in the car.  Ella didn’t quiet understand it but Juliet mastered it.  Stella was just sick of hearing us scream, “Ella – pull the stick – Stella – get Ella to pull the stick!”

Ron won 2 basketballs today and he gave one of them to Ella.  Thank you Ron.