Life With Ella

It’s been raining here since Sunday night. It’s not the usual San Francisco rain – it’s crazy rain. Even our Zen garden has huge puddles. I went to the gym today and I had to turn around and take another way because there was some serious flooding. Stella, Juliet, Helen and Ron left for Florida yesterday. I hope you guys are having a great time. Ella misses the girls and with the rain and stuff, we need to make sure that she stays busy. The girls playing together is usually enough, but since they’re gone, we had to make sure that Ella had a fun filled day. In the morning, I took Ella to Recess, then we played at home, then Ella took a nap. When Sunny came home, the 3 of us went to the gym and we went swimming. After swimming, we had dinner at the pub. Tomorrow, we go to one of the schools that we are looking at for pre-school for an open house type thing that the kids go to. We are interested to see if Ella likes the school environment. We’ll let you know tomorrow.This is a picture of Ella from yesterday – she was very happy playing with her dragon thingHere is our big girl having breakfast this morningSome people read magazines on the potty…Ella watches her moviesThis is a secret hiding space at Recess. Ella had a great time running around and hiding todayHere is Ella right before we went to the gym. She was dancing around, singing, jumping on the chair and clapping. She was really excited to go swimming.Ella in the locker room at the gym – in a locker.After dinner, Ella likes to walk around the fitness center. There are these huge sculpture people made out of a giant tree and here is Ella next to one of the feet

We decided that we needed to get a little more “aggressive” about Ella trying to use the potty. Part of it is us being a little lazy – not being patient enough to let her run around without a diaper for as long as it takes, and the other part is Ella just enjoying using her diaper. She communicates so well and she knows what’s going on so we decided that we would try something else. We filled 2 jars with all different flavor jellybeans and have one downstairs and one upstairs (where the potties are). We told her that if she made a pee or poop on the potty that she would get a jellybean. She has never had a jellybean before so this was pretty exciting for her. As soon as we told her that she would get a jellybean if she went to the bathroom, she said, “I have to pee”. It took a lot longer than that. It took about an hour – a lot of whining, a bath, about 5 stories and some chamomile tea. When she finally peed, she was so excited – she couldn’t believe it! We gave her 4 jellybeans that she picked out. One was cherry, one watermelon, one cotton candy and a chocolate one. She also did a little dance around her room. Hopefully the jellybean training will continue to work.

This is Ella when I came home from work today. We went to the elevator to wait for mommy. Ella is still recovering from her stomach virus. She’s doing really well, but her appetite isn’t exactly right and her nap today was over 3 hours. That’s why she looks a little like a wreck – but what a cute wreck.

Hooray!

Here is a little clip of Ella singing “We’re Off To See The Wizard” from the Wizard of Oz. She learned this all by herself by watching the movie. She’s great at making up words.