Life With Ella

Today was another really fun day.  We spent most of it at the pool.  Vaughn, Donna and Jay joined us today to help celebrate Milo’s birthday.  All day Ella was talking about the “pool party” that we were having.  We just all had a lot of fun at the pool.  Ella’s swimming is getting better by the minute.  She is fearless – and can hold her breath for a really long time.  I’m still working on the breathing thing.  It gets really frustrating for Ella.  After the pool, papa came home and all of us had dinner outside on the terrace.  Ella and Vaughn played together in her room and Jay said that Ella was really sweet with him and that played really well together.  Vaughn just turned 2 – Ella is really sweet with the little ones.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of Donna and Jay, but they were there and we all had a good time.

Ella made a lantern today during arts and crafts at the pool.

Beautiful grandma and Ella.

Ella and the Leonhart clan.  It’s incredible how much Ella looks like AJ.

Smiley boy.

Ella took all of these shots including the self-portrait.

Ella has mastered sliding down the pole.

Ella, Michael and Milo getting ready for the party.

Ella and grandma with their party hats on.

Ella and Vaughn having a conversation.

Happy Birthday Milo!

Ella and I kept our party hats on.

Sweet shot of Milo and AJ.

Ella and papa are getting ready to go out and look for fireflies.

They found some tonight and Ella caught a few (and of course set them free).

Ending a beautiful day and night talking on the phone to beautiful mommy.  We love you Sunny/mommy see ya in a few days!

Ella and I arrived on Sunday evening.  We love you and miss you mommy.  Can’t wait to see you on  Friday. It was a full house on Sunday night with Milo, AJ, Michael, grandma and papa.  Lots of stimulation and lots of fun.  Ella pretty much remains on California time which means that she falls asleep pretty late like 11:30.  Ella had grandma up pretty late playing the ladybug game.  Ella and Milo have a very sweet love for each other.  Ella just wants to love him and nurture him and take care of him and Milo follows Ella everywhere and doesn’t take his eyes off of her.  This morning we all woke up, played lots of games (Go Fish, Zingo, Hungry Hungry Hippo), I went and got a car and my mom and Ella went to the park.  At around 1:00, we all went to the Leonia pool.  Ella could not wait to go swimming.  She played around a little in the kiddie pool but spent most of the day in the big pool where she couldn’t stand but did a fantastic job floating and swimming.  She feels confident floating on her back, but her breathing for freestyle and breast stroke is pretty weak.  That is what I am going to work with Ella on this week…side breathing and breast stroke breathing.  After a long day at the pool, Ella came home and took a nap, Milo took a nap and I did some errands.  We had a great dinner and then loads of fun after dinner playing games, making up different characters and just laughing a lot.  It is great to be here with the family.  Hurry up Sunny – get here already!  LOVE YOU.

Ella and Milo doing some drawing.

Such sweet beautiful kids.

Ella and AJ playing Zingo.

Hey – what are you guys doing?  I want to play Zingo too!

Ella doing her backstroke.

Ella took this shot.

Ella doing arts and craft sat the pool.

Michael, Milo and AJ getting comfy in the kiddie pool.

Big cousin.

Ella getting ready to go into the big pool.

Me chatting with my childhood PE teacher while Ella shows us how well she can hold her breath.

Ella totally knocked out after a long day of swimming and playing.

Sweet Milo helped me gently wake up Ella.

Over the past few months, Ella has been looking at signs or words in a book or wherever, and really trying to sound things out on her own without us prompting her to figure things out.  She has been doing a great job and is learning how to read words.  Lately, she has also been really interested in writing.  She writes her letters really well (for a 4 1/2 year old) and she has many words mastered like cat, bat, hat, fat, rat, mat…she makes “rhyming books” and is moving beyond her “at” words.  Whenever she wants to write a “shopping list” or a card for someone, she asks us how to spell the words, and we basically just sound out the letters in the words with her and most of the time, she gets it correct.  Just during the past few weeks, she has been trying to write words on her own.  I know that at CDS, they teach inventive spelling where they encourage the child to spell their words the way they think they should be spelled.  I am all for that, but lately Ella has been asking us if her words that she has done completely on her own are correct.  I usually say, “That’s totally right for what you are doing…trying to sound it out”…and then Ella says, “But is it spelled right?”  and I say, “it’s not really spelled right, but you are doing such a great job trying to figure out your words”.  I hope I am responding correctly to her because I want her to continue to write on her own and take pride in what she’s doing.  Here is a really cute example…Today was Ella’s last swimming lesson with her teacher Yat.  Ella wanted to make him a card to thank him for teaching her.  We sounded out all the words together that are in red – Ella really figured it out letter for letter with me sounding like a strange phonics machine.  Then she drew some pictures and I was upstairs getting ready so when I came down, she had added a few words to her artwork.  I will post the card now. This is sweet Ella really proud of her card. This is the front of the card.  The person that she drew with the brown skin and curly hair is Yat.  He is from India and has dark skin.   We thought that was really cute and cool. So we did the red words together by sounding out the words and then Ella wrote the green words all by herself.  The first one, “sun” was great…the second one, “tweet” was fantastic.  The third one…”Letee buggs” makes total sense, lady bugs of course.  This is so exciting to watch Ella reach this level that is going to open up a whole new world for her.

Today was Milo’s birthday  KJ is going to celebrate his first birthday next Tuesday!Ella and Ron – that have such a beautiful thing going on.

Here is a Happy Birthday video from Ella to Milo.  We love you Milo!  See you next week.  Happy first birthday.

Ella’s sleepover at the Kim/Arena house was wonderful.  The girls played hard all night.  At one point, Helen and Ron peeked in on the girls and they were playing a game that they made up called “Senior Center”.  They made it up from the movie Ponyo where one of the characters works at a senior center.  I will post the senior center pic that Ron took first.  On Sunday, we woke up, and finally at around 9ish knocked on Helen and Ron’s door.  We found the whole family (including Ella) sitting around the table having breakfast.  Ella was wearing a Supergirl costume.  She kind of said hi but didn’t really care that we were there.  It was so beautiful to have her feel so secure with herself and with the Kim/Arena family.  A little while later, we took the kids to the Alta Plaza Park where everyone had so much fun – including KJ who is almost ready to take off running!  After school today, the 3 of us went to Pier 39 – Ella wanted to do a little bungee jumping.  We did that and then went to this crazy Spongebob 4-D movie.  Ella was a little freaked out…it was a pretty rough ride.  Tonight we had dinner with Phyllis and Michael at Pasta Pomodoro.  We all had a really sweet time. Here is the senior center shot.  All 3 girls were sitting together with a blanket on them.  Stella and Juliet had two other friends over.  One played the doctor and the other played the “orderly”.  These kids are too much. The kids were having so much fun doing everything in the park.  KJ even got in on the big kid action. Ella was doing some serious climbing.  She is a confident climber. ON the “zip line” building upper arm strength. Just really happy. Stella on the zip line. Ella was chasing Juliet around the park.  They were playing “prisoner” and Juliet was an escapee… Ella was calling this huge sandbox a pool, so she was jumping into the pool. Ron teaching KJ how to use the big shovel. This is a drum that Ella made today at camp.  They had a little dragon parade today that I got to see when I picked up Ella. Bungee fun! My girls on the crazy Spongebob ride.

One of Ella’s classmates had her birthday party at Lemo’s farm today.  Ella had such a great time…not only did she get to go on pony rides, train rides, a hay ride, play in a bouncy house and play with animals at the petting zoo, she also got to hang out with a bunch of her classmates who she really likes.  She had a huge smile on her face all day.  This evening, Ella went over to Stella and Juliet’s and Sunny and I went across the street to see Paul McCartney.  We had a great time at the show – it was really fantastic.  They did so many Beatles songs.  Ella is having her first official friend sleep over.  She is spending the night at the Kim/Arena house.  Helen and Ron -Thanks so much for taking such great care of Ella!  I hope she sleeps in.  Next time we take all 3 kids.  Good night – sleep tight. Ella practicing karate earlier today. I came downstairs to find Ella helping mommy get the dog hair off her sweater.  So sweet. I love this photo. Ella is so gentle with animals. Ella loves these crazy little rides. Our one handed pony rider. Peaceful easy feeling.Ella and Brickelle – so happy to hang out with each other. Ella and her buddy Luke.  They have known each other since they were around 2…they went to My Gym together before CDS. Ella and Macy – they took this right before we took a little train ride.

I’ve been a little behind in the site – I came down with some kind of virus that left me throwing up, having a sore throat and a cold.  Now I feel much better – just have a cold.  Sunny is in the end stages of her whooping cough and I think Ella is relatively healthy – maybe a little cold.  Tonight, Stella and Juliet came over and we had our usual Friday night movie night.  Ella let the girls choose them movie and they chose “The Princess and the Frog”.  They all had a fun night.  Juliet was a little scared of the shadow man and Ella held her hand through a lot of the movie.  It was really sweet.  Tomorrow morning we are going to a birthday party at Lemo’s Farm – should be a lot of fun. The girls before the movie. The girls during the movie. Holding hands with sweet Juliet. I love this.