BYOS

Well it has happened. Ella Sue is an entire year old. An entire year. 365 days. Of course now that I am typing this in she is over a year old. She has hair! Hair that you can see. Also there is a toddler look to her now.

Bring Your Own Soy milk

Ella Sue is the epitome of an independent child, when chatting with other parents, I find that no, their children do not play happily by themselves for hours. Or to put it another way, when I read about separation anxiety, I was, well I am ashamed to admit this, elated. Ella Sue is not a cuddler. Sure, she has her moments, she will sit with you right after a nap, but once her motor starts going, she is off. Separation anxiety meant to me that she might, just might, want me to hold her, for longer than 10 minutes. Half the reason I still give Ella a bottle is not because she can not hold it for herself, it is because it means that I will have at least 20 minutes of cuddle time. Separation anxiety, though it did show up, did not produce all that I had been promised. Ella did throw a glance our way, to make sure we were in eyeball distance, and there was a bit of reluctance at being held by people other than Drew and I, but that was it. No cuddling, barely any clinging. Tonight, however Ella Sue did not feel well. And somehow, I was able to trick her into falling asleep on my chest. There I was, head full of my list of things to do and it all go reshuffled because Ella Sue feel asleep on me. It was lovely. And it reminded that nearly a year has gone by since her last nap with me. When she was just a wee one, she would sleep on my chest and then she would fit on my belly. Now she was stretching out almost to my knees. There was baby hair all over her head and her fingers had dimples on them. There has been some serious growing going on in the past whirl of the last year.
My friend Katie took the photo above.

Sweeter than ice cream

For Mother's Day my considerate husband took me to one of my favorite places to eat. Of course since my world revolves around sweets, my favorite place to eat is an ice-cream restaurant. Sure they have some salads but your not foolen' anyone when you go there, you are going for the dessert. Ella Sue of course came with us. Restaurants have become a new fun zone for her. Especially if there is any type of child within eyeballen' distance. She is enraptured with kids. After trying to coax her eyeballs to our table with silly faces, straws, and toys, we finally gave up and moved her high chair so that she could get a better view of the 4 year old singing Jingle Bells in the next booth. We found ourselves humming along too. That kid could have gotten a collection plate going. A bunch of Moms in a restaurant all hopped up on ice-cream, are an easy target for adorable 4 year olds. All around us were Moms. Moms who had been ushered in by husbands and variously aged children. There were the teenagers, the tweenagers, the toddlers and few other babes in the crowd and amongst all of this were a bunch of beaming Moms. I had not one but two Moms stop by and tell me that there now teenager, use to be a baby too. Yeah Yeah Yeah, I am not falling for that line. I mean look at this Ella Sue, noway is she going to be driving a car one day or gasp, leaving for college. I want to meet Ella Sue the teenager and tweenager and every-age-in-between, I just am such a sucker for this crawln' beastie that terrorizes fitz and can give a one-eye raise like no other baby I know. Can't I have both? Course, if she grows up to be 4 I can teach her Jingle Bells and make a killing at ice-cream stores.

Here's hoping for macaroni necklaces

Thanks to many, many marketing campaigns, that are ever-present, my brain has finally gotten the hint that Mothers Day is fast approaching. This means planning on my part. I have to get cards and send some flowers to my Grandmame. Back home in GA, all Moms wore corsages to church, Mama's get cards and whatever else their youngsters deem gift worthy. I was big into making my own gifts. I am not sure if this came from, the lack of cash in my younger years and/or the fact that the closest store that I could access, without being driven, was Seven-Eleven. You would think that I would have made a macaroni necklace or a construction paper flower but oh no, I always had bigger ideas. One mothers day I handed my Mother a mud doll. That is right, I went and dug up a bunch of dirt, fashioned it into what seemed more like a mud snowman, put a part of a jean pants on it for a dress and triumphantly handed it to my Mother. There is a great charade played by all Mothers and Fathers when their children hand them something like a mud doll. I can remember my obsessively clean Mother telling me thank you and placing this doll of dirt on her kitchen table as a center piece. Or perhaps it is less of a charade then I think. I would love a dirt doll from Ella. It feels like a gift that she smiles at me, she is calmed by me and when she crawls over to me to be lifted up. A gift of attachment. Last year when I was giant and pregnant, I did feel a little deserving of the well wishes of a Happy Mothers day. I mean there I was, no bladder control, barely able to take a walk and a vagina that was desperately trying to hitchhike out of town, my only consolation prize was that I could wear elastic pants all the time. The "Happy Mothers Day" I got just helped to remind me of the bigger picture, the child to come. Now that it is almost an entire year later and my body has been returned to me, things are feeling much different. I have had 10 months of an Ella Sue in my life and a husband that is now a Father. These are my blessings. These are my almost-a-year of Happy Mother's days. This year me and my vagina have made up. I feel like I should be giving nothing but thanks to those that made it possible, Ella Sue and Drew. Well, them and cause I am from the south, lets add God and Fate too. However, I will say, not to be greedy but I am hoping that there will be construction flowers and dirt dolls in my future.
P.S. my friend Katie took this photo, if you are ever meet Katie, throw a camera in her hand and prance around saying cheese, you might get lucky and she will take stunning photos of you and whatever else happens to show up in the frame. I am serious, she made my guenie pigs look like a good idea.

When No means Yes

Because, Ella Sue has been doing secret complex math equations in her room that are going to put quantum physics in a tailspin, she has had to put her babbling on hold. This means that Drew and I are trying to catch her up. Mamamam and Bababababa and Dadadadada fill the house. I now refer to myself in the third person all the time "Mamama is going to pick you up now....". It is odd enough talking in the third person, even weirder that the name I am calling myself is Mama. I completely understand Bob Doyles constant third person referencing, clever marketing campaign. I am hoping that if I reference myself as much as Bob Doyle did himself, then Ella will one day soon put together Mama with me. Well, to be honest she probably already does. She also gets that her name is Ella Sue. She has multiple names, Ella Bee, Baby Bear, Ella Bear, Ella sweet, she seems to understand all of them are referencing her. She has picked that up in only 8 short months. It took me a good two years and 200 cans of soft cat food to teach Fitz his name. Of course now he is deaf, so I am trying to teach him how to read it....it is taking me much longer. I am also working on teaching Ella other words, mainly No. Mostly No. No do not grab Fitz and jog him up and down. This is mainly so the SPCA people don't come to my house to remove Fitz because I have let my child snatch him bald headed. Poor thing, if I hear too much glee coming from Ella, I have to go and unwrap Fitz from her choker hold. She must have been a wrestler in another life. As with any word there are certain ways you speak it. For instance, for No to be effective it can not sound the same as snookums and suga bear. Very difficult for me when talking to Ella. My "No" to her has the same intonation as "sweetie". Needless to say Fitz would be rolling his eyes if he could, but since Ella is holding his ears back so tight, his eyes are slits, I just feel his silent prayer beaming from his brain "tell her no". So there I am trying to teach myself to say No and Ella to hear No. Because if I can ever learn to say No in a way that Ella will hear, then maybe just maybe, Fitz can say Yes to a couple more years on this earth and if not, at least get to say yes to keeping his hair.Course, I do hear the bald cats are in.

One of two

When I was pregnant it seemed like I was going through adolescence all over again. My body just went off on its own path, not even giving me a map telling me which way it was going, and me just stumbling behind trying to keep up. I no longer felt like one, I felt like what I was, two. After pregnancy I was still two because that poor Ella could not even lift her head up without my help, much less move around the house. She was my little puppet and I was constantly making sure she was O.K. and not too upset about being moved around like a sac of potatoes. But now, now I feel like I am back to one, just me. Part of this is because my hormones are finally starting to reach a more normal state. I am not longer crying hysterically because we do not have Christmas paper in October nor do I hate ever single human being on the planet (two of the side-affects of my pregnancy, lovely). But Ella Sue is now off and crawling, all over, up and down, side ways and sunny side up. Not only that, she has intentions, things she does and does not want to do, and ways to let us know. She is no longer a little being who we were trying to guess what was going on, now we know. She nuzzles us with her head and screams bloody murder when we cut her fingernails. She also seems to be an independent child. No need to entertain her thank you, she is just fine checking out the 204 ways she can move around the leaves in the back yard. As much as I loved being two, I adore being back to one and getting to watch Ella since she after all, is my number one.

And then comes baby

I have found in my life that photos are what is sometimes needed to convince me that something is honest-to-gawd happening. For instance it has been photos that have spurred most of my diets, not the number on the scale, but the photo of me with three chins, is what gets things moving. Drew and I were recently given the very large gift of a photo session by our friends. Looking at the photos from this photo session it appears that I am part of a family of three. In previous photos I thought, how nice, I am sitting next to my boyfriend who I happened to be married too.But in these new photos there is a Baby Ella, which brings in the title Mother, Father and Child. A real honest-to-gawd-family. Which pulls in even more definitions into my life, family meals, pincer grasp, college fund, life insurance, etc.. It brings weight to my new job title "Stay at Home" Mom. As with all the careers I have had, this is yet another one that came without instructions or a clear job description. However, to be honest, I never read instructions anyway, so it is just as well. This trait of mine leads to a chaotic if not creative lifestyle. Maybe if you were being realistic you would say messy. Since this is me talking I prefer creative. Not all folks can live with this type of mentality. I have imposed myself on many a poor family member that just was not of the messy genre. And though I tried my hardest to fit in, I have always stuck out like a sore thumb amongst the organized (read Drew). That of course does not keep me from trying. About once a month or once every 6 months, I pull out my to-do list, read "get organized" and start putting things in manila folders with titles on them like, "Test Scores" and "Receipts". Since I am not organized I know the pain that being un-organized can bring and am hoping that Ella has gotten some of those organized genes from above stated family members. Anyway, here I am an un-organized woman holding a child, that apparently I am responsible for since I am the "Mother" in this family of three. It is times like this that one has to hope that lots of people are praying for Ella Sue. I am also hoping that she is going to be good with map and directions...and teaching me how to beat Drew at checkers.