Sad baby!

When Elizabeth gets told no or she gets pulled out of something that she wants to be in, and pretty much whenever she doesn't get her way, sometimes she'll start crying and run over to me saying, "Baby sad!"

When she does this, we'll say, "Are you a happy baby?" and she'll make this funny face like she's pursing her lips and sucking air in while she composes herself. It is so funny! Then all of a sudden she's a smiling happy baby with wet cheeks. =)

Also, sometimes whens he is in a grumpy mood or upset about something, she will run back in to the room all of a sudden, with a huge smile on her face, saying "Baby HAPPY!" Yay! ♥

Slappy Slappy Blue Ball

Whenever Daddy walks in the door after work, Lizzie starts saying, "Slappy slappy blue ball, Daddy!!" over and over again. Which pretty much means she wants to go downstairs to play. Slappy slappy blue ball is a game Lizzie and her daddy made up and play downstairs where they slap my big, blue yoga ball. Weirdos!

She will also start looking for her shoes and wanting to go outside as soon as her daddy walks in the door. She loves going outside. LOVES IT. Even when it is cold and I am out there shivering, she does not care. She just wants to be outside!

Today when Nate walked in, Lizzie started yelling, "Daddy! Slappy slappy blue ball! Walk outside! Shoes! Jacket! Daddy!" Whoa baby! He didn't know which way to turn! They are outside playing right now. =)

Things I want to remember

This is just a list of things I want to remember... hence the title of the post. :)

• Elizabeth loves eating what she calls "foffles" and "namas" (waffles and bananas, duh) for breakfast.
• Instead of saying something like, "Gimme!" like I hear from most toddlers, Lizzie says, "Reeeach!" if she wants something.
• She is pretty much copying everything we say. It doesn't always sound the same, but she tries!
• After a visit to Colorado, Elizabeth has learned to say everyone's names out there. Kourtny is "Kokey," Faith is "Fate," Olivia is "Livie," David is "Dabie," and Kristal sounds different every time she says it.
• She calls Pooh and Piglet "Pooh and Piggy."
• ***She can kinda sorta count to ten!!! It goes like this... "One, two, three, two, FIVE!!! Six, eight, nine, TEN!!!!" It counts!
• She knows what a bunch of animals say when we ask her. So far she knows cat, dog, horse, cow, sheep, monkey, owl, and pig (kinda).
• She calls Molly "Money" and will say "no, no doggy!" if Molly is doing something naughty.
• When I was teaching Lizzie how to count to 3, I would say, "1...2...3... Mommy!!" and she would say, "...2....3" real quietly, and then say, "MOMMY!!!!" I can't type it as cute as she says it. :) Then she started saying, "...2....3.... GABBA GABBA!!" Hmpf.
• When trying to convince Elizabeth to come back to her room for a diaper change, I held out my hand to her and started marching down the hall while saying, "March, march, march..." It has actually worked a few times! And now she can be found kinda stomping around and saying "Mon, mon, mon..."
• Elizabeth says "wower" for "flower." I tried to get her to say the "f" sound. I said, "Lizzie, say ffffffflower!" So she says, "Ffffffff... wower!"

The results are in!

Elizabeth's EEG results came back NORMAL!!!!!

We took her to Children's Hospital on Tuesday for her EEG. We were advised to keep her up late and get her up early. I thought maybe a half hour or so would due the trick. But THEN the nurse said to keep her up until midnight and get her up at 6:00! What the what? Also, NO NAP! Crazy people.

So my poor over tired baby girl had to endure these really nice ladies coloring on her head and putting "stickers" all over the place. She actually did way better than I thought she would, but she still cried a lot. =( They brought out a little DVD player and stuck in Finding Nemo, so that distracted her sometimes. After they were done putting the little electrodes all over my defenseless little baby, they wrapped gauze all around her head. It was so sad to see my precious baby like that!

Then they shut the lights off and I cuddled up next to her. They needed her to sleep for at least 10 minutes for the test to get accurate readings. After just a couple of minutes, she was out. She was still doing the little gasps that she does after she cries a lot, but she was sleeping!

So Friday morning Nate called the doctor to see if the results were in yet for the EEG or for the stool sample that we took in last week. (By the way, yuck). Then later in the afternoon, when we still hadn't gotten a call, I called again. Yes, we are those parents. I did not want to wait all weekend for these results when they were mostly likely sitting on his desk.

The nurse started talking about how the call slip is in his pile of people to call "and the results for the EEG are here and they came back normal but the stool sample hasn't come back yet, hopefully we'll get it-"
I interupted her to say, "Wait, WHAT? The EEG came back normal??"
Nurse: "Yes it did, but the stool sample results will hopefully be back tomorrow..."

Obviously she cared deeply for those poop results (which also came back normal, by the way.)

Well, it has finally happened...

Nate has finally written something in the baby book! (Well, the notebook I keep on the counter to write down cute things that Lizzie does.)

Just so you know, "baball" = football

Okay, so here is what the proud daddy wrote in her baby book:

"Elizabeth said FOOTBALL ON! Daddy is so very proud. I was watching a game and had it paused and she pointed to the TV and said 'baball on.'"

And then Nate proceded to tell everyone he knows about his daughter wanting to watch football. Weirdos.

Our Trip to Colorado

We got back from another exciting, fun filled vacation to visit our family in Colorado! The pictures pretty much explain everything we did and how much fun we had. :)

Elizabeth being all cute on the drive out there. You know, the 9 hour drive that she only slept 20 minutes of.


Lizzie loving playing in the water at this pretty garden place.

Playing in the water again.

Elizabeth and "Campa" getting some quality snuggle time.

Elizabeth at the ranch, wearing the cutest little riding helmet, while wearing Kourt's John Deere shirt (which we accidnetly stole... sorry Kourt!) and playing on Kourt's phone.

Tradional family photo at the Budweiser Factory

Elizabeth playing a beautiful ballad. (Good thing this is just a picture and not a video.)

Helping Aunt Kristal in the yard

She loved collecting pine cones! She even brought some home with her.

Chilling in the comfy chair and watching some Yo Gabba Gabba. Life is good. :) Also, her legs are so dang cute.

Where'd the baby go?!

My little girl on the way home. Where she stayed awake for the whole 9 hour drive.

Second trip to the ER... :(

We have been pretty blessed with Elizabeth's health. She has gotten a runny nose a few times (which most of the time I believe was from teething) and that is pretty much it. She gave us a pretty big scare when she was 10 weeks old, but other than that, she's been pretty healthy. Well now the punk has me scared.

A couple of days ago (Sept 11th), Elizabeth slept in pretty late, which is unlike her. When she finally woke up, I got her out of bed and she ended up falling back to sleep in my arms in her rocking chair. We sat there and cuddled and rocked for a very long time. She is so precious. She started to wake up so I took her to the living room so I could get her sippy cup, and she fell back to sleep in my arms again. So we sat on the couch and cuddled. Finally around 11:15 she woke up.

I asked her if she wanted her sippy or a cracker and she said, "Eat." So I got her a cracker and sat back down on the couch with her. She was sitting on my lap facing me and was holding her cracker. All of a sudden, she got super pale and super sweaty, and her eyes went blank. They never rolled back into her head or anything, they just stared right through me. I freaked. I started yelling her name and trying to get her to focus on me. I set her on the couch and kneeled right in front of her trying to get her to focus. Finally, finally she did. It seemed like forever but in reality was probably 10 seconds.

So of course this happens on a Saturday morning and of course her daddy left to go to Iowa City for a football game a few hours earlier. Lizzie's heart was racing and she seemed pretty out of it. Really lethargic. I called my mom and asked her to come over and then called Lizzie's doctor's office, which went to an answering service. They took down all of the information about what had happened and said a nurse would call me back.

While we waited for the nurse to call back, I held Elizabeth and she drank some water and ate a couple graham crackers. She still seemed sooo out of it.

FORTY minutes later, the nurse called and said she called back really quick since the notes said that Elizabeth was unresponsive. (I would hate to know how long it would have been had she not called back so quickly!) I again explained what had happened and she put me on hold to call the doctor on call. When she came back, she said that the doctor thought it sounded like she might have had a seizure.

A what now?

I decided to take Lizzie to the ER. The nurse had told us to go to Children's Hospital so I sat in the back with Liz and mom chauffeured us to Omaha. They did blood tests and an EKG, which came back normal, and they said they wanted her to get an EEG, which had to be scheduled later.

So this morning we went to Dr. B and got Lizzie checked out by her own doc. "Dr. B nice," says Lizzie. His nurse got her EEG scheduled for the first available appointment... September 21st! Now we wait.

Back from Vegas!

We had such a great time in Las Vegas for our anniversary get away! I am surprised I survived a whole week being away from my baby! But if there is one place that has the power to distract, it is Vegas. Our days were packed with all kinds of fun stuff (which Nate didn't care for. His idea of a vacation is to nap all day. Yawn.)

We went to 5 different shows while we were there! My favorite was Blue Man Group! That show was incredible. I don't even know how to describe it. And they are so funny without even saying a word. Once when they went running into the crowd, one of the blue men came right up to me, about 2 feet away, and just stared at me. (We were in the front row of the second section, or the non-poncho section, way on the side) I was afraid to look at him! Nate nudged me and made me look at him. It was really weird!

My second favorite show, and Nate's favorite, was Defending the Caveman. Hilarious. I would definitely recommend this show to anyone in a relationship. You will relate! We even bought t-shirts. :)

We also went to Legends in Concert (with Donna Summers, Jay Leno, Elton John, Elvis, and Michael Jackson impersonators). That show was pretty good too. The Michael impersonator was spot on! And then there was the Tournament of Kings show and the Free Beer Improv Show, which was funny sometimes. The people IN the show were good, but they encourage audience participation, and that got pretty dumb.

Other than the shows, we spent our time walking, eating, walking, playing roulette, walking, swimming, walking, eating... did I mention walking? It was so fun just going into all these places and exploring. Roulette was fun until the night before we left when we lost $160 right off the bat. That part sucked. At one point we made a $40 bet on red at Bally's and lost. Then we walked across the street to Bellagio and made an $80 on black and WON!! (I hadn't even realized the dealer had spun the dang ball yet when it landed on black.
Nate had to say to me, "It landed on 33.... 33 is black.... we bet on black... Jenni, we won!"
Me: *blank stare* "...wait, we won?" Oh dear. :) That was exciting.

And here are a fraction of all the pictures I took in Vegas...

The cutest little luggage ever!

Reading a book to daddy before we left.

Cuddling with Mommy. I was able to put her to bed before we left for the air port. So sweet and so sad! I bet you can't even tell that I was crying. :(

We stayed at Bally's. I really, really liked it there. This is the people mover to get to the strip faster. I LOVED this thing except when it wasn't working! And I didn't care for the people who just stood on the people mover. Duh.

Nate and I waiting for a shuttle at Bellagio (I think). The views from the shuttle between Bellagio and Monte Carlo is AMAZING. Especially at night.

The view of the Eiffel Tower from our hotel room.

Part of our gigantic room. I really did love staying at Bally's and I would definitely stay there again.

The fancy bathroom part of the hotel room.

The only picture I was allowed to take of Blue Man Group was this poster. :( But the show was awesome!

My favorite part of Vegas. :)

I could see the Bellagio fountains from our hotel room!!!!!!

Nate and I in our room getting ready to go swimming.

An artist on Fremont Street in the middle of creating our painting! I want to say his name is Michael Fletcher? Not sure about that...

Sold... to us! I love our Vegas souvenir.

Nate and I in some random hallway we found in one of the hotels... I don't even remember where. All I remember is we laughed a lot.

Kissy Monster

Elizabeth gives kisses now!! REAL kisses! It is the sweetest, cutest, most wonderful thing in the whole world. She kisses our cheeks and blows kisses. She kisses her favorite stuffed animals and toys and kisses us with her favorite stuffed animals and toys. When she kicked me and I said, "Elizabeth Renee, you do not kick your mommy!" all stern like, she kissed both of my lets to get out of trouble. It worked! Stinker.

When she falls down and bumps her head or bangs a knee, I ask her if she wants mommy to kiss it. Then she runs over and lowers her head or lifts her knee (or whatever body part got hurt) and puts her hands on both sides of my head to lead me to her owie. She is soo cute! And then we "shake it off." She wiggles her little self to shake all of the hurt off. Sometimes I can't stand how cute she is.

Little Booger

Whenever Lizzie spills some of her water or milk, she goes to find a towel to wipe it up. Well, a towel or something else that is even a little absorbent. A shirt, a sock, a diaper, etc.

She will also wipe her own nose and mouth with a kleenex. Today she dribbled a little when she was taking a drink of water from her sippy cup, so she ran over to the couch where she had left her kleenex from earlier and wiped her face off. The winter will hopefully be easier if she can wipe her own nose!

Also, sometimes when the little booger's nose is running (or maybe just itches?) she grabs my hand and wipes or rubs her nose of my finger. Ew... She's so cute. :)