A time to reflect

As 2010 comes to an end it is time to reflect on the past year and look forward to the year to come. So many things have happened in our home over the past year. We celebrated the first birthday of our beautiful daughter, became members of a church that we feel at home with, Billy finished his last class of his Master's Program and began his 50 page final paper, that will lead him to graduation. We traveled and showed Ella all the many things the USA can offer. We spent time in Florida and got to see sea life at Sea World, Mickey at Disney, and Legos that were larger than life. A trip to Las Vegas showed her the lights of the strip, her first Musical (The Lion King), a trip to The Valley of Fire, and some quality time with her Aunt Lori. A trip to Tenessee where she was able to see the mountains, got to a huge water park, and spend some much needed one on one time with her mommy and daddy.

This year also brought huge changes with both Lisa and Billy changing jobs. Lisa is in the same field, but is working for a different county. It has been a good change, but a challenging one. Billy began working at Wright Patt Credit Union and is just now starting to get his feet wet.
Ella continues to amaze us each and every day. We can't even count how many words are in her vocabulary. She successfully went poopy on the potty twice, however some constipation lead to a halt in potty training. She is very independent and doesn't like help from mommy and daddy unless asked. She opened her own presents at Christmas and was so excited at all her gifts. Ella has become more loving and caring, how this is possible we have no clue.

We look forward to the year ahead. We will celebrate Ella's 2nd Birthday and Billy's 30th. We will also get to watch Billy graduate with his Master's. We are looking forward to a week on the beach in September and any other surprises that will happen along the way.

Happy New Years Everyone,

Love the Carlin Family

The leaves of fall!

Ella continues to amaze us everyday. New words, phrases and even sentences are coming from her little voice. Now if only we could get her to go pee pee on the potty! This fall has been full of fun and busy times. We have gone to the apple orchard and made homemade apple sauce, gone to the pumpkin patch and picked our own pumpkin, trick or treated for the first time, and even got to see the Christmas tree at the local shopping mall have its lights on for the first time.

This week we enter a time of Thanksgiving. We are blessed in so many ways, however Ella is the greatest blessing in our lives. She is sweet and loving. She will kiss your boo boos, and is the best mommy to her babies. She loves to take her friends by the hand and walk with them. She says "bless you mommy/daddy" when we sneeze, and "bless you Ella" when she sneezes.

As we enter the Christmas season we can't wait to put up the tree and have Ella help us decorate. This year will also be the first year that Ella will follow in a Bridge family tradition, baking cookies as a family. Lisa would do this with her mom and we can't wait to Ella help make Lisa's mom's cut out cookies. We can't wait to share the nativity scene and story with her so she can hear about baby Jesus.

Life is good!

6th Anniversary and a Birthday

The 28th of August marked our six year anniversary. To celebrate we went on a zipline tour in Hocking Hills. We were supposed to go on a canopy tour, which was easy, but it was booked and our reservation went missing. We choose another place and found out (after it was way to late) that it was also a high ropes course. Billy made it the whole way, but Lisa had to stop half way through thanks to a bad knee. After we had an amazing dinner at Due Amici. On the 1st we celebrated Lisa's 28th birthday with a trip to the local park. With this blog are a few pics of Ella at the park/18 month pics. Ella talks more and more and is starting to put sentences together. (go night night, hello baby, juice please mama, etc.) She loves to dance and sing. Her favorite song at this time is the itsy bitsy spider!

So far behind...

We started this site to keep our family and friends updated as to the going ons of a new baby and tiny family, however as time passes it seems that I type less and less, which is problematic. I realized the other day that in all reality this web site isn't just for our loving family and friends, but more so as a record for us. Time passes so quickly and it amazes me at how quickly you forget.

As a Social Worker I spend  my time with children of all ages. Recently I aquired a 7 lb baby on my case load. As I sat there holding this child I said to myself, "Ella was never this tiny." She was though, how quickly I forgot. At 18 months she is no longer a tiny baby who wants to snuggle with her mom and dad (not that she has been that for awhile, but still.) Ella is independent, intelligent and so loving. The amount of words she can say these days astounds us both. She will say please, more, hair, mouth, nose, eyes, etc. She can easily pick out any animal that you tell her to look for, and at times will run up to the shower curtain in her bathroom, point to the turtle and say "tur tle." When Ella wants something she makes it know. She will now come and grab either of us by our thumb/finger/hand and "drag" us to her destintation. Her most favorite thing to do at night is lay on the floor with Billy and play with her sesame street house and big bird figurine. Ella weighs 22 1/2 lbs, which is still tiny for her age, but big for her. When she is tired she will say "night night" and head to the stairs letting us know it is time for bed. We sing her night night song and she now kisses us both goodnight. In the morning we are greated with not only Ella, but her arms full of her favorite blankies. When music plays she dances, when the phone rings she says, "hullo" and when she is mad she will scream at you and throw herself to the ground. It appears that toddler hood has offically hit the Carlin household. We love watching her grow and are amazed at her grace and loving spirit. We are truly rich people because no person is more blessed than we to have such a beautiful big girl!

Itsy bitsy teenie weenie.....

Summer is here (to some extent that is!) We spent Sunday playing in the sunshine with Ella. We went to the lake and as we walked up to the water she started screaming. We thought for sure she was scared, but we were very wrong. Ella was upset because we weren't getting to the water fast enough. As soon as she was free and able to hit the water she ran full speed ahead. We didn't have swim suits on so we could only go in so deep, but she had a blast splashing and playing with the sand. We got home to an 85 degree afternoon. We put on Ella's itsy bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot bikini and set up the sprinkler, ironically the huge deep lake was a go, but the sprinkler was not in any way.

Ella is now 20 lbs 8 ozs. Her hair is long enough that Lisa can pull her hair back into full piggy tails so today Ella got to sport her first set of real piggy tails.

The Amazing World according to Ella

 Ella is getting bigger and bigger every day. She is finally 20 lbs and can face forward in her car seat. She loves looking out the window and waving to everyone we pass. Ella's vocabulary is growing..she now says fisssh, juice, mama, dada, papa, bye bye, etc. She talks all the time, we just can't understand her most of the tinme. Ella is able to recognize things and point to them when asked. She recognizes dogs, fish, whale, dolphin, elmo, cookie moster, etc. She will also point to her nose and show us her feet when asked. At night after her bottle we will tell Ella it is time to go night night she will run to the stairs and wait for us to take her up to bed. When the doorbell rings Ella will run to the door and say "hi." We are amazed at how much she is learning. We can't wait to see what she does next and how much more she will be able to do week by week. Here are some recent pics of Ella and some of the new things she is doing these days!

Ella got her first ice cream cone and ate it all herself. She was only a bit messy, but LOVED her treat!

Lisa bought this OSU bench for Billy for father's day. This year we finally put it out by our tree in the back yard. Ella now loves to sit under the tree and just enjoy the outside. She looks so grown up to us.

Ella was sitting on the bench talking to the neighbors dogs.

Ella has come to realize that if you turn the knob the door opens. Thankfully she isn't quite tall enough yet to open the door! She also enjoys when we are on the other side and she can "kiss" us through the glass.

 

Ella used to hate when we would put hair things in or bows on her head. She now LOVES to wear her pretty headbands and bows.