We simply must have you for dinner!

Hello, beautiful. Is it you, or is it hot in here? Why don't you scoot closer...there you go...

What? That little guy? Don't worry about that little guy. He's harmless. Sorry about the mess. I was going to clean that up right after I.......

Oh, yes, I did. Knives don't kill tomatoes, people kill tomatoes. And you are mine.



HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA.

Not one...

Not two...

But three! wicked batches of tomato sauce.

Oh. Wait. What have we here? You are friends of who? Tomay, tomay what? What does he look like? Describe him. Red, you say. Red, red, red. I'm afraid I do not know of whom you are speaking. What was that? Oh, that little guy. Don't worry about that little guy. He'll take care of you. You know, I like you. Please, you must let me have you for dinner. I insist.

Been a long time...

Facebook? Blog? Wash dishes? Read book? Watch football? Check email?

Blogs are so 2009.

How about just a quickie. Here's "little" E, just a few days before Thanksgiving 2010. It was a chilly day, but she wanted to be on the deck. As soon as that wind grabbed hold of her hair, I knew I had to get a shot. My beautiful girl!

Ellie-speak

As I wrote a few posts ago, Ellie's vocabulary and ability to pronounce words has exploded over the last couple months. Right around her birthday, something clicked in her toddler brain and off she went. She's stringing together several words, which tickles me to no end. Other than her tendency to answer every question with "yeah", we are enjoying the ability to have a conversation with our kid! The other night, she was calling out "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" And then, out of nowhere, she yells "Daddy! Sit there! Eat supper!" Keep in mind that for her, each word has it's own little punctuation, so it sounds more like "Daddy! Sit! There! Eat! Supper!" Which makes it even more precious.

I've captured some of her speak in little video snippets, where I ask her to say something and then she repeats it. I'm hoping to someday be savvy enough to edit all of these into a little film, but now we all just have to be satisfied with one or two words per video.

I hope you enjoy video #1. Topic: Exercises, Banana, but no Toast.

Kargers x3

Right before Ellie's birthday, one of Bonner's brothers and his family came through town on their way to a wedding. I alluded to their visit in the previous post when I mentioned that we went swimming at their hotel. I was digging around, looking for a new video to post, when I found these four photos. These three kids are so stinking cute! To be fair, all the cousins on all sides of the family are cute as can be, and B. and I really do wish we all lived closer. As Ellie has gotten older, she's really started to appreciate the awesomeness of cousins. Or as her daddy taught her, "cuzzies".

I am completely baffled by how, in this sequence of photos, the cuteness quotient increases exponentially. It's one thing to maintain a level of cuteness, but I've never seen such a thing.

Here's Ellie, showing off her mad popper skillz*.

And here you'll find Ellie, Ridley and Bryce.
I don't know why E. and B. don't have any pants on.
Maybe that's part of the cuteness quotient?

OK, seriously. Does this not just make you giddy inside?
Look at Ellie; she looks like she's about to explode with glee.


And our final, parting shot. One of only two boy cousins of the seven total on B.'s side.
This is a picture I expect to see posted on one of those potentially
embarrassing "photo boards" that parents and siblings put together
for high school graduation:

Show's over! Did I not try to tell you about the cuteness quotient? Did I not forewarn you of the expanding balloon of cuteness that just exploded?

*A quick story about the popper, which I think is funny and I remembered it when I saw the photo. Grandma Cindy gave that popper to Ellie for Christmas this year. At the same holiday gift opening extravaganza, Grandma Cindy also gave cousin Z. a similar popper, but this one was more of a rolling cylinder that sounded tinkly and fairy bell-y when you rolled it. So as the girls were running around with their new rolly/poppy/tinkly toys one day, Z.'s dad piped up and, speaking as if he were Z., explained how "First, you have to pop the floor. Then, you can fairy dust it."

Happy 2nd Birthday!

My baby! She's 2 years old today! As we drifted off to sleep last night, Bonner and I reminisced about Ellie's birth. "What were we doing two years ago right now?" I asked him, at about 10 p.m. Without going into gory detail, I can tell you that we decided my water had broken, and I was in the bowels of hell. Had I known then what I know now, you can be damn sure I probably would have worked even harder to get the little munchkin into the world. Who wouldn't be eager to experience a day like this, her second birthday?

We eased into the day with a birthday serenade before her eyes were even fully open. She loved it! She loved it so much she wanted me to sing it 'gin, 'gin, 'gin (again), and then she wanted me to change the words and sing it to myself, and then sing it to daddy. At some point in the day I even sung happy birthday to Dora and Mickey Mouse. Next stop was a hotel in town, where Ellie's cousins had stayed overnight. We joined them for about an hour in the pool, where Ellie got to use a floaty for the first time. After nap, we skyped with Grandma, and I frosted the cake, and then we went to the doctor for her 2-year check-up, which she came out of with NO shots and a clean bill of health.

Ellie received some wonderful gifts. Thanks to my Aunt Dianne, Bonner's aunties Bee and Glenda, and Grandma Cindy.

Special thanks to Grandma Cindy for the book of 2000 animal stickers!

On to the cake!

Time to blow out the candles!

Blow, blow, blow!

Didn't quite get it...

Try again!

Yay! Ellie did it!
(With a little puff of air from Daddy...but I won't tell if you don't!)

A close-up before the frosting hits the fan...

Mmmm...num num num...

Fingers work better than forks.

The girl may just love this frosting more than I do.

Don't worry...it's not a real knife.

This is sure to make some of you flinch. Someone generously gave us a play kitchen set, including the giant plastic structure (which has been relegated to the side of the house until winter) and a big bag full of plastic food and utensils. Some of the plastic food is fruits and veggies that are actually two pieces each, stuck together with velcro (excuse me...hook and loop closures). As you'll see in the video, there is also a plastic chefs knife and a cutting board. Ellie had, up until the filming of this video, been satisfied to sit on the floor with the veggies, knife and cutting board, and she had a decent amount of success cutting those veggies in half by wedging that knife between the halves.

On this day, however, I discovered her standing in the living room attempting to cut those wiley foodstuffs with the knife in one hand and the produce in the other. Keep an eye out for classic concentration faces, right at about 25, 45, and 57 seconds. 25 is our favorite.

Eye-eee!

Ellie continues to grow almost as fast as the weeds in our garden. About a month ago we got this quick video of her messing about with a Fisher-Price Little People house (an awesome collectible I found at a garage sale but didn't pay nearly enough for to keep them away from little hands...and she loves them). She's pulling the house around and knocking into the little dingy bell. For some reason she really liked sitting on it's peaked roof on this particular afternoon, which gave me the opportunity to ask who, exactly, is sitting on the house.