Happy belated Turkey day!

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! We sure did!

Aunt Amy came to visit, so we had a lot of fun playing with her. Unfortunately, Elizabeth had a cold, was teething, and was in extreme "Mommy" mode, so she wasn't as fun for Aunt Amy to play with this trip. We also don't have any pictures from the times she did spend playing with Aunt Amy, because the little stinker (meaning Elizabeth - Amy will now be referred to as the BIG stinker, to prevent confusion) wouldn't sit still for the camera. Elizabeth also amused us all by learning to say "AAAAA-MEEEEE" with a strong Southern twang.

Here's a picture of Granddad reading her "Big Bird Book" (or "buh-buh-buh" to the people who have trouble understanding toddler-ese) to Elizabeth:



And, here are some pictures of Elizabeth all dressed up for Thanksgiving dinner:





As you can see, her nose is looking much better!

Visiting with BB

Elizabeth had a great time visiting with BB (David's mom) last week. Elizabeth and BB had a fun time shopping and playing at the mall:





Drawing snowmen:



Playing the piano:




Building with blocks, and playing dress-up, including putting bows in her hair:



And even filing her nails:




We sure were sorry to see her leave, and hope she gets to come visit again soon!

A massive post to catch up

Sorry I've been slow in posting this month....it's been pretty hectic around here. I had a seminar to go to last week, plus my office is in the process of moving. Aack!

Fortunately, David has had extra help at home. Elizabeth has decided that she must be allowed to help with the laundry and dishwashing duties. She has her own special tasks. As the washing machine is being loaded, she'll sit on the dryer and throw each piece of laundry into the machine, then reach for more:

Give me some clothes, Daddy!



Into the machine it goes!



More, more!!!



Then, it's off to help with the dishes. She insists on helping empty the silverware compartment, handing each piece up to us to put away.



It's pretty cute to watch!

Elizabeth is now walking everywhere, in the combination Frankenstein/ drunken sailor gait of the newly walking toddler. Unfortunately, she's also had her share of spills...including doing a not-so-graceful faceplant into the concrete driveway. This resulted in a large scab on her nose that led to the church folks affectionately dubbing her "Rudolph." Of course, that happened right before we were planning to take our pictures for our Christmas cards, so you all might be getting them a little late as we wait for her nose to heal a bit more.

Here's her new look:



Her latest addiction is doing "ABCs" on the computer through www.starfall.com. She also likes to draw ABCs on her doodleboard...well, we draw them, then she scribbles a little bit.



David's mother (BB) is visiting us this week, and we're all really enjoying having her around. Elizabeth alternates between asking for "BB" and "ma-man" (aka "snowman", another new obsession), which is a very high honor for BB!

Elizabeth has a new Barney Christmas book, which shows Baby Bop drawing a picture of a snowman for Barney. Everytime we read that, Elizabeth makes us pull out some paper and her crayons so she can draw a snowman for him too. Of course, I'm always glad to know what she's drawing in advance, since it's sometimes hard to decipher one scribble from another!

We all went to the Kentucky Horse Park to see Southern Lights tonight. I tried to get a picture of Jonathan and Elizabeth in front of their Christmas tree, but that's pretty difficult with a wiggling toddler. This was the best shot we got:



After driving through the lights, we went into the petting zoo. BB and Jonathan liked the animals, but Elizabeth was a tad bit scared of all of them - which is pretty understandable seeing how big they were compared to her. Jonathan got to make another sand art sculpture, while the rest of us tried to keep Elizabeth out of the sand. Then, we all walked through the miniature train and photography exhibits. It was a lot of fun!

Back on the charts

Elizabeth had her 18-month appointment today. The doctor was pleased with her progress, and she's back on the charts (barely)! She weighed 21.2 pounds (8th percentile) and was 29-3/4 inches tall (5th percentile). She had to get one shot for the chicken pox vaccine. She was a real trooper for that - she only cried for a few seconds, mainly because she was mad at David for holding her down. We're hoping she doesn't get a reaction to it!

She's also started walking more on her own. The last 2 nights, she's had a lot of fun walking between mommy and daddy. And, today at the doctor's office she even got brave enough to walk ~10 feet away from mommy all by herself to look through the windows!

Barney has four eyes

Elizabeth went to play with Carolyn, Ethan, and Maggie last night while David and I went out with some friends for sushi. It was a great opportunity for us to catch up with some friends we hadn't seen in a very long time, and Elizabeth had a great time playing with all of the toys at "Aunt" Carolyn's house.

Apparently at some point in the evening, her Barney failed a vision test, because he came home with a new pair of glasses.



All day, she's been putting Barney's glasses on, then taking them off again. She just giggles like crazy everytime she does it. Thanks, Aunt Carolyn! (And I hope poor Mr. PotatoHead doesn't bump into any walls without his glasses!)

Resorting to bribery

Yesterday afternoon, I was talking on the phone with Erin, and the subject of negotiation/bribery came up. I told her that Elizabeth was starting to get the hang of this - i.e., I'll tell her she can get up from the table if she eats one more bite, and she'll usually eat it, or I'll tell her we'll read her book after she picks up her toys, and she'll put all her toys away. Basically, she's learned that she gets things she wants if she does what I ask her to. Right then, it hit me that we needed to try more of this with her walking. She'd only taken a single step twice on two different occasions, and she'd shown no inclination of wanting to walk alone, no matter what tricks we'd tried. We knew she *could* walk, but she'd just seen no reason to up to that point.

We started trying the bribery with her Barney book...I told her that I'd read it to her if she'd take some steps to me. No doing - she wouldn't budge. So, after dinner, we upped the ante. I pulled a lollipop out of the Halloween candy and told her she could have it after she tried taking some steps. Lo and behold - she went for it!

Here's her first attempt:



And, here's the next try - she walked right across the room!



She caught on very quickly - although I couldn't pry the lollipop back out of her hands and her shoelaces were untied! I told David we'd get turned into child services for that one for sure!

Of course, today wasn't quite so easy. She waved "bye-bye" to the cookies David tried to bribe her with, rather than actually trying to walk...little stinker! But, we took her to the mall playground tonight, and she took about 5 steps altogether at one point, so I think she'll get there eventually! We're on our way to having a full-fledged toddler!

DEFINITELY benign!!!

I finally got my results back (it seemed like a really loooong 24 hours!), and everything was completely benign! Thank the Lord! Needless to say, a huge weight has been lifted from our shoulders!

Even though the results came back negative, I'm still very glad I went ahead with it. I think it would have been way too much of a strain on my family - not just me and David, but all of our extended family as well - to wait 6 months for the results.

Things are finally turning around again. Not only this, but David's face is almost back to normal, and his pain is completely gone.

Thanks for all your prayers - they have definitely been answered!

It's great to be a fuzzy bee*

*For all those Georgia Tech fans out there....



Happy Halloween! Elizabeth dressed up as a fuzzy bee (aka Georgia Tech yellow jacket) for Halloween this year. She even charmed Mommy with a few well-placed "buzz" sounds. She had a little more trouble with, "Go Jackets...Sting 'Em!", but we'll cut her a little bit of slack on that one.



Jonathan camped out on the front porch with his original 1970s Darth Vader mask and handed out candy to the kids.



He and David also continued the little-known pyromaniac Halloween tradition of burning empty candy boxes on the front porch while waiting for more kids.

David and I took Elizabeth around to a few of our immediate neighbors - mainly as an excuse to show her off. She really liked trick-or-treating once she figured out it resulted in candy. Of course, she wanted to eat all the candy as soon as she got it. We compromised by giving her a lollipop, which she spent most of the evening sucking away on. She did, however, continue to charm the neighbors by waving to them in between lollipop licks.



When we got back to the house, we had a final Halloween treat waiting for us - a box full of Beanie Babies from Cousyn Robyn.



She had a lot of fun playing with those! And, of course they all got lots of kisses:



Thanks, Robyn!!!

I'm back

I'm home and everything went pretty well with the biopsy. The nurse and doctor told me my biopsy was the most difficult one they could remember doing, so apparently my boobs are ornery too. :)

They found 5 calcifications. They were trying to remove all of them for testing, but they couldn't get the final one. It dislodged and started floating in the opening created by the removed tissue, so after several more tries at it, they gave up. They'd already run 45 minutes over their time slot and the other doctor was chomping at the bit to get in, not to mention how uncomfortable it was for me. He said they had plenty of tissue for sampling, so he would make his decision about what to do with the last calcification based on the results. He thought if everything came back benign, he would just recommend I come back for a follow-up mammogram in 3 months, instead of the normal 6.

They only had to use a local anesthetic, and I didn't feel any pain during the process, other than pokes and stinging when the anesthetic went in. The worst part was just having to lie on the table (face-down with my boob sticking through a hole) for about an hour and a half without moving. Now, the anesthetic is starting to wear off and I'm getting pretty sore. They told me I'd probably be sorer than normal, since they did so much extra sampling. So, I get to look like a lopsided Dolly Parton all day, with an ice pack in one side of my bra.

I can call back tomorrow afternoon to get my results. I'm actually not stressing about it very much. I've had a bad cold all week, which has kept me from sleeping. Add that to the night of lost sleep in the ER and the normal end-of-the-month work stress, and I'm just too tired/drained to worry about it anymore.

I'll try to get some Halloween pics posted tonight - I know that's what you all were really looking for when you came to the blog today!