Springtime & Mother's Day

Springtime has been just lovely around here.  I realize how sarcastic that may have sounded, but I was being completely serious.  It's been a gorgeous spring.  Check out some of the fun things we've done so far...

WAY back in April, we celebrated the homecoming of one of Andy's good friends from college.  He recently got back from Afghanistan, so the whole gang got together to hang out and catch up...

Babies: Elijah, Ellie, Audrey, Mariah (this is the best one I got)

Dads (plus Micah): Micah, Matt, Andy, Alex, Jared

I thought it was too cute how, with the exception of Micah (who isn't a dad), the dad's sat in the same order as their babies.  Awww.  Oh, and apparently the McD's can't keep their hands off the Bailey's (the people, not the Irish Cream).  Hmm.  We'll have to keep an eye on that.

Ellie took walks and played in the park with various parents & grandparents...

Saw a few more critters...

Duck in a BIG puddle in the park. 

Tree Frogs on our deck.

And learned a little about flower gardening...

"Oooo piddy!" (Oh, pretty!)

"Dish?" (This?)

And helped her dad clean and rearrange furniture in the living room...

And established her 'office' in our 'dining' room...

(Sorry that picture is so grainy - the lighting wasn't great and by the time I got the camera adjusted properly she caught me taking pictures and started to cry until I left.  She's serious about her office space.  She will often take books over there and sit and read.  In this picture, she's got the baby monitor (which she answers like a phone, "hi!"), her water cup, and her bedtime prayer book.  And yes, that shelf is firmly anchored to the wall.)

And discovered bubbles.  Oh the bubbles.  

Hey, those are kinda funny little things...

Ahhh!  It touched me!  And it TICKLES!

Run away!  Run away!

Ahh, it's much safer behind the bubbles!

Then came Mother's Day.  And let me tell you what, she made me work for this one.  It started on Friday, when Andy and Ellie were going downstairs to play and he slid down some of the steps.  Nothing too terrible - just a foot slipped and he went down a few, but he kept her safe and sound and just wound up with a bruised shin and big toe knuckle.  Evidently his toe hurt REALLY BAD because he was still complaining about it over a week later.  It wasn't bad enough to actually go to the doctor, though.

Saturday, Ellie and I went shopping with Gramma and had a super fun time.  In the evening, we were all down in the basement watching Jeopardy together (because we're cool like that) and Ellie was playing with her stuffed animals right next to where I was sitting on the floor.  Then, all of a sudden, she starts choking.  Like, gasping for air, can barely cough, eyes watering, choking.  On what???  Anyway, she was still coughing as she crawled up in my lap, so I calmly encouraged her to keep coughing and then felt inside her mouth to see if there was something big I could pull out.  Well, I gagged her and she threw up dinner (hot dogs and mac 'n cheese again) all over me, but the object came out too and she could breathe, so it was all good.  Andy threw a towel on me and we went up to change clothes.  Evidently, there was a chunk of plastic that she tried to swallow.  I have never seen anything like that anywhere in my house.  And we vacuum that room twice a week, so the floor is actually really clean!  We cannot figure out where it came from or at what point she put it in her mouth.  Like I said, she was right next to me the whole time!  Anyway, I was really shaking and freaking out for most of the rest of the night.

Sunday started out pretty normal, except Ellie decided morning started at 5 instead of 7 like usual.  She got fussy right in the middle of the sermon at church, so Andy took her to the back so she could run a little bit.  Right at the end, he put her up on his shoulders, which he's done many times before.  Well, her favorite youth came walking back and she threw herself at him and off of Andy's shoulders.  Thankfully, he caught her, but it was by the arm.  So she was screaming and mad, but calmed down when I got to her, so we figured she was just scared by the whole ordeal.  We went out for lunch at a local pizza place with some friends and that's when I realized that she wasn't using her right arm.  That's the one he grabbed.  Yeah.  Not a good sign.  So after we all had full bellies, we headed off to the ER to get checked out.  JUST what I want to be doing on Mother's Day!  It turned out the be the fastest ER visit in the entire history of hospitals.  We were in and out in 35 minutes.  It helped that we were the only people there at the time.  So we got all checked in and told the story to three different nurses and the Nurse Practitioner came in and started checking over her arm and POP it was fixed.  Her elbow had been dislocated.  Apparently it's a very common injury in kids her age.  They run out in traffic or something and you grab their hand to stop them and their elbow just pops out.  So they wanted to give her some tylenol and observe her for a few minutes to see if she started using it to determine if they needed to do an x-ray.  Well no sooner was it back in than she wanted to be down and twirling around and digging in my purse.  She was totally fine.  We all got a pretty good kick out of it.  So we all went home and took super long naps and then had a normal rest of the day.  It was pretty crazy.

I was pretty scared to drop her off at the babysitter's on Monday morning, but everything settled back down after that really eventful weekend.  So anyway, for Mother's day Andy gave me the gift of knowing that I will never be the first person to cause our child to have to go to the emergency room.  How thoughtful.

Watching The Mummy in the ER waiting room.

Now what can I get him for Father's Day that will top that??