Ella's (belated) 3-Monthiversary...and some other stuff

I do realize I'm almost 2 weeks late in sharing poor Ella's third month post and for that, I apologize. Poor, poor second child. I also apologize for the ridiculous amount of information that I'm going to stuff into this post. Poor, poor you.

3-months and cuter every second!

Anyway, we had one fantastic week of Ella sleeping through the night. Like, the WHOLE night and then some. I'm talking 8-10 hours at a stretch! I got cocky, shared my good news with a few friends, and she changed things up on me immediately. The next week, she was awake every 3 hours during the night and her naps during the day didn't top more than 40 minutes. She was exceptionally fussy whenever she was awake and absolutely refused to be held by anyone but me. Having gone back to work, let me just say how difficult it is to take meetings with a screaming child in tow and type one-handed. I tried taking her to a friend's low-key party and it was a disaster of epic proportions. Ella literally screamed the entire time. The noise of chatter and laughter sent her into a tizzy. And made me want to drink heavily. It was a very, very challenging week.

Right before she screamed her face off

 Fortunately, when she woke up this Monday, she was back to her happy self. When she's a normal fussy baby as opposed to Satan's spawn, she's pretty similar to how her big brother was as an infant: food solves all problems; the initial buckle-in into the car seat results in the caliber of shrieks normally reserved for wild animals; driving around makes a sleepy baby; and she prefers her momma over everyone else. :-)

Necessary accessories for TV watching

Ella is quite different from Brady in a few ways, though. Namely, she has a bit of a temper. Brady was a pretty chill baby. Ella makes her presence known! She is constantly babbling, cooing, or yelling. She has a lot to say and she will make sure you hear every word. Can't imagine where she gets that from...

Talking to Elmo

We had quite an eventful time at church last weekend. We normally go to the 8 am mass because both kiddos are sluggish therefore better behaved, but because Ella hadn't been sleeping well, we opted to sleep in a bit. Never again. Ella was so angry that she wouldn't even nurse. In fact, she started kicking so hard that she kicked my nursing cover right off, exposing my boob to the congregation. I was so flustered I just up and left. I took the girl into the bathroom to regroup and suddenly realized my stomach was upset. Let me just say typing isn't the only thing that's hard to do one-handed. So, by the time we rejoined Zach and Brady at our pew, Brady had peed himself. It went through his pants to create a lovely little puddle. We used every last wipe to clean up the mess, but I fear we have officially stained God's house. Here's hoping He has a sense of humor and understands why we didn't show our faces there this week.

Going for a walk

 The circus came to town over the weekend. And by circus I mean a small family of Mexicans and by town I mean the sad little place we call Leechburg. The kids didn't know the difference and they really enjoyed it! Well, Ella slept through 90% of it, but when she was awake, she stared in awe. Brady absolutely loved it! He was dancing with the music, clapping along with the (creepy) clown, and went nuts when the horses came out. He's still talking about the one white horse and one brown horse. And he tells anyone who will listen that no, there were no "el-phants." I personally enjoyed the Michael Jackson impersonator. The kid danced and looked just like him. It was Billy Jean, greasy hair heaven.

Showing off his "I'm Building My Savings" sticker from the nice bank teller

Brady's frog potty endeavors have been going fairly well. He still can't/won't tell us that he has to go beforehand, but he is very bothered by a dirty diaper, so that's a step in the right direction. We'll throw him on the potty (that he calls a "fog toy-yet) and he'll normally pee and then we celebrate like we won the Powerball. So far, the praise and excitement is enough to get him geared up, but I'm sure the bribery will begin soon enough. I should stock up on M&Ms while I'm thinking about it.

Always giving kisses

The kid is super funny these days, too. I don't know if he means to be so hilarious, but the stuff that comes out of his mouth is priceless. This morning when I went into his room, he flared his nostrils at me and asked if I could see his boogers. Seriously? Boys are so gross. But he's also cute, so that helps. In fact, just today I was telling him how cute he is and he stopped me and said, "No, Mum. Brady handsome." Well then!

My gal

And finally, to conclude the Jankowski version of The Odyssey, we had family pictures taken at a local park with a former Valley High School student. I am beyond excited about the final shots and the price. For $80, we got to choose the location/s, almost 2-hours of shooting, we'll get one 8x10 print, one 5x7 print, and ALL of the pictures on two CDs, one color and one black and white. We will own the copyright to the pictures which is something that's almost unheard of today. Or at least our former photographer hadn't heard of that. She charges $100 just to sit down in her studio. She was fabulous; her prices were not. Enjoy some of the pictures from our big photo shoot!