Much has happened so let's get right to it, shall we?
Christmas 2002 was a fun time. We had lots of things to do. On Christmas Eve, we prepared a nice dinner (and when I say we, I mean Jada) for the fam. Jada's dad came over as well as our friend, Pete. We bought a HoneyBaked ham, and Jada baked it while I was at work. We broke out the table runner and the candles. As soon as the candles were lit, and the lights were dimmed, Ellen said "Oooh. Pretty". This had been her Christmas phrase used anytime she saw the lights on the tree in the darkened front room. It was very cute.
On Christmas day, we got up early...well, at exactly the same time we get up every day - 6am. That's just when Ellen wakes up every day of the week including weekends and holidays. We had a yummy breakfast of omelets, bacon, and Cinnabons. (Mmm. Cinnabons) Then we went in and opened our presents. Ellen has finally learned how to unwrap her presents on her own. She had lots of fun. Then it was off to visit Jada's nieces in their new house followed by a nice nap. After our nap, we headed out for dinner at Mike and Carrie's house just over the hill. Ellen had loads of fun playing with the other kids that were there including Elsa for a little while (Dave's Goddaughter). It was fun getting to see everyone again, but it all ended too soon as we had to get Ellen home for bed.
Dave took his first real vacation of the year starting the day after Christmas. No laptop. No pager. No phone. No work for 1.5 weeks. Thursday we spent the entire day packing and preparing for our flight back to Illinois. Thursday night, we had yet one more party with some of Jada's friends from college and their families with Ellen's favorite food, pizza. Then it was to bed as soon as possible to prepare for an early rise to get to the airport.
3:45am came all too soon. I got up and hit the shower and packed the car while Jada prepared the final snack packs for the long day's journey. We had no idea what to expect from Ellen, but we wanted to give Ellen the best chance to succeed we possibly could. When we were all ready to go, we slinked in Ellen's room. She was awake as soon as we opened the door, and very pleasant. We put her coat and hat on over her jammies, grabbed her blanket and bear, and headed out into the rainy night towards the airport. Once there, I dropped Jada, Ellen, and the bags at the terminal where we got a sky cap to help her in with the bags and car seat. Then I drove back to the long term parking. It seemed like forever before I got back to the terminal on the shuttle. In that time, Jada was able to get our boarding passes and luggage checked. Our airline was the only one that didn't have a line. I don't know why. Jada was keeping Ellen occupied by watching carpet get pulled up in the main console. The security people were very nice. We got through the line quickly, and they helped us figure out what we needed to do. We got El changed into her travelin' clothes while we waited for the plane, and walked around until it was boarding time. Here's a tip for anyone traveling with kids on American Airlines: They don't announce pre-boarding for parents traveling with kids. They actually let the first class passengers board first. So I excused our way into the first wave of boarders where I learned this information. So here I am carrying a car seat, a baby girl, and a backpack. I made sure to bump as many of the first class passengers as possible...after all, they paid for that privilege. We set the car seat between us for better coverage, but for some reason which neither of us can recall, Jada wanted to sit on the inside next to the window. This made for an interesting time for her frequent bathroom trips. The other fun thing was the woman who was sitting in front of Ellen was out of range of Ellen's kicking feet when she wasn't reclined insisted on reclining that 2 degrees that define comfort for the airline industry. So Ellen kicked the seat the whole time. We tried to stop her, but there's not much we could do. Ellen did as well as could be expected. She hit her frustration point around the 3 hour mark, but we somehow got her down on the ground without much of an incident. We made it with plenty of time to our connecting flight. The hard part of the journey was the commuter plane. Ellen was so close to sleeping, but couldn't get herself to commit. I really felt bad for the old lady in front of her though. The seats are 2 inches apart, and she was so upset to be stuck in the car seat yet again. I finally caved and took her out of the seat. She enjoyed making friends with the ladies behind us for the rest of the trip. The worst part of that section of the journey was the fact that it is a 40 minute flight from St. Louis to Peoria, but we spent 30 minutes on the runway in St. Louis. I hate that airport.
But Nana and Bapa were waiting for us. All we wanted to do was get Ellen home and into bed for a nap. We had decided to keep Ellen on PST which made it her nap time. Since we were going to be overloading her enough that week, we wanted to give her something to help her. She actually was able to fall asleep after screaming at us for a while from her different bed and room. We made sure she had her bear and blanket from home though. When Ellen woke up, she was inconsolable for a while as she tried to get her bearing on where she was. Eventually she calmed down enough to play for a little while, which was nice since Auntie Mandy arrived that evening.
Saturday was a big day. We unleashed the whole fam on Ellen. My brother, his wife, 2 kids, my aunts, uncles, and cousins all arrived in the morning. It was a fun day for us. Ellen enjoyed getting to play with her cousins. She really was fascinated by her older cousin Charlotte. Ellen spent most of the weekend following her around. We had a bit of a second Christmas which was nice. Of course, it's always nice to spend time with my family.
The week was a really nice vacation once Ellen got used to waking up in a new place. The first couple of days were difficult for her, but she reached a balance point after the weekend. We made a trip to the Pekin Public Library to get Ellen some new books. She got to sit in the big Kangaroo rocking chair that has been there since I was a child. We got to see one of my oldest friends and her husband and toddler. Ashley is almost a year younger than Ellen, but they still seemed to do pretty well together.
New Year's was a pretty normal Pearson soiree with all the hoopla I remember from childhood. We read books, occasionally watched Dick Clark, and eventually went to bed at 10pm(PST) because that's the time I normally call mom and dad from Portland. We were tired. It didn't matter that it didn't make sense. We had to be up in the morning to drive down to Collinsville to see my mom's side of the family. It was another full frontal large family get together that Ellen handled amazingly well yet again. One of my cousins was there with his daughter. She was about 3 years old, so Ellen and she hit it off immediately. Ellen followed her around as they played several pretend games. (I think they were making chowder at one point). It all ended far too soon as we had to get on the road. It was Ellen's nap time, and there was a snow storm that was supposed to be blowing in later in the day. El managed to fall asleep for about an hour, but woke up screaming and inconsolable. She literally screamed for 45 minutes. Somehow, Nana was able to distract her enough to calm her down. It was an early bed time that night, I can tell you.
The rest of the week was spent trying to finish off all the cookies and desserts before we left. We left for the airport on Friday afternoon. Jada got flagged for her shoes, and she had to be searched. They didn't turn up anything, of course. The worst part is Ellen didn't have anyone to walk to through the gate since Jada couldn't pick her up until she had been more thoroughly scanned. Luckily, I didn't get dinged, or that would have been a really bad start to the trip with Ellen not getting to touch either of us. The beginning of the flight was iffy. Ellen started screaming that she didn't want to get into her car seat, but I managed to distract her with watching what was going on outside the plane. It was a quick flight back to St. Louis. And another long wait on the runway to take off for Portland. Luckily, it was a short wait to get on the plane. We made our way back through first class bumping as many people as possible yet again. We got Ellen settled in, and fed her a ham and cheese sandwich. She wasn't all the interested in eating though. She started to get fussy, so we went through our normal bed time routine with reading and singing. She had almost fallen asleep when the people in front of us turned on their overhead light and the light reflected back between the seats. So I sang her a lullaby from one of her books about 20 times over and over again to get her to fall asleep. She finally did, but it was a fitful sleep. Either way, she didn't wake up until we stopped at the gate. Once off the plane, we stopped and changed her diaper, and put her in her jammies. Then we all held hands and walked through the airport. The bags were both right there on the conveyor belt by the time we got there. I left Jada and Ellen just inside the door as I took the shuttle to the car. I wish I had brought them with me because we could have gotten going more quickly, but this way, they could wait inside while I got the car seat back in (it only took me 3 tries). Then it was home and straight into bed. All in all, the whole trip went surprisingly well. I think we were expecting the worst, but I think we did a good job giving Ellen the best chance to succeed in her environment by keeping her on her schedule. We really appreciate everyone's help in keeping her on her schedule even though it meant eating late for every meal. Nana and Bapa are real troopers.
On to closer to now. Music and swim lessons have started up again at the park district. I had to miss the first swim class due to the big SQL worm impact at work, but Jada was able to take her. Ellen might be getting her 2 year molars a few weeks early too. She's got a runny nose and she is drooling a lot! Not to mention the poor sleep at night. She's also recently gotten into a thing where we have to do a fuzz check between her toes before every bath or she freaks out if there is fuzz in the water. It's very odd. But we're managing. Ellen's also speaking in nearly complete sentences. And she can say and identify Chewbacca. Who can ask for more?