Miss Manners

Ellie is starting to do very well with her manners, when she wants to, of course. She knows she can pretty much get anything she wants, as long as it isn't dangerous, by grabbing our face with her little hands on our cheeks, putting her pleading face right up to ours, and saying "Please mommy or please daddy." She knows how to work us already! And if anyone in her vicinity sneezes, she immediately says, "Bless you." If we don't say "thank you" quickly enough to her, she'll beat us to the punch by saying "You're welcome."

Then again, miss proper can also be very unladylike. She is starting to potty-train (and doing very well!) so she talks a lot about her bodily functions. Everytime she "expels gas" she exclaims, "Toot, toot!" There's no more blaming our noises on Ellie, because she'll point out exactly who makes what noise. Anything crusty that comes off her cheek or eye or anywhere on her face is a "booger, yuck." I know she must have learned all of this from us, but did we really teach her this?

About potty-training again. Today we received a new potty seat for Ellie (thanks to the Harkins family). It is a Dora the explorer seat, which is Ellie's favorite character right now (well, Elmo is still in the running). We have one Dora dvd that she asks to watch over and over again, and we often let her because it is so cute to watch her dance with Dora and Boots. (Yesterday she was twisting from side to side shouting "We did it, we did it, lo hicimos") Anyway, she was very excited about the seat, but was very apprehensive of peeing on Dora. Once I convinced her that Dora wanted to see Ellie pee and poop, then she was able to relax. I'm amazed at how well she's doing with this, hopefully it will continue!

It's a....

baby! We went to my doctor's appt today, hoping to find out if the baby is a boy or a girl. The doctor really tried, but she couldn't get the "money shot." So, we don't know yet. But, the baby looks really healthy, and that's what matters most, right? Right?!? I know, we're disappointed too. Hopefully next month this baby will cooperate. I am just not patient enough for this!

We're planning on another bus trip next week, going to Petra. In October we had plans to go, but they never happened, so we're trying again. We're running out of new adventures in Amman, so this should be a lot of fun for us. We just hope it's not too cold.

Sorry we don't have much news to report. It's just normal life as usual here in Amman.

Ellie's First Year

So, I guess I'm being a little nostalgic with this new baby coming, thinking about Ellie growing up. So, here is a photo montage of Ellie's first year (bring on the kleenex!)

Make an online slide show at onetruemedia.com

Another hospital trip

This time it wasn't for Ellie!

I've had a cold for about a week, and yesterday I figured out that it had turned into a sinus infection. When researching it online, I discovered that this is common in pregnancies. Who knew? So, yesterday I had some pretty bad pain in my cheek area; right under the cheekbone is one sinus cavity. I wanted to wait until today to find a doctor, since yesterday everywhere was closed. Last night however, my sinus infection turned into an ear infection, with extreme pain in my left ear. Then, around 5am, my eardrum burst! So, after a night of hardly any sleep, I woke up Jason around 7am and we went to the emergency room. Luckily an ear,nose, and throat doctor was coming in soon, so we waited there for him. He cleaned out my ears (SOOOO painful in the bad one) and prescribed antibiotics and pain killers, both safe for the baby. He also prescribed a nasal spray, which he and the pharmacist assured me was perfectly safe. However, when I came home I read the info about the spray and it says this, "Otrivin should be avoided during pregnancy...the medicine should be administered only if the potential benefit justifies the potential risk to the fetus." So, I won't be taking it. I don't think the potential risk is worth a less-stuffy nose.

Can I nominate Jason for the husband-of-the-year award? When I came out around 1:30am, not able to sleep in the bed, he set out to make a comfortable place for me to sleep. He made this contraption for our bed:





UPDATED: Today I feel better, my ear doesn't really hurt, I just have a lot of pressure in my sinus area. The antibiotics are making me sick, but I just took one with a lot of food, so hopefully that one will stay down. And in other news, tonight Ellie tried to secretly change her own poopy diaper. You can imagine the mess that made! Actually, she did a pretty good job, she just couldn't quite wipe everything off herself. Sorry, no pictures for that :)

My very first french braid attempt!!

You can learn anything online!!

Back to school

School again for Jason. He's had a really nice (and unexpected) break since Christmas, but he had to go back today. Fortunately he only has two weeks left of this semester, then he has another 2 week break. Hopefully we'll be able to travel a little bit within Jordan during that time.

I'm feeling a lot better as far as morning sickness. I have an episode every once in a while, but for the most part it has gone away. And I'm pretty sure I've felt the baby moving around a couple times! I was starting to get worried because at the last ultrasound (about 2 weeks ago) the baby WOULD NOT MOVE, even when the doctor poked at him/her. I was reprimanded for not eating enough, so I was starting to worry that my morning sickness had caused some sort of permanent damage. I know logically that it didn't, but it's hard not to worry about everything! Since getting over the sickness, I've started cooking good dinners again. Jason's excited about that!

Recently we took Ellie to this place that is like a mini-carnival for little kids. There are about 6 small rides (ones that pretty much go around in a circle) and tons of those toys like in front of Walmart that you put quarters into. But Ellie's favorite part was the bumper cars that she went on with Daddy. Now she stands at the front door every day and asks for the bumper cars.

Ellie is also her own biggest fan. All day she walks around saying "Ellie's beautiful, Ellie's gorgeous, Ellie's adorable, Ellie's cute, Ellie's awesome." And each time she says one, we have to repeat it before she'll move on to the next one. She also tells herself "Good job" a lot and today after I gave her a cup of tea (basically warm whole milk with a couple spoonfuls of my tea in it) she kept saying "Good drinking" every time she took a drink. She was very proud to be drinking out of a cup without a lid!

I have some pictures that I'll have to upload soon!

Happy New Year!!

I hope everyone's celebrations were fun. I woke up last night to the sound of fireworks; I couldn't even stay up late enough (not that I really tried).

Here is a video of us reading the Christmas Story. This video is only the first half, but if you only have time for one (they are almost 5 min. each) then watch the second one instead. If you want to see the beginning of the story first watch this one:


This second video starts in the middle of the story, so that people who don't want to watch everything can at least watch some. We have more, but it takes about an hour to upload each one, so I'm only doing one a day. This one is the cutest though: