Thank goodness for cheerios. I finally resorted to giving my child cereal for dinner after she refused everything else I put in front of her and a full cup of applesauce splattered all over the floor. She is now on her second bowl of cereal. At least she drinks the milk out of the bottom of the bowl. That's good, right? Lately, her two favorite foods are cheese and cereal....turns out that a 21 month old can be very picky, despite my grand illusions of believing I'd never have a picky eater. So now everyone can go ahead and say I told you so!
Another funny thing....if anyone watches the show "2 1/2 Men", you'll know that between scenes and going to commercial, they sing this little chord "Men". I guess we watch a lot of the re-runs that come on in the evening and now Meredith sings along every time. We thought it was a fluke the first few times, but now it's consistent! Very funny kiddo.
Oh yeah, "I can't" has entered the vocab. She says it whenever she has to put any effort into anything.."I caant". Fun stuff.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
It's still there!
Every morning Meredith goes to the back door and looks out in the yard and sees her little house and she squeels with absolute delight and says 'hou, hou'. It's like she is so amazed that it is still there and it's like Christmas every day! It is awesome to see her sweet face light up with such excitement over a plastic house in the back yard :)
Another update: Chris got 14 stitches Sunday evening after a golf accident. How in the world would you need stitches after golf you might ask? He was on the 18th hole and his ball had landed in the woods, so he was less than thrilled with his shot to say the least. He got out in the woods where his ball was and there was a big tree limb in the way, so he picked it up to toss it out of the way and it had a really sharp edge on it and it sliced his hand wide open as he threw it. The doctor seemed to think he was fairly lucky that he didn't get the muscle, but he is in quite a bit of pain and it is also his right hand, which makes every day life quite difficult. Poor guy isn't having the best string of luck these days.
Another update: Chris got 14 stitches Sunday evening after a golf accident. How in the world would you need stitches after golf you might ask? He was on the 18th hole and his ball had landed in the woods, so he was less than thrilled with his shot to say the least. He got out in the woods where his ball was and there was a big tree limb in the way, so he picked it up to toss it out of the way and it had a really sharp edge on it and it sliced his hand wide open as he threw it. The doctor seemed to think he was fairly lucky that he didn't get the muscle, but he is in quite a bit of pain and it is also his right hand, which makes every day life quite difficult. Poor guy isn't having the best string of luck these days.
Friday, October 19, 2007
October Updates
Wow, I feel like a lot is going on lately, so I'll try to catch up. We spent last weekend in Tennessee with Chris' mom and step dad. It was actually quite a nice trip. Chris and I rented an adorable cabin up near Gatlinburg on Friday night and quite enjoyed some peace and quiet away from our precocious little one and her grandparents were thrilled to get some one on one time with Meredith. We stopped through High Point on the way home and saw Chris grandparents, dad and step-mom. We didn't get home until after 9:00 pm on Sunday, so it was a really long day, but we managed to see all of the Elliott contingent in one weekend!
We were all exhausted to start a long week, but Monday turned into a fabulous day at work. I had checked our Biogen stock online when I got home Sunday night and saw that it had skyrocketed in post-market trading on Friday. I had been out of the office on Friday and missed an email from our CEO telling us that the board has approved shopping the company around for purchase. This rumor has been going around for awhile and now it appears to be coming to fruition. So, based on this news our stock went through the roof to a 5 year high. I had a bunch of stock options that I didn't have much hope would ever make me any money and as a matter of fact, quite a few of them were so far under water that I had basically written them off. So, I jumped on it and set up my options to sell on Monday and I ended up doing quite well. It is like an answer to our prayers because we have been working so hard to get ourselves out of debt and this will get us a lot closer. The taxes on the sale makes me physically ill, but I figure that it is money we never expected to get, so I am thrilled about it. The word on the street and the net is that Merck may be a frontrunner right now, but supposedly everyone from J&J to GSK have perused the option of buying us. The sale may not even happen at all because a lot of analysts are saying we are already overpriced, so we'll see. If we do get bought out, our stock should go up even more and I'm surely going to dump even more stock!! Yippee!
The day after the good news about the stock, Chris got into a car accident and really messed up our Endeavor. He rear-ended a little Nissan pickup truck and their car fortunately had very little damage and he was fine, but our car is not. Thankfully, he didn't get a ticket, but we now have to pay our $500 deductible and our insurance will go up :( The silver lining is that when he sat down with our agent to see what the increase will be, they discovered that we were coded as Durham City & County, but we are really Raleigh City and Durham County, which makes a big difference in our annual payment. So, he is going to get it corrected 4 years retroactively, which should basically make up for how much our insurance will increase over the next 3 years.
Meredith is as busy as ever. A co-teacher of Chris' gave us a Little Tykes playhouse that her kids had outgrown and oh my gosh, Meredith is absolutely in love with it. Her OCD father is painting it the same colors as our house (with that paint that adheres to plastic) because it has definitely faded in the sun, so it should be really cute when he's finished. If anyone could have seen us the other night, it was quite a sight because Meredith dragged both Chris and I out to her house and made us both get in there with her....needless to say, it was a tight fit!
Another weird thing she is doing is she has gotten really picky about her cups. She'll just stand and point up to the cabinet where her cups are and just whine 'cahp' and I'll go through the whole cabinet asking her which one she wants and inevitably, she doesn't want any of them and just keeps pointing and whining. We may be buying a few more cups this weekend for variety!
All 4 teeth have made a lot of progress pushing through, but they still have a bit more to go. She is constantly drooling and chewing on things and I can tell she is uncomfortable. She's been a bit more whiny than usual lately and she isn't eating well, but doing well with them overall.
Her vocabulary is certainly growing these days. She still doesn't make a lot of sense a lot of the time, but it is really starting to come together. She most definitely understands what we tell her. Today we got home and we usually go get the mail together and she looked up at me and said 'geh mai', ie get mail! I was quite impressed :) She also knows body parts like eyes, ears, nose etc and she knows a couple colors and shapes. Oh yeah, her favorite is saying please. She kinda sticks her behind out, bends over a little, scrunches her face up and says 'Peeees'...it is quite adorable, although not sure she quite understands the reasoning other than she gets what she wants when she says it....we're still working on thank you since the attention span is gone once she gets what she was asking for!
Ok, if you're still with me, sorry about the novel of a post.
Still no pictures. Now our camera battery is dead, so I'll have to work on that soon.
We were all exhausted to start a long week, but Monday turned into a fabulous day at work. I had checked our Biogen stock online when I got home Sunday night and saw that it had skyrocketed in post-market trading on Friday. I had been out of the office on Friday and missed an email from our CEO telling us that the board has approved shopping the company around for purchase. This rumor has been going around for awhile and now it appears to be coming to fruition. So, based on this news our stock went through the roof to a 5 year high. I had a bunch of stock options that I didn't have much hope would ever make me any money and as a matter of fact, quite a few of them were so far under water that I had basically written them off. So, I jumped on it and set up my options to sell on Monday and I ended up doing quite well. It is like an answer to our prayers because we have been working so hard to get ourselves out of debt and this will get us a lot closer. The taxes on the sale makes me physically ill, but I figure that it is money we never expected to get, so I am thrilled about it. The word on the street and the net is that Merck may be a frontrunner right now, but supposedly everyone from J&J to GSK have perused the option of buying us. The sale may not even happen at all because a lot of analysts are saying we are already overpriced, so we'll see. If we do get bought out, our stock should go up even more and I'm surely going to dump even more stock!! Yippee!
The day after the good news about the stock, Chris got into a car accident and really messed up our Endeavor. He rear-ended a little Nissan pickup truck and their car fortunately had very little damage and he was fine, but our car is not. Thankfully, he didn't get a ticket, but we now have to pay our $500 deductible and our insurance will go up :( The silver lining is that when he sat down with our agent to see what the increase will be, they discovered that we were coded as Durham City & County, but we are really Raleigh City and Durham County, which makes a big difference in our annual payment. So, he is going to get it corrected 4 years retroactively, which should basically make up for how much our insurance will increase over the next 3 years.
Meredith is as busy as ever. A co-teacher of Chris' gave us a Little Tykes playhouse that her kids had outgrown and oh my gosh, Meredith is absolutely in love with it. Her OCD father is painting it the same colors as our house (with that paint that adheres to plastic) because it has definitely faded in the sun, so it should be really cute when he's finished. If anyone could have seen us the other night, it was quite a sight because Meredith dragged both Chris and I out to her house and made us both get in there with her....needless to say, it was a tight fit!
Another weird thing she is doing is she has gotten really picky about her cups. She'll just stand and point up to the cabinet where her cups are and just whine 'cahp' and I'll go through the whole cabinet asking her which one she wants and inevitably, she doesn't want any of them and just keeps pointing and whining. We may be buying a few more cups this weekend for variety!
All 4 teeth have made a lot of progress pushing through, but they still have a bit more to go. She is constantly drooling and chewing on things and I can tell she is uncomfortable. She's been a bit more whiny than usual lately and she isn't eating well, but doing well with them overall.
Her vocabulary is certainly growing these days. She still doesn't make a lot of sense a lot of the time, but it is really starting to come together. She most definitely understands what we tell her. Today we got home and we usually go get the mail together and she looked up at me and said 'geh mai', ie get mail! I was quite impressed :) She also knows body parts like eyes, ears, nose etc and she knows a couple colors and shapes. Oh yeah, her favorite is saying please. She kinda sticks her behind out, bends over a little, scrunches her face up and says 'Peeees'...it is quite adorable, although not sure she quite understands the reasoning other than she gets what she wants when she says it....we're still working on thank you since the attention span is gone once she gets what she was asking for!
Ok, if you're still with me, sorry about the novel of a post.
Still no pictures. Now our camera battery is dead, so I'll have to work on that soon.
Thursday, October 04, 2007
Teeth
I totally forgot to mention this in yesterday's post, but Meredith has 4 teeth coming in at once. They are the inscisors ( I think that is the name). She has had a gap between her first molars & her front teeth, so these teeth will fill in that gap. She is doing a little better with brushing teeth. Usually she is chewing on one tooth brush while I am attempting to scrub with another tooth brush. I'm thinking about getting an electric one so that she would be excited to brush her teeth since it is still quite an ordeal to get it done. She's been a little grumpy with these teeth coming in, but I guess since it is four cutting through at once she is entitled to some bad moods!
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
A few pics
These are from my cousin Becky's wedding that was at Lake Michigan courtesy of Hillary's camera.
The whole Smith crew...yes, we have officially doubled in size. There are 12 of us now!
The Smith girls....hard to get us all in one place
The Elliott's
Endless summer
So, is it ever going to feel like fall around here?? A little rain would help too. I can deal with 80s in October, but they are saying we might hit 90 again! Come on! We have lost like 5 azaleas and several other shrubs because of this horrid drought and our front lawn looks like a hay field (although our backyard looks great because it is bermuda grass, which my husband preaches about the fabulous attributes of this type of grass all the time...he doesn't understand why people don't like it....he loves his grass) Enough about this weather.
Nothing too exciting has been going on and it has been wonderful! Meredith has recovered from her stings, although you can still see the stinger marks. Funny thing happened last week while she was staying with my mom. They were in the front yard while mom was pulling some weeds. Well, Meredith decided to play with her stroller and somehow she crawled into the basket part of the stroller and got her head popped out where the foot rest part is! Mom said she looked over bc Meredith started screaming at the top of her lungs and she couldn't believe how quickly she had gotten into such a predicament. She got her out with a little effort, but I must stress that this is not a small child. This is a 27 pound, long legged toddler who somehow fit herself into the basket of a stroller! Mom says she still has no idea how she got in there!
Lately she has been saying 'kay' to everything. She used to answer everything with 'yeah', but now everything is 'kay'. I guess I say 'ok?' to her a lot to make sure she understands what I'm telling her and she has definitely picked up on it. "Meredith, do you want some milk?" she answers, "kay". Also, while she is still speaking mostly in her own toddler language, I swear that she said 'mas' the other day...as in the word more in Spanish. She was holding an empty cup and said 'ma' while she was holding it out to me. She hears both English and Spanish from her babysitter, so her little brain is working on processing two languages and out came Spanish this time. It may have been a total fluke, but I want to believe it's sinking in :)
Oh yeah, we are starting to think about the big potty training. No major pressure, but I've been sitting her on the big potty every now and then to get the idea. No tinkles so far, but just trying to get her really interested. It truly is amazing the things that are now fun topics to talk about now that I have a child. 2 years ago, I never would have believed what a big topic my child's bodily functions would be! The joys of motherhood never cease to amaze me!
She has these bright pink cowboy boots that we got on clearance at Target last winter and she just loves them. I'll have to get a picture posted soon because there has been more than one occasion where she is just wearing a diaper and her cowboy boots (only at home!). It is so redneck, but it makes me laugh watching her clunk around in her boots! The other crazy part is that they are a size 7 and I can barely get them on her feet...this child is 20 months old and has the shoe size of a 3 year old!
Sorry I haven't posted pictures in awhile. We are hoping to get a new camera soon. The one we have is fine, but it just doesn't take the best quality picture. We also have been looking at computers since the mother board on ours died. At least the hard drive is still good and we can copy that over to a new one. So, right now I guess the computer is the priority since we can't get both at once.
Kay, think I have rambled long enough. Maybe I'll get some pictures up soon.
Nothing too exciting has been going on and it has been wonderful! Meredith has recovered from her stings, although you can still see the stinger marks. Funny thing happened last week while she was staying with my mom. They were in the front yard while mom was pulling some weeds. Well, Meredith decided to play with her stroller and somehow she crawled into the basket part of the stroller and got her head popped out where the foot rest part is! Mom said she looked over bc Meredith started screaming at the top of her lungs and she couldn't believe how quickly she had gotten into such a predicament. She got her out with a little effort, but I must stress that this is not a small child. This is a 27 pound, long legged toddler who somehow fit herself into the basket of a stroller! Mom says she still has no idea how she got in there!
Lately she has been saying 'kay' to everything. She used to answer everything with 'yeah', but now everything is 'kay'. I guess I say 'ok?' to her a lot to make sure she understands what I'm telling her and she has definitely picked up on it. "Meredith, do you want some milk?" she answers, "kay". Also, while she is still speaking mostly in her own toddler language, I swear that she said 'mas' the other day...as in the word more in Spanish. She was holding an empty cup and said 'ma' while she was holding it out to me. She hears both English and Spanish from her babysitter, so her little brain is working on processing two languages and out came Spanish this time. It may have been a total fluke, but I want to believe it's sinking in :)
Oh yeah, we are starting to think about the big potty training. No major pressure, but I've been sitting her on the big potty every now and then to get the idea. No tinkles so far, but just trying to get her really interested. It truly is amazing the things that are now fun topics to talk about now that I have a child. 2 years ago, I never would have believed what a big topic my child's bodily functions would be! The joys of motherhood never cease to amaze me!
She has these bright pink cowboy boots that we got on clearance at Target last winter and she just loves them. I'll have to get a picture posted soon because there has been more than one occasion where she is just wearing a diaper and her cowboy boots (only at home!). It is so redneck, but it makes me laugh watching her clunk around in her boots! The other crazy part is that they are a size 7 and I can barely get them on her feet...this child is 20 months old and has the shoe size of a 3 year old!
Sorry I haven't posted pictures in awhile. We are hoping to get a new camera soon. The one we have is fine, but it just doesn't take the best quality picture. We also have been looking at computers since the mother board on ours died. At least the hard drive is still good and we can copy that over to a new one. So, right now I guess the computer is the priority since we can't get both at once.
Kay, think I have rambled long enough. Maybe I'll get some pictures up soon.
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