2015: The Best Year Yet.

Hands down, 2015 has been the best year yet.  So much has changed since this time last year, and I'm having a little trouble believing that another year has already come and gone because it has definitely flown by.  This post doesn't even begin to do our 2015 justice, but I wanted to do a little year in review so here goes! :)

The first few months of the year were primarily spent prepping for our little girl's arrival + working on her nursery, growing the bump and doing weekly bumpdates. Tyler also spent a considerable amount of January and February shoveling snow while I baked all kinds of treats for Ellie in the belly - she sure did like her sweets! ;)

On April 26th, we welcomed Miss Ellia Summer into the world! The best day of the year, for sure. :)

We spent a lot of time learning as new parents (read more here and here) and watching our baby grow right before our eyes.

 

We enjoyed the summer weather and celebrated my birthday, took Ellie for her first swim, and had our first night out without the babe at Country Fest.

We watched summer quickly turn to fall, bought Ellie a Patriots jersey, saw the Noel family grow by two when Ellie's aunties got married, got pumpkins and decorated for fall, dressed Ellie up as a kitty for Halloween, got our family photos taken, and celebrated Ellie's first Thanksgiving!  We also fed Ellie her first "real" food and introduced many new ones, which luckily got to be a less and less messy task as time went on. :)

We were so excited to get Ellie's first Christmas tree!  We spent lots of time getting into the festive spirit and celebrating Ellie's first Christmas.  We managed to get in her first trip to the playground this past month, and really saw Ells grow into a not-so-tiny baby when she started crawling and said her first word!








  I always get a little sentimental on New Year's Eve - especially when it's been such a great year, it's a little sad to say farewell to 2015! For the past few years, I've been saying that the next year will be even better than the year before and it always seems to come true.  While 2015 will certainly be hard to beat, we've got a couple things in the works that could very well make that statement true again for 2016 and are so excited to see what's in store for us!

Wishing you + yours the happiest new year! :) See you in 2016, friends!

Eight Months of Ellia

Age: 8 months

Height: Will find out for sure next month.

Weight: 17 lbs 3 oz at the doctor's today - turns out she has an ear infection. :( I'm writing this as she's sleeping in my arms because she won't let me put her cute butt down today, poor girly!

Clothing size:  Still the same as last month for the most part - 3-6 and 6-12 month tops, 6-12 month bottoms.

Diaper size: 3

Eating: Still loving her food pouches. She'll eat 4-5 a day with bottles in between. She's also been eating some more fresh fruit and sampling more of our food.  She's had puffs but I broke them into even smaller pieces because I'm a little neurotic and am always worrying about her choking, although she seems to have no fear and will shove any food into her mouth that we let her (or that she ninja-swipes from our hands + plates).

Sleeping: She'll wake up anywhere between 1 and 31 times a night. ;) Usually just once or twice though and just needs to be rocked back to sleep - no bottles needed overnight! She typically goes to bed between 7-8 and wakes up between 5-5:30.

Favorite toys:  She really seems to love a lot of her toys, but I have to say she especially loves her monkey book!  So much so that it is now broken into two pieces already.

Loves: Eating, being outside, her kitties, dance parties, Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, baths, cellphones + tv remotes, her binkies!

I feel like Ellie has changed the most this past month.  I already wrote a little about it here, but she is able to belly-off-the-floor crawl now (watch out kitties!), pulls herself up on everything, has two teeth almost in, and is saying "mumma". I'm not going to lie, I was pretty excited that mumma was her first word. She says it all the time now, but it might be the cutest (and the saddest at the same time) when she says it when she's crying.  She also repeatedly gave me the best slobbery, open mouth kisses on Christmas Day. I really feel like she's growing every day and think this age is so much fun! Now that Christmas is over, we've definitely got to work on baby proofing the house because this girl is getting into everything. :)

P.S. Here's a picture of Ellie wearing the same dress when she was just over three months old.  So cute, right?! She still makes that face all the time. :)

Christmas 2015

I'm a little sad to see Christmas go, but Ellie's first Christmas did not disappoint! We got to see (almost) all of our family and Ellie got more gifts than we could even imagine what to do with.  We already need a bigger house, but we appreciate it all so much. :) 

We kicked off Christmas Eve with a delicious breakfast and I was so excited when I thought of a way to include a festive food for Ellie.  I cut up strawberries and bananas (which basically ended up as mush) and made them into a shape of a candy cane!  We a few other things as well, but the best was cinnamon rolls made in the waffle maker.  A pack of cinnamon rolls on medium heat for three minutes, cooked one at a time.  Drizzle on the icing and you are good to go! Dangerously delicious. ;)

In the afternoon, we went to Tyler's grandparents house for a couple hours and then went to my aunt and uncles.  After visiting, my sister and parents came over to do presents just the six of us.  Of course Ellie was sleeping by then so she ended up with even more presents to open on Christmas morning. :)  It seemed a little jam-packed but it was nice to be able to see everyone!

After they left, I had way too much fun playing Santa. We set out cookies and milk even though Ellie wasn't up to help.  We just figured it was a must-do anyway, especially because Tyler surprised me with a Santa cookie plate on Christmas Eve. :)

Ellie woke up at 5:00 on Christmas morning and got through maybe half of her gifts before she decided she needed a nap. Of course she didn't care all that much about her presents, (although she did seem to like her sled!) it was still lots of fun.  We went over to my grandma's house in the afternoon for more Christmas festivities. 


 
After Ellie went to bed on Christmas night, Tyler made me a fort in our living room.  It was part of my Christmas present he thought of after reading this post, and he even bought me the pink faux fur pillow cases that I said I wanted! :)  I love that he thought to do that for me, although I was a little confused when I unwrapped a package of rope and clothespins on Christmas morning. ;)  We watched Home Alone and felt a little bit like little kids again.

We had one last Christmas celebration on Saturday with Tyler's family at his parents house.  Between everyone's work schedules, it's super hard to coordinate a get-together so we were unfortunately missing two people from the bunch, but it was still a lot of fun.  We also had a teeny tiny guest with us this year - Ellie's baby cousin due in August!  I don't think I mentioned that I'm going to be an auntie here yet.  So exciting! :)


And with that, Christmas is over!  We are exhausted and Ellie is fighting her first cold (the cold is winning), so I have a feeling we have a few long days and nights ahead of us - poor girlfriend!  I have to say that Ellie was a champ the past few days with all the visiting.  She has been known to have a minor meltdown when she's around people she's not familiar with but hardly cried at all (and when she did it was either because she was exhausted or because she seems a little afraid of dogs).  Anyway, we were pleasantly surprised and so proud of her. :)

I'm just about ready to pack up the tree and all of the decorations, but I'm already dreaming of next year.  Ellie will be a little older and able to enjoy it more, and her Elf on the Shelf will come to pay a visit or two, who we don't actually own yet but have already named him Clark.  Because what else would we name him? ;)

Hope you all had the best Christmas!