Whitney's Graduation and other catch-ups

A few weeks ago we traveled to Nashville for Whitney and Nathan's graduation from Belmont. Here are some pictures from that day!


Ella dreaming on the way to Nashville
Walking around before graduation

Waiting on Whitney and Nathan to walk across the stage


Ella playing with the pots and pans
Hanging out with Nana in the tv room.
Ella's first cheerios
She can get mad!!
Favorite time

Over the hill and through the woods...

to papa and granny's house we go for memorial day weekend!


First, we got acquainted with the beautiful garden. Ella looooved playing in the grass.


See the grass I'm about to put in my mouth?


One of the very best parts of the Corbin hill is seeing papa Jones.


Ella looooved playing with granny Jones


and of course Ella and Papi had a lot of fun....this might have been during my four hour nap at lunch time...to dinner time...


Granny Jones gave me some pots to play with in the floor


I definitely needed a nap after that long day playing...my papi knows how to nap anywhere!

and night time is so much fun when you're hangin out with the fam...


Asking Ella house decor advice

And right down the road, we visited Uncle Mike and Aunt Kim's pool...Ella was sooo excited to swim!!

...and very excited to bundle up with Papi!

Nana and Ella enjoyed eating granny's biscuits. One of the worst things about granny visits for me is always missing the home-cooked sausage biscuits. See...I've always had a problem waking up in the morning. When I was little at my grannys, I wouldn't wake up for anything except Christmas morning. Even now, when I get up at a normal hour regularly, I STILL missed fresh breakfast due to the fact that Papi and Nana took Ella in the morning so I could sleep in!! I'll never make it for hot biscuits!!


VROOOOM VROOOM - her favorite noise right now.


Unfortunately, we had to say goodbye to granny and papa and go back to our regular lives. Boo.

To the Aquarium!!

On Tuesday, I had a doctor's appointment in Chattanooga and since Kevin was off, he and Ella came along. While there, we made a quick decision to go to the aquarium downtown. First of all, we found a perfect spot on a patio down at the brewery right in front of our parking space...sooo we got to leave Ella in the car asleep with all the windows down RIGHT next to us...and had a peaceful lunch while she got to have her nap. It was one of those moments that does not often happen. After feeding the meter a few more times, changing a diaper (yes in the back of the explorer, in front of the other lunchers...I tried to be discreet), loading my purse/diaper bag from the bigger diaper bag, loading the stroller, and ensuring the camera was readily accessible, we finally made our way to see the fish. I had to suppress my great anxiety and nausea at entering a building full of my arch enemies: underwater creatures. I am incredibly freaked out by them. Number 1 is the whale, however, I have recently learned to hate the more dangerous shark as well. Most anything under water gives me a chill. I grit my teeth and made it though for the sake of all...and I'll admit, I had a lot of fun (there are no whales there).

Just looking at the stingrays!
Looking up at the fishies above!

OOOOO AHHHH
Yikes! Sharks so close! Mommy had to look away!


Look at the penguins!


Penguins were def. our favorite part.



Butterfly garden is second favorite.


We had to get a souvenir - she just loves this baby penguin puppet!
Finally kicking back on a walk by the river.

Mother's Day

My second mother's day was wonderful. We invited the Taylors and Garmons to the Bunch's (our house) and Kevin made wonderful rib-eyes, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans and salad. Then we had a glorious mother's day cake from the village.
Ella and Kevin got me some great smelling lavender stuff for the bath and some other goodies.

There are so many things to write that could pertain to mother's day, but I will just sum it up by trying to make a list of things that are different/ I didn't know prior to being a mother - not things i never heard, but things I never REALLY knew until now:

-You can feel like you have more energy by being incredibly busy than when you had nothing to do but lay around and watch tv on the weekends

-It is not necessary to get an entire night's sleep to function during the day...even if it lasts for a year nonstop

-Some babies will not be able to sleep in their cribs alone. Cry-it-out does not apply to everyone.

-Some days the only thing you will get done is feeding / bathing / changing / chasing your baby. Yet you will not sit down once.

-Over all, having a baby can make you extremely happier than you were pre-baby. Even though I once heard a stat that people actually are less happy after having children...not me.

-Babies do not come pre-wired to understand the word "no."

-Sleep is overrated.

-It is possible to have a clean house and a baby. Just not every day.

-Babies do not magically make a marriage better or increase the romance. You have to consciously work to maintain your relationship.

-Things can happen to your body during pregnancy and childbirth that can completely transform your life and your ability to deal with it, but you will make it anyway.

-You will believe your baby has pertussis even if it is her 4th cold and she only has a runny nose....ok, maybe that's just me. ?

-For every bit of child-rearing advice, there is an equal and opposite bit of child-rearing advice

-You WILL have at least one room of your house that constantly looks like toys-r-us / a landfill.

-You will find a renewed joy in shopping when you can now buy everything you wish you could get away with wearing and (even better) in miniature sizes!



I could go on and on and on...

While I'm rounding out my mother's day post, I will thank my own mother for everything she has done in our lives. Most of all, I guess I would say my mom taught me and Whitney how to cherish our womanhood and stand up for ourselves. My mom never gave us speeches about woman power or "you can do anything you want to" necessarily because it was so obvious in her everyday life that she believed those things. She loves us passionately and without fail or even flinch, will be there to hear whatever we have to tell her, good or bad. Ultimately, she supports us and bails us out whenever needed. My mom kept a calendar of my entire first year of life, with notes on what I did EVERY DAY. I just saw this thing the other day and it was amazing. Not to mention, the loads of video and picture she diligently took to remember my growing up. She is the most efficient, dependable task-doer I have ever met. If I can't seem to get something done I think, "now how would mom do this and would she have procrastined this long??" and a lot of times it gets me off my seat. Next to my husband and my father, when I am scared or upset, I can't think of where else I would rather be except with my mom. I know she will be all these things and more to Ella as she grows up, too. Ella already calls out for her Nana regularly.

SO SORRY PAPI AND NANA

I am so ashamed for not posting while Papi and Nana are in Asia. I tried a few times, but the pictures would not transfer and what is the point of an Ella update if you can't see that face??

I decided it is time for a post dedicated to mischief...because that is Ella's current middle name. By the way, she is so hyper. I don't know if it is a normal level of hype or not as this is the only baby in my possession, but it is a lot. Some days she does not nap at all and she doesn't even like to eat because she doesn't stop moving, grabbing, mouthing. She moves through several sounds that she decides to repeat over and over as well. One day, happily for someone, it was "Nana...nananananana...nana" in the sweetest voice and the loudest yells. For a few months of her early life, it remained "mamamamamamama....MA - MA!!" For a long time she has made this noise over and over: "Mmm Bah" Now, she is vibrating her lips all the time (I don't know what you call this, although my baby book calls it "razzing"). She does this A LOT..and she can do it LOUDLY. Oh, how on earth could I forget the huffing, puffing, scrunchy nose frustrated face / noise.

So we are officially in the full-fledged personality-appearing, discipline-invoking, mischievous-searching phase.

Last night during our nightly bath ritual, she banged her cheekbone on the bathtub and got what I consider her first "official" play wound. It was sad, but she quickly forgot when I handed her a toy. A few days before that, she had a major tumble in her play room when she fell flat backwards onto the bottom rung of a wooden bookshelf. Mommy freaked out, Ella's head was fine, Mommy calmed down. Ella screamed. Mommy squeezed her...she was fine.
Her obsession with cords continues. We now have a baby gate for each major electrical device in the ever-evolving "baby-safe" tv room. We look like a mini-zoo for small brightly colored toys and electric outlets. Another favorite game is where she will crawl to the door of the tv room and crawl out just out of our site. As we both yell "Elllllla...where are you? Come back baby..." she crawls back, peeks around the edge and laughs just before doing it again. It is adorable.

Be sure and check out her stellar teeth in these pictures. She has had them for about a month or two now, but you can really see them now.

Climbing to get to the "suitcases." I like suitcases, do you like suitcases? If you just read this with a strong southern accent and pictured yourself as a small brown curly headed girl with chicken pox, you are probably part of the Jones clan in some way.
and.....I'm caught.

But getting caught can be so funny!!

Helping mommy make something...I might have gotten some ink on my face! ...and glitter all over the place!

Saturday night we went to the Barks Baby-Que. It was a lot of fun and we are so excited for Jason and Jaime. Ella met a little friend there and within about 2.5 seconds, she had his shirt in her fist, trying to pull him back from the cardboard box she wanted to play with - maneater! From the looks of this next picture, it seems we might have our hands full...what do you think daddy?