More Airplanes

So tomorrow night we're embarking on another adventure to the east coast.  I'm definitely hesitant after our last trip but at least this time we'll be staying for 9 days so we'll all have more time to adjust.  We also went ahead and bought Esme her own seat for our return flight which is during the day.  Tomorrow night we're on a redeye again and we figure she'll just sleep on us anyways.  We're headed to Sneads Ferry, North Carolina to visit Aunty B, Uncle Josh, Makena and Capri.  I've been having Esme practice all their names and they end up sounding like "Ah-Bee-C" for Aunty B, "Kena" for Makena and "Pea" for Capri so we decided to use her other nickname, Cici, which she can say with no problem.  For Uncle Josh she can say the correct amount of syllables but it sounds nothing like his name. 

Since our last trip Esme's sleep has been awesome.  Bedtime is still at 7pm but now she's sleeping in till about 7am (previously it was 6am) and sometimes (maybe once or twice a week) till almost 8am.  It's so strange on those days to get ready all by myself without having to distract her the whole time.  When we're all home and she gets up we just pull her in bed with us and she'll lay there quietly until one of us opens our eyes and makes eye contact with her.  Then she's all over us and no one's going back to sleep ;)

We took this picture on our last trip when we met up with my sister and family on her birthday in Corning, NY.  It was Labor Day so the town was pretty much shut down so we decided to take a picture on the sidewalk.  We put the camera on a timer and placed it on a storefront ledge.  Well all of a sudden, right before the camera was about to go off, this man in an electric wheelchair appeared out of nowhere and had no idea we were taking a picture so he's just inches from the camera when it went off.  That explains some our silly faces cause no one knew what to do :)

Esme The Biter

Yep, you read that right.  Apparently Esme bit a kid at daycare last week and then today she bit two kids and one bit her back afterwards.  Hopefully she got a taste of her own medicine and won't continue this little trend.  At home when she's playing and gets frustrated she'll bite her toys or something and she's tried to test us by putting her teeth on our skin without pressing down but we usually stop that before it goes any further.

She's doing great with pottying at daycare though.  She's dry in her diaper most of the day but it's not cause she's telling them she has to pee or poop.  It's just because she wants to go anytime another kid is going (which can sometime be every half hour) and she's productive most of those times.  They laugh cause she even finishes and claps for herself like we do at home.  I still put her on the potty in the morning and evening but that's it.  I ask her randomly during the day and it's hit or miss whether or not she wants to go.  She's still not telling us when she has to go so we're just waiting for that to start to really push it any further. 

Here's a random compilation of pictures from the past few weeks:

Esme loves to get in the front seat of the car when we get home.  She pushes just about every button possible so that everything's going off the next time Allen or I get in our cars.  Sometimes we even have to wrestle her out of the front seat to get her in the house. 
                    

Esme gets all kinds of ponytails now that her hair is getting longer.  And daycare has fun with it too.  Sometimes they'll send her home with 3 or 4 sprouts coming out of her head. 

                    

Esme loves her berries and could seriously finish that whole tray in one sitting.  She likes to put the raspberries on her fingers and to get our attention she says "I see you!"

                    

My cousins Shyla and Luke recently moved back to Seattle from London with their 8 month old daughter Tabitha.  Esme loved playing with a new baby and showing off all her old toys.  We took Tabby our old jumper, walker, etc and Esme was even interested in them again too.  She also wanted to play with Tabby's things like wearing her bib (even though Esme hates bibs at home, we stopped using them ages ago) and slobbering all over her rings and giving them back to her ;)

                    
                    
                    

 

What A Ride It Was

Well this might be a record for how long I've gone without posting something - 2 weeks!  Unfortunately we're still recovering from our trip to Ithaca, NY over Labor Day weekend to see Allen's sister Ting, Yoshi, and Kai.  In the end we learned that it was way too far to go for such a short time and with Esme being sick which started the moment we left.  On the flip side, it was great to be able to spend time with family :)

We planned to take a redeye flight on a Friday night so we put Esme to bed that night at her normal time and woke her up prior to leaving for the airport.  She didn't fall back asleep until we boarded our plane and they turned the lights off.  She was sprawled across both our laps and all of a sudden got really hot.  I figured it was just all our body heat combined so I unbuttoned her sleeper and she cooled off a little bit.  Then we landed in Chicago very early in the morning and Esme decided she was done sleeping so we spent our 3 hour layover at the awesome kids play area which was almost like a children's museum.  On the next flight to Syracuse, NY she slept again and started heating up but I figured that was because she was lying against my chest this time.  She cooled off once we landed and then napped again on the drive from Syracuse to Ithaca.  She had a hard time adjusting to the heat once we got to Ithaca and was still slightly warm but by the afternoon I realized she was burning up even though she was just wearing her diaper around the house.  We started giving her ibuprofen and her fever would spike every 6 hours when it wore off and this went on for about 36 hours.  She had no other symptoms though so I figured it could only be teething even though she was super hot.  Luckily we didn't have any major plans for the weekend so we spent a lot of time just hanging out and catching up with Ting, Yoshi & Kai.  Esme wasn't quite herself the whole time which was a little hard. 

On our last night we were able to coordinate a dinner with my sister Hannah and family who were driving from Buffalo, NY down to North Carolina.  It was a special treat as it was Aunty B's birthday too.  Unfortunately Esme was having a bad afternoon and didn't care much about seeing her cousins Capri and Makena.  She wouldn't even let Aunty B hold her :(

The next day, just 3 days after we arrived, we took off for Syracuse Airport again to start this whole adventure over.  By this time Esme's fevers were gone but she was still very edgy.  She slept on the first flight and then enjoyed the play area at the Chicago airport again.  But on the flight from Chicago to Seattle she was up most of the time and was super fussy.  She was crawling all over Allen and I and signing and saying "all pau" and "outside."  It was miserable.  Strangely enough as soon as we got home that evening, she ran into our house and was just screaming with glee.  She seemed so excited to be in her own home.  That night when Allen was reading to her before bed, she pointed to her crib and said "inside" cause she just wanted to go to bed already.  She's always been a great sleeper and so easy to put to bed but she never does that! 

Just a day after we got back, we noticed Esme broke out in a small, fine red rash all over her body and turns out she had roseola, a viral rash that's common in kids following a high fever. At least that explained everything but coupled with the travel it just made it that much worse. And on top of that we infected all her cousins, the children's area at the Chicago airport, and the airplane. We learned our lesson after this trip and decided to buy Esme her own seat for our next trip to North Carolina next month to make our lives a little bit easier. We'll just cross our fingers that she doesn't get sick again.

                   
                Hanging out at the Chicago Airport                                                                       Playing in the pretend shipping crates
                    
                                More playtime with daddy                                                                         Enjoying the pretend cockpit
                  
                Sleeping on daddy on the flight to Syracuse                                                     Visiting one of the gorges at Cornell University
                    
                      Playing at Cornell University architecture school                            Constantly sucking her fingers so I thought she was teething
                                                                      
                      Attempting a hike at the park                                                                                 Eating breakfast with Kai-Kai
                    
                            Cousin Capri just lights right up!                                                                       So does cousin Makena
                                                                
                                                                                        Happy Birthday Aunty B!