As I sit here, holding this amazing 5 week old girl, I decided it was time to tell the world about her and update our blog!! Hehe! Pictures are backwards so bare with me!

Hallee's first snow! not too happy..She is her Daddy's girl!

Come the first day of spring, Ellison wanted to have a picnic! Due to the snow, she settled for a pizza picnic on the kitchen floor. The next day she didn't understand why we didn't eat every meal on a blanket!

We took these in the living room on Hallee's one week birthday to use for her announcements!

Smiling for the camera!

Ellison helped prepare! I love this girl!

Still helping...

first outing to her mommy/baby visit at 4 days old!

What a wonderfully blessed family we are! Our new addition baby Hallee Nicole Foster got here a little early on March 11, 2010! She weighed in at 6 lbs, 6 oz, which amazed everyone since she had stopped growing at 35 weeks! Our big girl! We had a scary time getting her here... but once she was out, she was perfect and has been ever since!! Big sister Ellison loves her and has done wonderful with her! She is a big helper. She will bring you diapers, blankies and whatever you ask for. She always wants to include baby sister on everything and make sure she is "happy." Happy is a new understanding for her.. or at least she is starting to figure out what the word means. She will be about to do something and then ask "mommy happy?" or "daddy Happy?" She relates it to being okay. She thinks that baby Hallee has two modes... Happy or hungry... which at this point is pretty true! :)
Our little 2 year old is definitely showing it's terrible side of late... yet she still is a wonderful child! Ellison has a very big vocabulary, so while most of the time a 2 year old gets told no and throws a fit.. she gets told no and proceeds to say " Don't say no to me," and "Not no, yes... yes I can.." do whatever it is that she wants. It's really naughty and she gets sent to her room(if mom's temper stays in control)... but we still laugh when she's out of sight! I would be more upset with her if it weren't for the fact that she sounds like mini-me saying it... I know that she gets those phrases from me and I am working on finding nicer ways to word things so maybe she will, too! Overall though she is still the smartest, sweetest little two year old ever and never fails to brighten our day!
Hallee is still sleeping a lot!! She's an eater so she wakes up hungry every 2 and 1/2 to 3 hours, but she lets us sleep 5 hours gaps at night, which we are very thankful for! She smiled to my voice today for the first time- which made my day.. for some reason it was so much sweeter than all the gas driven smiles before! When awake, she is very alert! She has been very strong since day one and now can hold pretty much her whole top part of her body off the ground during tummy time or while she's on your chest. She seems to enjoy tummy time... which is awesome considering Ellison hated it! And daddy is so great with her and to me! If she's still alert at night, he lets me sleep and Hallee and Phillip have quality gaming time! I know he is exhausted and I am so thankful I have such a sweet, sensitive husband!
We are still struggling with me not being able to lift Ellison yet. Me most of all I think. It's really hard to see her become so much of a Daddy's girl like she has! I want to be the one to scoop her up when she falls.. and I have had to step aside! We went to the zoo yesterday and we had a few rough times. Having great cousins and aunt and uncle with us helped her.. but made me a little sad! :) Don't get me wrong.. I had a blast with them and enjoyed their company.. but at one point Steffany was holding Hallee and she was perfectly content and Ellison was chasing "untle Alan" through an exhibit ignoring me completely. Kind of makes a girl feel useless! :P I honestly don't know what we would've done these last few weeks if we didn't have such awesome family! I can't wait to go to the doctor next week and hopefully get released so I can hold my (bigger) baby girl again!

Prince Charming!

This is not an "update" post, but we thought was very cute, so we had to post it!

FYI..."Gacky" = Daxy (a.k.a. Prince Charming)

Fun at the library with Steff!

We did crafts and decorated cookies! The boys dug in, but Ellison was only interested in sprinkles!

Riding the Train!

She loved playing on the computer!

..really concentrating! She loved the song games!

Playing with the toys!

Our busy, busy bee!

Phillip decided this morning that we are going to start calling Ellison our little "Bumblebee." She gets so wound up and her mind is so busy she says phrases one after the other that actually make no sense together! At the table this morning, she asked "Hey, what you doing?" followed directly by "Want to watch Panda." She topped off with "Daddy eating." I don't think she even took a breath in between and she uses different tones. Her hey, what are you doing is always in this curvy go down then go up voice! So curious and sweet! Want to watch Panda is almost always in this voice that is very close to a scream and she is usually jumping up and down with excitement! Daddy eating is just very informative. She switches tones as quickly as Bumblebee off of transformers does when speaking through the radio! We love it!

We bought her a few costumes on sale after halloween. She LOVES them! We now have a "Dress up" drawer in her room. I think her favorite is Batgirl... picked out by her beautiful daddy! :P And she is super cute running around in her cape! She wanted to wear the dorothy one but she wouldn't take off the batgirl costume... so she was Batgirl posing as Dorothy! It was super cute! For halloween she was a black cat in honor of Phillip's 4-5 years of being a black cat as a child because the costume continued to fit! It was super creepy at Northpark when a half-dressed teenage girl seductively purred at her. Not sure if the poor girl was trying to come on to Phillip or just really that silly. :) Oh, well... he's stuck with me and all of our girls anyways!

We are getting super excited about " Baby sister!" Which is all we know to call her right now!! Names are a hard thing! Ellison originally called her Elmo, which is hilarious because she has never even watched Sesame Street.. just loves her Sesame Street books. We are still deciding on where to put baby. Part of me wants her to have her own room.. but another part of me is scared to death to put her in that front room by herself!! Regardless I have started weeding through stuff to see what we need for her! We've been doing some deep cleaning this week.... we even went through Ellison's toys and threw away some junk... and yes... embarrassed as we are, we did throw out a few that worked... TOO WELL!! We saw the opportunity and ran with it! :) I am super excited for her to have a little sister and to see what this new little person is going to bring with her! A new personality and face and more and more love! Thank you Lord for all Your blessings!

18 Month Pictures!! See her cutie boots she picked out and had to have!! We thought they were funny so we let her get them! She wore them all around the store!
Chasing mommy!
This is the face we get when we ask her to do something and she doesn't want to ...

Such a sweet girl!

This was my dress when I was little! Only I was a chubby girl so I wore it when I was 11 months!

My favorite! She's such a happy girl!

They got her to do so well by letting her play "drums" on the pillar!

So happy!

Ellison Jean.... 18 months old!

Wow!! I cannot believe our little girl is fixin' to be 18 months!! She is such a big girl! She uses complete sentences now... most of which contain "I don't want.." whatever it is that we are trying to get her to do. :) She thinks she is hilarious! She'll do something or say something, crack up, then say "I so funny." Phillip is trying to teach her to add "and so humble" to her I so funny phrase. :P He, too, thinks he's hilarious!

I was waiting until August to really start potty-training but she has pretty much done it on her own. We still wear pull-ups when we go out... just in case she gets too busy or I don't pull over quick enough! She doesn't even notice that she doesn't get a prize when we are in any bathroom but hers... but she does bargain for a bigger prize when we are at home. She'll go pee pee and we'll wash her hands and as I start to give her the usual 2 m&m's, she'll say "four?"

Starting Monday I am now a full-time, stay-at-home mommy for our Ellison. I have really struggled every time I have had to leave her... and my work is awesome enough to let me resign but stay on PRN so that I can go in now and then to keep my scanning up, and financially we've always planned on this, so I am nervous but super pumped! Too bad that my first two days home with her I've been sick. :P No fun.

This sweet little girl still never ceases to amaze us!

June Pictures by Timeless Photography