Detroit Mommies Lilith Fair Giveaway and discount!!!

Courtney over at Detroit Mommies has a discount available for Lilith Fair and is giving away two tickets too! Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Sarah McLachlan. Somehow I never managed to make it to Lilith Fair when I was in college. Sarah's music got me through some rough times, and she finally wrote a happy love song right before I got married.

Check out Courtney's blog and the info at:

"Detroit Mommies:Lilith Fair Discount and Giveaway"

Many hats

I can't believe I never blogged about our diagnosis and Ella's new therapy? It has been such a roller coaster the last couple of months. I will definitely put some thoughts down very soon. This week is so crazy.

We have a houseguest! We brought my niece (Jason and Jenny's little girl), Saoirse, back from Cleveland with us. Saoirse is 5, and she is so very smart. I was worried that Saoirse would be bored because she is getting so big. We have had to find like 20 books every night just to keep her reading long enough to get sleepy. Today we bought her a Star Wars Clone Wars book- she's 5!! She has been just blowing me away these last couple of days. And Ella loves her cousin so much!

I just wanted to share a funny story. Ella's favorite game is to assign new roles to everyone in the house. She will be "mama", I will be "Ella", and Dave will be baby or some other mixup. I think because she knows these words well she likes to drag this game out for as long as the participant(s) will allow. We try really hard to avoid it sometimes. Lately she has been really trying to work it in. Today we were getting really confused as to what to refer to ourselves as because with Saoirse here, we wear many hats- Aunt, mom,Heather, Dave, husband, dad. So we discussed it for a minute and decided I was Aunt Mama and Dave was Uncle Daddy. Dave, Saoirse, and I had a good chuckle about the silliness of our new titles. Ella was really quiet through the discussion and all of a sudden she gets talking really fast...."I'm baby. You're Ella and You're Ella, and Diddy Ella. No, I'm Mama. Mama Ella...."

The power of love or our crazy family- you choose

Ella has really begun to understand what it means to have aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. and can tell you through yes or no questions who lives where and what they are to her. We had a wonderful Christmas with Dave's family, and Ella loved playing with her Chicago cousins. We heard so much expression and had some really big moments like when she told her cousin (who loves to play teacher) - "No! Three. One, Two, Three." Everyone was in various rooms and got really quiet. I finally said, "Did Ella just count to three?" Ella has known "two" and "three" for awhile but we go through times when everything is "two" or "three" depending which is easier for her to say but its been clear that she knows when she has two things or when she has three. I have heard "one" maybe a handful of times. It was a really big moment!

Then we had a few days recovering at home and we worked with flash cards to keep the momentum. On New Year's Eve we left for Cleveland to celebrate the holidays with my family at my sister's. My family is anything but quiet when we get together. It's loud, crazy, and often dramatic. My daughter fully embraces the insanity and becomes a part of it. She gets so excited about everything that she just blurts words out left and right. We got full sentences and tons of random new words. I heard a lot of "I need...", "I want..." which isn't totally new but to hear it all day long is incredible. She told me she wanted "apple juice" instead of signing it. She talked about "snow", told us there were three dogs, and pointed out every "E" to let us know that "Ella" started with "e". The whole weekend was full of very proud moments. And to see her face, when she said what she wanted and we understood...wow.