{"id":315,"date":"2009-12-27T16:20:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-27T16:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/shout-out-to-my-girl-ella\/"},"modified":"2018-04-21T17:22:40","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T17:22:40","slug":"shout-out-to-my-girl-ella","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/2009\/12\/shout-out-to-my-girl-ella\/","title":{"rendered":"Shout-Out to My Girl Ella"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_EzNMDgf7WQE\/SzeJeKJRlHI\/AAAAAAAAEsc\/PM-fuMJ93dU\/s1600-h\/12-25-2005%2BCHRISTMAS%2B020.JPG\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5419951827776017522\" style=\"DISPLAY: block; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 213px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px; TEXT-ALIGN: center\" alt=\"\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/almostjuliet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/12-25-2005-CHRISTMAS-020.jpg?w=628&#038;ssl=1\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>You might wonder how I&#8217;m finding the time to blog these days. When we started this blog, it was originally intended to be a way for the grandparents to see pictures of Charlie. Over the past 2 1\/2 years, it&#8217;s become my little corner of the world.<\/p>\n<p>Those who know me know that I majored in Theatre in college and had dreams of moving to New York (or any other major city) to pursue my career. I even made it into the final round of auditions for a prestigious conservatory in Denver&#8230;I wanted to get my Masters there. When I didn&#8217;t make it into the school of my dreams, I moved to Chicago with 6 suitcases, no job, and some cash from graduation. I showed up on my friend Courtney&#8217;s doorstep intending to crash for a bit and stayed for 10 months until we found a 2 bedroom apartment. Ten years later, I&#8217;m still in Chicago, married and the mother of two little girls. Life certainly surprises you, doesn&#8217;t it??!!<\/p>\n<p>Back to blogging &#8211; I&#8217;ve always been a writer (a hack of sorts), journaling like a madwoman and writing epic emails to my friends in the middle of the night&#8230;I&#8217;m infamous for those, actually. So, even though I have no idea how to turn this unrealized dream of writing into an actual career, I have turned my little corner of the world into my &#8220;journal.&#8221; And lucky you, it&#8217;s all out there for you to read. That being said, blogging is so essential to my daily routine now, that I miss it terribly when I can&#8217;t make it happen. This is why you so often see 5 or 6 posts at once because when I do finally get a chance to sit down, I want to make it worthwhile.<br \/>Before I get into all of the fun Christmas pics and stories, we wanted to share a recent shot of Ella. Her big sister truly is the star of the show, and gets most of the stagetime, but little E deserves her time in the spotlight as well.I am happy to report that Ella went from 11 pm to 4:30 am this morning, not quite &#8220;sleeping through the night&#8221; but awfully close. If I were to sum up our lives in one or two words right now, they would be:<em><strong>Troubleshooting<\/strong><\/em> &#8211; we&#8217;ve discovered that Ella is a fussier baby than Charlie was. It&#8217;s so hard to compare the two because C was formula fed and E is breastfed, but Charlie was SUCH an easy baby that she spoiled us until she hit 18 months and became the curmudgeon that she is today. Maybe Ella will be a fussy newborn and an angel toddler. Who knows. What we do know is that she grumbles a lot and has a &#8220;witching hour&#8221; fussy time starting at 6 pm that lasts for most of the evening. How do you get a baby to drop a feeding when she won&#8217;t even GO TO SLEEP for any feeding in the evening?? If you know that secret, I may just kiss you.<strong><em>Survival<\/em> <\/strong>&#8211; I am constantly encouraged by the amazing moms-of-two that I know. Future moms-of-two, take heart, I&#8217;ve heard it does in fact get easier&#8230;but right now we are in what we call &#8220;survival mode.&#8221; We decided that if the dishes are done and the laundry is fairly caught up, we are doing a pretty good job. That&#8217;s about all I can ask of myself right now. I can&#8217;t believe how fast the days go&#8230;it&#8217;s like we are on a constant loop of diapers, feedings, bathtime, and Curious George (God love him). It would make sense then, that I&#8217;ve had a bit of the blues this holiday season. How, you might ask, can I be sad when I have this brand new bundle of joy in my home?? Probably the weather, most likely being far from family this Christmas, and definitely being sleep-deprived&#8230;these are all contributors. Today I have a lactation consultant coming to the house. I&#8217;ve put it off (I&#8217;m a &#8220;lingerer&#8221; &#8211; meaning I&#8217;ve tried to muscle through any issues we&#8217;ve had) and am finally accepting the fact that I need help to determine what&#8217;s wrong and why it&#8217;s not second nature at this point. We&#8217;ve had some challenges that aren&#8217;t going away, and I don&#8217;t want to quit breastfeeding so I&#8217;m nipping this in the bud (no pun intended, honestly). I&#8217;ve heard it&#8217;s the best $200 you&#8217;ll ever spend. Hopefully, the next time I blog I will be singing a different tune. Until then, here&#8217;s my little grumbler. What a face!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You might wonder how I&#8217;m finding the time to blog these days. When we started this blog, it was originally intended to be a way for the grandparents to see pictures of Charlie. Over the past 2 1\/2 years, it&#8217;s become my little corner of the world. Those who know me know that I majored [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1802,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/almostjuliet.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/12-25-2005-CHRISTMAS-020.jpg?fit=213%2C320&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1803,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions\/1803"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1802"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/almostjuliet.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}