End of January Update (!)

Hurricane Ellison has been tearing through the house like crazy over the past few weeks. Her current favorite thing to do is take every single toy out of her toy bins and spread them throughout the house. She has two plastic bins of toys that sit under our coffee table in the living room, and the other day she emptied both of them, tipped them on their sides, and was sitting inside one of them playing. She also emptied an entire dresser drawer last week, and then starting putting things back in when she was done. Too funny!

Ellison is getting more adventurous with letting go of things she is holding on to (no real steps yet, but she will grab for us and walk towards us with very little support), bending down to pick objects up from a standing position (she likes to drop things and them pick them back up), and walking (practically running) around with her walking toy. She cruises all along the furniture like a pro. I still think she will be walking by her birthday. I guess we will see in about 2 weeks whether I am right! I cannot believe it's coming up that quickly.

Watching Sesame Street while "walking"

Her favorite place to hang out right now is the bathtub. She absolutely loves to take baths (probably because she is in there with at least 10 toys!). While the water is running she will stand outside the tub bouncing up and down, and trying to climb in (she can get one leg up pretty high but so far has only managed to actually climb into the toy bins and laundry baskets). She does not appreciate when bath time is over and throws a complete fit! I dread taking her out of there.

Miss Ellison does have a bit of a temper. She does not like having things taken away from her at ALL and will cry (with big tears and everything) if you take away something she shouldn't have or steer her in a direction other than the one she wants to go (which is usually towards the stairs, she is obsessed with climbing them). She also does not appreciate when we eat in front of her, unless she is eating too, and preferably the same thing we are eating. The other day there was a bowl of oranges on the table and she wanted those oranges so badly, despite all the food she had in front of her. She will point wildly at things that she wants! She did the same thing when I was eating a yogurt while she had breakfast. She wanted the yogurt, not her food, and cried until I got her a yogurt of her own. Most of the time though, she is a sweetheart! She has started to give kisses (both to us and her stuffed animals) when we ask her to, and also "shares" her food and pacifiers with us. She also likes to play peek a boo with us!

Kisses for her doggie at Gramma's!

Peek a boo!!!

More peeking...

Besides the words Ellison has been working on for the last couple of weeks ("what's that" and "cup"), I think she says "sock" sometimes too. Laundry is still one of her favorite things to play with, and that is usually when we hear what we think is "sock". Still not really saying "mama" or "dada" consistently, though she has been making those sounds for months. They usually aren't specifically directed at us. I am kind of wondering if we should start trying to teach her some signs (I have been trying to do "more" with her at meals, but she just laughs at me), but I worry that it will stop her learning to say words. The whole process of teaching babies sign language doesn't really compute in my head.

We have started the transition from breast milk to whole milk. She is now getting two ounces of whole milk in each 5 oz bottle she drinks. She doesn't seem to notice a difference. We are also talking about transitioning her off bottles, but the only sippy cups she will really drink out of are the kind without handles, with the valves removed (so they will spill if tipped, and they are pretty big cups that she tips constantly). We have tried giving her water in a lot of different cups with handles and she didn't really drink out of any of them. However she will drink her water out of the sippy cups without handles and has started to hold them herself. Right now she is still getting 4 bottles a day, separate from her three meals of table food. We usually give her water with meals (we have yet to ever give her juice). I guess switching over to cups of milk with meals rather than separate bottles is our big goal for the next few weeks, since our pediatrician recommending being off bottles and on whole milk by the 1 year appointment!

See, I can drink like a big girl!

She also has a favorite book! It is called Dancing Feet and she brings it to us to read multiple times a day. She thinks the pictures in it are hilarious and no matter how many times we read it, she laughs. It's so cute! Still one of the only books she will sit still for... I'm just glad to get her to sit that long! I think she likes it because its got kind of a sing-song pattern to it, and she absolutely loves music (and dancing - or bopping as we call what she does when she hears music).

Reading her favorite book (again!)

We had another rough couple of days where Ells wasn't napping or sleeping well, but she seems to be getting back on track to her usual self. It looks like she has a couple more teeth coming in, so I am guessing that was the issue. Definitely not a fan of teething!

She does sleep :)

We are working hard to get ready for her birthday! I can't believe it's almost February already....

Silly girl!

True love <3

She likes to try to put things in Elefun's trunk that don't belong...pacifiers, headbands, Cheerios...

I kid you not, SHE put that headband (it's mine) on her head while I was in the kitchen!

Loving lunch!

Anyone else in there?!

No words. She is hilarious!

We still aren't sure why she was doing this...but it was really funny!

Such a big girl...she can wear full ponytails AND pigtails now!

Cute girls in cute hats...Ellison and her buddy Ava :)

Just hanging out, no big deal!

11 Months Old!

Happy 11 months to my sweet pea E! It is insane to think that in a month I will have a 1 year old! I say it every month, time is just flying by. I love seeing her getting bigger and smarter every day!

We have officially decided that Miss Ellison can talk (and not just babble). She constantly points at things and says "what's that?" (it doesn't sound quite that clear, but it's pretty obvious that's what she is going for). She will also say what sounds like "cup" every so often. There are a couple other things that I am not totally convinced whether they are words or not, but it sounds like she is working towards them. No mama or dada yet though...

Ellison may not have many words, but she definitely understands us and can follow directions. She knows what "no" means, though she doesn't always listen. I think she is going to be a very stubborn little girl, which she obviously didn't get from me...haha! She responds appropriately to commands like "wave bye bye" and will put her arms up (so big) when we ask how big she is. In the last couple days she has finally started trying to clap when we say "yay!" as well.

She is still a tiny tornado! Making a mess here, then moving to a different area of a room and making a mess there, then moving to another room altogether. She is definitely one of the most active little people I've seen. Still not walking...it's like she gets scared once she doesn't have the support of furniture and her legs buckle immediately. This morning she seemed to be almost forgetting she couldn't walk and would let go of whatever she was holding and turn to try to take a step...so I think it's coming soon!

Books are still one of her favorite things to play with...taking them off the shelf, shuffling them around, looking at them, doesn't matter! She loves them!

The little lady continues to amaze me with how smart she is. She knows where to look for things when they disappear (she will look under the couch or pack n' play for things that roll away and knows where to look for the balls that drop down the shoot of her ball drop toy). She stacked one block on top of another for the first time that I've seen this past weekend. I thought she only knew how to knock blocks down! She opens and closes the doors on her Little People farm and takes the animals in and out of the stalls, and she knows what to press on her Elefun to make the balls shoot out of that. I just can't wrap my head around how quickly she has started picking things up in the last few months!

Ellison's sleeping habits have been a bit crazy over the past month or so, and this past weekend she barely slept at all. Not sure if it is teeth coming in (don't feel any), a mild sickness (she had a low grade temp one day but no other symptoms), her being almost ready to walk or something else entirely, but she wanted nothing to do with being left in her crib. It was the roughest few days we have had with her up to this point! We have definitely been lucky to have such an easygoing little girl so far, so those few days threw us for a bit of a loop. Luckily it wasn't a weekend I was at work, because it would have been really hard for Jay to manage her on his own! I guess things have been improving over the past couple of nights though (I was at work but from what I heard it was better), and hopefully she will get back to sleeping through the night on a regular basis soon.

Tired little girl clinging to Mommy

Not pumping over the past week has been a big adjustment. I always feel like I am forgetting to do something! It has been over a week since I stopped and I am finally feeling comfortable and back to normal in the last day or so. I was a lot more uncomfortable than I expected to be, and it took longer to improve than I thought it would. But it sure felt great to pack away a lot of the breastfeeding/pumping supplies! We will start mixing whole milk in to Ellison's bottles in the next few days, and I am also planning on starting to give her milk in a cup more often so she gets used to that before her one year pediatrician appointment.

Climbing on Daddy

I guess that's all for now, other than it has been an amazing 11 months with my little princess, and I love her more every day!!!

Holiday Pics and More

Since all of Ellison's grandparents have now received their Christmas presents, I can finally share the holiday photos we had taken! My sister's best friend, Laura, took these for us at Mayfair. We went early before the stores opened and used their big tree and Santa area as our backdrop! Jay, Kon, and Ryan would not let me sneak into the actual Santa area, so we just stood outside...haha! Laura did such a great job, and everyone loved how these turned out! There may have been tears from more than one recipient...

Ellison also gave her grandparents and great-grandparents handprint Santa ornaments (idea courtesy of Pinterest) with a poem. They were a pain to make (it was at least a 5 day process with clay drying, painting, etc.) but it was worth it when they ended up being super cute!!!

Pinterest is a double edged sword...there are so many cute ideas but sometimes I feel like a bad mom for not making my millions of craft, baking, cooking, decorating, and organizing ideas come to life! Even if I didn't have a full time job, I would never be able to get them all done...so I have cut back on my pinning so I am a little less stressed about all the "projects" I'm not doing!!! But here is the one other Christmas project we did this year...canvases with handprints (similar to the Halloween ones we made)...

We didn't do any New Year's artwork but we will hopefully do something for Valentine's Day! If we do, I'll be sure to post!!! Currently my main project in my spare time is getting ready for E's first birthday party...can't believe it's only a month away!!!!!!!