Miller Time: 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!