Tuesday, December 6, 2011

My Ellie Mae



The first year of life is a funny thing.

For the first few weeks, you are still wrapping your head around having a little one.
And you wonder if you will ever sleep again. Then before you even realize it, they aren't so tiny anymore. You are thrilled when they start to roll over. Sit up.

Then- holy crap, when did my baby get big enough to crawl? Eat solids?

Now she is One.
She is walking. She is jibber jabbering.
She is getting feisty.
(I wonder where she gets that.)

I can't believe a year is already gone.

I find myself wishing I had taken time to enjoy it more. It has been a little bit of a rough year for me, trying to figure out some health issues going on. This year has been full of blessings though, and having Ellie Mae join or family definitely tops the charts for the year.

She is walking. She just doesn't know it yet.
She can walk all the way across the room if she has the right motivation. Other than that, she is content crawling, or- holding on to someone's hands and steering them around as she walks.
At 11 months she was 24 lbs. We will see what her 12 month check brings.
She wears size 18 months clothes.
(Side note. I just had to make Abigail stop wearing her size 18 month coat so that Ellie could wear it.)
She wears size 3 or 4 shoes. Kind of in between.
She only takes a bottle before bed. And not for long.
She eats.
and eats.
and... Eats.
She is allergic to eggs. Kind of. They give her the worst diaper rash you've ever seen almost instantly. Probably something she will outgrow.
She also has a bad reaction to squash, and possibly other orange/yellow veggies.
Diary is still undetermined.
She does the cutest mean face on demand.
She bites Abigail when she is being mean to her.
She loves, loves, LOVES playing on the stairs.
She likes making a mess of the doll house.
She gets into everything.
She freaks out when you put her in her car seat, but is fine once she settles in.
She wants to be a big girl. She hates having to sit on the sidelines and watch Abigail do certain things, like her dance class.
She loves baths.
She sleeps about 13, sometimes 14 hrs at night. (with the occasional disruption of course)
She likes to sleep with her face buried in the corner of her crib.
So much more I could say about our Ellie.
She is wonderful.
She has made our family complete.

...............At least for now :)

I went through the last year and picked some of my favorite pictures of Ellie to put in a book.
Feel free to quit at any time, but I couldn't stop picking favorites.







































Sunday, December 4, 2011

Our little Ellie

Sometimes I feel like this blog is all about Abigail.

The truth is- Ellie is a very "hands on" kind of a girl, if you know what I'm saying.

She likes to be held, she likes to stir up trouble.

It isn't very often that she is awake, and I am able to grab my camera.

Here is an example.
She loves climbing on the stairs. It makes me panic.

There is NO barricading this girl.

Another example:
We had a plain little silver magnet on the fridge. It had been glued to something but had come off. Its really hard to pick up because its small and hard to grab.

Ellie was playing with some other magnets and Charles put it down at her level and said,
"Here, this will keep you busy for a while. I can't even get that one off."

A few days later... Oh, whats that shiny disc in her poop... oh, nice. "Charles!!! She got it off!"

So, when Ellie is awake, she is under constant supervision ;)

Saturday, December 3, 2011

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas



I think it is safe to say, I have not ever in my life been so excited about Christmas.

I have been buying things for months.

It is kind of the pits though. I thought I would be ahead of the game having my Christmas shopping done so early. Turns out it kind of takes the fun out of shopping this time of year. Great deals, but I don't need to buy. Dang. Next year I will wait longer :)

We decorated our tree as soon as we got home from Thanksgiving. Abigail is loving it.





We finished off our decorating with a cup of hot cocoa. mmmm...



Friday, December 2, 2011

What a week :)

A blog post on Ellie's birthday is in the works.
We got hit with a stomach bug this week, so it wasn't much of a party.
I'll post more later about that.
This post is a picture blast of our Thanksgiving week with my family.

We started the week off with a very special trip to the Temple with Courtney and Daniel.
I couldn't be more proud of these two, and love seeing how happy they are :)

We had fun Thanksgiving treats.

We went on walks.

We played frisbee with Bitsy.

We let the dogs run free.

It wouldn't be a trip to Nana and Papa's without visiting the cows.


We met "new cousins." My cousin came with her two boys. Abigail loved playing with Ethan and keeps talking about her "new cousin."


Of course we did lots of swinging.



We turned Mimi and Pops' garage into a photo studio for a day.
(I'm kind of regretting the zebra... but cute girls none the less.)


Then I got to take some pictures of a couple other cute girls.

We played hide and seek.

Ellie started doing a "mean face" on demand. Pretty hilarious.



And we got LOTS of Daddy time. That's the best.

That is our week in a nutshell. Lots of family, lots of fun,
and lots of excitement getting ready for CHRISTMAS.

Can't wait :)