New Teeth!

Ellie now has two teeth! She is putting them to good use:


Eating everything she can get her hands on - she has discovered where I keep the onions and now I have to hide them better in the basket. I had to relocate the garlic altogether, and now I have potatoes there so I'm guessing that's next.

Getting much better at feeding herself. I may have a lead on hosting videos if I just follow up, then I can show you her mad skillz in video. For now here is her making some funny faces at mealtime. The scrunchy face is her latest favorite, mostly for when she's annoyed. Picture it even more scrunched (hard to catch on film since she starts smiling at the camera), with her upper lip curled more and her making a snorting noise. Very attractive. :)

Another video I"ll hopefully get up is her climbing the stairs. This is the scariest milestone yet, and I'm trying to train her to go down backwards but she really has no sense of danger, so it's gates or nothing for now. :(

This is one thing Ellie is not eating, but I was so proud of the pear tarts I made the other day that I just had to put this in. :) Served with cherries or blueberries on the side - and I used yogurt instead of sour cream in the crust so they were quasi-healthy. :)

Visiting Friends

We got to see some old friends from law school recently, as well as meet some new additions.

Ellie meets Clare Palazzolo for the first time - they're only a month or so apart in age, so it's too bad we don't live closer!

Watching the World Cup finals with Fred, munching on chips and cheerios.

Hanging out with Bronwen on her recent visit to DC and finally seeing Christina!

Fourth of July

I have a bunch of photos from the last month, which will get posted a lot faster without too much commentary, so here goes:

Fourth of July - we watched the fireworks from the lawn of the Pentagon, thanks to a John Brodarick, a friend of ours from church who works there. A wonderful time was had by all, and it was cool to get a mini-tour of the Pentagon en route to the site.

Long-Overdue Update

Okay, so we've been traveling and between cameras, but now I'm finally back with more news on Ellie.

Ellie's eating habits:
She still isn't gettng tons of food in at every meal, but we now generally have two meals a day, with cereal in the morning and yogurt in the afternoon. She has one thing mixed in with the main dish, including applesauce, bananas, peaches, avocado, tahini, peas, carrots, cauliflower, spinach, and mango. Today was her first day of carrots and she loved them, which is a relief because she ate a ton for a change. She also gets flax seed with her cereal, which she seems to like fine and adds omega 3 acids. :) The photo at left was one of the last taken before the old camera dropped - even on her first day of solid food she was already holding the spoon and trying to feed herself. She is still working on the spoon thing, and her daily bath is now regularly after her breakfast, because she gets it all over herself - down to her legs, too.

Mobility:
Ellie has been trying to get more mobile since day one- she was attempting to crawl every time we put her on her tummy as long as I can remember. Now she's continuing to zoom ahead and is practically to walking! She pulls herself up to standing whenever she gets a chance, whether on the open dishwasher door, a chair, my leg, or her crib side. She loves to hold on with one hand and bounce up and down, all the while giggling, smiling, and babbling to show how proud she is of herself. Her record so far for standing without support is 11 seconds, and she's gotten really good at landing gently - an important skill. We think she might even be walking by the family reunion next month. The photo at left is Ellie helping me with filing while Mom was visiting in June.

Communication:
Grandma Campbell is always coming up with a new game to try or skill to practice, and so it wasn't surprising that her naming game was when Ellie first starting saying "mama." At first she was just repeating "ma-ma-ma" over and over, so I wasn't sure if she got what it meant, but now she seems to use it especially when she wants me, or wants to be picked up or nursed. While visiting Rose the last week in June she started saying "papa" or "baba" as her new syllable. Not clear if she gets the meaning yet, but we need to keep practicing. Since getting home, though, she's mostly just making funny growling sounds - very expressive, but not so many consonants. She does get the idea of mimicking sounds and gestures more, though. Last weekend we saw Grandma Campbell again and Ellie is now on her way to perfecting patty-cake. She loves clapping, and Grammy insists that she "rolled it" for her, and was on the way to "marking it with a B". Great-grandma suggests that we work on waving bye-bye, so that's in the works.

And now it's bedtime for all of us - Ellie has been in bed since 11, though, which is a record early bedtime! Let's hope it continues...