Playing Catch-up

Ok, So I realized today that I am so far behind on pictures and Ellie updates! I am going to try to fix that without going totally picture overboard - but I make no promises.

First, Ellie got some new toys a few weeks back. We got her a playmat and a jumperoo to encourage her to play independently more. She is learning to love the jumperoo even though she was not at all thrilled with it at first, and she enjoys the playmat.

Lately the jumperoo also seems to be the best place to sleep. This has become almost a daily occurrence, sometimes twice a day. Ellie is such a good sleeper for the most part. She puts herself to sleep usually within 10 minutes of the time we put her down at night. Often times for naps she knows she's tired so when I put her in the crib she just goes to sleep, and every once in a while she just hangs out playing in the crib when she wakes up which I LOVE. The other day I went to check on her and she'd just been playing for a while. Then she giggled the whole time I took her jammies off. Such a great nap time!

Speaking of playtime, we are also starting to occasionally get happy tummy time! And, as of Sunday November 21 Ellie started to roll over again. You may be thinking, "so what? she's been rolling over since Labor Day." True. Till she stopped. It had been several weeks, so we're glad she is rolling over again. Here is a video of tummy time and rolling over from the 21st of November. She is only rolling over using the weight of her head when she pushes up still, so sometimes she thumps her head, but when she does she isn't usually upset. (Rose/Bennett hard heads are good for something.)

But don't worry, we still get plenty of this kind of tummy time too. Most of the time, in fact.

Man, she's not even red here... She obviously wasn't very upset.

I don't have a good video of it, but Ellie is also developing in her speech. She has been talking to us more and more all the time, and just today she started making more complex sounds some of the time. In other words, her sounds aren't always all vowels. So exciting to watch her little mouth make all these cute shapes as she starts to get a feel for "words". Since I don't have a video, instead enjoy this CUTE picture of Ellie and Steve getting ready to go out last Monday night.
This girl LOVES her Daddy.

We are also watching her figure out her hands. She obviously knows they are there now, and at times knows she controls them to some shaky extent. We never did get the whole staring at the hand wide open in the face thing, just watching them at times and having them whap her in the face. But, based on how often she watches them into her mouth and the fact that she is now grabbing blankets, toys, etc. (sometimes with help) she obviously is figuring those hand things out. As a result, she is also currently fascinated by other people's hands. From watching us type on the ipad to tracking a "magic jelly bean" Steve held over her at my parents' house, she is fixated on hands.Staring at her hands above and happy after playing with this blanket below.
She also loves trying to help hold her bottles these days. And she's held it for a few seconds a couple of times now! She usually gets in her (and our) way, knocking the bottle out of her mouth and getting mad, but we love watching her try to help out.

She also still loves watching her feet. And, a new thing as of this week - feet in the air! She loves doing this during diaper changes.

Another phase we're entering - insert in mouth. Blankets, a jacket that gets bunched up, hands, bibs, our hands on occasion. When she gets mobile it will be time to baby proof in a hurry!

A couple of other quick developments... On Saturday, 20 of November we saw Ellie roll her tongue for the first time. Apparently that comes from me as Steve can't do it. And because he's Steve, his first response was to go into the fact that tongue-rolling is the dominant gene and that if we have a non-tongue-roller in the future, that makes me a hybrid. Gotta love that scientist...

Probably our FAVORITE recent development is: laughter! Thursday November 18 I heard her first undeniable laugh! Then nothing till Monday and then about a laugh a day for a few days. Then while we were at my parents Ellie started showing how much more entertaining Daddy is than Mommy and Steve had her going and going and going! We'll put up the only video of her laughing we have so far in the video blog.

Lastly, here are a few pictures of our growing girl from this past week. Our home scale has her around 16 lbs already!!!

Still to come: videos of Ellie and pictures from our Thanksgiving trip to Spokane!