That's right, those are potatoes. She saw them in our plastic bin and decided they were a fantastic toy. She came back to these for a few days and played with them frequently before (I'm assuming) forgetting they were there.
Don't ask me about the head thing... She likes to do this and look straight up lately, especially in her stroller or carts at stores. Oh, and you've got to love the painted toe nails. Grandma did that for her birthday the morning we left. (And yes, her hair really is that wild now, even brushed. We pretty much have to wet it down and brush it before we go anywhere if we want her to look like we brush her hair at all...)
Anyway, I'll post about her birthday party next, but this is where I try to record some of the fun things about Ellie at this age before I forget how truly amazing she is! First off, stats. On the 15th Ellie had her check-up and became a pin-cushion for vaccinations. We LOVE her pediatrician, and Dr. Dernbach said there wasn't a single thing she could find to worry about on her. (Yay or not permanently damaging our child yet! At least, you know, visibly....) Anyway, Ellie is one long lean girl these days. She's pretty much worked off her little belly and has slowed way down on eating, so I'm not sure it's going to make a reappearance real soon. She is 31.5 inches - still at 97-98%, and 22 lbs - down to 75%, with her head being around 75% (the nurse never tells me how big that noggin is, but I can tell you we had to have Grandma Reva sew some snaps onto the neckline of her shirts so we could get them over that 75th percentile noggin).
Ellie also continues to teeth - with no breaks! She now has 8 teeth!
She cut the bottom left tooth while we camping, and then we just noticed that she had cut the top leftmost tooth like two days ago out of nowhere! It never ends! Dr. Dernbach said that she could see Ellie was working on a couple of new teeth, and that bicuspids come in before canines, but it's still funny to see the big gap followed by a tiny white bit of tooth.
Now, the more fun parts of Ellie. She still loves music. She perks up when there are musical numbers in church, and today was trying to sing with a number the Relief Society instructor played for us. In fact, favorite memory of Preston BAR NONE: Reva was practicing her piano numbers for Relief Society and Primary and Ellie recognized a few of the Primary songs and sat snuggling on my lap (there are benefits to separation anxiety) while she sang with the piano in the other room. Yup, I cried. I struggle to know when and how to introduce the Gospel into Ellie's daily life where she is so little still, but that made my heart just about burst. And not only does she like to try and sing, but she dances now too. At random moments - halfway through songs, during commercials, always for Sesame Street music, she suddenly bops up and down and swings her arms back and forth. So cute!
On top of loving music, Ellie currently loves her dolls, puzzles, activity cube, toy cars, stuffed animals, and balloons that are still at our house from her birthday. I love that recently she has taken to grabbing stuffed animals and then snuggling them tight to her face while squealing in delight. She loves to do this with a giraffe she has and her bush baby from Grandma Kerry. She's also funny to watch her try to figure out how to drag her dolls through the house while crawling and eventually give up with a doll in the middle of the hallway.
While we were in Preston she accidentally stood for a good 10-15 seconds with no support while eating snacks before she realized what she was doing and immediately plopped down. She did the same thing at her birthday party here a couple of times. She can stand on her own, and when she holds things almost never holds tight enough for any assistance balancing, but she is convinced she doesn't want to do it on her own yet, so she won't, and sits right away when she lets go of things. If she wants to use both of her hands, she'll even belly up to something and stick her tummy way out to still feel like she has the support. This girl cracks me up.
What she does want to do all on her own is feed herself. She has recently taken to refusing even food she likes for a minute or two if she can't give it to herself and will refuse other foods just to do it at times and establish her independence. I am struggling to know how much to push and how much to give in so we don't turn our "goat" into a picky eater. She loves her milk that she's now allowed to have, which makes life much easier on us since she needs a lot of it daily. Our only complication is that now we live in Kennewick our water is fluoridated so we have to schedule when she gets her fluoride and milk so they don't overlap - apparently calcium interferes with fluoride intake in the body. But, all in all, she still likes new foods once you convince her to try them, and is doing well.
She added new words to her reppertoire while we were in Preston. She went through a phase where she said "hi" about every 30 seconds for two days or so. Then, she turned to the word "cat". She can also say something like "do-ot" for dog, a word that sounds like "toy", and since we have been home has gotten "fish" (ok really "shish") back and now says "shoes" every once in a while as well. She repeats words every once in a while, but doesn't keep them. But, except for our fish, most everything is still a "cat" especially birds. She is really insistent that birds are cats. She is starting to say hi and wave to people at church and stores though. Ever the flirt.
Oh, and fun fact which makes getting pictures much harder: she no longer smiles at the camera. No, no.... Now she squints and scrunches up her face or turns away right away. Hopefully you enjoyed all the previous pictures, because I don't know how many we're going to get to share in the next little while....
Other than all that, our Ellie girl is a fast-crawler, tummy sleeper, stranger-lover, all around good girl. And she amazes me all the time. Especially when she figures things out and you get to watch the wheels turn. A couple of weeks ago at church she decided that she could climb up stairs, even though she'd never done it before. She made it up a good 10 steps or so too before deciding she wanted back down and was stuck. After that, she watched Primary-aged kids climb down the stairs over and over trying to figure it all out.
We are so in LOVE with our absolutely AMAZING little girl!
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