Bath!

Ellie really loves her bath time, always has. Especially when she gets to play with the rubber ducks :) It's hard to get her to set her ducks down. I usually have to pry them out so I can wash her hands.

But she is willing share, sometimes. As long as I give her duck back.

Ponytails

Ellie's hair is getting long-ish :) It's plenty long for her to rock the Bam-bam ponytail/top knot. What a cutie... And with all the humidity we've had recently, she's got lots of curls showing up. So fun.

PPPP

Ellie's first big girl pajamas — i.e. two-piece and without feet — have a very long name. They are her pretty pink pony pajamas!
Here's a few pictures of her playing in them on a recent night... when she decided to be a night owl for a change. Last night, though, she was back to her pattern of sleeping 12-13 hours overnight. What an angel.
As you can see below, though, she enjoys finding any dog toys around the house and playing with them or chewing them! After spending months trying to keep the dogs from eating Ellie's toys, the situation is now reversed. (sigh)

Oh, and here's shot of Ellie doing what she does best these days. Hittin' the road... in search of more dog toys, no doubt.

10 months

Wow, I cannot believe it's already been 10 months. Ellie has officially been outside of me now longer than she was inside!
She's going through a developmental explosion right now, but I'll try to summarize in this month's top 10.

1. Crawling! There is no stopping Ellie these days... well, except with a gate or other large obstruction. As one of her teacher's pointed out the other day, we spent so long trying to get her moving and now we're trying to slow her down — or at least keep her from getting into the trash, the dog toys, the power cords, etc...
2. Working on pulling up to standing. She's actually done this a couple times, but it's not consistent. Ellie is getting really close to being able to do it all the time. And then we'll really be in trouble :)
3. Needing to learn "nice touch." It turns out Ellie is a bit of a meanie to the other babies at day care right now. She likes to poke them in the eyes, ears, nose and even pull hair. She doesn't mean to hurt them, I know, but she needs to learn that those touches can hurt. Ellie is even scratching and pulling hair on me and Brian these days... so we need to keep working on this lesson with her. Hopefully we'll have a breakthrough soon.
4. Emptying toys out of bins, buckets and trays. It seems that her favorite activity right now is taking all of her toys out of whatever container is closest. And item on her daily log from school the other day read: "Emptied two whole toy bins. Big mess! :)" Maybe her next phase will be an obsession with putting things away?
5. Saying lots of new sounds/words. In addition to her staples, ma-ma and da-da, Ellie has picked up the "na" and "uh" syllables. And I'm not sure if it qualifies as her first word or not, but she's been saying "UH-ohh" often when she drops things from her highchair or changing table. Funny.
6. Throwing things. Ellie loves to throw food from her highchair to the dogs on the floor. She also is quick to throw whatever toy she's holding to the ground in favor of a new toy she gets in her sight. It's funny now, but I'm sure it's a habit we'll have to break her of in time.
7. Eating "big girl" food. Nearly all of her food restrictions are gone now, except for no eggs, fish, nuts and limited dairy. That means she's exploring a lot of new finger foods. And she's also starting on the toddler menu at school... we'll see how she likes it!
8. Weaning. Ellie decided she's almost done with nursing. She was nursing 3x each day at nine months, but then dropped to two and is now only willing to sit still long enough for one feeding each day. I'm a little sad about it. But I'm happy with how well we did for so long. And I still get to start my morning by feeding my little angel... we'll see how much longer that lasts.
9. Loving games. Ellie is a huge fan of the "SO big" game. And she loves playing peek-a-boo and when I sing Pat-a-cake with her. I'm looking forward to doing more of this and having her sing along, too.
10. I know I've used this one before, but seriously she's amazing us every day. When she is happy and smiling, I feel like nothing in the world can really be that bad. And watching her learn so much, even if it's in tiny pieces at a time, makes both of us proud beyond words.

What's in here?

Ellie is getting into everything these days... including this box of beer that makes a very cool clanking sound when played with.
I think she wanted to replace her regular nighttime bottle with one of these. Those are the new vortex Miller Lite bottles, so I guess I can't blame her. Definitely our kid.

On a related note... I can't help but share one of my favorite stories about Jim and Sandy's kids, Alora and Jay. Sandy took Alora with her to a La Leche League meeting several years ago while Jay was still nursing. Sandy was in the process of feeding Jay during the meeting (since the attendees are very easy-going about such things) and Alora was playing with toys nearby. Well, Alora found a plastic toy Coke bottle and brought it over to Sandy where she proudly exclaimed, "Mom, here's your beer!"
The best part was that one of the ladies nearest Sandy then said, "Oh my."
Classic. I'm actually laughing out-loud as I type it.

Messy girl

Here is a collection of recent pictures showing how messy of an eater Ellie is these days. It's fun to experiment with more finger foods, but they definitely end up in her hair, behind her ears, in her lap and just about everywhere else by the end of the meal.
The dogs don't mind helping clean of Ellie, the chair and the floor, though! They're in heaven with all these "treats" that keep falling out of the sky.

Memorial Day weekend

Here are some pics from our trip up to Rockford this past weekend. Ellie was absolutely amazed by her cousins — and they thought she was pretty cool, too! Alora and Jay definitely gave her a workout doing the whole "How big is Ellie?... SO big" game. Too cute.

Ellie will be joining the "kids table" before too long... God help us ;)

And Ellie took her first dip in the pool over the weekend. I forgot her swimsuit and her swim diapers. She was fine in a regular diaper in the pool, but it absorbed so much water that I thought the pool was going to go dry :)
It was plenty hot outside, but the cold water from the hose took her off-guard at first. She came around, though, and played in the water for a long time. Alora and Jay kept her company, when they weren't busy in the sprinkler!