Quick update

Ella walked across the living room yesterday. And she's off!...

So much new

It's hard to put into words the amazing things Ella has learned in the last four days. I'm actually a bit in shock at what she's been up to.

I have to preface this list of accomplishments by saying that Ella has always been determined to march to the beat of her own drummer. Not ONE SINGLE thing has been done on anyone else's timeline but her own. It took her 11 months to sleep through the night and she never crawled--not one time. Just when we start to become a little anxious about her development or those stupid (yet important) "milestones" which she takes at her own pace, she'll have a week like this week has been.

In the last four days, Ella has:
-tried and loved whole milk--took it like a champ.
-gotten from lying down to sitting up after months of REFUSING to try
- pulled up onto everything about 1 million times and cruised across countless pieces of furniture
-WALKED!! up to 6 steps at a time, multiple times today
-learned to say "Teddy", which is more like "Tuh-duh" at this point, but still awesome.

All of a sudden, a fire has been lit under this little girl and she is raring to go. I honestly think she might have been lacking confidence to do things (walk, most notably). She's been walking holding our hands for over 2 months now and JUST yesterday took off on her own.

Exciting times ahead...1st birthday in less than 2 weeks!

Curly mop

The hair is starting to get out of hand. It's glorious.

My two front teeth

And just a pretty face...

Butt scootin' boogie

Ella is finally showing some signs of moving around, and we couldn't be happier to have our little gal movin'. Everyone has said, "Count your blessings that she's not crawling yet, because once she does, there's no stopping her." I agree that that is probably going to be very true, but I'm also glad to see her taking some interest in getting herself where she wants to go. Until now, she has been a permanent fixture on my right hip, and it was starting to get sore way back at 18 lbs, so by now it's seen better days.
The interesting thing about Ella is that she thrives on all things unconventional. She has two teeth now, but unlike all her other baby friends, she decided to get the top two teeth first. I always heard it was the bottom two that come in first, but far be it for Ella to be too conformist. Moreover, she has also refused to crawl, and instead, has become a full-fledged butt-scooter. In the last several days, she has slowly realized that sitting on her butt, pushing her heels out in front of her, and then whipping them back towards her body propels her forward...and so we're off on new adventures, feet first (literally).

Ella in the bluebonnets

These were taken at Grandmommy and Grandaddy's house this weekend. I have removed Hal's rant on why no one should take highway bluebonnet pictures, although he is accurate that the bluebonnets were MUCH more plentiful 15 years ago. It turns out you can have too much of a good thing-who wouldn't want a beautiful picture of their baby in said highway bluebonnets? It's understandable to want the picture, just unfortunate that the bluebonnets won't bloom again afterwards. So, thankfully, we had the opportunity to use private grandparent bluebonnets, because I was gonna get those bluebonnet pictures somehow.

one last one....