8 months

Ellie turned eight months old on Christmas Day. Despite all the other things going on around the house, I actually remembered to take her monthly picture!

Keeping her in the chair long enough to take a few pictures has become quite a chore, so I'm really glad Pete was able to be in the room with me or these might not have happened. I really think Ellie's going to be one of those girls who wants to go skydiving on her 18th birthday - she loves to try to jump/roll/dive off the edge of any raised thing.

Month 8 was HUGE development-wise! Every day we are amazed at the things this girl is doing, she makes every day things funny and enjoyable. Ellie can get pretty much anywhere she wants by crawling now. After Thanksgiving, when we arrived home from Pennsylvania we let Ellie stay up a little later than usual because she'd been in her car seat for ten-and-a-half hours. I was sitting on the basement floor and got her to scoot towards me, but it was pretty slow. By the end of the week she had made serious progress with her speed and coordination. Her tummy is still on the floor, so it is more of an army crawl, but she can move pretty fast when she wants to - as you can see here:



We could see her upper two front teeth for a few weeks before they broke through her gums - but they did just at the end of the month, on Christmas Eve day: two big, chicklet-sized incisors.

Last month Ellie started making this fantastic, nose-wrinkling, giant grin. We love it when she is happy enough to give it to us - I was happy that she showed it to Carl and Estelle when they were visiting. Ellie's favorite toy this month was her big box of blocks. She loves to dump them out and pound on the empty box, or bang two blocks together.

Ellie's babbling has gone from canonical /bæbæbæ/ or /dædædæ/ to variegated /deɪdægəgə/. She wakes up from naps and starts babbling instead of crying and is still a chatterbox in the morning when she wakes. She is generally a very happy, very content baby and she makes every day brighter!