13 months

This has been a month of change.  It almost makes it okay that I no longer have a baby.  Almost.

I know all you readers already know this because I can't help posting video after video of it - but this month Ellie learned to walk!

Each day she gets more and more sure of herself; she is definitely walking more than crawling now.  About a week after she toddled for the first time, she started standing up on her own (not pulling up on furniture and taking steps from there).  It is still really entertaining to watch Ellie push her little bottom in the air, then get in a low squat, and finally stand.

 
Last month I thought getting two more teeth was a big deal - add four more to that for a total of twelve teeth!  About a week after her first birthday two bottom molars popped out, and in the next two weeks two upper molars were visible as well.

Ellie's 12-month appointment was on April 30th and our pediatrician said that Ellie should no longer have a bottle.  So we started giving her cow's milk in a straw cup for all of her meals, and stopped giving her a bottle of breast milk with our bedtime routine.  Luckily, she had no issues and slept like a champ on that first night and has done fine ever since.  We still gave her one bottle of breast milk each morning until we ran out of pumped milk, which fell on Mother's Day, May 13th, and since then have been completely bottle-free.

On May 2nd we had another session with Cassidy!  We met her in the afternoon at Gratz Park for Ellie's one-year-photos.  Here are a few of the amazing images - we are beyond thrilled with them!!

Ellie is growing into such an independent and purposeful child.  It is pretty amusing to see her try to fit all the blocks in the box, stuff the letters into the velcro bag, or put the penguin pieces on the peg.

But then she will get tired and suddenly my baby girl is back, crawling into my lap, asking to be held, resting her head on my shoulder, signaling that it is time for a nap.

After which she will wake up bright and sunshine-y, ready to go!

Memorial Day Weekend

It was so great to have a three-day-weekend together with no official plans.  Ellie loved having her daddy around for three whole days in a row!

We recently got Ellie a new pair of shoes, and she's pretty obsessed with them.  Not for wearing exactly, but she likes to carry them around and pull at the little white flowers on them.

 

Ellie and her daddy making the same face at each other.

oops!  I threw the shoes - will you get them for me?

thanks!

Yesterday was our friend Caitlyn's first birthday and her parents had a cookout in their back yard.  We had a really great time grilling out and relaxing with all of our friends and their children (but I didn't have my camera).  Ellie loved playing in Caitlyn's new pool and we realized that Ellie needed more than her little plastic pool.  It was scratching her legs every time she climbed in and out of it.  So we went to Target this afternoon and got her a nice inflatable pool for ten whole dollars. :)  It's just big enough that Pete and I can sit in it with Ellie.  Pete blew it up and filled it with water during her second nap and we spent the rest of the afternoon in the backyard in our bathing suits.

We played in the pool, took Ellie around the yard in her wagon, and Pete started to weed the patio.

Joanne and Jerry came over for dinner; Ellie happily shared her pool with them. 

After dinner we made root beer floats, watched Fiona play in the sprinkler, and called it a night!

For extra fun, here is another walking video:

Gearing up for Summer Fun

It has been unseasonably warm here so we got Ellie's kiddie pool out Monday evening and let her take a quick dip in it before bed.  Fiona seemed to think it was a giant water bowl.

Tuesday afternoon Ellie had a good time playing in the pool - especially when she discovered she could climb in and out at her own will.  

 

 Don't you love her chunky monkey legs?!?!

Someone told me it's all happening...

at the ZOO!!

The only good thing about Pete working three of the last four Saturdays is that he doesn't feel too guilty about taking a random Tuesday afternoon away from the computer to go on an adventure!  After Ellie's morning nap, we drove to Louisville to take Ellie to the zoo.  We went once last year with Rachael and Sylvia, but Ellie was still pretty itty-bitty.

What a difference a year makes!!!

The rhinoceros was the first thing we saw - he was so close to us!  Ellie wouldn't take her eyes off him, and her grip on my arm got tighter and tighter.

 

She was also very interested in the sea eagle.

The monkeys, not so much.

It didn't seem like Ellie saw the gorillas, and we were getting ready to walk to the next area, when suddenly she DID see them and tried to crawl over the rail!!

The gorilla walked right up to the glass once we had walked down to the other viewing area.  He came so quickly that I jumped back and carried Ellie away.  Pete got this great picture, though.

The last thing we saw before we left was the polar bear.  He was so cute and fun to watch swimming around and playing with his pool toys.

This is such a great age - we love watching her face as she sees so many new things.  I can't wait to take her to the aquarium later this summer, I think she's going to flip!

We have a toddler!

Last Tuesday I texted Pete to tell him I thought Ellie had taken a step.  He texted back to ask me if I was sure, and to see if she might have just been slowly falling.  The next afternoon I was visiting Joanne and all my pals at John's Run/Walk Shop and I turned to get a wet wipe out of my bag to clean Ellie's hands (the floors are kinda yucky) and out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw her take three steps from one chair to another.  Luckily, I had no less than four other witnesses to confirm my suspicion.  We all spent the next 20 min or so trying to get Ellie to walk to us.  Joanne had the most success by shaking her iced coffee at Ellie.  (Joanne's theory that small children are pretty much like cats is proving more and more true.)  I headed home from John's after Ellie had taken 3-4 steps several more times.  So on May 9th, exactly two weeks after her first birthday, Ellie took her first steps!!  I captured a few steps on my phone that evening to send to Pete who was out of town, but yesterday I got a nice long clip.  It was still on my phone, though, so apologies for the quality.  Ellie had just finished pushing her table from the living room, down the hallway, and into Pete's office:

Picture Pages, Picture Pages, Time to get your Picture Pages

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12 months

It has taken me a few weeks to come around to writing this post.  I have had to mentally adjust to having an almost toddler versus a baby.  She's still a baby to me, and she'll always be our Baby Girl, but I know that she is now a one-year-old and her infant days are far behind us.  These past two-and-a-half weeks I've been realizing what fun it is to spend my days with such a smart, funny, opinionated, optimistic, cheerful girl and not waste my time waxing nostalgic about when she was itty-bitty.  Here are Ellie's stats from her 12-month well-check on April 30th:  height: 30 1/4 " (82%) weight: 20lbs (31%)

In her twelfth month, Ellie....

- visited the tulips

- took swim lessons

- grew her 8th tooth - her final incisor (top left lateral).  Since then she's gotten two more!! (but I suppose that is information for her 13-month-post)
- really started harassing the dog.  Fiona brings Ellie such joy, she shrieks with delight whenever they are in the same room.  Fiona has also learned jump up and run away when Ellie approaches.



-stood on her own!!  The first time it happened Pete and I were both standing in the hall while Ellie held on to the gate at the bottom of the stairs.  She then was holding on to Pete's leg, then suddenly, she wasn't!  It took a few days before I could catch her doing it with the camera, but it finally happened on April 17th.

 

 

-had her first bubble bath.  It did not go well.  She was upset that the bubbles covered all of her toys and was generally afraid of them.  So we scooped them out and have gone back to plain water baths.

-got her 2nd ear infection.  She suddenly stopped nursing, which was how I knew her ear was infected, and hasn't nursed since.  :(  But I had enough frozen and pumped enough that she still drank exclusive breast milk until a week after her first birthday, so I can be proud of that.

-named her lovey.  Ellie has slept with Zebra since she was four/five months old.  One afternoon I got her up from nap and asked her something about Zebra and she said, "CiCi!"

We're really excited about this next year - we know she will grow and change in so many ways - and we can't wait to be a part of it!