We're Coming to Florida

Our flights our booked, travel plans are made and I've started pulling out summer stuff for Elle.  We are so excited that we are able to visit our family in Jacksonville in March.  It is a totally unexpected trip but we are escaping the cold weather, which seemed to be letting up but is now turning snowy again, and heading for sunshine.  I am so excited because all the spring stuff is starting to show up in the stores and I now have an excuse to buy them for Elle.  I am also excited because she has a few pairs of sandals and a bathing suit she wasn't going to get to wear due to the sizes and our cold weather.  I even pulled this super cute hat out of the closet yesterday.  It fits perfectly!  She looks like she's ready to go doesn't she?

Teeth!!!!

Please excuse the food all over her face!  Yesterday, as I was feeding her green beans and butternut squash she kept making the funniest face and showing me her teeth.  Since I've been trying for two weeks to get a good shot of her teeth I yelled to Matt to come with the camera.  Instead of trying to clean her mouth off between bites, we were trying to get her to show her teeth!  Matt was able to snap this great picture of them!  While it looks like she might be crying, she isn't, she's just being a total ham.  

Below is a picture of her eating her "Crispy Rice", the organic version of Rice Krispies (I think the name is funny).  She's pretty proud of herself for doing it on her own however, she is not that good at hitting her mouth!  

Elle's 8 Months Old

 Where did January go?  We are already in February and running in fast forward!  Elle turned 8 months a week ago...8 months going on three years.  She is so full of life and personality.  I look at her and no longer see a baby girl I see a child emerging.  She pretends to eat with her mouth when she sees food, bounces to the beat when music comes on, and laughs when I laugh at her.  She is the happiest little person I have ever met.

  Matt just got back from Mexico.  He had a good time and came home with a tan!  I was so jealous happy for him.  While he was away Elle and I stayed with my parents so I didn't climb the walls being alone with an eight month old.  While we were there Nana gave her the traditional sink bath.  My Mom loves bathing them and does so whenever she has them over night.  I warned her that Elle was not like her cousins and it would be a Shamoo show the minute she hit the water.  Here's the only photo I snapped before we decided she needed to get out.

Here she is playing dangerously with her Father.  Perhaps this is why she seems a little unsure when I leave her alone with him.  

 Being a little poser!

 Embracing the "bad hair day"!

 

With wild hair comes wild hair-dos...this is Elle with her Rihanna do.  As Matt says,  Rihanna gets her "hair-did", Elle with her hair-did.

Lazy Saturday mornings mean play-time with penguin.  They say you start to look like someone the more time you spend with them.  Elle and her BFF, Penguin.

Who does Elle look like????

The mystery is solved:


Chelsey, 10 months old

Elle, 8 months old

We definitely know where the wild hair came from!!!  Sorry Elle!

As previously promised....

With crawling comes....

When Matt got Elle from her crib he found her standing looking over the edge of the crib.  Luckily she was facing the wall trying to reach the "E" from her name, but we quickly found out that with crawling comes climbing.  While I fed her lunch Matt lowered her crib mattress to avoid any spills.  Here are the before and after pictures of her crib.

Before:

After:

* There were no babies injured in the taking of these pictures.  Both parents were present and near the crib.

Crawling, Teething and a whole lot of Whining!

Elle Belle is seven and a half months old!  Wow how the time flies.  The weeks and days just seem to fly by without notice.  It seems like everyday Elle is doing something new, we really can't keep up.  She has recently started crawling.  It started with her rolling from place to place.  We would set her down with her toys and find her under the bed or up against a wall, not completely sure how she got there.  By the beginning of this week she was taking little tiny movements forward for things she REALLY wanted (tv remote, a cookie...yes we did bribe her with a "cookie" aka. rice rusk) she would take a few little crawls and then stretch out to reach what she was going for.  Now, she's crawling from toy to toy at a pretty good pace.  Matt got it on video during his lunch break so maybe I can talk him into posting it tonight.

This week her nose started to run again along with lots of whining (not normal for her) and I instantly started to worry that she got her Christmas cold back.  Having just gotten through 2 weeks of flu and colds, I was less than thrilled to be heading into that again.  Other than her nose running, she didn't have a cough which lead me to the conclusion of teething!!!  That's right, baby girl is getting her TWO bottom teeth!  I was so nervous to stick my fingers in her mouth as I didn't want to give her any germs (mean while she touches everything and sticks everything in her mouth, my freshly washed hands are the least of her worries) but Matt had no problem doing it (again my freshly washed ones were probably way cleaner but...) and found TWO teeth!!!! So we gave the girl some Tylenol and celebrated her first two teeth.  These are not great pictures but they are the best I could do!

She is starting to eat really well again.  Over Christmas holidays she kinda fell behind her food schedule due to travelling and being sick but she is back to normal and doing great.  She enjoys pure' sweet potatoes, butternut squash, avocados, bananas and most recently apple sauce.  I've been making all my own food because it is so easy and good for her.  I'm using all organic because there is something about the processed stuff that just doesn't sit well with me.  We recently bought Elle her highchair so she sits in the kitchen with me while I make up her food and put the extra in the freezer for later.

Finally, last weekend we celebrated Popa (my Dad's) 55th Birthday.  The family got together, put the babies down for a nap, and played street hockey in the snow.  We had an absolute blast and did not realize just how sore we would all be the next day.  We aren't kids anymore!!!  Once the babies got up from their naps Lindsay and I took Elle and Abby out to play in the snow.  Elle seemed to love it and Abby was just a good sport for her Mom.  We took them out in the sled and had to put Abby on top of Elle because she couldn't bend at all in her snow suit...poor girl.  Lindsay and I had a blast...not so sure about the girls.