Ella, 10 months

Ella is our go-getter. She is definitely the mover and the shaker. She has been working on her sitting and crawling, crawling and sitting, laying down and sitting etc skills. She loves to stand and kick. She is never sitting still. If it involves any type of large motor skill she is doing it, practicing it or working on it. I told Shawn that compared to her our other 3 are lazy. She continues to start bouncing the minute she awakes, even from a dead sleep. She should literally just drop over from exhaustion for naps but even there she cannot sit still. For the longest time we have relied on swaddling to at least stop her from all the crawling and rolling in her crib. Often it proved futile. I called her my swaddle Houdini. She seemed to look at it and other methods of captivity as a challenge for her to overcome. She is definitely going to have to be closely watched. She loves to bang on the toy piano in the few minutes she is sitting still. And I mean bang. Concert pianist anyone? Because of all her movement she is all muscle. She is our big eater. She is not particularly picky or difficult to feed. She loves egg yolks and any finger foods particularly.



Ella is a definite daddy's girl. She loves her mama but she just lights up when she sees her daddy. She revels in his attention and looks so sad when he is busy getting ready for work and cannot pick her up. She loves to say both dada and mama. I love when she follows me out of the room saying mama, mama. She is a fierce talker in that she converses with us in such a serious matter, sometimes frowning while getting her point across. She still has a special place in her heart for her uncle Goober, it's pretty cute.



Ella is in general a VERY happy little girl. She gives us huge smiles and is so excited to see us. Having a bad day? Say hi to Ella, she'll make it better!! Where Henry is always growling, Ella is always shrieking in excitement and kicking/jumping/smacking in joy. For Ella life is a par-tay! Ella loves to figure out toys. She is constantly shaking, moving, examining and tasting her toys. Here's the highlights of her 10th month:

New foods this month: Eggs Yolks (ick-LOVES them now), chicken pieces (not baby food-have you seen how nasty that stuff looks?) (YUM-give me more!), apricots mixed in with other fruit (ok), and Soy Yogurt (Yum-Yum-Yum!).

On the 25th and 28th of April she gets her top left and then right teeth respectively.

On April 27th she is the first to start officially "crawling." The traditional, up on hands and knees crawling. It seems like days later she is zooming from place to place and room to room! By May 7th she is able to move from crawling to sitting and back again. These tasks are old hat to her now. We are looking at ways to keep her out of places I don't like them to crawl ie bathroom floors and the laundry room.
She plays peek-a-boo for the first time with a bib on April 29th. Thus the end of April is full of firsts for this little girl!

On May 15th Ella gets her right lateral incisor. She gets the left lateral incisor on May 20th. She officially has 6 teeth. Warning: Keep your fingers away from her mouth! As a side note: with colds, fevers and teething it has been a crappy few weeks for sleeping and napping.

We had visitors the last/first weekend in April/May, my friend Andrea and her two children Emma and Easton. With her I took the kids out for their first extended shopping trip and extended trip in the quad stroller. You should've seen the looks and whispered conversations. We were quite the attraction. Doing this once has grown my confidence in managing going out and about with the kids, like I once did with Evie. Maybe to start shopping once a week with them or doing something beside being homebodies.

We have so enjoyed these last 1o months with this sweet and active little girl.