It is quite possibly her FAVORITE thing to do, so when we saw it at Noah's birthday party, we had to climb inside.
We jumped. We played. We tried not to hurt anyone...too badly (sorry, Chaz!). But more importantly, we debated for a long time about who had more fun at Noah's birthday party!
I decided to post this just in case a certain someone decides she needs a little touch of home. We both miss you, Momma!
~~~~~
Editor's Note: Please excuse the messy hair (it was a long day!)
This 3T-sized jersey, "a little taste of Wisconsin", was a Valentine's gift from the fam in the Midwest. That was very sweet! Little E thanks you all! Much love.
Yes that's right, it's still clearly the end of October around here. As I download pictures and video of the big night, I remembered how much fun we had decorating the place with items we were too fearful to bring out last year. This translates into our Rocketship seeing many things for the first time - parenting gold. Check out the video.
Admittedly, I knew this would give her a start, and yes, I did stage this sequence allowing her to set of the motion-activated pumpkin. It was worth every effort just to catch her reaction. Note: similar to most kids, waving her hands in the air (usually wildly) is her way of communicating "all done", or in some cases such as this, "take it away" and/or "get me out of here".
"Please" is the newest word/phrase most commonly heard at our household. I do believe we enjoy it more than anything else E has spoken to date, yes even including "mama" or "dada".
Here is a sampling:
This was sent to me as an email forward so I don't know who the stars of this video actually are. What I do know however is this little boy sure does LOVE Wii Sports, especially the golfing game. Personally we've had fun playing the golfing on our Wii, but we've never laughed like this. It is a shame to think that some dads would actually pretend to buy a Wii under the guise of it being a purchase "for their children". Who would do that? Certainly, ahem, I wouldn't...ha ha!
Either #1 or #2 took this footage or my new indoor ball pit, I can't remember really. What I can remember though is I LOVE playing in my balls. As you can see below, I can even get in and out of the pool by myself now!
The idea for an indoor ball pit came from friends (and coworkers) of #1, the Hayes family. They have one in their basement during the winter for their 2 children, Rohin & Veda. Its not set up right now though as they have been temporarily transferred to India for work (for 3 years!) They have a family blog too, which can be found here.Bottom line, I love my ball pit. Thanks Roh and V!
Alternate titles for this post:
"This One Goes Out To My Dogs"
"Dog Day Afternoon"
"This Site Has Gone To The Dogs"
This space reserved for a well-deserved doggy shout-out to our favorite puppies; Riley (a.k.a. Riley-Boo, Boo), Dusty (a.k.a. Dusty-Moto, Hey $%!#$ come back here with that!), Darcey, Amber, Sammie & Blue.
Happy New Year!
Wait, what do you mean today is the 5th of January? This year is going by even faster than the last one did! Impossible! Hard to believe that E is 7 months old to the day. I KNOW!
Today was our first day back to work and it was....a.....rough.....go. I needed a bit of extra coffee to keep myself at the helm. Let's just say we had a good vacation together. Other than celebrate Christmas (several times with our several families), we really didn't do anything special. It was nice to have some time for each other though.
Allow me to speak for Ellena for a second, she had a great Christmas! It was enjoyable to watch her light up when she saw her many relatives. She really enjoyed being passed around, kissed, hugged and pinched. She also had fun hanging out with her cousins. Funny thing actually, S and I both noticed she seemed to want to stand more (supported, of course) when they were around her - like it was the cool thing to do!
As with most children, she also really enjoyed the gift-opening, although it had more to do with the tissue paper than anything else we feel, but I must say all that time we spent practicing ripping out magazines pages really paid off! She looked like a professional!
Good news too - we shot lots of new pictures and even captured some video!
Here she is in the box (of course) of one of the presents from us. No child, we said think OUTSIDE the box!
And here she is crawling, or scooting/shimmy-ing. Uh-oh, she's getting faster!
What do you know, I was searching the archives and I found some video of E holding her own bottle for the first time. As you can see, she is a real pro!
Ellena has also been grasping objects lately. Her little fists, previously balled up constantly as though she were wearing tiny boxing gloves, have been relaxed a bit. She occasionally reaches out and grabs her toys and rattles. We've also been using this time to introduce her to new textures and fabrics. So far she's touched objects such her blankets, our clothing, the carpet, and of course, the cats. She loves when we hold her near the felines and allow her feet to feel their bellies.
One funny story from earlier this week happened when Ellena was on her mat playing and Maddie, our female cat, who frequently likes to hang out really close to Ellena, especially when playing, sat down next to her. Well, knowingly or not, she sat on E's open palm and a few seconds later jumped up and relocated a few feet over and sat again. I thought this was a strange exchange until I looked at E's hand only to find it clenched tight and full of Maddie fur! It was as though Maddie sat on a bear trap. Ellena didn't know any better and probably just thought "Hmm, fuzzy".
Another noteworthy development has been her cooing. Ellena surprised us the other day with an entirely new squeal. I captured this in video below where you will hear me speak to her first and she will answer. What she said, I haven't the foggiest, but it's fun just the same. We've had several "conversations" with her and she really seems to be understanding that we're giving her attention.
Fully awake and in one of her cutest outfits to-date, Ellena spent some enjoyable moments this morning with two of her favorite items; the Boppy pillow and the play mat. She really enjoys sitting up and looking all around the room. The yellow lion hanging there has become her best play pal so far - she just gazes at him (assuming its a boy lion because of the mane) and can now sit up and bat him around!
Enjoy the video (click on the play button underneath the picture!), as downloaded from the point & shoot camera. Still have to spend some time with the better video camera to decipher the instructions for downloading and posting some video clips from it.
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