To sum up the last 5 months....

I feel horrible for not documenting the last 5 months better. UGH! I'll never get those months and memories back. Bummer. Here's to being better...

Ellie is now almost 11 months old. She has developed quite the little personality. She is really active and loves crawling all over the place. She learned to crawl the first week of July, the same week I had toe surgery. She has been all over the place ever since. Ellie loves to follow me everywhere I go. One day while I was vacuming she followed me into each room I vacumed and layed down on the floor waiting for me to move to the next. I love that sweet memory. I love that she is so obsesed with her mommy. I am equally as in love with her. Sometimes her clingingness does get in the way of getting all my chores done. Try putting away dishes with a little girl hugging your leg.

We moved in July too. Since Ellie had lived with 6 adults she was used to being held all the time. We had an interesting time adjusting to her having to learn to be on the floor now and then. She's gotten used to it now though.

Last Sunday (September 16 2012) Ellie started walking! She took 8 steps at a time before falling on her bum. She still hasn't mastered the task but she's working on it at her own pace. She mostly crawls but now and then she takes a few steps. I LOVE that she bobbles her head as if she's dancing while she crawls. This girl LOVES music. Tonight for FHE we sang If You Could Hie To Kolob and she sang with us. I need to capture that on video now that I think of it. Her singing is cute. She really loves to dance. She dances anytime she hears music wheather it be the radio, mom singing or even the background song on a show. I love that she loves music. I hope she keeps it up.

Ellie is still nursing anytime she wants to go to sleep. I love sharing those moments with her. My favorite is when I make her laugh. She smiles and giggles while still sucking and it seriously melts my heart. I'm going to miss that. It makes me a little weepy to think I only have about a month left of those intimite moments with her. She's growing up way too fast. So fast in fact, that I try holding on to ever baby thing I can. Gary isn't thrilled but I let Ellie sleep with us once she wakes up in the night. Gary snuggles her to sleep once I've nursed her before bed. Once she's asleep she stays in her bed till about midnight at which point I sneak her into bed with me to nurse and snuggle. I love my Ellie.

It's normal for babies to develop stranger danger at about 7 months. I think Ellie did at 7 months to the day. We went to Idaho for a family reunion with my family. She met all of my family and would cry anytime one of them tried holding her. She loved Bayli though. They played for hours one day. It was great!

Now that Ellie is 10 months old she's really having a good time exploring the world. She loves digging through our kitchen cupboards and pulling out the lids. She also enjoys pulling out the silverwear from the dishwasher.

Unlike most babies, Ellie takes more showers than bathes. Sometimes I feel bad becasue I feel like we're missing out on bath tub memories and experiences but I think showing with mommy seems like a better use of my time and an extra oppertunity to bond and speand time together. She is so good in there! She doesn't mind the water in her face and when I hold her to rince her off she holds her head back under the water and lets it pour from her head. Sometimes she even lets it fall into her face. She loves water time. And I do still give her a bubble bath about once every other week or so so she can splash and have her own tube time.

I'd like to share what Ellie's favorite food is but like her parents, she's far from picky. She'll eat anything. I was eating chips and salsa for lunch one day and she wanted some. She can't eat chips so I let her taste the salsa. She pulled in for more! After about 4 nibbles I had to tell her no more because I was afraid that was too spicy for a baby tummy. I was proud of her though, for liking it! This past Sunday Gary had to make breakfast for us. He made scrambled eggs with tomatoes, oninons, cheese and green peppers. Ellie ate almost as much as I did. She loved those eggs! She is an incredible eater (another thing I hope she keeps up).

Ellie goes through favorite toys. Right now her favorite toy is her building blocks/shape sorters. She can even take the shapes out and put them back in. She's truly a smart little girl. She's always loved books and it would be safe to say those are her favorite. She also loves the vintage barn that was passed down from my dad. Gary always points out though, Ellie's favorite things aren't toys at all. She prefers a good household item over a toy anyday. She loves remotes and phones. This past week or two shes started holding objects up to her ear and yelling at them as if they were a phone.

As I said, I am simply in love with my baby girl. I want to give her the world. I hope the world is good to her. She deserves it. She's so loving and sweet. She cries if I get upset with her. She snuggles me when I pick her up. She plays with my hair gently as she falls asleep. She is the greatest thing I've ever seen. I love her red hair. I love her round little face that's softer than anything I've ever touched. I would do anything for my sweet baby girl.

Home

We moved! We had been living with Gary's parent's for the past year and a half. It was great to be with family and it was a little cheaper than having our own place. It was also great that Ellie got to be with her grandparents all the time. They really bonded which is priceless. But it is SO nice to finally have our own space again! The condo we are in is beautiful. The decorations I have set up are faboulous and it just feels great. I am in love with our new home.

Ellie is not a fan of having only tw adults at home. She's been really clinging but can you blame her? Her world not only flipped upside down but she's gone from 4-6 adults giving her attention and now she's down to just me in the day and two of us at night. She'll get used to it.

3 Weeks!

This past Wednesday Ellie turned 3 weeks old! I can't believe how fast time is going by. It seems like she was just born last week. UGH! If I knew how to slow time down I would do it without hesitation.

She's still an adorable newborn but she's quickly loosing her newborn look. She's looking more like a beautiful baby girl and less and less like a grumpy old man. When she was first born I instantly thought she looked just like Gary's Grandpa Hall which only goes to show what an old man she was!

I love the shape of her almond eyes. When she's eating I can't stop looking at her and when I do look at the TV or computer for a while I feel so guilty for not staring at her longer. This guilt sets in when I'm not holding her too. If I could eat, shower, get dressed and clean with her attached to me I would. I am madly in love with this baby girl and I can't get enough of her.

There were a few days where Ellie was staying up til 1:00 am. She would then wake up between 3:00 and 4:00 to eat again and then again around 7:00. This was making me really grumpy. I feel bad but I would get so frustrated that I'd have to just hand her over to Gary and he'd take her upstairs to play till 1:00 when she'd finally sleep. The next day I'd feel so bad for being so frustrated though. She really is worth all the sleep deprivation in the world!

The past few days she's gone back to her good old sleeping pattern. She goes to sleep around 10:00 and sleeps til about 3:00 or 4:00, eats for an hour (after I change her diaper) and goes back to sleep til about 7:00 or 8:o0. We get up and I eat breakfast and maybe shower. Then we go back to bed for her skin to skin feeding and nap. When we wake up I get her dressed for the day and she starts her day of eating, sleeping, pooping, eating more, sleeping more and pooping some more! Finally at 6:00 when Daddy comes home we try to keep her awake til 9:00 or 10:00 when we all go to bed together but not before we read scriptures in English and Spanish and say our prayers.

I jinxed myself. I was bragging confidently last night that Ellie sleeps well through the night. I of course have to wake her up to feed her every 3 hours since she's too little to sleep through the night but she lets us sleep and even when she does wake up, she lays there so calmly. She's been perfect. She eats all day long but I have been fine with that since it results in this great nights sleep.

Last night was a whole new deal. It was similar to her first night of life. She fell asleep at 9:00. It was bit earlier than I like to go to bed but I figured the extra sleep wouldn't be a bad idea. As usual, I had to wake her up after 3 hours. She ate and I changed her. She went back to bed as usual. An hour later she woke up to eat. Another hour later, again, she woke up to eat. And again, and again and again every hour til 6:45 when Gary's alarm went off. He was so sweet and took her upstairs as he got ready for work. Knowing I was beyond tired he woke up his parents to keep her while I slept. I got to sleep for 3 full hours and it was wonderful!

Now lets just hope she sleeps better tonight!

Our First Week

Well, I survived my first week with Ellie! Gary went back to work on Monday and I really wasn't sure how I'd survive alone with no one to help hold her feet back while changing her, no one to pick her up out of her bed, no one to burp her. It certainly made me realize that doing this as a single parent would be quite a haste.

I have learned to manage alone during the day. Each afternoon I look so forward to Gary's return home. He is such an amazing dad and he really is the perfect husband. I'm so blessed!

This morning (it's Saturday) I woke up to my baby MIA. I was almost concerned until I realized that her daddy had taken her out of the room to let me sleep in! See, he really is perfect. He even did something he swore he'd never do. He changed a poopy diaper and he did that perfectly too.

Ellie and I have certainly bonded this week and I'm thankful for that. I have started to figure her out and I am learning new things about her every day (like: she loves to suck on my index finger but will scream if you giver her a pacifier). She is the sweetest little baby and I'm madly in love with her.

As a side note, I am extremely thankful that my body is recovering so well! I feel awesome and I have already lost 24 of my 31 pounds. Seven pounds to go and I'll weigh as much as I did before I was pregnant. I don't know how that's possible. I really think it's because I worked all 9 months and chasing 16 toddlers is a lot of exercise.  I'm 90% convinced that my stomach is smaller now than it was before I was pregnant. Seriously.