Update

At the mall with my cousin. I have figured out how to stand up in my stroller, so now that's all I do.

Relxing in Grandma and Grandpa's patio

Playing with my toys

Having fun eating a bagel

News report: Ella cut her third tooth today (thank god!) and is working on her fourth. It has been hard work involving lots of crying and not so much sleeping. Everything else is going great! Just counting down the days until we get to reunite with Greg!

Entertaning myself

If we tip over her toy basket, Ella can occupy herself for a long time: pulling out one toy, turning it over a few times, shaking it, tasting it, then tossing it aside and staring over with a new toy from the basket. You can see her pile of discarded toys behind her in this photo. I have been waiting for this day to come for 6 months!

She is obviously very happy with this arrangement and seems to be quite proud of her independence. Now, if we could only get her to crawl...

Ella Jumps!

Ella loves jumping in her rainforest jumperoo. We are so happy to be able to get a few things done while she entertains herself!

Eating real food and my new teeth

Eating in AZ

Even in a real high chair

After her first meal of smashed bananas

After her second meal of smashed bananas. We learned quickly that eating in a diaper makes for much easier cleanup!

Ella's first two teeth! You can barely see them poking through her gums in this photo. But, now they're big pearly whites!

Bubbles!

San Diego

Ella finally got to meet her buddy Gavin U. in San Diego. They are 9 days apart in age (Gavin was 3 weeks premie, explaining some of the size difference, but still funny to see them side by side). We had a great time meeting him and catching up with the U. family!

With Maggie

Pink marshmallow girl on a early morning walk while the rest of the family was sleeping.

On the beach!

New computer!

I'm a movie star in the making!

We are all in Arizona now, enjoying the sun and the extra space at Grandma and Grandpa Jeffries' house. Hailey is especially happy to be at the doggie resort. We are up and running on our new computer and will put more photos online after Greg heads out to Portland. We are having fun spending time as a family before he leaves and don't want to spend all our time on the computer!

Six Month Checkup

Ella had her 6 month checkup on Wednesday, and as usual, she's healthy as can be. She now weighs 19 pounds 7 ounces, is 28 1/4 inches long, and her head is 18 inches around. She is still above the 95th percentile length and height, but not as much as before. Her rate of growth has finally slowed down! She is still really enjoying solid foods, and is working on giving up her nighttime feeding. On Wednesday afternoon she also figured out how to stand up from a sitting position when she has something to pull up on. If that thing happens to be our hands, she LOVES to let go of our hands and do a belly flop onto our chests. We'll have to get a video of that up once we get out new computer next week.

A couple San Diego photos

Here are a few photos from our trip to San Diego from Grandma...

On the beach with Maggie and Zoe

Playing with Auntie Becky

The morning babysitters while Mom slept in!

With Auntie Sarah on the beach

More milestones

Our computer is still down, but Ella refuses to wait for it to be working before making more milesotnes. She now sports two lower teeth, sits very well on her own, and is dabbling in the world of solid foods. She gets so excited and smiles ear to ear when we put her in the blue chair on the counter because she knows that means food is coming. She opens her mouth up wide and reaches for the food with her arms...so cute! So far she has tried banana, sweet potato, apple, pear and rice and oatmeal cereals. Of course we have many photos to share, but will have to wait until the computer situation is resolved.