Ella turned one about a month ago, but I guess this is what happens when a birthday coincides with moving. At least this way she got two 1st birthday parties.
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| Ella's 1st birthday party, second round. |
Some things about Ella at one year old...
- coinciding with complete weaning, she is no longer overly attached to me. If there is a roomful of people, she will walk around and try to charm everyone in the room. But she still likes me best and I love that.
- also a nice result of weaning has been that she is an awesome eater. Her favorite foods are meat and fruit, often to the exclusion of all else. She's on the hunter-gatherer diet. Yogurt is usually the only dairy I can sneak in and I hope that it is enough, cause she usually won't take more than a sip of milk.
- she is starting to say a lot of words, especially ones that start with B. Her first word was "bump", her favorite is "bye-bye", and her most impressive one is "butterfly" (buh-uh-fuh). Lately she is obsessed with "eye" and likes to poke at them - on people, dolls, pictures, statues. She has pretty expressive jabbering and has quite a bit to say sometimes. She loves to pretend to talk on the phone. She's picked up on lots of sign language, but it's mostly animals and not much useful stuff.
- she likes to cuddle. It's everything I hoped for!
- she has a great attention span, is easy-going, is easy to take out to restaurants, is easy to have in church, is easy to feed, takes good naps, and is sleeping through the night even when we have switched time zones and houses and hotels like a million times in this last month. The only thing I can think of that she consistently hates is getting in her carseat, but even then, once she is in she is easy to travel with. Even at her worst, I can pretty much just laugh, because it is still like 10 levels easier than what I've already learned how to deal with from her big brother. I always am thinking "she is my heart", which sounds dumb but it's just what always comes into my head when I am with her or think about her. She is just the loveliest creature and adds a lot of wonderful to my life.
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| Living it up at the Ritz Carlton in Georgetown on her first birthday. Making all sorts of messes for room service to clean up. |
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| Loving her first balloon from Godmother Anna. |
Michael watched an episode of Diego today, and this was the scene I returned to when I got out of the shower. He is such a guy. He dragged the potty in to the living room so that he wouldn't miss any of his precious Diego time while doing business. I know I'm sort of a t.v. nazi (he generally gets to watch one or two shows per week), but this really highlighted the fact and made me wonder if I need to lighten up on regulations around here.
