Nicknames: Hazel Nut, Wiggle Worm, Ella Bella, Little Turtle
Weight and Length: 17 lbs. and 26 inches long
Foods: Ella is continuing to have bottles. She averages about four bottles with 7 oz. of formula. I also nurse, but only three times a day. I nurse in the morning, with the afternoon nap, and then for bedtime. It might be a bedtime curse, since that is how she usually falls asleep. We started giving her solid foods after she was five months old. She seemed interested and ready, and let's face it, I was excited to give her some too. Now we eat as a complete family for lunch and dinner. I'm a little better at figuring out how often and how much to feed so she has tired a lot of new foods in the past month. Let's see if I can list them all: bananas, apples, carrots, peas, green beans, squash, pumpkin, prunes, raspberries, avocado, sweet potatoes and yogurt.
Temperament: Ella is super smiley. She loves to smile at strangers and friends alike. Even though Jack is not always nice to her, I think he is still her favorite person. He is the only person that can make her giggle besides Joe and I (and that's only when we tickle her). Although she is a very happy child, she can also be super dependent as well. She likes to be held and will cry when not getting her way. She is way more sensitive when not getting her way. And when she doesn't like something she can really cry. We have learned that she does not like to be contained in a car seat. Road trips have become hard because she cries after about two hours. And when she is learning a new skill it can effect her sleep, and temper. Nevertheless, she still smiles and that makes us love her so much. I'm so glad to have her in my life.
Items/Toys We Love the Most: We continue to use the baby jumper that my mom bought in Canada. She loves to jump and lately Jack will push her around while she is hanging in the jumper, which makes them both laugh. I tried to capture it on video tonight, but I was just a little too late for the giggles. Other than that we just have to put toys on the ground and she will crawl over to them. She basically likes anything that Jack is playing with! The bumbo seat is also comping in handy too. We have to drag it upstairs and downstairs, since it is her high chair for now and also a seat for her in the bath tub.
First Experiences: After we had the derecho and knew our power would be out for a week, we decided to make a road trip to my grandparents house. It was a quick last minute decision that we made while the kids were sleeping in the car (we were going to go to the lake to cool off from the heat when we turned around). Thirty minutes later we were on the road with dirty laundry and almost everything we would need. We choose their house, because they live by the beach. So it was Ella's first time in the ocean. She loves water, especially swimming pools. This was extra fun though, because she got to touch the sand and discover a new environment. However, the sand gave her a diaper rash...poor girl. As I already mentioned she started crawling too. At first it was a lot of rolling to things and she would get up on her hands and knees to lunge forward for an item. Then she attempted the army crawl for short distances. Maybe that was just too dirty for her, because this week she has figured out how to get onto her hands and knees and coordinate the movement to be able to crawl. It is so cute too. I'm constantly impressed with how quickly she is learning new things. I wonder if she will struggle to walk after having had foot problems?
We also went on our first family backpacking trip. Joe has been trying to get me to take a backpacking trip for years. He finally made it happen when we had two kids. Why didn't I try it before, it would have been so much easier! Actually, it really wasn't that bad. We decided to go to Summersville lake, which is thirty minutes away. Then we hiked about a mile to a secluded cove where they was a fire ring and benches. It was a great little camp site. Each of us carried a backpack on the back and a child on the front. Then Joe hiked back to the car and got our kayak so we were able to play around in the water too. Everything went pretty smoothly until bed time. Ella had a bit of a hard time calming down, but she went to sleep when the rest of us tuckered down (almost two hours late). Then she woke up at 3 am and took almost two hours to settle back to sleep. Needless to say, Joe and I were both super tired the next day. Oh, and it didn't help that we camped next to a working beaver. I woke up around 11pm to the beaver gnawing on a tree. I was so scared because it was an unfamiliar noise and he went out with the head lamp for a better look. Fortunately we were able to be sure it wasn't a bear and I tried to fall asleep. Then I wouldn't go pee by myself since I was scared of the beaver so I made Joe go with me again. He must have been hating me that night! Like I said, it was a long night with few solid hours of sleep. But Jack woke up happy and that made it worth it. I look forward to many more camping trips with both of them as they get older!
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