10 months!

Wow! Our little Ella Lu is 10 months! After my last post we went to her nine month appointment and found that she is in the 65% for height but in the "under 5%" for weight. We've got ourselves a little string bean!

She is a little fireball full of energy and personality. She keeps me laughing and on my toes all day. That opening monthly photo of her is a little deceiving. She rarely is sitting still...the following is a better example of how this photo shoot went. I'm sure 11 and 12 will be even more exciting.

She is absolutely loving her new found freedom that comes from crawling! She is now able to crawl to her toy basket, pull herself up and choose what she would like to play with. Each selection lasts approximately 3.5 seconds before she moves on to the next so our family room is pretty much always a disaster. But honestly? I love it. It's lived in and fun and I love the evidence of Ella's playing after she's gone to bed.

She has also made some friends with the adorable neighbor girls. It cracks me up to watch her with them. You can tell she feels so big and special to have these girls paying attention to her. They are so sweet to come over and visit when they see her on her blanket in the back yard.

We are taking full advantage of the nice weather and summer. We were all feeling some major cabin fever over the winter so now we spend a lot of time outside. One evening after Danny got home from work we took her up to Castle Park where they have fun baby swings. She was in heaven!

We then moved on to the slide. She is a daredevil. We took turns taking her down and when we'd get to the top she'd try and push off herself and then she'd squeal and laugh the whole way down. Fun times.

Here is a fun shot of her crawling. I don't want her to learn to walk because she is such a cute little crawler. She loves to crawl around a corner and then we ask "where's Ella" and she pops her head around the corner and laughs. She's so tricky.

We took a family trip to the zoo last weekend and had so much fun checking out the animals and enjoying some sunshine. 

Ella's favorites (judging by her arms flaps) were the giraffes and a little squirrel. I think next time we'll save ourselves the $20 and just go to a pet store. =]

 

Ella deciding which animals she'd like to go see next.

Another fun thing we've doing this summer is going to Danny's softball games on Monday nights. Ella loves when Danny runs by and waves at her and we love that there are lots of other moms and babies to hang out with.

And finally I wanted to capture a couple of pictures of her with her favorite little doll. She loves to hug her really tight and then she'll usually bury her face in it. These were taken before church so she's also modeling the adorable dress that my sister made her! I love it!

This post is already ridiculously long so here are just a couple of other little things about little girl:

• She's getting to be a pretty good eater. She eats a wide variety of food, pretty much everything we do. A few of her favorites are berries, ravioli, french toast and yogurt.
• At ten months she has still never in her life thrown up or spit up anything. She's also not a drooler. I'm counting my blessings on this one since I'm pretty sure future babies won't be this way.
• Her two top teeth popped out this past month so she now has four teeth. I love her toothy little grin. 
• She absolutely loves running errands with me. I think she thinks that every person at the store is there to see her. She talks to people, waves, smiles and flirts. And believe me, she gets plenty of attention back. And if by someone is crazy enough to not dote over her she really turns it on until they do. It's so funny to watch.
• She unfortunately has reached the age where she no longer likes to wear her headbands. She'll leave them on for a little bit but then she reaches up and pulls them off. Her hair is at an awkward length so I'm never quite sure what to do with it. Oh well, she's still adorable.

We are so in love with our little Ella. She makes life so much fun as we are able to rediscover all the simple things of life her. It's amazing how she gets me to slow down and just sit and look out the window at the birds in the backyard. It really puts things into perspective. I love being a mom and she's made it easy on me by being such a fun, happy baby.