11 months!

We're approaching the big year mark over here. Ella is 11 months old! Yikes! And according to my measurements (which include trying to get her to hold still long enough to sit on a scale and to hold a yardstick up next to her so you know they aren't too accurate) she weighs a whopping 16.4 pounds and is 28 inches tall. Tiny.

This past month we've spent a lot of time enjoying the summer by spending tons of time at the pool. My neighbor friend invited us up to her parent's pool which was so fun. They have a blocked off shallow end that the babies could all just float around in. Little bumper boats. These cute little girls are all within 6 months of each other - actually Ella and the cutie next to her in the blue tube have the exact same birthday! They are starting to interact more and more and we're looking forward to them growing up to be great friends.

Ella loves the water and was very chill floating around in her tube.

We've also spent a TON of time at Cherry Hill. We're definitely getting our money's worth out of our season passes. I love that we can pop over there for an hour or so in the afternoon. We have friends who also have passes so it's so fun to get together.

Ella is a little fish and is absolutely fearless in the water. She crawls around in Pirate's Cove a million miles an hour and will even randomly dip her face in the water. She comes up smiling and thinking it's so fun. It's little nerve racking for me but she doesn't seem to mind. Her other favorite activity is crawling over to one of the drains and picking out whatever disgusting thing she can find. This means her mom then has to touch the stray bandaid/clump of hair/wrapper in order to pull it out of her hands. Lovely.

The cursed drain the background. And in case you haven't been there these drains are all around the cove spaced about 3 feet apart so I can't just move to another location.

Modeling her shades. These lasted about 3.2 seconds before she ripped them off. And don't mind the nudity. We learned that swim diapers don't hold everything in so we get her changed into her suit poolside once we get there.

Our crazy baby. This may look like torture but she loves it! She squeals and laughs when she gets splashed. We've also taken her down the blue slides and she laughs the whole way down. She is a little thrill seeker.

When we're not swimming Ella has discovered the joys of exploring our house. She absolutely loves getting into the pantry. If she sees the door open she run-crawls as fast as she can over there to play with all of her treasures. Unfortunately I don't let her do this anymore because we had two run ins with soup cans tipping over and smashing her little fingers.

She has also discovered the fun of the toilet paper roll. And about 5 seconds after this photo was taken she had pulled the rest off and shredded it into tiny bits. She's lucky she's so cute. In other news I have completely given up on having a clean house.

She LOVES her daddy. She gets so excited when he gets home from work. I caught this picture of her anxiously waiting for him to come back inside to play. She sat here and watched him mow the entire back yard while yelling at him and smacking the glass to try to get his attention.

She also loves her cardboard playhouse that Grandpa Spiers made her. It's just her size to crawl in and stand up and look out the window.

It's getting more and more difficult to capture pictures of her in the moment because the second I pull out the camera she goes from playing nicely like this...

to this because her mean mom won't let her play with the camera.

Another one of her "things" is to lay her head down on anything soft and then we all say "awww" and she sits up and face plants again, we say "awww" and this repeats over and over. This particular day there weren't any blankets or pillows on the floor so she tipped over our blanket basket for her little rest. You can see in her face how proud she is of herself.

She still loves to empty her toy basket and one day while doing so she found a binky. She never really did take one so she's not very familiar with them. I guess she's seen them enough to know the basic concept but she didn't get the execution quite right. Since then she has been loving playing with it and every time puts it in like this and giggles then tries to put it in my mouth. Silly girl.

Now for a few other things about our little Ella Lu:

• She has learned to give kisses which is one of the cutest things I've ever seen. When you ask her for a kiss she leans in her head and gives you kiss. Sometimes her mouth is closed, sometimes it's wide open and sometimes it's full of food. The sad thing for me is that she will always give Danny a kiss but with me it's about 50/50 of whether she feels like it or not. 
• She loves animals. Every single time she sees any sort of animal or bird she growls. I have no idea where she learned this since we didn't teach her to do it but it's so funny. She sits in her high chair by the window and every time a bird comes into the yard she starts growling. And she has a really good eye because I'll glance out the window to see them and it usually takes me a minute to spot it hidden in a tree or bush.
• She also loves other kids and babies. She gets so excited when she sees another kid. She squeals and waves and if that kid smiles back or talks to her she gets so happy. 
• She is starting to learn to share. When she's eating she likes to offer me some of whatever it is. She's a little more generous with her peas than she is with her peaches but she loves to put food in my mouth. She'll also hand me toys when we're on the floor playing. There have even been a few times when she's handed me my cell phone or the TV remote which is a big deal since those are her favorites.
• She's getting really good at pulling herself up to standing and cruising along the furniture. I don't think it will be too long before she's walking. Yikes!

We love Ella and are having so much fun being her parents. She is such a joy to have in our family.