8 Months Old (a few days late)

This photo pretty much says it all. This is the real Ella...patch on the eye, toy in the hand, one sock off, the other sock almost off, snot on and around the nose, and a big fat grin on her face!

She is such a joy to be around (when she is not throwing newly found tantrums, which pretty much include crying and kicking her feet really hard). But seriously, she can get so excited on just having one of us walk in the room and it makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside! Her cackling laugh is becoming increasingly louder and the squeals will knock your socks off!

She is not making any notion towards crawling, but loves to sit (straight as a board, mind you) in the floor and play with anything and everything within her reach. My mom says she is Elasti-Girl, because it seems her arms can reach 3 feet out with no problems!

She has just recently gotten down to 3 bottles a day and her solid food intake is increasing greatly! With all of Daddy's homemade baby food, she is getting quite a wide range of menu items:

Chicken with Sweet Potato and Apple or Carrot

Broccoli and Cauliflower in a Cheese Sauce

Fish and vegetables in a Cheese Sauce

Mangos, Bananas, Apples, Pears, & Avocados

Broccoli, Carrots, Potatoes, Rutebegas, Peas, and Squash

...just to name a few!

She is trying her "hand" at finger foods. So far, she loves to hold them and play with them, but doesn't really care about putting them in her mouth. She did, just tonight, put a Cheese-It in her mouth and sucked on it for a few minutes, but then I got scared and took it away.

Ella holding the hand of her Penquin friend.

Goose (as she is affectionately called...derived from Silly Goose) is currently wearing 9 month clothes and size 3 diapers. According to our Wii Fit Plus (which I just found out you can totally make a Baby Mii...thanks Kristen...so cute!!!), she weighs 20.5 pounds. Whew...no wonder my arm is getting tired from holding her.

Here is Maggie walking by while I was taking pics of Ella. She is still campaigning to send the baby back to the hospital but hasn't convinced us yet!

Speaking of holding her, Ella has developed separation anxiety big time whenever she is away from me. The thing is, as long as I am holding her, she is fine. If I hand her to someone else, she starts crying, but only if she can still see me. If I leave the room, she calms down. If I come back in, she cries again. The funniest part of this (sort of) is that Lee can be holding her, I can come in the room, which starts her crying...as soon as I take her, she stops crying immediately and looks back at Lee and gives him a big smile. So funny!

We haven't been up to much the past month except that E did get to stay with her Nannie and Grandad two weekends in a row, with one weekend including Colby and Savannah. My poor parents!! They were troopers and acted like they were excited about it all, but I'm sure that once we all left with our kids, they dropped in their recliners and were out within two seconds. Thanks again for all that you do!! I don't know what we would do without you!

Within in the last month, we have finally gotten more comfortable with taking the munchkin out to different places. Lowe's has become one of her fave places to go (probably since that is the place we go most often)! She is a great trooper and helps Daddy pick out plumbing supplies in between chomping on her stuffed monkey and flirting with the male employees.