Day 221

Ellie is 31 weeks and four days old.  She is crawling with her belly off the ground now -- still not too masterfully, but she is able to reach her destination when it matters to her!  She will be pulling herself up to a stand very soon.  I cannot believe how quickly the first seven months of her life have flown by.  She has been very chatty recently, repeating syllables like ba and da and sometimes even ma.  She seems to be understanding some of what we say -- Nitin told Ellie he would be right back when he left her nursery today briefly, and Ellie waited with uncharacteristic patience for him to return! She also seems more attached to Nitin and I lately, and loves to be carried -- but she is quite the squirmy wiggleworm!

I am able to get a deeper sense of her personality.  She is very active, but also has the attention span to focus intently on a toy for ten minutes at a time.   For months, she has been noticeably more vocal than other babies, and that trend continues -- she really seems to have many of her own emphatically expressed opinions.  She wears her feelings on her face, flashing big smiles when she is happy, and a big pouty lip when she is sad.  She is still very much a baby, but I see flashes of the kid that she will be, and I feel nostalgic already for my tiny baby girl.  It is so exciting to think of knowing the child she is becoming, but at the same difficult to let go of the newborn I breastfed, the sleepy, snuggly baby who was not yet on the move, etc!

Here are a few pictures of our girl from the past couple of weeks --

We think that Ellie may be teething again! This nylon bag that we fill with fresh fruit for her to suck and chew on seems to help.

We may have gone on a bit of a toy buying spree! Here, Ellie answers her toy phone, but has not quite learned to hold it to her ear yet!

Seven month old baby!

We took Ellie to the farmer's market in Falls Church last Saturday -- she loves to nap in her stroller.

Later that day, we had a picnic with my office friends, and Ellie played with several babies in our office born in the same two month period!  We had dinner with Kim and Judd and boys that night also, but I forgot to take pictures of her boys trying on Ellie's butterfly wings.

Could look at this sweet smile all day.

Ellie has no concerns about trying to steal Zoe's prized tennis ball.  Fortunately, Zoe is a very good sport.

Ellie's kinship with Mr Moose continues...

We are all smiles during bathtime lately.  I hope that the swimming pool will be a hit, too!

More fun with new toys, and showing off impressive baby core muscle strength!

I love this look -- it is more often on her face after she finishes the milk!

We tried peaches for the first time during our trip to Linda's cabin in WV this weekend.  Local Virginia peaches for our little Virginia peach! She was instantly smitten.

We hiked on Saturday night and Sunday morning, and Ellie ride the Daddy express!

I literally only held her for these photos because this baby is getting heavy and hiking is tiring!

A little snippet from the crawling videos. It's a process, people.

Who was most pleased about Ellie's bath today, after skipping last night's bath and taking two sweaty hikes and a handful of sweaty car rides? Probably me, but Ellie seemed grateful to be clean again, too!

The night we spent in WV dicey as far as Ellie sleep -- all four of us were awake and in the same bed between four and five and we couldn't get Ellie back to sleep until midnight after an earlier evening wakeup.  Ellie protested our efforts to restore order at bedtime tonight, going as far as to gnaw her way out of her crib with her single tooth.  But we persisted.  May she sleep all night and wake up smiling!