13 Months

There's too many thing that I haven't written down that I want to remember about Ella at this age for forever. 

Here she is at 13 months.

Look at those long legs!

 Oh this girl's a talker! 

She talks and talks and tells me things and talks and then chuckles at her own jokes and gives a little courtesy laugh when she hears anyone else in the room laughing.

Life is all about balls! 

We cannot go anywhere without her pointing out each and every ball to me. 

Light fixtures at stores are balls and balloons are balls. 

Everything.

And she notices even the faintest dog barks out in the distance.

When I give her a kiss she imitates the noise back at me, "Mahh!"

And she loves snugging with stuffed animals. 

Maybe I mentioned this before but I just really love how much she loves her stuffed animals and how she rubs her nose in their fur and talks to them. 

I hope that this is a sign of a good imagination.

I finally got a picture of this girl sleeping.

She is such a light sleeper she wakes up the second the door opens, but for once she didn't and I made sure to capture it.

Sucking her left thumb and Gerard in the other hand.

They are friends.

Adam and Ella play this game in the car when he is driving and she is in her seat in the back she says, "Da!" and he says "Da!" back and then she does and then he does back and forth, louder and louder and followed by peals of laughter and giggles.

We went and saw some dancers at a Christmas event and Ella was enthralled for full 3 minutes (which is a lot of time in Ella's world).

It's fun to see the little dancing girls and imagine going to Ella's dance recitals one day.

Say the words, "dancing dancing"and she immediately starts bouncing that cute bum of hers.

For the past 6 months or so I have given Ella oatmeal (not baby oatmeal, just regular 1-minute oatmeal) for breakfast with a whole bunch of frozen blueberries, raspberries and blackberries stirred in and some pureed baby food too. 

She always picks out the berries first and eats them and then she eats the oatmeal that is all purple from the berries. 

I always served that to her because she loves it. 

But we have started being more adventurous and trying out hard boiled eggs and toast. 

She loves it all! 

She is a great eater. 

Vegetables just aren't her favorite. 

I think mostly because they are hard to swallow without chewing really well. 

But I throw thawed frozen spinach into all sorts of things (pasta, scrambled eggs) and that usually tricks her into eating veggies.

I love that when she takes a bite of something for the first time, she thinks about it for a sec and then either flings the next piece over the side of the high chair or she looks me in the eye with a smile and says, "Mmmm!" 

I love that she wants me to know that she likes what I've fed her.

When she is finished drinking her water she flings her sippy cup as far as she can.

The activity she spends the most time doing is looking at books!

I never thought this day would come!

Adam finished his classes for this semester, I am so happy! 

That means that Ella and I get to see him more! 

There were too many days when Ella didn't see her dad all day because he would have to go straight from work to school. 

I've noticed that Ella has become more distanced from her dad the less that she sees him and has become more clingy to me, and although I love that she wants to be with me I want her to remember how much she loves to be with her dad. 

Adam is so amazing to spend all day working and going to school, he is incredible! 

But I know he's happy to get to spend more time with us too and get to play with Ella again rather than just say goodnight to her as I put her to bed.

Ella crawls into the kitchen where I am cooking and pulls herself to her feet by the back of my pants and just stands there, begging to be picked up. 

She loves watching me cook dinner from my arms but it's tricky to cook with her in hand.

I took Ella to play at the McDonald's Playplace recently and as soon as I walked in and she saw all the kids playing she started squealing and bouncing for joy. 

She loves other kids. 

I put her down to crawl around she found a little girl sitting in the corner looking very sad and Ella crawled up to her and smiled and said "hi" and then sat by the little girl and then crawled around her and said "hi" to her again and sat by her again. 

A few minutes later the little girl came out of the corner with a smile on her face. 

Maybe it's silly, but I really think that Ella knew that little girl was sad and she wanted to make her happy and she did! She has this cool talent to be able to make people happy. 

Really. 

She can make anyone smile around us. 

She easily engages with people with a huge smile and a happy "hi!" and some bouncing and dancing.

This is always fun when we are at church and Ella is happily chatting with the people seated in the pew behind us and laughing at the jokes she is telling them and they are laughing at her because she seriously is just good at making people happy! 

It will be fun to see this skill develop as she gets older.

We had her babysat at a church Christmas party and she had no problem saying goodbye to us and playing with the toys and other kids. 

I would go and check on her every once in a while and she was always enthralled with some toy and not sad at all. 

When we walked in to pick her up she was so happy to see us but she had been totally fine to be away from us for a while-- woohoo!

People at church know us by our baby.

They don't know our names or who we are but they know who Ella is, which I think is just so funny!

They know that hyperactive happy girl who waves "hi" to everyone.

She makes herself known.

She knows when she's doing something naughty.

She gets all happily anxious and fidgety when she finds my phone or the remote control and starts looking around for me and when she sees me coming towards her she drops whatever she's not supposed to have and goes scrambling in the opposite direction.

The other day she did something she wasn't supposed to and I told her "no" and she immediately responded, "No no no!" 

I had to laugh.

I love when she hums!

She heard Adam singing the other day and she listened to him so closely and when he stopped singing she started humming, trying to imitate him,

She can go from a squatting position to standing without holding onto anything but will she walk? 

No.

She downright refuses to even try and she knows when we are trying to trick her into walking.