Just Like Daddy.

 As Justin sat, shelling peanuts, for a couple hours in the living room last night, Ellery wanted to be no where else other than right beside him. She watched intently as he held a peanut between his fingers and pried off the shell.  Then she would follow his hands as he discarded the shells in the 5 gallon bucket. Back and forth, she watched.

This probably went on for half an hour.

Then, almost as if deliberately, she reached down...
 

picked up her plastic chain...

and dropped it in the bucket. She then looked up at Justin and smiled the biggest smile, as if saying, 'Look daddy, I helped!'.
 

Justin and I couldn't help but laugh. It was as if it was all planned out, so intentional and so effortless.
 

I took the chain out of the bucket, washed it off, and put it back on the floor. Within minutes, the same scenario happened again.

Ellery is learning, even when we don't think there is anything to learn. She's taking it all in!

8 Months.

So much has changed in the last month.

It is hard to believe.

One day she can't, the next day she can.

Ellery is fine tuning her skills and beginning to inch farther and farther away from the baby stage and closer to the 'I can do it on my own' stage . I look at her and think, ' You're not supposed to be doing that, you're not old enough!'

And then I realize that, she, in fact, is old enough and it has already been 8 months since she made our family complete. Eight months.

Eight incredible months.

And each month has been better. Each month, easier. Well, parts of them anyway.

Teething is happening now. She currently has four teeth, two on top and two on bottom, but two more top teeth are trying to make their way through the gums as I type, and Ellery does not like it.

Also, now that she can sit up and pull up onto pretty much anything, getting her situated for bed and down for a nap is quite a challenge. With her eyes closed, breathing slow, she's on the edge of sleep, I lay her down. But as soon as her back touches the mattress, she starts to cry and has pulled up to a standing position in the crib before I have even left the room. 

Unfortunately, we have resorted to letting her cry.

Ellery is crawling like a champ. All over the place and all over everything. She loves power cords. Especially ones that are already plugged into the wall.

She's also teaching us, everyday, that our house is not as (crawling) baby friendly as we thought.

Another thing she has really taken to is eating. Well, she's always like to eat, we see that in her thighs, but she hasn't always been a fan of the solids. She's getting better everyday! Her favorite foods are yogurt and avocados, but she'll eat mostly anything we put in front of her (except for peas and carrots. We're still working on those!)

Ellery is quite the fan of the genius invention, Puffs. She has figured out how to get them from the tray to her mouth in one quick swoop. (And even better, I don't have to worry about her choking, because as she's learning to chew, they dissolve in her mouth!)

Her giant smiles and big bursts of laughter keep us entertained, and we are loving how interactive she is becoming.  

Each stage has been better than the last, but I'm telling you, this is pretty awesome.

...Now, if we could only perfect nap time.