elsie: 14 months

Elsie

14 months

--She is a walker! This past week, especially, she is totally done with crawling. She can walk wherever she wants, even out of the photo set :)

--She has three, almost four teeth! Finally the bottom two appeared, followed by one and top, and the other top middle is on the brink. If you ask her where her teeth are, she usually gets very shy, but happily points to her mouth. 

--She is getting sillier everyday. She likes to stick her spoon in her mouth and hold it in the air with no hands. She also pulls a good trick when I'm feeding her from a spoon--she will open her mouth really wide, I will stick the spoon in, and then she just doesn't close her mouth. That makes us laugh. 

--She really enjoys her belly button, and gets a bit confused when she is in an outfit that can't be pulled up to expose that little outie.

--Her signing vocabulary has grown and become refined. She finally learned "more", and has really perfected the twisting-wrist motion for "all done". She also knows potty--but not in the "I need to go potty way", but the "Hey mom, you are on the potty" way. I guess that's still a good step!

--Her speaking vocabulary is still limited to "doggie", "daddy", and "mama". She really likes trying to say "vacuum" though.

--She has become a uni-napper. The transition to get there was pretty muddy, but it's great now!

--She is a technology addict already. When she wants an iPhone, nothing else will appease her.

first birthday

Yes, Elsie had her first birthday. She made it all the way to one year with no teeth and only one day of sickness. And for that, we celebrate.

The first celebration was letting her eat Cream of Wheat while sitting in out bed with us, and very un-messily, I might add. 

After her morning nap, it was time to head over to Gramma's for Party #1. I thought she would have fun eating the chicken salad we had made (she generally loves grapes), but she pretty much just whined and screamed the whole time she was in her high chair. Birthday Diva. It was funny, she would scream and cry, then stop to take a bit of croissant, then scream and cry again.

We figured she was just trying to get through the eating part and hurry up to the present part!

In attempts to get her interested in pulling out all the tissue paper from the many chevron bags of gifts, we started by helping her find the baby cell phone toy in one of the bags. That actually only got her interested in playing with the cell phone, and she was only slightly distracted by a card that was in another bag.

We did give Elsie a little cake with applesauce on top, but I only took video of that part. She liked the applesauce, but didn't quite understand what to do with the cake. Aaron smashed her hand in to it, and that caused her to take a few bites, but most of it went untouched.

Next, we headed up to South Jordan for Party #2 with the Robisons. It began with a Cheerio bath...and I discovered that you can't seem to stop taking pictures when you baby is in a Cheerio bath. And I also discovered that a Cheerio bath is a great way to get some cute expressions on camera.

Elsie did a lot better at birthday dinner, though she didn't keep the cupcake headband on longer than five seconds. She seemed to enjoy her carrot cake cupcake pretty well, too, and loved watching the smoke float away after Aaron blew it out (a few times).

elsie: ONE YEAR!

Elsie

One Year

--Elsie gets leaps and bounds smarter everyday. It seemed like suddenly one day you could ask her things like "Where is your spoon?" and she would look towards the spoon drawer, look around her high chair, earnestly looking for the spoon. Or if she were holding it, she might hold it up and smile.

--Other words she recognizes: socks, ball, doggie, Snoopy, bear, hat, Mommy, books.

--Speaking of spoons, she can use one pretty effectively these days. She dips it in the bowl (though sometimes using the opposite end), and brings it to her mouth. At first the spoon would tag team with her hand, but now it's pretty much a straight shot from the bowl to the mouth.

--She also likes feeding other people, generally with food that has been in and out of her own mouth several times. She's just sharing the deliciousness!

--Also, one day it seemed she magically learned the sign-language sign for "sleep" and "wash hands", and there is a chance she knows "brush teeth", too.

--Pretty much everything is still "Daddy" in Elsie language. We think she just learned to copy Aaron, who in attempts to teach her that he was her daddy, would frequently point to himself and say "Daddy". Now if you ask her where daddy is, she probably will point to herself and say "Daddy".

--Still no teeth and no official steps yet, but they are just under the surface and just waiting to happen!

--She is fascinated with zippers and eyelashes.

--Somehow she has learned to shake her head and say "No". How do they learn that?

--She loves her hats, though for some reason totally hated the hat her Gramma knit her that we tried to use in the photo shoot. She ripped it off immediately and shook her head "no" when we brought it near her :( We are hoping it just needs a soft lining!

--We are working on animal noises. It seems like she is trying to master "Moo" and "Grrr", both excellent choices.

--She is great at opening cabinet doors and making a mess of whatever is inside. If there is a trash can in it, she'll go for it. She loves the game cabinet, and knows exactly which buttons to push on Catch Phrase to make it start beeping.

--And along with buttons, she has totally mastered pressing Apple device home buttons. It's not super fruitful though. She will usually get a picture of herself, since all of our lock screens are her, and sometimes she might get Siri to say something to her. If she's on an opened Apple device, who knows what she might do...

--And finally, drum roll please...it looks like she has some curls forming at the base of her early-stages-of-a-child-mullet!