Eight Month Old Sickie

Ellie woke up this morning with the most disgusting green boogers running from her nose. She was so yucky! There is nothing I hate worse than seeing a kid with boogers everywhere. I always think those kids aren't well kept and this time it was my kid. I decided not to post a picture of what she looked like. You're welcome.
Well, I think this is Ellie's first official time of being sick. Her nose was running like crazy and was so full that even after wiping it one hundred times, she still couldn't eat well because she couldn't breathe. I wish babies knew how to blow into the tissue. It was my first friday back on-track and I had to work the full day. The new babysitter said she was more fussy than the other days. She's been really clingy to me and doesn't really want her daddy to hold her if I'm around. When she cries it sounds like she's losing (spelled it right-you're welcome Todd) her voice.

Ellie hasn't done many new things since our "7 month" post. She is 27 and a half inches long and weighs 16 and a half pounds. Whenever I try to get her to say "Da Da" or "Daddy" she says "Buh". Last night, I was trying to get her to say "Da da" and Weston would try to get her to say "Ma Ma". The end result was that I would say "Da da da" and Ellie would say "Ma ma ma". I think she's a little confused about the concept of repeating. She did that about 20 times and laughed after a few of them. What a clever little stinker.

Ellie's New "Do"

Even though the packaging says not for kids under three years old, I couldn't resist. These are the cutest little clips I've ever seen. So tiny. She looks like such a big girl. I can't wait until she has a little more hair so I can do something with it.
On a side note, Ellie had her first "meat" today-beef with beef gravy. It certainly doesn't have the texture I expected. She wasn't quite sure she liked it either. So now Ellie is an official omnivore!

Happy Birthday Mom!

My mom is the greatest! We love her and hope she had a great birthday!


We went to dinner at Red Robin to celebrate.

The stairs, a tooth, and we missed 7 months

I was waiting to post about the stairs because I wanted to get it on video, but we kept forgetting our video camera so you'll just have to believe me. My mom and Weston can vouch for Ellie too. Well, anyway on January 2nd we went to my parents' house to watch the Utah game on their new TV. Ellie of course couldn't sit still and was crawling all over their basement. She headed down the hallway and right up the stairs. I'm not kidding. I had to scrape my jaw off the floor. She has never been around our stairs because they are leading to the unfinished basement and we don't normally go down there. My parents have a split level home and while I followed her to make sure she didn't fall she trekked the 8-10 stairs to the front door on her own! I wish I had my camera there because we tried to make her do it again and she wasn't interested.

That same day, Ellie's first tooth "erupted". We were so shocked, but it made sense after how fussy she had been. It has come out quite a bit more since then.
You can't really see it, but it's on her left (your right)

Well, all of these pictures except the last one were taken after Ellie turned 7 months old, but we were so busy in December that we didn't get many random pictures of her. Our last progress post for Ellie was the middle of December (about two weeks late, but her 6 month post).

Since then, Ellie has perfected her wave. She can wave on her own to people she knows and she knows when I say "hi" she is supposed to wave. We put her in the cart at Walmart one night and as we pushed her down the aisle, she waved at everyone like she was in a parade.
She has been playing Peek-a-boo in her play pen. She crouches down and when I say "Where's Ellie?" she pops up and I say "Peek-a-boo". This is followed by lots of giggling.
She loves to walk when you hold her hands.
She can use her pincer grasp to feed herself pieces of bread, cereal puffs, and the occasional marshmallow.
She puts herself into a sit when she is crawling and she is getting very fast. She is also still pulling herself up on everything and trying to walk along. She's getting daring and we find ourselves wincing quite a bit.

Ellie's first zwieback toast strip

We didn't teach her this naughty hand signal

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

What a busy time of year! I really need to be better about blogging. Maybe I'll make that a resolution for this new year.
I have officially been off track since the 22nd of December. It seems like that week was crazy as all get out. I taught a half day that Monday and then rushed to Inkley's in West Valley to have Reynolds family pictures. It was pajama day and the day to move all my furniture out of the room at school so I was a mess. The pictures look really nice though.
Tuesday I spent a lot of the day wrapping presents when Ellie wasn't climbing all over them. On Christmas Eve during the day I tried wrapping more presents while Weston was at work half of the day. Ellie had the fussiest day I can remember since she was about two months old. I haven't wanted to give her back for a long time and she certainly tested my patience that day. We went to Weston's parents' house to open the Christmas Eve pajama gift. Mary Kaye had made green pajama pants for everyone and the girls (Brooke and I) got light blue snowflake shirts also. She had made Ellie a onesie out of one of the shirts. We then headed to my parents' house for Christmas Eve. Dad wasn't home from work for awhile. My brother couldn't stay very long because he had to be at his girlfriend's house for dinner, but we had the whole family there for about 20 minutes. We ate pizza and opened up the gifts to each other because we wouldn't see them on Christmas. We talked and laughed the rest of the evening until my mom started falling asleep. She had worked all day long and couldn't keep her eyes open any longer. Normally, we would spend the night at the family's house that we spend Christmas morning with. We decided with the doggie and the baby this year, we should just sleep at home.
So, Christmas morning there was no sleeping in. We opened presents and ate Christmas Crown at Weston's family's house. Then we got ready to go to Grandma Jones' house for breakfast and $2 gifts. Back at the Reynolds' house, we played World Tour and Apples to Apples. We ate Christmas dinner and waited for the snow to stop so we could drive home. It never did, but we made it home at about midnight after driving on unplowed side streets the whole way. The day after Christmas we went to Grandma Reynolds' house to have pizza with all of the aunts, uncles, and cousins. Lisa, Mike, Jaime, and Hunter left early, but everyone was there! Weston's aunts found a whole bunch of quilts and quilt squares in his great aunt's apartment that his great grandma made. After spending many long hours repairing, sewing, cleaning, and who knows what else, they presented each of the grandkids with a beautiful quilt. They even had enough to give the great-grandkids (Ellie included) a quilt. It was so neat and now Ellie has something her great-great grandmother made.
Saturday I spent most of the day getting the new primary manuals ready for next year. Monday we went to lunch with Todd and Brooke and the rest of Weston's family minus Cameron. They flew home later that night. It was really fun to have them here and spend time with them. We spent New Year's Eve at Weston's parents house and ate Pagoda chinese food and watched Iron Man. Ellie almost made it to ring in the new year, but she fell asleep in my lap at 10:45. Wow, I tried to be brief. Happy New Year!