The basic updates: Ella is the most awesome baby ever! No bias here...nope, none at all. hehe She'll be 5 months old next Thursday...which is NUTS! She rolls all over the place, can sit supported by her hands for pretty decent periods of time, and has been eating cereal for almost 3 weeks. She loves the cat and dog and lunges forward anytime the dog is nearby so she can put her hands in Brigid's fur and pet her. Brigid has been wonderful and will turn her head and lay down so Ella can touch her and love her without Brigid getting poked in the eye or something. Pecan still has little interest in the baby but will rub up against her hand if Ella's holding out hers when we're holding out ours.
We've tried as much as possible to continue our lives and add Ella in, rather than stop everything and just sit around watching her. She's become quite the traveler and there's only more on the way. So far this year, Ella's travels have included:
- Up into the mountains to the outlet mall with her Aunt Allie and her parents. She was little enough then that she just slept through the whole thing.
- Into Pike Place Market with Aunt Allie and her parents. She snoozed in her carrier the whole time - it was glorious! :D
- Jimi Hendrix's grave with her Uncle Steve, Deb, and parents. Easy enough to point out it was her mom's idea to visit a graveyard with a 7 week old. hehe
- A trip on the Light Rail into the city. She just watched the world swirl past her while hanging out in her stroller.
- A trip from Westlake Center Mall to Seattle Center on a monorail put in place during the Seattle World's Fair. Ella was rather blase about the whole affair but her mom was uber-geeked out by the history/architecture of the recent past. :D
- The Northwest Folklife Festival at the Seattle Center. Full of music, food, and hippies...it was awesome!
- Many miles of walks with Deb and her mom around the area - into parks, around neighborhoods to judge people on their lawns and homes, etc.
- Again into Pike Place Market with her great-grandparents and parents. This time she was awake enough to be alternately fascinated with all that there was to see and cranky/tired/hungry that things weren't revolving around her.
- Out to a restaurant with the great-grandparents. We thought she'd be a monster but she was so tuckered out from Pike Place she slept the whole time.
- Up into the mountains for 4th of July with the Willsons, the Sorensens, a horse, several dogs, and a brood of chickens. It was in the 50s, drizzly, and at times chilly enough to see our breath but totally worth it! Ella sat on a horse (with much assistance and caution, of course), took a mondo nap, and was a trooper around fireworks. So. Much. Fun. :)
- Northwest Trek animal park with Grammie Penny and her parents. This is officially the coolest place ever! It has animals native to the Pacific Northwest and they were all out that day (save for the bobcat who was in hiding somewhere). We saw bison, elk, big cats, a beaver, grizzly bears, lots of other things, and...a moose! Ella didn't really care about the animals too much but the beaver and otter both caught her eye because they were so close and so needy for attention. The beaver kept swimming up to the glass, pausing with his paw on the glass, and then performing a backflip and returning to the glass for his admirers. Too cute!
As you can see, she's been a busy girl for the last few months. The rest of the year is shaping up to be equally busy! Grandma Sheryl and Grandpap Geno are visiting in late August. Ella's going to start spending time with other little ones when she goes to someone's house 2xs a week for playdates/babysitting. Dad and Ella are spending a long weekend along together while I travel to Dallas for a wedding. The whole family is flying to South Carolina for a wedding in November and then flying two weeks after that to California to spend Thanksgiving with family. Whew! Craziness! Add to that a fundraiser for Craig's youth that I'm helping with in September, a 5k walk at Northwest Trek I'm doing (also) in September, potentially a walk/fundraiser (again also) in September, and *fingers crossed* a move out of our tiny apartment into something a bit bigger (also) in September.
I have also decided that I am going to make Christmas stockings for our family this year. This should prove to be interesting because I have minimal (at best) knowledge of all things craft-y but I'm not planning to get uber-complicated but rather to make basic stockings for the five of us (yes the animals are getting stockings as well - I'll probably do my practice runs on theirs) that match and will look nice if (oh please, oh please, oh please) we have a mantel come Christmas. hehe
This post was a tad longer that I anticipated but I needed to catch up. I am going to try very hard to post more often. It's just very hard to find time between the work, play, and, routine to sit on the computer and post to friends/family the minutiae of our lives.
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