Happy 14 month birthday Ella Grace!
I know I've posted this photo before, but it's one of my absolute favorites so it's going up again! :)
My friends, I don't even know what to do with this baby girl of mine. She is happiness and sunshine and drama and hilarity and snuggley and emotional and playful and smiley and excitable and silly and engaging and...
Aunt Candace says Ella Grace is so silly that she thinks she is going to be "even weirder than Julian." I told her I'd prefer the words "playful and adorably quirky!" and she said "That's way too long." So we settled on quirky;)
She is not walking yet. I wonder sometimes if it's because her feet are too small to hold her up!? Ha! She wears a size 2 shoe, and they still absolutely will not stay on her feet. I live in constant fear when putting on her shoes that they will fall off and be gone forever. This has happened more than once, but thankfully I've recovered all but one of the lost shoes...even if it's meant retracing my steps through busy stores. It's gotten to the point now where we will go out and people will say upon seeing her "oh my goodness! look at her little feet!"
I recently saw a Dreft commercial that said something like "you'll have your child forever, but you'll only have your baby for a year." To that I say au contraire! Ella Grace is still very much a baby! Though I remember thinking the same thing about Julian after he was a year, her being bite size probably doesn't hurt in my believing this way.
The only explanation I can think of for her being so small is because
perhaps she has my Grandma Sundstrom's itty bitty genes. She eats SO. MUCH. Sometimes even more than Julian! (And he eats a ton.) Lately I've
even started to worry...probably unnecessarily (hopefully). Her newborn screen initially said her TSH levels were high, indicating hypothyroidism, a condition that makes it difficult for a person to control weight gain. The pediatric endocrinologist kept a close eye on her and we continued to get her blood drawn regularly and the levels went back down to the normal range. But lately I've wondered if perhaps those numbers just kept on falling? What if she actually has hyperthyroidism, which makes it difficult to gain weight. Then again, I know that some babies and people are just small, so I tell myself not to worry. But I think I'm gonna go to the doctor this week to check and recheck (though she was checked plenty as a newborn...) :/
This is a size 12 Months dress. Granted, most 12 months clothes aren't this big on her, but the photos show her stature pretty well. Here she is at her cousin Georgia's birthday party!
She just loves to read and flip through books on her own. One of her FAVORITE things ever is to take all the books down off the kids' bookshelf,
and then just sit in the giant pile on the ground and look through all of them. I used to put the books back in a huff, thinking "why am I even cleaning? They will be back on the ground first thing in the morning." But the other day I found myself smiling as I put them away, as I thought about how much fun she would have taking them down!
She does the same thing with the books in her nightstand in her room. Not quite as big of a mess!
She is still nursing. I've got to say: I will be sad when we stop. I love when we sit and rock together and she smiles at me, and her beautiful blue eyes light up. She touches my hair and smiles when I tell her what it's called. She loves to point to the different parts of my face as I ask her "Where's Mommy's eyes? Eyebrows? Nose? Chin? Cheek? Forehead? Ear? Hair?" etc.
She loves to brush her teeth (let's hope this sticks)! She even says "teeth!" every time she sees her toothbrush. She likes to "brush her hair" and she'll do it on command. She LOVES peekaboo, still. It's the cutest thing:) She found my scarf last week and was putting it above her head, then taking it down fast with a big smile. She had initiated a game of peekaboo, and she thought it was pretty much the most fun thing EVER! Here she is living it up:
She is also starting to point to numbers now and try to say what they are! She has "4" down pat! Julian first did this when he was a little bit older than her by a few weeks. He first pointed to the number "3" and said what it was. It was such an exciting moment then and also now with Ella Grace. We got a video of it recently; I'll post it soon:)
Daddy put her hair in pigtails for the first time recently. He had gone to get her when she'd woken up from her nap, and they came out with her looking like this:
She has quite a little repertoire of words she can say, and it has gotten so much more robust since turning one. It's 2:30 AM (I took a nap on accident when I put Julian down for bed)...so I'm not sure I can come up with the words...but I'll try: Grandmama "Mamama" (same as J!), Pop Pop, Gigi, brother, Mama, Dada, teeth, brush, four, bow, ball, up and down, eye, apple, fruit, bear, Spot, baby, Jesus, duck, all done...I know there's more. I'll have to come back and edit! But she's almost beginning to just be a little parrot sometimes. She'll just repeat a random word that you say. Also, she loves to make the sign for "all done" when she's done with her food. She waves her hands in the air like she just don't care with a big smile!
She also has a repertoire of animal noises! She will tell you what the elephant says, lion, cat, puppy dog, duck, cow, bird, monkey, again with the 2:30 thing...
She loves animals! Here she is pointing to a birdie
Her hair! I just love to run my fingers through it. It gets straight when it's cold:
But it's curly otherwise:
She loves apples. She found the one brother decided he was finished with...next on the list of words to learn: choking hazard :/
She's become a harder sleeper (hallelujah!) so I've managed to take some photos of her whilst slumbering:
This child is soooo drooly when she sleeps! Sometimes the drool puddle she's made is so big, we think she's soaked through her diaper! Then we check her diaper and it's not very full.
Daddy sent me this photo last week of Ella Grace after she'd woken up:
I love seeing her in the morning. Stace is a rockstar and is usually the one to bring her to me. I look up and she is smiling huge at me! Like she hasn't seen me in years and our being reunited is the best thing ever! I don't have a picture of this, so we'll use this one:
Pretty baby after her bath:
Behold...the skinny jeans! I think skinny jeans are cutest on adorable chubby babies (and all chubby babies are just that: adorable!), but I think Ella Grace pulls these off quite nicely!
Seriously? Seriously.
Happy as can be with a Spot book and her milk!
This was on one of the first chilly days this fall, and she needed a sweater to go over this shirt. I pulled this one out from the stored clothes (she's standing on)...size 3-6 months! ha! Why do we put away all old clothes? Some still work (like cardigans) long after their expiration date!
Happy to be at the park! She's always content to be in the stroller and just observing brother play! Goodness gracious, does she get excited when brother is happy and excited! But if I take this girl out of her stroller anytime, we're done for...she will raise cain until she gets to the ground where she can roam free/ do her lightning fast knees-up crawl all over tarnation...
Until I get her in the swing! Then she's happy too! (though it may not seem so in this pic:)
It's hard sometimes for me to read her scriptures before our prayer at night because she just wants to hold them so much! It's hard to pry them from her hands! It's so funny...she's not like that with any other book. I hope she grows up to love the scriptures as much as she does now. ;)
Here she is trying to put on her baby's hat...
How we love this precious baby girl. She still loves to play with cars. She and her brother have started really playing together by chasing each other through the house...the laughter that I hear when they do this makes me sooo happy! I am so grateful for these sweet (and sometimes ornery;) little babies in my home!
3 comments:
She is so adorable! She's little, but she doesn't look oddly little to me if that makes sense? I saw her last Sunday at church and didn't think of her as being too small. She's very well proportioned. Hopefully the doctor will say everything's fine and then your worry will be gone. It's kinda funny she's not walking due to her little feet, Raelee walked late due to her big head lol.
She is so cute and little. My boys wear 18-24 month stuff. It might be good we moved because they would tackle her! Sweet little thing.
Thank you Shelley! I don't really think of her as oddly little either...I guess it's mainly her feet that surprise me the most! I didn't know that about Raelee, but that's awesome! To me, she is and always has been one of the most beautiful baby girls ever!
Kathryn: I can't believe E & G are in 8-24 months! Ah...they are so adorable! It IS a good thing you moved, or I would eat them right up! ;)
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