Monday, April 27, 2009

Ella's World

Ella’s world has been full of new adventures lately. She had her 9 month check up 2 weeks ago and she weighed 17 lbs. 13 oz and was 27.5 inches long. She had to have her finger pricked to check her iron, and she handled it better than I normally do. I hate, hate, hate having my finger pricked. I’d rather have blood drawn from my arms. Anyway, instead of turning her head and squinting while breaking out in a cold sweat in anticipation (which would have been my reaction), she watched intently as the nurse stuck her and then collected two little tubes of blood from her finger. Then she worked diligently until she removed the tiny band-aid from her finger. She had two shots, and I think if she’d only had one, she wouldn’t have cried at all. The crying was a fit of anger, which she made very clear each time the nurse came into her line of vision. Once the nurse left the room, the crying stopped and she was good to go.

She is standing up on everything now. She recently learned that she can pull herself up and hang onto my legs while I’m working around the house. One day while I was standing at the sink, she did just that – so sweetly snuggling her face into the backs of my thighs. Then she bit me. Hard. With her razor sharp puppy teeth. I screamed out in surprise – louder than I normally would – and scolded her. Her little face folded up and she started to cry. Of course I picked her up and cuddled her. She hasn’t done it again, but that’s mostly because now I know to expect it when she pulls up on the back of my legs and I head it off before it happens.

We’ve determined that she is a climber. She has mastered climbing on top of the overturned clothes basket, which she then uses as a step up to the couch or whatever piece of furniture it is next to. She has fallen backward off of it once when she sat too close to the edge, but since then she’s been very careful. Last night she started using that clothes basket to walk around the living room. She accidentally discovered that she can push it and walk behind it, so then she started doing it on purpose. It has also been a table/desk to hold her things while she is working very hard in her toy basket.

Dave bought her a pool over the weekend, so we spent quite a bit of time playing outside. She loved it. I stripped her naked and let her go all over the yard. She played in the pool, examined the bits of things she could find in the grass, helped me plant flowers, ate a mouthful of mud - basically she did whatever struck her as interesting at the time. I love to just set her loose and watch her explore. She gets so excited about every little thing. It’s refreshing. She was one nasty baby when we went inside for a nap, but that’s fine with me. A dirty baby is a sign of a productive day.

We took video of her playing in the pool, but I forgot to take pictures. Here’s a recent one from Easter anyway.


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