Crawling!

Yesterday I pulled out my camera so that I could take a picture of Elea's latest signature move. If you've ever done yoga, it's very similar to the "downward dog" position. However, Elea has learned in her few short months that if a camera is out you should stare at it and get to it as fast as possible. Well, it just so happens that getting to the camera as fast as possible required crawling on hands and knees- not staying in one place doing her yoga pose. So I spent the next 20 minutes racing around the room trying to get her to crawl one way while I took pictures from the other way. It sort of worked.


Later, I was able to distract her long enough to get the yoga pose saved for posterity as well. If I had known that she would start legitimately crawling when I pulled out the camera, I would have done that a week ago when my mom was here!

Sharin' the germs and other fun tales

Elea and I have been passing some sort of cold back and forth all of 2009. Sadly for her, it's more often her than me. Maybe it's allergies. Who knows. What I do know is that I am about sick of blowing my nose and wiping/ sucking out hers. She seemed better for about 4 days and now she's back to the wheezing, coughing, snotting, etc. yummy.

Her latest cool trick is that if she starts to cough really hard or if we put something in her mouth that she doesn't like or if it is too thick she coughs/gags twice and then throws up. All over. This isn't just like the little baby spit up anymore folks. This is the wretching, launching, gallon-challenge-esk style vomitting- out her nose and everything. I feel bad for her when it happens because it's not like she does it on purpose, although she usually ends up getting an extra bath that day, which she loves, so maybe for her it's worth the trade-off.

I think she may be teething again too. Her bottom gums are huge right now, and I swear I can see two little teeth under there. But who knows- I may just be making things up. I don't know if all kids hate orajel or this is unique to Elea, but she getsTICKED when I put it on. I tried it a couple of weeks ago and she got mad, but I didn't know if it was because of the orajel or that I was sticking my finger in her mouth uninvited. So since she has been so ornery today and constantly sliming everything she can get her mouth on I figured it was worth a shot again just in case. Yeah that didn't go over too well. She got so mad. So maybe she is like her mother and hates being numb. When I fed her a bottle later I realized she was drooling so bad that it was pooling in her neck crease. Reminded me of trips home from the dentist as a kid. I swear my mom stopped at wendy and got us frosty's just because she thought it was hilarious to watch us try to eat them with half of our face numb.

PICTURES!

1st hair cut!

I took Elea to get her first haircut today. Not even 7 months and she had an intense mullet. I've been wanting to cut it for weeks now but Jeff was having none of that. But finally he realized that she did indeed have a mullet, so then the past few days he was bugging me to get it done ASAP. So then I started to put it off until today the girl who is usually on the bike next to me in spin class mentioned that she thought Elea was cute and that she has a ton of hair. (She sees her in the daycare when she drops off her kids). I said, "Yeah, she's got a mullet right now." Her response was, "yeah, I noticed that." HELLO?! Really?! So funny. She wasn't being rude, but just matter of fact. Anyway, point being, if complete strangers will tell you that your daughter has a mullet, it's probably time to get it taken care of.

My friend Amanda cuts hair so I had her do it this afternoon. She shortened the back so that it is more even and less scraggly. Then she trimmed the front so that her hair would not hang in her eyes constantly. So now I have a 7 month old with legit bangs. Who's ever even heard of such a thing?

** I was really having a good "mom" day and saved some of the hair for her baby book and took before and after pictures. I then left the camera and hair sitting on Amanda's counter. I'll post them tomorrow. (the pictures, not the hair).**

Alligator Crawl

When I started taking pictures of her she caught sight of the string hanging from my camera. That's what she was focused on until I blocked her with my foot.




Elea can get wherever she wants to go these days. She hasn't progressed passed rocking on her hands and knees but it definitely hasn't stopped her from moving around!

. . . and yes, even Divas have bad hair days.

The incredible shrinking man.

So I wasn't going to post about this because he'll probably get embarrassed but whatever. Jeff has lost 33.4 lbs since New Year's Day. Probably more than that since that weight in was almost a week ago. We're doing a biggest loser competition with his siblings & spouses and he is a machine. His sister's husband won their weight class the first week and that's all it took to get him motivated. . . now he's dropping weight like it's his job.

I, on the other hand, am losing weight like a part-time fill-in temp. But what do ya do.

Life is about to get a little more interesting.

Elea has been scooting around on her belly alligator style for the past couple of weeks. Her forearms are constantly red and chaffed because it doesn't matter how big of a blanket I put on the floor, she prefers the rug and carpet for gettin' around. On Monday I was on the phone with Angie and I looked down at Elea and she was up on her hands and knees. (Then she face planted and got ticked). The hands and knees thing has progressed to hands & knees with a forward and backward rocking motion followed by a face/shoulder plant and yell/cry of frustration from Elea.

So according to Angie who is my go-to girl for all things baby development related- she'll be crawling any day now. And then the fun begins. I guess we'll be ordering the baby gates sooner than later. It's crazy. She's not even 7 months old yet. Combine her probably crawling relatively early with her mop of hair and she's gonna seem 5 before she hits a year old. So weird.

Oh yeah, one other thing. She knows how to get out of her bumbo chair. It's kind of scary actually because she twists to the side, pulls one foot under her and then proceeds to launch herself out. Luckily, there has been someone to stop her everytime but it has become necessary to hold one of her ankles almost constantly while she's in the chair. And that's with the tray on. I guess that's why the box says not to put children on a counter or table while in the chair . . .