Recent favorites...

This is currently my favorite picture. I just love her big eyes, her thick hair, the look on her face, everything about it.
She has such a gorgeous smile and adorable dimples! Daddy was tickling her belly!

Just one random day after daycare. She actually managed to stay clean and in the same outfit all day and I thought she looked SO cute!

You can see the intensity in her face and can imagine how loud and silly she was being here with her daddy!

My little pilgrim

At daycare, they sometimes dress up the kids for holidays and take pictures to post in the room or outside of the room for everyone to see. This morning when Michael dropped off Ella, this picture was hanging outside of the door to her daycare room! It was so adorable he took a picture of the picture with his camera phone and emailed it to me right away! How sweet is this picture!?!

Celebrating 6 months!

We did a lot of celebrating this weekend for Ella Pearl's half birthday! Friday, her actual birthday, neither of us were feeling great, so we spent the day at home together. Here are common scenes of the three of us playing in her room!

Friday night we had a big birthday dinner at Alamo Cafe with Michael's family.

Saturday we were feeling much better and spent the day together as a family and getting ready for our afternoon 1/2 birthday BBQ for Ella and Addison! A few friends came over and the Brown's brought party hats...we had a great time! I was all about celebrating her half birthday... I just can't believe that 6 months have passed, and in just another short 6 months we'll be celebrating her real birthday!

Addie and Ella...we caught them both smiling and happy in their party hats!
See how much we've all changed in just 6 short months. Wow! The girls are SO big! The picture above is from this weekend, and the one below was taken when the girls were just a few days old.
Here are just a few more pictures of Ella, in her crawling position. We have to put her in this position initially, but once there, she's getting stronger and stronger. The first few times her legs would slip to the ground immediately, but just a couple of days later, she has improved tremendously, and now she's rocking back and forth!

Tomorrow afternoon is her 6-month well visit, so I'll post again when I have some time to write a little more as well as post her stats!

Cereal.

Tonight was by far the messiest experience with cereal, but it was also the most successful! Ella seems to be understanding the concept of swallowing, although she has an instant reflex to suck her thumb the second I give her a mouthful of cereal! Tonight I was literally holding down both of her hands and trying to get her to swallow without the help of her thumbs! She finally got it, as long as I held her thumbs out of the way! Here is our sweet little munchkin...messy face and all!

Oh...and she also likes to play with her hair while she eats! There is a reason why we only try cereal at night BEFORE her bath!

All clean!

Good night!!

A special visit from Great Grandparents and getting into the Christmas spirit

On Saturday we had a special visit from Ella's great grandparents. They came to bring the stocking for her very first Christmas. It is a family tradition that Grandma Carol hand-stitches a stocking for each new member of the family for their first Christmas. They are always beautiful and I couldn't wait to see Ella's! You can't see all the detail in these pictures, but you can still see how pretty it is.


Ella was SO sweet with her great Grandpa! She sat by him on the couch and would tilt her head to look back at him and then she would smile and lean her head against his shoulder. She did that multiple times....it was so sweet. Here it looks like they are having a very serious conversation...

And here she is with her talented great Grandma. Thanks again for the stocking! We love it!!

Always chewing....

Later that same day we checked the mail and Ella had a surprise waiting in the mailbox! Aunt Doris sent a wonderful Christmas book for us to read over the next couple of months while we get ready for the holidays. What a sweet and thoughtful surprise! Thank you Doris!! I am obviously so excited for Ella's first Christmas and have been anxious to get into the holiday spirit. This weekend was a perfect way to get it started!

Watch out McKenna...there's a new gymnast in town!

she can stretch real far....

she has great balance....

she can do the splits....

she can touch her toes....

she can do forward splits....

and she even smiles for her audience....

but sometimes she gets tired and just wants to suck her thumb....

or maybe her toes....

Maybe she has just a few more things to learn from her cousin McKenna!.....

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Aside from the gymnastics, Ella impressed us SO much tonight. Luckily we caught it all on video and through photos, as you can see. It started with her "reading" her books. As soon as she got this book in her hands she started trying to turn the pages and was talking outloud non stop.

Then we started moving it out of her reach to see how hard she would work for it and she did everything she could until she got a hold of the book. Several times she leaned over her leg and gracefully onto her stomach, sometimes even balancing on her arms and legs for a second. One time she even reached all the way down grabbed the book and used her stomach muscles to pull herself back into a sitting position. Pretty impressive! It was really cute to hear her noises and see her faces as she struggled so hard to reach her goal. She never fussed though, she just kept trying. What a sweet girl! We are very pround parents!! :)