10 Months and Counting!

Ellie turns 10 months old today!

I say this every month, but I really can't believe it.  Everyone warns you that it goes by so quickly, but you can't really imagine it until it's happening.  There are only 2 months left until her birthday.  I'm starting to plan the party and everything.  It's just unbelievable.

Snuggly Bunny towel that Grampy bought me in Maine!

We're not sure about her measurements right now.  She was at the doctor for her 9 month check-up in the middle of October and she weighed 17 lbs. 3 oz. and was 27 inches tall.  She goes back on the 15th of November for the other half of her flu shot, so they might weigh her again then.  She waves bye-bye now and seems like she's working on trying to stay it, too.  And she shakes her head 'no' when she doesn't want to eat whatever you're trying to feed her.  AND she claps her hands, which is the cutest thing ever.  Except she doesn't know what it means.  She'll be laying on the changing table screaming for some reason, but still clapping her hands.  At least it makes the screaming a little more adorable!  She's crawling around like a speed demon and is into absolutely everything.

Um, mama, can you put down the camera and help me get un-stuck?!

It's great developmentally, but it sure does make life more difficult!  I can't go anywhere without her following, but I can't take my eyes off of her for one second to do anything.  So our morning routine is basically me trying to get ready while chasing her at the same time.

You can't find me!

By the time I get myself ready and her ready and both of us out the door and do our respective destinations, I'm exhausted and need a nap!  But again, all of this is par for the course that everyone warned me about.  So I don't know why I'm surprised, but I am.  This past month has been full of fun firsts.  Take a look...

Ellie started eating cereal puffs and yogurt melts this month!

Mmmm tasty!  I think I'll save this one on my face for later!

It sounds like a small thing, but I'm pretty excited about it.  I can now put her in the high chair and pour some puffs on the tray and have at least 3 minutes to myself where I don't have to chase her around the house.  It's glorious.  It is amazing how much I can accomplish in those 3 minutes!  Next stop: cheerios!  But we're not quite there yet.  She needs to get a little better with the puffs before I trust her with something more dense.

Oh, and we have a tooth!  It's still only about half-way up, but at least it is through the gum.  And with just the one, it's not too painful for me just yet.  I'm starting to think she's working on the second one though, with all the drooling she's been doing.  And no, I couldn't get a picture of it because she just wanted to stick her tongue out at me and then turn her head.

Another big milestone was our first FAMILY trip to camp!  Their Fall Festival was a few weekends ago and we spent most of the day there.  Ellie had a great time!  I have a ton of pictures and need to do a whole post dedicated to it, but here are a few highlights...

Soft bunny!!

I am SO EXCITED to be here!!!

Ellie also went trick or treating for the first time!  And the second time!  First, we went to the local state park to their Halloween in the Park event.  It was really family oriented and fun.  They rent out the camp sites and the campers decorate for Halloween and then the public is invited to come trick-or-treating through the park.  There's fun vendors and demonstrations and even a hay ride!  My parents and my sister came down and we all went together.  It was cold, but I think we still all managed to have a good time...

Grandma, Pappy, & Auntie came trick-or-treating with me!

*meow!*

The next day, we got a surprise call from Ellie's Great Grandparents (my mom's parents) saying that they were just down the road at a woodcarver's show and thought they might pop in for a visit!  So they stopped by and we had a good time visiting...

I'm the only one who noticed the camera was out!

It's hereditary!

Thanks for visiting!!

Then the following Tuesday, our church hosted a Trunk or Treat for the very first time.  We couldn't get there until close to the end, but it was still fun to go and see how people had decorated!  And they were kind enough to give lots of candy, knowing that Mommy and Daddy were the ones who were going to be eating it...

Watching the magician at Trunk or Treat, who is actually a family friend who performed at Mommy's sixth birthday party!

A few days later, Ellie celebrated her first actual Halloween, although we stayed in that night to welcome any potential trick-or-treaters in our neighborhood.  There weren't any, but at least now we know what to expect in the future!

And that was our month!  November is shaping up to be pretty eventful to with holidays and birthdays coming out of our ears.  I've also been working on a project in the nursery that I hope to show you someday, whenever I get a free moment to finish it!  HA!

Also, I wanted to let you all know that my church is doing a Yankee Candle Fundraiser to help raise funds for some building repairs that are become more and more urgent.  For one, we need a new roof that is going to cost well over $70,000 because of the unique design of our building.  So, head over here and see what Yankee has to offer.  These are really high quality candles - not junky stuff that loses its scent after you burn it a few times.  Online orders are due by November 12 and they will ship directly to you and should arrive in time for Christmas.  We keep 40% of the sales, so your purchase will do a lot to help us repair our building!  Thanks!

Like Mother, Like Daughter

So Andy's dad graciously watches Ellie 1 or 2 days a week while I'm at work.  He comes over and they play and then I come home.  And it works out great.  He gets to hang out with her, she gets to hang out with him, they take LOOOOOOOONG naps on the couch together, and she's all wound up and not a bit sleepy when I get home.  So really it just works out mostly great.

This past Thursday, when I got home from work, Ellie dearest was not a teensy bit sleepy.  But she had already played with ALL of her toys that morning, so she was completely unimpressed with them by the afternoon.  Basically, I was running out of things to do with her to keep her occupied.  She's not the kind of kid that will just sit nicely and play or sit nicely and read a book or sit at all.  She's got to be moving and having something to do to keep busy.  So we went downstairs  and had a little photoshoot.

Same piano and everything.  It was my grandmother's and she taught piano lessons on it for years and years and years.  As the music teacher in the family, I inherited it and now teach lessons on it every week.  It's very special to me.  And it makes me so happy (and a little weepy, to be perfectly honest) to see my daughter sit at it and play just like I did so many years ago.  Here are some other favorite pictures of mine from that afternoon...

Ellie also wanted to remind you that we are in the final hours of our Thirty-One party!

Look how much stuff it can hold!!

Hop on over here and get your order in before it's too late!  Just click on 'place an order' and then 'shop now' next to my name (hint: I'm the only Heather on the list!) and have fun shopping!  If you spend $50 or more (before tax and shipping), you will be entered to win a $20 Thirty-One gift certificate and the odds are still looking pretty good!  Also, if you're local, you can save $4 on shipping by selecting 'ship to hostess' and visiting me sometime to pick up your order rather than having it shipped directly to you.  Seriously, this is some good stuff, so go pick out a gift for someone you love or, even better, something nice for yourself.  You deserve it!

We had a super amazing time at Fall Fest last weekend and Trick-or-Treating last night.  Then this morning, Ellie's Great-Grand-Pap came for a surprise visit!  He just happened to be at a woodcarver's show down the road and so he called and they stopped by after they were done.  So it's been a busy, but really fun time so far in October.  I'll have more pictures for you sometime next week, but probably not until I do our 10 month update.  Wait, did I just say that??  10 Months?  Double-digits?!  Nope.  I changed my mind.  It's not happening.  I am cancelling all further Month-days.  No growing up for you.

9 Months Old!

This month has just flown by!  Ellie will be 9 months old as of 7:47 this evening.

(modeling her beautiful Ghanian dress from Miss Sarah!)

Actually, today she is exactly 39 weeks old.  Which means that she's been in my arms longer than she was in my stomach (which was 38 weeks and 1 day).  I can't believe it.  Yesterday I was out shopping and saw a three week old baby and thought he looked SO SMALL, but really he wasn't any tinier than she was at that age, she's just gotten so big over the past 9 months.  We go in on the 15th for her 9 month check-up and shots, so we'll see then how big she actually is.

  

Over the past month, she's gotten much more mobile.  She's not walking yet, but she's so so close.  She pulls up to standing on anything that will provide enough resistance and walks along the side of anything she can.  She will even transition from object to object in order to keep walking.  And she no longer falls down when she's done standing, she does a very controlled sit.  She is into everything.  Even the stuff that we've tried to keep out of her reach she finds some way to get to.  

(this is our VOIP phone system that Ellie loves to play with.  If you leave us a message and we don't call back, she deleted it.)

It's ridiculous.  And constant.  I can't even brush my teeth without having to chase her away from something or pull something out of her mouth.  At least she's started to enjoy the pacifier now so that's a good way to stop her from chewing on everything.  

Speaking of chewing on things ... she still has a total of zero teeth.  She goes through phases where she works on the one that you can see RIGHT THERE under the gum, but it hasn't broken through yet.  This is about 4 months that she's been working on it.  4 months for one stinkin' tooth.  Crazy.  I'm almost expecting it to pop through as an adult tooth with all the drama that it's causing!

She is really into eating, too.  Like, REALLY into eating.  She loves food.  Of all kinds.  We haven't tried something yet that she didn't like.  And this month we tried vegetables!  Peas and carrots, so far.  I basically get one new food for her each time I go grocery shopping, which is every other week.  Today she had some more applesauce that she actually liked.  I found (at Aldi!) cups of no-sugar-added applesauce.  The ingredients are just apples and water, just like homemade, but I don't have to actually peel and core and cook and mash the apples myself.  Fantastic.  So anyway, they're 4 ounces each and she ate the ENTIRE THING this afternoon!  We couldn't believe it.

Ellie had some pretty exciting times this past month, though.  For the first time, she was a guest at a birthday party!  Her second-cousin Luci turned one in September and we got to go over to celebrate.  She had a blast playing with all of Luci's toys and seeing everyone.  She wasn't too thrilled about the party hat, though...

She did enjoy sitting in the grass and having some deep conversations with the birthday girl...

And their neighbors to the back have quite a few animals, so Grampy took her back to meet the turkeys...

It was a really fun, cute party and it got me thinking that I need to get started planning Ellie's!  There's only 3 months left and there is a LOT going on in there, so I really better get to work now.  I have an idea that I'm pretty set on, but her Daddy isn't so sure it's 'appropriate' for a one-year-old.  Humph.  We'll see who gets their way. 

Speaking of  Daddy, we also celebrated HIS birthday this month!  

He turned 28 just a few days ago.  Ellie also made him a super cute card with her hand prints on it.  Yeah, that was a fun project.  I'm just glad that I had my craft table set up to work on it!  SO much easier than trying to lay everything out on the floor!

Here's a few more fun pictures from our 'monthday' photo shoot this morning.  I let her run around her room while I picked out her clothes and got everything set up and this is the mayhem that ensued:  First, she wanted to pull books off the bookshelf and look at the pictures...

Super cute, but still a mess to clean up.  Then, she wanted to do this...

... pull the socks out of the basket, un-pair them, and throw them all over the floor.  Don't you just love that smirk?  How come she's so cute when she's being naughty??  I had to put the camera down and put a stop to the 'fun' when she started going after the diaper pail.  Sorry deary, you cannot unpack that one.

Anyway, we have a lot of fun stuff coming up this month.  Our church camp's Fall Festival is happening in a few weeks and we're heading off to that.  It will be Ellie's first time at the camp where her Mommy and Daddy met, fell in love, and got married.  It's a pretty special place to our family, so I'm really excited to take her there.  

We'll also celebrate Ellie's first Halloween!  Halloween is one holiday that was never huge in my family.  We were allowed to dress up and go trick-or-treating, but our costumes had to be 'nice' - nothing scary or spooky - and we didn't decorate.  I mean, we decorated for FALL, but not Halloween specifically.  It was a nice compromise, I think.  So Ellie's going to dress up and we're heading to a local state park for their Halloween in the Park event.  Basically, they open up the camping area and the campers decorate their campsites and families can come in and go trick-or-treating there.  No cars or streets or questionable houses to worry about.  Plus, it's designed for families, so I won't feel as weird about taking a baby.  There's also hay rides and food and a pet parade for pets that dress up and all sorts of other fun stuff.  I think it'll be a good first-Halloween experience for us.  We got her costume (as a hand-me-down) this week, so now I'm extra excited to see just how much cuter she can possibly get!

New Toys and A Trip to Grandma & Pappy's

So, what's the next best thing to a thrift store?  A huge multi-family yard sale setting up just down the hall from your office, that's what!  And that's exactly what happened to me last week.  It was glorious.  Every day after work I would walk up to the Fellowship Hall (I work at a church) and stroll through the dozens of tables, scoping out all the new goodies that were put out that day.  Most people say 'junk', but I say 'goodies.'  Granted, a lot of it IS junk.  But when you have a chance to go through it before anyone else, you get to cherry-pick the items that are worth something to you.  So that's what I did.  And Ellie made out like a bandit!

First, we did buy something brand new last week that has revolutionized our life.  And I'm not over-selling it.  It's called a Super Yard.  Basically, it's these panels that snap together and then flex at the joints so you can put it into [pretty much] any shape you want.  They're tall enough that babies can't get out, but short enough that grown ups can easily step over.  We set it up in the dining room (since we don't have a table in there right now) so that she can hang out near us while Andy works on banking in the kitchen or while I'm cooking dinner.

 It works like a charm.  Ellie loves it because there's enough room for her to crawl around, but we're not always chasing after her and telling her what she CAN'T play with.  We love it because it keeps her contained!  And Maggie loves it because she can finally relax because the bald monster can't chase her.

My father-in-law refers to it as a baby prison, but I prefer to think of it as a zoo.  You know, it's for the preservation of her species.  Just don't feed the wildlife...

So, back to the yard sale... The first thing I found was this cute crib toy.

We decided to use it out in the dining room pen.  It has a cute mirror on it that spins when you pull the cord and it plays music and the lights go and it's basically a baby-hypnotizing tool.

Plus, it's an elephant, and we love those around here.

Then, I found this.

Ellie's first camera.  I'm so proud.  Right now she just likes to chew on the strap, but someday soon I hope to see her running around the house, taking imaginary pictures of things.  The flash even flashes and the lens 'zooms' in and out.  It's freaking adorable.

I also found some [unopened] puzzles for when she's older.  One of them is Veggie Tales' Pirates Who Don't Do Anything and it's in a bottle.  You know, like a message in a bottle style?  Well, she was pretty excited about it...

And I got her a few coats for next winter and some nice shirts for myself.  All in all, we made out really well and Ellie is enjoying her new treasures.

On Saturday, we went up to visit my parents and attend a Spaghetti Dinner benefiting the Missions group that my dad will be traveling to Haiti with in February.  My mom made this new little gem for her to take to church and other places...

Isn't it cute?  The buttons are sewn on nice and tight, plus they're really big, so no worries there.  The zipper is just sewn on top, so it doesn't open to anything in particular.  The beads are really fun to spin and slide and, well, Ellie likes to suck on them.  And, the best part, the shoelaces!  Ellie loves to play with our shoelaces, but they're so dirty that I hate to let her.  It's great fine motor skills practice though, so this is the perfect compromise.  Right now she just unties them and then fidgets with them before deciding to suck on them, but that's ok.  Basically that's what the whole blanket is good for: fidgeting.

Hey, whatever keeps her happy.

My mom's cousin and his wife were at the Dinner as well.  They make these puppets and brought this one along to show my mom and see if she would like to have the pattern.  Well, bring a puppet into a basket auction full of antsy kids and you're bound to attract some attention.  Ellie was entranced, too.

One thing about "new" toys are the comments they've been bringing from various people (mostly older people from church).  I just don't know how to take them.  People will comment about how they never had a car seat or a high chair or their kids didn't really have toys.  And that's it.  That's all they say.  I really can't tell if they're just making an observation or trying to share and connect with me on a 'mom' level or if it's a quiet kind of criticism that perhaps my child is 'spoiled'.  Any thoughts?  And if you're someone who has actually said that to me in the past, please don't think I'm upset - I just honestly don't know how to react!

So anyway, what do you do with all these new toys?  Well, you carry them around in the diaper bag, of course!  Now I'm lucky enough that I received TWO great diaper bags as baby shower gifts.  My mom made one (that I linked to previously) and Andy's cousin and his wife gave us this one...

Yep, it's a 31 tote.  Now, I'm going to be perfectly honest with you here.  I resisted the 31 draw for a long, long time.  I have a natural distaste for anything super trendy, so since it was so popular, I wanted nothing to do with it.  But I was grateful for the gift and it just happened to be my favorite color.  When it came time to start taking Ellie to a babysitter every day, we started using the bag as a 'babysitter' bag.  Basically it stayed permanently packed with the supplies the babysitter would need and the other bag stayed packed with the stuff I wanted to have around when I was taking her out somewhere.  And I found that I actually did like the 31 bag.  We use it frequently now, since it is the ONLY bag that fits in the bottom of my stroller without falling over or being squished up.  And it just seems to hold a bit more than the one that my mom made me.  Don't get me wrong - I still use that one because I picked it all out and I love it.  It's just nice to have two very different ones so that I have ALL situations covered.

I tell you all that to get to this:  I'm hosting an online 31 catalog party from now (October 1) through October 27th!  It's really easy.  You just click here and you'll go straight to my party page.  Then click on 'shop now' and you're ready to go!  You can scroll through and see all the different products and pattern options and place your order right there.  Super duper easy.  If you know me in person and you'd prefer to look through a physical catalog, I have one of those I can let you see.  And Sarah, my awesome consultant (and cousin-in-law-in-law) set up some pretty sweet promotions, too!  Every customer who spends $50 or more before taxes and shipping will earn a chance to win a $20 Thirty-One gift certificate.  AND if my party total is over $300 before taxes and shipping, I will earn a $20 gift card to Target, which is pretty much my second favorite retail store of all time.  

So yeah, I'm pretty stoked.  And you should be, too!  Because these things make great gifts - for someone else or for yourself.  And did you know that Christmas is less than 90 days away??  Yup, it's true.  So get shoppin'!

And ps- if you're shopping for me, my favorite color is purple *wink*

What a Week! [and a half]

What a week (and a half) we've just had!  Little Miss decided she wasn't growing up fast enough, so she took matters into her own hands.  Or, rather, her own feet.

She decided last Monday (September 9) that she could pull herself up from sitting to standing.  All of a sudden.  I showed up at the babysitter's to pick her up and she was sitting next to her walker playing while we were chatting and then she was just standing up.  It caught both of us off guard.  But hey, good for her!

The next day, she went one further.  I got to the babysitter's after work and she demonstrated how she could pull herself from crawling to standing.  Ok, not too big of a leap.  I can handle it.  Here's a video from that evening...

Wednesday, she tried to crawl up the TV stand.  She had both hands on the stand, one foot up on the top of her little piano, and the other foot stepping up onto a basket next to the stand when I caught her.  This kid is a monkey, I swear.  

Thursday, she crawled up and over the crate of books that we had set up to block the pole lamp (the doctor advised us that it is one thing parents frequently forget to baby-proof, even though they are very prone to falling over) and was just hanging out back behind there, playing with Daddy's computer bag.  Grampy thought it was cute.  Mama wasn't as thrilled.  Book crate moved out, giant Rubbermaid tub of storage items moved in to block the lamp.  She hasn't gotten over that one yet, but she's gotten awfully close.  She got up into the crate of books (which is next to the tub) and tried to stand up in there and crawl over to the tub.  I so wish I was exaggerating, but I'm really not.

By Friday, she was walking along the furniture.  Walking along the furniture.  This is too fast, darlin'.  When she pulled herself up on Monday, we immediately ordered a bumper for the edge of the coffee table.  I'm not ashamed to admit that we spend a good deal of time in our living room.  That's where most of her toys live, so she plays in there a lot.  And our coffee table is rectangular and has pointy corners.  I could just picture her falling and poking an eye out.  So we ordered the bumper.  It arrived on Friday, so we were able to put it on before she starting trotting along.

She basically just put all those skills to work over the weekend.  My sister came down and we went to the street fair in our little town and had a wonderful time.  Ellie was an angel riding in her stroller and even fell asleep toward the end of our trip.  But at home, she just wants to stand all the time.  And I mean all. the. time.  

She gets so tired out that she cries and fusses, but doesn't want to sit down.  She will scream if you try and take her away from wherever she is standing.  She literally stands at the TV the entire time that I am getting ready in the mornings.  

Tell me more, O Wise One!

I know it's probably not the best for her to watch TV like that, but it's The Cat in the Hat on PBS, so it's very educational and there's really nothing else I can do with her and still get myself ready for work.  So there.  We do other activities at other times in the day.  Morning is TV time.

This past Monday, (September 16) I picked her up from the babysitter's.  I walked in the door and she was in their living room, laying on her tummy in a crawling position.  I expected her to crawl over to me, like she usually does.  Instead, she flipped over and SAT UP.  She hasn't done it for Daddy yet, but I've seen her do it plenty of times, so I know it wasn't a fluke.  She can now sit herself up.  All within a WEEK.  Holy wow, kid.

Yesterday, I was a little nervous walking into the babysitter's house.  I kind of thought she would just stand up and run to me.  Luckily (for me), nothing major happened.  She just still gets a kick out of standing up.  *whew*  Maybe that's enough developmental milestones for now?  I hope??

This morning I was eating breakfast and she started fussing (as usual), letting me know she was awake and not happy to be stuck in her crib all by herself.  I walked back to get her and saw this...

Good Morning, Mama!
(sorry for the lousy cell phone picture - it's all I had on me at the time!)

Seriously.  Cut it out.  I'm happy for you.  I'm proud of you.  You're doing so well for a baby that doctors literally told me might have a fatal defect.  But my nerves can only take so much.  We need to slow things down or I'm going to have some serious anxiety problems.  Luckily, we had lowered the crib mattress weeks ago when she first started showing interest in maybe thinking about trying to sit up.  But now Andy thinks it needs to be lowered further.  Really?  Is that necessary??  I mean, her head barely pokes over the top.  I think she's perfectly safe, so my poor aching back and I vote that the mattress stays where it is.  But Daddy is the King of Safety in our house, and he's pretty insistent that we lower it to the lowest level.  What do you think?  Is it fine where it's at, or do we lower it and run the risk of my falling in when I lay her down at night?

Either way, I've got to do some rearranging of the living room and put a teething guard on the crib this weekend.  So much for spending the weekend unpacking!

8 Month Update

So my baby is 8 months old today!

This was THE most difficult monthly photo shoot so far.  She would not sit on the chair without that chalkboard in her mouth.  If I took it away, she did this...

...yeah.  Fun times.

We've been busy this month with trips and visits here there and everywhere while summer winds its way down.  Here's a recap in pictures...

Little Miss has accomplished a lot this month.  First, she went shopping with Mama and rode in the cart like a big girl!

SO much better than being stuck in that darn car seat!

PS- Cart cover = one of the best investments so far.  The MOMENT I put her in the cart, she immediately chomped right down on the handlebar.  SO GLAD it was covered!  Plus, I got this super nice, brand name cover at a consignment store for $8!

She also got and learned how to use some sippy cups!

I love my big-girl cups!

Ellie LOVES water.  Seriously.  Loves it.  So when she's fussy in the evenings, we just give her a sippy cup with water in it and she's happy for like a half hour.  It's one of the best tricks we've learned so far.

She's becoming quite the chatterbox...

And she's been helping out around the house a lot more...

Ooooooh so soft and warm!  I will eat them!

Haha, ok so she was interested so I put her in there.  Kept her entertained for a while.  Then I realized she was drooling all over my clean towels.  Is it bad that I folded them and put them away anyway?  They weren't like guest towels or anything - just the ones that Andy and I use.  We're always covered in baby drool anyway, so no big deal, right?  Right?!

Moving on...

She's also been teething like crazy.  As in, screaming non-stop unless there is tylenol or ibuprofen in her system.  For almost a week now.  She's been working on this tooth for months.  (for once I'm not exaggerating)  I think the gum is finally split open now, so all the tooth has to do is move right up through it.  You would think that the painful part would be over.  Notsomuch.  I feel so bad for her, but I'm starting to feel even worse for me.  I've been getting, on average, a total of 5 hours of sleep per night.  5 hours - not all in a row.  For a week.  And she's taken a total of 1 afternoon nap during that week.  I honestly don't know how much longer I can take this.  Someone please tell me that the first tooth is the worst?!  *sigh*

...end of pity party...

And now the biggest change this month.  I was sitting on the couch eating breakfast one morning while checking email.  I had PBS turned on and sat Ellie in her pile of toys to play so that I could have 2 seconds to eat.  I looked up, and she wasn't there.  She'd been rolling like crazy, so I thought maybe she just rolled onto the other side of the other couch and out of my view.  Got up to look for her and saw this....

Ooooooh, what's in HERE?!

Yup.  Crawled down the hall and halfway into the bathroom.  We have a crawling baby.  It's nuts.  It's a good thing we already had the gate installed because we had virtually no warning that she was going to start.  She gets around pretty quick, too.  And she's not even doing the true crawl yet.  Just the army crawl.  I don't even think she'll get to the regular version.  She just wants to run.

Check it out...

She also pays absolutely no attention to any obstacles in her way.  She just crawls right over them.  A few examples...

A new way to sit in my rocking chair

Hamper?  Or TENT?!

I now play the piano with my elbows.  It's cuter that way!

Just checkin' to see if there's any trouble I can get in back here.

Yeah.  So now we're dealing with that.  Life has gotten pretty interesting.  And she gets MAD when you don't let her do something dangerous.  You know, like chew on power cords and roll off the changing table and stuff.  She has a special scream that she reserves just for those occasions.  I can't WAIT for her to learn the word 'no'.  It's going to be so much fun.

We also had quite a bit of fun running around this month.  My parents took us and my sister to Longwood Gardens for our 'family vacation' this summer.  No one had the time or money to do anything really elaborate (plus I've heard that vacationing with a baby can be more of a pain than it's worth), so we just did a day trip.  If you live in PA or NJ and you've never been before, you should totally go.  It is THE most beautiful, relaxing, entertaining, refreshing place you can go.  There is literally something that will appeal to everyone.  And every season is a little different.  We're hoping to go back in December and see the Christmas display with Andy's dad.  Check back in a few days, I'm working on a whole post dedicated to our trip, but for now, here's a few pictures for you...

Family picture at the beginning of the day...

Admiring the Italian Water Garden

Andy's dad went on a trip to Maine, where he is originally from, in the middle of the month.  He graciously comes over and watches Ellie 1-2 days a week.  So for that week, we were lacking a babysitter for a day.  Grandma to the rescue!  She took off work and came down Wednesday afternoon, spent the night, and stayed with Ellie while I was at work on Thursday.  Then I got home and she gave me a nice haircut.  She's all kinds of awesome.  She also never arrives empty handed.  This time, she brought Ellie one of her favorite new toys...

Leave me alone, I'm watching TV!

... a tambourine!  I'm all about the musical instruments (I am a music teacher, after all), but really now.  A tambourine?  All it's good for is making noise.  And Ellie is amazing at it.  She bangs on that thing all. the. time.  So thanks, mom.  You're doing an awesome job of being a Grandma :-)

And we also had a family get-together of my dad's side of the family.  We usually get together for Easter, Thanksgiving, and Christmas every year.  We missed Easter this year because my cousin had JUST had a baby and Ellie was in the midst of her bout with colic and just nobody got around to planning it.  So we had everyone (who could make it) over to the house on Labor Day weekend.  It was SO MUCH FUN!  Again, I have more to show than this (including some fun video), but here's a group shot of everyone for now ...

Not pictured: Aunt Linda (who was taking the picture) and Cousins Wesley and Emily, who couldn't make it.

I absolutely adore this crazy, wonderful family.  Can't wait for Thanksgiving!

Also, on a very serious note, I'd like to ask my praying friends to uplift my church family.  I mentioned these on facebook this week, but I thought I'd share them here too as we can use all the prayer we can get.  First, a 12 year old boy from my youth group lost his dad on Monday night after an incredibly long fight with brain cancer.  It wasn't unexpected, but still a huge loss for a wonderful family.  Then on Wednesday night, while he was getting ready for choir practice, our Choir Director collapsed.  He was rushed to the hospital with only a weak pulse and was later put into an induced coma and flown to Hershey Med.  At the time of this post, they still don't know what's going on with him.  So please keep everyone in our church family in your thoughts and prayers.  I'm a little scared to see what happens next - they say these things happen in threes.  Anyway, your prayers are truly appreciated.