Waving and Clapping

Elise is learning how to clap and wave. In the first two videos, Matt is waving at her and she is trying to wave back. She may even be trying to say "hi" or "hey," but I can't be sure.

In this video, Elise is clapping. She hasn't quite gotten the hang of keeping both hands open while she does it, but she's getting better. She loves it when you say "Yay!" when she claps.

Favorite Things

Elise's favorite things right now include

hanging out with Mom

and Dad

(sometimes literally hanging),

eating the zippers on Mom's backpack,

reading books,

especially books that have textures to touch,

playing with the diaper bag,

which is even more fun when it's open,

going outside with Mom

and eating the grass,

and standing up whenever possible.

Being eight months old is so much fun!

Up and at 'Em

After a month and a half of army crawling, Elise decided today that she wants to crawl on all fours. And she's surprisingly good at it.

Cruisin' and Bruisin'

Elise is now cruising. Her favorite place to practice? Her crib, of course. Naps have turned into nightmares, bedtimes are battles, and all she wants to do stand, stand, stand. We spend way too much of the day trying to get her to sleep. It's just too bad she can't fall asleep standing up.

All this cruising is making me nervous. Elise is totally fearless. Yesterday she completely let go of one side of the crib and made a grab for the adjacent side (I watched her on our video monitor). She's 8 months old, for Pete's sake! Of course, this crazy attempt ended tragically, and Elise now has a pretty little bruise on her cheek. Add that to the not-quite-healed scratch she already has on her forehead, and the poor kid is beginning to look like a victim of child abuse.

Most of the time she will hold onto things with just one hand. She doesn't seem to believe she can fall. Friday she pulled a kitchen chair over on herself. Thankfully she wasn't hurt, just shaken up, but I was even more shaken up.

Any suggestions? How do I get this kid to sleep? More importantly, how do I make sure she sees her first birthday? Any and all advice is appreciated!

Pull Up a Table

Elise pulled up on the table for the first time! She has been practicing so hard in her crib, and she is really making progress. (Still, I wish she would stop practicing long enough to nap. Today it took almost two hours for her to get to sleep for her morning nap because she kept pulling herself up.) Anyway, now that she can pull up here, I guess we can't keep anything on the table anymore.

She's still very unsteady, but I thought her bopping around was cute. And she just made her first attempt at cruising. She's fearless! I bet it'll just be two or three more months before she's trying to take steps, especially with how much her daddy practices with her.

On an unrelated topic, I love how Elise is starting to try to use things how they are supposed to be used. She tries to drink out of any cup now, whether or not it has anything in it.

Up and Up

This is what Elise has been doing at naptime when she's supposed to be going to sleep:

(and biting the side of the crib)

As you can see from the first picture, she's pretty proud of herself. Now that she can pull herself up into a standing position (a skill she figured out last Thursday), she tries to pull up on everything. So far she has only been successful in her crib, but she has been practicing a lot. Maybe soon she'll be cruising on the furniture. Every day she can get into more things! Ahh!

[By the way, she got the scratch on her head yesterday when she fell onto the corner of a board book while practicing some of her other great moves. When she finally starts getting around on all fours like she has been working on, I'll be sure to post a video.]

Eight Months?!

This is our most recent picture of Elise. It's from yesterday, right before Matt left on a bike ride. The weather has been beautiful here! Elise was about to get in the bathtub, but first she had to say bye. She loves her daddy! (And yes, Matt's shirt is a Halloween shirt turned inside out. It's his only orange t-shirt, and he wants to be as visible as possible while he rides. We need to get him a real cycling shirt.)

Elise is eight months old today, and she really is cuter than ever. And crazier than ever. She certainly keeps us on our toes, this one. Today during church, she loudly repeated ba ba ba and squirmed like crazy and (I'm sure) distracted half the women from the Relief Society lesson the bishopric was teaching. Before that, Matt and I both spoke in sacrament meeting, and Elise sat with friends of ours (thanks, Kylie and Michael!). As far as I could tell, Elise entertained herself most of the time by chewing on a plastic water cup from the sacrament, eating the paper program, grabbing Michael's nose, and pulling Kylie's long hair. They were really good sports about it. At least Elise didn't cry the whole time, right? Matt also played the organ in sacrament meeting and the piano in Elder's Quorum and Primary. Not to mention I met together with some women before church for my calling today. It was a busy day all around!

Today was also Mother's Day, my very first one being a mom! Matt let me sleep in this morning, which was so nice. How did I get so lucky to be married to such a great man? He knows just what I like—sleep!

Speaking of sleep, Elise refused to take her last nap, got exhausted, and fell asleep without a bath. Today has been such a crazy day. I guess that's what a mother's life is like most of the time.

Happy Mother's Day to all you moms! You're amazing!

And happy eight months to our beautiful little girl!

Thunder Thighs

It was warm in the apartment, so I left Elise's pants off after I changed her diaper. She loved it, for some reason. Then I was noticing how chunky her thighs are. Wow. I couldn't even capture the chub on camera; there was just too much of it!

This next one is the best I could do.

How does she keep herself in such excellent shape, you may ask?

She does these aerobic exercises all day, everyday.

No Parking

I got my first parking ticket. And within hours it was cancelled. It's kind of a long story, but Matt is kind of in an in between place with school right now. The car was registered under his name, but apparently he has no parking privileges (even though he is considered an active student, don't know how that happens). Anyway, all we had to do was register the car under my name and voila! the ticket was magically voided. That's $30 we didn't have to shell out. All's well that ends well, I guess.

Elise Update

Elise is growing so fast! She is doing new things all the time, and her personality is showing more and more every day. Here are a few things that she has been doing lately that I don't want to forget about her as an almost-8-month-old:

• She has recently started saying ba, ma, and ra. Elise has been really vocal since she was tiny, but she has never been into using many consonant sounds. I was starting to get worried, and then the other day she busted out with several consonants all at once. Her favorite is ba. I've got to get a good video of her new sounds. She whispers it in this one, but it's the best I have right now. Usually she says it nice and loudly.

• That video reminded me that she really likes it when you whisper to her. She thinks it's funny.
• She loves the bathtub. I tell her it's bathtime, and she gets so smily and excited and starts kicking her legs, no matter what mood she has been in previously. We got her some squirting bath toys for Easter, and she loves them. Mostly, she likes to suck the water out of them (disgusting, I know). The turtle is her favorite, I think because it's the easiest for her to suck the water out of.

• She still won't really eat anything that isn't pureed, but she's doing a little better. For a while, she refused solids altogether. I'm not so sure what to do about that, especially because her way of refusing solids is getting a giant mouthful then blowing raspberries. Since I'm not a huge fan of peas in my hair, we didn't press the issue too much. We have just kept offering her solids regularly, and lately she has stared to take them again. This kid must love to nurse. As much as I love breastfeeding and am so glad I chose to do it, I keep telling myself that she can't nurse forever, that she will eventually eat real food, and that keeps me going.
• She so wants to pull herself up to a standing position. In the bath she wants to use the ledge to climb (with my help) up to this tiny bar that is meant for hanging a washcloth on or something, and she holds on with both hands and stands on her tiptoes like she wants to get higher. She even tries putting her knees on the wall like she's going to climb up Spiderman-style. She tries to pull up on everything, even if it's ridiculously too short, like a wipes box. Maybe she'll succeed soon. In this picture we stood her up.

• She doesn't like grass poking her in the neck. Sometimes when it's warm we go outside and sit in the grass, but she simply won't lay on her back. Her neck is super ticklish.
• If she is sucking her thumb, she's either hungry or tired. Or both, like in this picture.

• She understands so much of what we say to her. If she is trying to sit up while we change her diaper, which she is constantly doing (literally), we can tell her "Lay down!" and she will do it (for a second, anyway). She is also beginning to understand (and ignore) the word no. I have also noticed that if we tell her a few times before naptime or bedtime that she is about to go to sleep after one more book (or whatever), she goes to sleep much more easily than if we just put her in her crib without warning her first.
• She's so dang cute!

I wanted to write this post mostly as a reminder to myself of what Elise is like right now. She is growing up too fast! I don't want to forget a single thing. Of course, I'm forgetting a thousand cute things she does even as I write this. At least there are sure to be many more moments in the future for me to dote on her.