Elise at One Year

At her twelve-month well check, Elise weighed 20 lbs 15 oz (50th percentile), was 30.5 inches tall (90th percentile), and had a head circumference of 45 cm (50th percentile).

We're so blessed to have Elise in our family.

Bucketheads

The kids decided that these buckets worked great as hats. Elise can say hat, and she gets obsessed with pretty much any word she can communicate (say or sign), so hats are a favorite thing right now.

Please excuse the pantlessness.

I love this one.

Ryland digging with his broken shovel

the handsome boys

Leighton posing in his sling

(He already knows he's cute, the heartbreaker.)

Where was Savannah, you may ask? Playing in the dirt? No way. She was modeling her "sleeping beauty" dress and her Ariel necklace, watching her reflection in the sliding glass door.

She's such a girl.

D is for Dance

Elise has started moving to music. This is the way she dances, I guess. The ABCs are really rockin'.

Up to the Highest Heights

According to my oldest sister, I was a climber when I was a baby. I guess Elise must have inherited this trait from me because she wants to climb on everything all the time. [I've mentioned that before.] Today she showed me that she can climb all the way onto a chair on her own.

Watch her go, the little daredevil.

What You Don't Know Can't Hurt You

My nephew Leighton is four years old. He's hilarious. And wild (as four-year-old boys tend to be). He recently broke his humerus, and now he has to wear this sling. Don't worry, even though his dominant arm is broken clean through, it doesn't slow him down one bit.

Here's a video I took of him playing as usual. In this video, his right arm is broken, but he doesn't know it yet. My sister had just gotten the call from the doctor letting her know.

[Oh, and if you're wondering, he is pretending to speak into a radio to his mom.]

Man, I love this kid. You would too if you knew him since he was this little. He was an adorable baby.

Ready to Go

Elise is so ready to go these days. Since she started walking, she hasn't looked back. She almost never crawls anymore. She can stoop and pick up toys off the floor and stand up easily in the middle of a room. And she's getting so fast!

Elise is up for all kinds of adventures. Now that it's finally getting a little cooler here in Arizona, we can actually go outside occasionally, as long as we don't stay out too long. Elise begs to go outside several times a day.

Here she is saying "out," which is how she asks to go outside. We can't wait for even cooler weather!

Elise's First Birthday

Elise is one year old! Her birthday was a lot of fun.

Here's the birthday girl.

Her party was rainbow themed. We had a rainbow fruit tray made out of strawberries, oranges, pineapple, green grapes, and blueberries.

The cake turned out to be an epic disaster. No joke. Apparently it still tasted good, though. (I wouldn't know; I couldn't have any. Dang celiac disease.) I guess six layers was a little too ambitious for me. The inside was kind of pretty. White cake with added food coloring and rainbow chip frosting.

Cake time!

Elise knew just what to do with it.

After we had cake, Elise opened presents.

Here she is enjoying them all.

Happy first birthday, Elise! We love you so much!

Stuck

This is Elise at eight months. She had just learned to pull to a standing position, and she was teething. She scratched the finish off of her crib all along the side by biting the bar. The scratches were ugly, but I thought we would just refinish that part one day.

Fast forward to yesterday: Elise had been playing around in her crib (when she was supposed to be napping) and had gotten her leg stuck. She had put her leg through until it was stuck above her knee in the bars, then bent her leg to try to pull it back through. Bending her leg made her chubby knee even chubbier and even more stuck. I heard her crying, came in, straightened her leg, and was able to pull it back through without much of a problem.

Later, I left Elise at home with Matt while I went to the grocery store. Elise was napping, and Matt was watching Kung Fu Panda. All was well.

When I came home, this was what I found:

Apparently, Elise had gotten her leg stuck again. According to Matt's story, it sounded like she had woken up and repeated her shenanigans from earlier that day. Matt, being the loving, protective father that he is, found her stuck and crying. He panicked a little, grabbed the bar, and pulled it off. That's right, he broke the crib to save Elise's leg. Now the crib is glued back together. Hopefully it's still safe to sleep in.

Moral of the story: Matt shouldn't watch violent television, including Kung Fu Panda.

Our poor little crib, that was supposed to last our family a long time, is not looking so great.

I Scream for Ice Cream

Tonight Elise had her first taste of ice cream, Cold Stone sweet cream with Heath bar (we shared). She's a fan. She especially liked feeding herself with a sample spoon. She didn't even care if the spoon had any ice cream on it; she just would swipe at the bowl and put the spoon back in her mouth. She liked it whether or not she got any.

Leighton, Savannah, and Ryland loved their ice cream too.