Ode to Ellie

There are lots of things I should be posting about - our Memorial Day weekend (lots of BBQ's and rain) and cute Austin stories, but right now I'm watching Ellie crawl all over the place with her happy squeal and I just can't help myself - I have to post about how incredibly cute she is.

How could you not love this chubby, happy face? Every morning I wake up and she's sitting in her bed with a big smile. She sees me and gets the biggest grin. I love it. The only time she's cuddly is when she's tired or just woken up, so Randy and I love to get her and have her put her head on our shoulders.

Here are some fun facts on Ellie:

• She has the softest, chubbiest cheeks which are great to kiss and munch on.

• She loves the dog. Truly, she loves to crawl over to Safari and play with her tail. The dog is so wonderful, she'll just lay there and occasionally give me a look that says, "Does she really have to crawl all over me again?" Ellie will squeal like nothing I've heard before, its pure joy.

• She HATES her car seat. She screams as soon as she 'goes into position' to get in the car. She pushes against the straps the entire time and grabs at them, hoping one time her efforts will be successful.

• Ellie also HATES being late on meals. As you can tell from the above picture - this girl means BUSINESS when it's meal time. She gets very cranky if food is not on her tray when she gets in her highchair. She also likes to eat immediately when she wakes up. If she wants to eat and you aren't ready - watch out. She'll turn angry and it's not pretty.

• She loves being entertained by her brothers and sister. She'll just sit there and laugh at them. They dance around her, they sing to her, they hold her and she loves it all. It's quite helpful when they play with her in the car - she'll have moments when she'll forget she's in her car seat and really let out a few laughs.

• She's nine months old and still won't hold her own bottle. Confession: we've propped her bottle up in the car since she was two months old. It seems as though we're always in the car during a feeding, so I've just propped her bottle up with a blanket. She knows the drill, when her bottle comes and we happen to not be in the car, she'll put her arms down by her sides and just drink. We try to coax her hands up to the bottle and place them there but they inevitably fall to the sides. I'm not worried - it's more of a reflection of how often we are in the car.

• She LOVES Ian. She has to catch his eye whenever he is in the room. She'll look at him and smile. It's so cute. She won't stop staring at him until he acknowledges her.
  

• We call her Tyler Jr. because she looks so much like Tyler when he was a baby. She also has his happy personality too. Tyler likes that someone else in the family has blue eyes.

• She never tires of kisses - which is good, given that everyone in the family kisses her cheeks a million times a day.

We LOVE our Ellie and are so happy she's part of our family. Pardon my indulgence...