I need to catch up on posts!! Here are some January pictures. I have to say though, while I love hurrying and taking pictures of Ellie doing cute/new things I hate that my ISO has to be up all the way to 1000 or more sometimes and my shutter speed has to be slow. All because my house doesn't have daylight lighting beaming through at all hours of the day. This makes for blurry and grainy pictures. I also don't clear out the space around her so days old mail, random shoes or breakfast from earlier may be lingering in the background. Just ignore all that.
In these two pictures, I sat Ellie on the counter for some reason. I must have been writing or reading something because I then noticed Ellie had grabbed a piece of the Mint Chocolate Orange from behind her and started chowing down.
Ellie playing peek-a-boo
This was a gift, v-tech Camera, from my sister in law. I showed Ellie how to hold it up to her eye to pretend to take a picture. She eventually caught on and started doing it on her own.
We were clearing out a bedroom that we were (still are) redoing and we brought this red shelf out in the family room. Perfect jungle gym apparently. (If I point it out it probably makes it worse, but ignore the dust!)
I heard, "Mommy come look at this." Daddy had covered Ellie with all her friends. She thought it was so funny!
Side note: Ellie is starting to get a lot of red in her hair, but it is not as red as it looks in these pictures. It was the lighting.
This is one of those pictures where I grabbed my camera so fast to take the picture so I didn't miss what she was doing. But I wish I could redo it. She looks like such a big girl laying on her tummy, feet in the air, looking at a piece of a magazine.
Ellie likes to reach in the trash can and see what she can pull out. Usually nothing good. I know better than to leave gross stuff within her reach (more gross than reaching in the trash itself) but after spilling salt from a pretzel bag on the floor I thought to put the trash cans up on a wooden crate. They are too tall to reach into now so hopefully she gets over her phase by the time she does grow taller.
James' birthday was this month too. Prior to his birthday I had made some homemade Whoopie Pies using a homemade gluten free recipe. James would not stop talking about them. He said, "For my birthday I only want these. I don't need a cake." I could easily make that wish come true. He worked the day of his birthday and Ellie and I planned on meeting him at work for lunch. I also planned on bringing Whoopie Pies for everyone on his team. They took me FOREVER! Really you are making twice as many cookies as normal because you stick too cookies together to make the pie. Anyways, I made the cookies, made lunch and we visited daddy at work. Ellie even wore her "I [heart] Daddy" shirt. Later that night, I had him blow out a candle and make a wish. (We went out to dinner for his Birthday the Saturday before).
Check James' Birthday picture from last year (holding baby Ellie).
Tania and I always challenge ourselves to think of homemade gifts to make for each other on birthdays and/or Christmas. We do buy gifts sometimes too. But for Ellie's birthday, Tania made her a quilt using the vintage sheets we spent months collecting. For Jane's birthday I painted peg people (their family) for her to play with. She loves them! Tania sent me a video of her eating a banana with one hand and tightly gripping one of the dolls in the other hand. When Tania tried taking it away, Jane whined. I'm glad she likes them! I thought they turned out pretty good. I was proud of myself.
Also on this day, January 30th, Ellie decided to start walking. She has taken steps before, but this day she decided was the day she was going to start walking. I really thought we'd wake up the next morning and she'd starting crawling again but walking was here to stay.
