Eleanor is 10 months old!

Wait...just one more, very important post before we go...

Eleanor is 10 months old!

She's doing so many new things. Here are a few of them...

• Walking holding on to furniture. Sometimes she even lets go for a second- then either falls or grabs whatever she was holding on to when she realizes she's going to fall.
• Pulling up on anything that isn't moving. And sometimes even things that are (e.g. Jordan).
• "Crawling" all around.
• Getting into a sitting position from lying down by herself.
• Eating finger foods.
• Talking all the time. Mostly babbling, but she can say, "momma", "daddy", "hi", and "hey". She also says, "ba" for ball, "ba-bu" for baby, and "it-ty" for kitty. The best is "hey", which she uses to greet everyone, even the cats or pictures of other babies.

This baby is turning into one hilarious little person. She keeps us laughing all the time! We are seriously so blessed to be her parents.

Swim lessons

Here they are...pictures from our swim lessons. Well, sort of. There aren't actually any of us in the water because I had to take them myself. Even the one of Eleanor and me, which is obvious because you can see her little finger reaching for the camera.

Unfortunately, I think we're finished with swim lessons. We close on the house tomorrow, and will be moving out there with the bare essentials, so that we can work on our projects while Eleanor is asleep at night. I don't foresee us driving to swim lessons in rush hour, so I think that was it for us. Plus, our teacher wasn't very friendly, and frankly I'm a little tired of him scolding me for my baby drinking the water amongst other things.

I don't know when we'll have internet access at the house, so posting may sporadic for the next month. I'll try to post as much as possible when we make trips back to the apartment or when I go sit somewhere with free WiFi out of desperation.

Until then...

A big weekend

So, this weekend was huge as far as baby development goes. Eleanor showed us all kinds of new tricks. We went to the mall play area today to try some of them out.

Don't you hate when you go somewhere with your camera, turn it on, and find it mocking you with the words, "No CF card.....NO CF card?" (No compact flash, i.e. no memory card, i.e. no photos for you!) Luckily, I had my trusty little point-and-shoot that I always carry in the diaper bag, and it did have a memory card.

Anyway, back to the point of this post...my baby girl and what she can do.

She is...

pulling up on almost everything,

cruising like a big girl,

and getting into a sitting position all by herself.

I'm hoping to get some better quality pictures of these milestones later, but these are it for now. Luckily, she's cute enough to make even a bad picture look good!

Judging by that smile (and the round of applause she gave herself for sitting up), I think she's almost as proud of herself as I am of her!

Will crawl for puffs

So, I finally figured out how to motivate Eleanor to get movin'. I just have to strategically make a trail of Gerber puffs that goes all around the apartment. She'll crawl and crawl until the puffs run out. I even put some up high, so that she has to pull herself up to get to them. Works like a charm! So far, I've discovered three things that will get her goin' anytime- my car keys, puffs, and electical cords. The last one doesn't seem to be that good of an idea though, so for now we'll stick with the others. It does a lot for this anxious mommy's peace of mind to know that she can get from one place to another. For some reason, she chooses to stay put a lot of the time. I guess I should be happy that she doesn't have me running all over the place! That day will come, I'm sure.

Another crawling photo...

One tough baby

So, these aren't exactly the pictures I was hoping to get when I got my camera out today, but I did think they were too funny not to post...

"What'd you say about my momma?"

"You wanna piece of me?"

Here we are...

I hate when I go a week without blogging. Bad, bad blogger. Things just seem to get hectic all at once. I've been scrambling around during the day trying to make sure everything is ready for the closing on the house, which is NEXT THURSDAY!!! Woo-hoo! Eleanor is teething again, which inevitably comes with a cold. Sleep has been a little hard to come by. Sunday night, we thought we'd test our stamina by only allowing ourselves two hours of sleep. I lost, and crashed out for most of Monday, as did Eleanor. We did make it to our first swim lesson Monday morning, though. I thought, well...since we're up anyway. The swim class ended up being a lot of fun, and I'm looking forward to next Monday when we go again. (We missed today's lesson because I couldn't resist, and snagged a little of Eleanor's cold for myself.)

Anyway, we're feeling a little under the weather, but our spirits were brightened yesterday when Eleanor's soft play center arrived. I made this little purchase prior to the beginning of the whole home-buying process. When I look at it, I can't help thinking to myself that I could have replaced both upstairs toilets for what that thing cost. Oh, well, it's super fun, so it's worth it. Today, I was enticing Eleanor to try out all its features by baiting her with Gerber puffs. I felt exactly like one of those gorilla trainers at the zoo. But, hey, it worked. Here's my little girl monkeying around today...

This first one is her fake crying face. It comes complete with a pathetic whimper and everything. She only does it when I'm looking, and I've mastered the art of quickly turning it into a giggle.

hey!

This first one is a video of Eleanor saying her new favorite word. WARNING: There is a very brief screaming fit in the middle of this video. Who knows what brought it on?! It only lasts a second, but is very loud.



Here's the 'sort of crawl' mentioned in an earlier post. I've kind of just accepted that this is probably her crawl. Its uniqueness is growing on me.

Beach baby, beach baby...

A Cupie doll...see Mimi's comment

Take home handy-baby

Okay, it was really hard for me to decide on a title for this post, given how many do-it-yourself television shows were floating around in my head. (The runners-up included Toolbelt Baby and Ask This Old Baby.) This weekend consisted of two very long trips to Home Depot, one trip to Lowe's, and watching home improvement shows until we wanted to poke our eyes out.

As you can see from the pictures, Jared and I aren't the only ones getting a little antsy about our upcoming projects. Eleanor's new favorite toy is her hammer, which, I might add, was a huge hit with the construction-minded aisle-lurkers at Home Depot. I love the last one because she looks like she's really considering how to go about "fixing" her Leap Frog learning table.

Bookworm (Part II)

This is a video of Eleanor reading a book. It's probably a little bit boring if you're not one of Eleanor's family members, and maybe even if you are. I just thought it was really cute how she turns the pages by herself. This particular book happens to be her current favorite, and she cries when we get to the end. It's just a book of pictures of objects and their names. I'm pretty sure I have it memorized now. Girl, boy, t-shirt, pants, socks, shoes...

Eleanor's (sort of) crawl

Eleanor has developed her own little crawl. It's sort of a (very slow) combo normal/bear/army man crawl. She only does it when she wants to, and not when I ask her to. If I try to force the crawl, she kicks her legs and screams and her face turns red until I sit her back up. If her toys somehow get away from her, she'll lie down and get them, but she immediately wants to sit up (which she can't do on her own yet). She still prefers standing to all other positions, and is now pulling up on a few things around the house. It seems like she's doing everything out of order. At her 9-month check-up, her pediatrician told her that she was supposed to have read the baby manual by now, and should be following it more closely.

I'm really working on not focusing on what she's not doing. I've stopped asking every mom at the mall how old their kid is because I know I shouldn't be comparing Eleanor to other babies. Am I neurotic or do all moms do this?

Anyway, here are some pictures of Eleanor's very unique little crawl. And one picture of her that I like just because...

OUR FIRST HOUSE!!

So, this is the big news...we bought a house! Our first house. After being married for seven years, and living in five different apartments, we finally have our own little place on the map. Praise God!!

Here it is...

Here's a little info about our new casa...

It is located in Hamilton, VA, which Jared has deemed "Mayberry." If you go to the website, there are pictures of the newly-rebuilt park, which happens to be adjacent to our back yard. When Eleanor is bigger, she can just jump over our fence, and go play. The house has 3 bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms. The bedrooms and the two full bathrooms are on the main level, along with a living room, and, of course, the kitchen and dining room. It also has a fully finished walk-out basement, which is apparently very important to people around here. (I am clueless in this department, as no one in Texas has a basement.) The basement has five rooms- a laundry room, half bathroom, and three other miscellaneous rooms. We will probably use the biggest room in the basement as a family/playroom. There are two fireplaces- one on the main level and one in the basement. Also, you can't see it in the picture, but there is a big screened-in porch on the right side of the house.

Structurally, the house is great. Cosmetically, it is stuck in 1976, when it was built. I affectionately refer to the kitchen as "That 70's kitchen." That is why there are no pictures of the inside. I'm waiting for the fabulous before and after shots that I know are waiting in our future. At least our Christmas lists will be easy for the next few years- Home Depot gift cards, please! Now, you may be saying to yourself, "WHY would they buy a 1976 fixer-upper for their first house?" I would like to answer that with a sample listing from our area...(THIS IS NOT OUR HOUSE)...

This house costs $289,900. And they're serious.

But I digress.

We're so excited about our big purchase. The closing date is June 28th, and we don't have to be out of our apartment until July 26th, which gives us almost a whole month to get that awesome wallpaper torn down, walls painted, and floors redone. We've been watching A LOT of DIY Network, Discovery Home, and TLC for pointers on our various projects. We make Eleanor watch it too. Hey, everyone has to do their part if we're going to get this place whipped into shape!

Cowaphobia

Today, I needed to get some food made for Eleanor because she was out of her two favorite dishes. I put her in front of the Fridge Farm, thinking she'd love playing with the animals while I cooked. Little did I know, she's terrified of cows. I can't say as I blame her, I might be scared of a purple cow too!