Buddies

Last night we went to our friend's house for dinner. Elise's friend Jacob was there too! This is the best picture I got. Elise was a little unsure about the whole thing and Jacob is just as sweet as ever.

Elise is worried, Jacob's just hangin' out. SO cute.

And, I have a love/hate relationship with the mesh feeder. Elise LOVES to eat bananas in this thing and it keeps her busy for a good 10-15 minutes. But it is really gross to clean.

Randoms

Elise loves to look at herself in the mirror. I thought this would be a good place to sit for awhile. She sat here for a long time just checking herself out. We're totally good until she figures out how to turn on the water.

The other night after bath I was getting Elise all ready for bed. This was our conversation:

Nick: Why is there a pie chart on her diaper?
Me: It's a beach ball.
Nick: No way - why would they put a beach ball on a diaper?
Me: Why would they put a pie chart on a diaper?
Nick: To make babies smarter.

Only an engineer would think this is pie chart - not a beach ball:

And - in response to my little challenge to come up with an example of my walking hurricane-like tendencies: the prize will go to Emily!

Mostly because she was one of the only ones who commented, and AG kind of was disqualified, I see Aubrey all the time, and she lives in HUNGARY, for the love. Congrats Em, I will send you something cute sometime soon! Trust me - there are more instances. Many involving me hitting things with my car.

7 Months!

Our little Elise is 7 months old! Poor thing has a little cold right now, and if I try and wipe the never ending trail of snot from her little nose she screams as if I'm torturing her.

So this was definitely the highlight of my day:

This little hat was cracking me up. I'm pretty sure it came from our cousins Elle & Lola - I found two of them in my bag of hats!

Downside of my day: spilling red crystal light on the white carpet in the middle of my living room. I had to have an emergency visit from the carpet cleaners - luckily they were able to get it out but I am only allowing clear liquids in my living room from now on. Now I get why my mom always said that. And the fact that I am me and I've done crap like this my whole life. I will send something cute to the person who comments with the best example of another incident where I've spilled something. Or broke something. This oughta be good.

Sunday

Last night Elise stayed at my Mom and Dad's because Nick and I had a party for his work. It was fun, and really nice to have a free night. Thanks Mom and Dad! Lauren and Carl were in town too so Elise was very well taken care of. Notice the drool bib - the girl is a drool machine these days so they are a necessity!

Erica came over for lunch today too!

This is how I found Elise after naptime the other day. She was just talking to herself - completely relaxed, hanging out.

Lip-Smackin' Good

When my cousin Emily who lives in Budapest was home in January, she brought Elise some yummy Hungarian baby food. She's trying the strawberry puree - and she likes it I think!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Happy Valentines Day!

Happy Valentines Day from my favorite little valentine!

And - I knew this day would come eventually...

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Cheerio!

Grandma made Elise some Cheerio strings. She LOVES them. Elise's great Grandma Faye used to make these for my mom, and my mom made them for us too!

It took my mom a long time to make these things. She had to make exactly 12 for us to take home, and Elise kept eating her progress. Well, not really eating as much as turning them into a soggy mess.

And a few randoms:

Elise relaxing during bath time. She is so exhausted by bath time (which we usually start around 6pm) she will just totally zone out.

And just in the past couple of days she's started sucking her thumb! She will never take a paci but she is liking her thumb lately.

She wanted to eat the water really bad...

And your dose of mega-cuteness for the day....

I've been waiting my whole life for this...

A one-piece bathing suit. I am not kidding.

The last time I wore a bikini I think I was 7. Since then I've been a tankini kinda girl. Not really by choice - I mean when you're 16 a bikini is the cool thing, but I never could pull one off. And a one-piece on a highschooler is just sad. But now, I have crossed over. I have crossed over to the acceptable life stage for a one-piece, and I am the proud owner of this cute little polka dot number. Thanks to my favorite little girl, the tiny sliver of tummy that showed on my aforementioned tankinis is now not allowed to see the light of day. I can fully embrace the spanx-like one-piece with ruching and a little skirt. Praise the Lord. Now all I need is a tan.

Mom's little love bird says hello!

The child will still not nap. She took a 20 minute morning nap from 10:10 - 10:30, then slept for 20 minutes on the way home from the mall from 1:40 -2. Then she cried for 25 minutes in her bed in the afternoon when I laid her down after her bottle at 3:30. And this is her at 5:15. Help!

Toes!

I am loving this age - definitely my favorite so far. We just have so much fun now! Elise is so sweet and content. This morning we went to Innovative Consumer Research to test out some baby food. We had to taste two different kinds of pear baby food and fill out a survey while we did it. It took about 15 minutes and they gave us a $20 Meijer gift card! Awesome.

Good Morning! Elise has found her toes.

How can you resist grabbing toes as cute as these??

"I want to eat this kitty on my toes!"

She likes her bunny outfit too. :-)

Elise's First Date

This week we braved the snow to go play with our friends Rachel and Jude!

"Mom - you brought me to play with a boy??"

"He took my rattle!"

"Hey give me that back!"

Elise shared some of her Baby MumMums with Jude.

Jude is very busy with all of his cars and trucks.

Rachel gave Elise some love...

Rach - looking good with two babies! (heh heh)

Rachel & Jude - thanks so much for letting us come over and play!

Naps According to Elise

Elise has always been quite the stinker with naps.
Here's a few fun facts about naps around here:

• Elise will take a morning nap exactly two hours after she wakes up. If you try to put her down too early, to avoid the 20 minutes of extreme crabbyness, forget it. She'll cry for an hour and refuse to sleep.
  
• She will sleep for exactly 30 minutes. I have mastered the art of getting completely ready in this amount of time.
• She will sometimes sleep longer than 30 minutes, but usually no more than 45. Any longer I consider "bonus time" and I hardly know what to do with myself.
• About once a week she will nap for an hour or longer in the afternoon. This is my favorite day - but I never know when or why this happens.
• If I happen to be driving home from somewhere and she falls asleep, I will sometimes take a loop around Grand Rapids because she will sleep for longer than a half hour if we are on the freeway.
  
• Yes, I know gas is expensive right now. It's worth it.
  
• She will often refuse to nap in the afternoons only to fall asleep in the Baby Bjorn (my last resort) at like 4:30. If I can successfully transfer her to her bed this is usually her longest nap, and sometimes I worry that she'll just sleep until bedtime. She never does.
• When she does nap longer than an hour she wakes up kind of mad. Like she's totally mad at herself sleeping that long. It takes her a few minutes to wind back down.
  

Even though the sweet girl is not a great napper - I can't really complain. She goes down for the night between 6:30 and 7 and usually sleeps for 8 hours straight, only to need a little bottle and then she's down again until 7am. Not bad. And who really cares about naps when this sweet girl is around anyways?

Snow Day

After the "snowzaster" of 2011 left my deck looking something like this:

We had a fun little snow day inside - since our road still isn't plowed.
We spent some time reading (eating) books...

Watching a little Sesame Street...

Rolling around and having fun...

Daddy worked from home today too! This is the face she gets when Daddy comes up to play for a little while.

Yay Daddy!

We also tried some carrots. Not a huge fan.

We had plans to stay in our pajamas all day - but with this little drool machine her pjs were soaked by lunchtime. So now we're wearing bibs...