Cheerios

Booster seat

Elle loves to tuck both of her legs between the spaces wrapping around the underneath of the booster seat's tray. We discovered this habit of her when she started solid around 4 months old. She was screaming and throwing her fist in the booster seat. After a few speculation we finally figured out she was sad about not able to move her legs as they were trapped in the tray. The funny thing was after we freed her legs for a while, she would tuck her legs back again. Then, there's more screaming when she realized she couldn't move her legs again.

Simple fun

Her dada has been letting Elle free roaming on the ground in the living room recently. Oh boy! It's a riot. She is pretty destructive in nature, pulling things off the TV cabinet, on top of the coffee table as well as underneath the coffee table. In just a few seconds, the floor is scattered with stuffs she pulls off from everywhere and she's happy as a clam. When her dada blurted out, "This is the best time of her life". I couldn't agree more. The mindless, simplicity of happiness. We're living the age of innocence through her all over again.

Messy baby

Sleeping posture

Elle is really freestyle in the way she sleeps. She hardly stay in the spot we put her down to bed in the first place. We normally check up on her for several times when she's asleep. It becomes a routine that one always comes to the other describing how hilarious Elle's sleeping posture is that the other has to come and take a look at it. We'll go back to her room together, laugh at her silliness, and then readjust her sleeping position. The way she sleeps always puts a big smile on our face. Her blanket always rolls underneath her. A hand or a leg will be found between the slates. Sometimes she's curling up like a frog in a corner facing north, half an hour later, she buries her head in the corner facing south. We keep adjusting her whereas she keeps rolling all over the crib. Her dada always says she sleeps like her mama. Shouldn't mama feel proud?!

Those days of worrying her sleeping on tummy or back are long history already.

Evening walk

Taking a walk in the park to soak up the gorgeous sunshine seemed to be a wonderful idea at first. I was wrong. It was quite cold despite the sunny look and the pave was piling with snow that it was very difficult to push Elle in the stroller. It's a surprise to run into Jessie's family at the parking lot though. We took a short walk together and the two kids fighting over who got to push Elle.

March snow

When we thought spring is finally here, the mother nature decides to throw a curve ball at us and send in a winter storm. Lovely! We have 12 inches of snow accumulation in kalamazoo.

Elle and mama have so much fun shopping around this afternoon. We stopped at the cafe to get a blueberry pretzel since Elle kept pointing her little finger at them. When we started digging in the pretzel, a burst of laughter came from a lady sitting nearby just made mama blush. Mama was caught trying to get a bite off Elle's hand as she kept dodging mama's attack. This naughty baby refused sharing her blueberry pretzel with mama. It's too yummy that she wanted to keep it all for herself.

Drowning the duckie

Elle loves the water running down from the faucet during bath time. See how she's having a blast trying to drown her little duckie. Poor duckie! It's funny to see the "We already done?" expression on her face whenever I turn off the faucet. She's a little reluctant to get out of the bath tub after all these fun.

On paper Cloud 9

Never understand why Elle thinks paper is so much fun, the rustling and crumpling? I watched her tearing the magazine apart, breaking them into smaller and smaller pieces, and finally shoving them into her mouth! Great! She's eating paper now. No matter how hard we try to dig them out from her mouth, she simply refuses to spit them out. The way she's eating the paper reminds me exactly how she eats her finger food: break them into little pieces and put them into the mouth!

Big tub

Finally, Elle agrees to get into the big tub without a fuss for the first time. Yeah! Bath time inside the big tub! No more water splashing all over the counter top and floor! Cross our fingers. She'll not change her mind of bathing inside the big tub tomorrow. Let's see.

Elle waves. She waved crazily at me when she saw me coming through the door after work. Baby, you melt my heart. You're the sweetest little thing in my world.

Cookie Bandit

This is the cookie crime scene. She keeps coming back here for more cookies. It's like a smorgasbord, self serve buffet to her.

A pain in the butt

We spent a couple of therapy sessions of air drying Elle's blistering rash bottom. Poor baby! Even we tried to wipe her bottom with the softest touch, she shrieked like a piggie and her hands were completely shaking. I pulled over a chair sitting next to her crib and her laying on the bed with a naked butt and legs bent like a frog. We had a sweet conversation time and it's nice that she laid still and not moving around like a squirrel, simply because, she's having a painful butt.

It's such a blissful day that all three of us got to take a 2 hours nap uninterrupted! Way to catch up the hour we lost for the daylight saving on last weekend.

Blueberry Pancake Day

Hold me high!

Green bean, anyone?

One for dada

One for mama

One for baby

A battle of wits

There's a make-you-wonder-if-you-should-laugh-or-cry feeding episode playing at our dinner table tonight. She'd start rubbing her eyes with both hands to refuse eating when the baby spoon approached her mouth. On the contrary, when we approached her with the adult metal spoon, she'd lean forward with a open big mouth. No kidding! It's the spoon that matters! Since the food was too hot to feed her with the metal spoon, that's how we outwit this little naughty one. Metal spoon in one hand, baby spoon with food in the other. Metal spoon approaches, at the moment her mouth wide open, the baby spoon goes in. Voila! Dinner accomplished.

Elle's still under the weather. Poor baby is having pink eye, ear infection in one ear, and cough. Two teeth are breaking through the lower gum.

Cutting teeth

We had a couple weeks of good days and then suddenly Elle sends us into a tailspin of worry again.

She has a mild fever and her nose is dripping like a leaking pipe. Her cheeks and eyes surronding are flaming red hot and swollen due to her constantly rubbing her face drenched with drool and mucus from the nose. She's yawning all day long as she has trouble sleeping and always awakes moaning and screaming.

We hope this miserable torture shall pass soon.

Saturday

I was struck when Elle blurted out "Ma Ma" in a perfect chinese accent. To make sure it's not my hallucination, I said "Ma Ma" to her in the hope that she would repeat it after me. She did, for 3 times! They're perfect, not a baby babbling version of "Ma Ma" at all. Mama was over the moon.

It's due date for library books again so we spent some time in the library this afternoon. The tots room was pretty packed with kids and parents. Elle was much more interested in the surrounding than the books. She was looking around, searching for the source of the noise and movement, and then crawling all over the place chasing after the tots she liked. We met two sisters, Lori and Kayla, about 5-ish and 3-ish years old. Lori came over to say hi and talked a bunch in her cutesy tots way. Her little sister, Kayla, was a little bit on the shy side, not talking much, but, the first thing she did was to pinch Elle's cheek and then blurted out "so cuuute". Then, came another toddler, passionately wrapping Elle around with two hands, hugging her off the ground, squeezing her so hard that Elle's face was literally nestled under her neck. It was a fun day.

Almost there

See the two white pearls that almost break through the lower gum. It hurts when she bite down our fingers now!

10 months old

Dear Elle,

9 months flew by in a blur of laughters and tears.

You crawl with a book along with you.
You feed us and tease us with your food.
You drink with one hand holding the bottle,
while the other hand busy flipping our lower lip outward.

You bing, bang, and bong, making loud noise.
You brush your hair with mushy food.
You pull out the food tray with your herculesly strength.

You hold a rag up and down playing peek-a-boo to us.
You bite our mouth with a big drooly roar.
You pinch our lips together when we're talking on the phone.
You stand on the couch watching the telly and slurp on mama's big toe.
You eat more than your grandma, one full bowl of porridge!

You're just plain silly, mischievous, yet feisty.
You're a godsend, our bub.
Happy 10 months old!

Love,
Mama

Sharing

Elle is making progress in sharing and giving. At first, she keeps teasing by handing out her food to us as if wanting to share her goodies with us. At the moment our mouth approaches her food, she pulls her hand back and slowly put her food into her big "O" shaped mouth. The same trick over and over again. What a baby teaser! Now, she's all mama and dada a bite and baby a bite. Very sweet.

It's really funny to see how she imitates us. When we shake our head and utter a bunch of gibberish, she'll repeat the same after us. Her baby cuteness version simply makes a good belly laugh workout. It's equally funny when seeing her cries for ridiculous reason. Carrying her between the crib and the door seems to stir an extreme emotional reaction in her. When we carry her near the crib, she'll start "Wa-wa Wa-wa". When we step to the door, her crying awkwardly turns into giggling and she's jumping happily in our arm. We did this like 6 times straight yesterday. The crying and laughing switch is drop dead funny.

Baby Swing

Milestone

Today Elle takes a big leap towards standing all by herself without holding onto anything. Aside from standing on her own, we're in awe of seeing her jumping and landing on her feet on the bed. Although she only succeeds once and the rests have her bum landed first, we're pretty impressed by her stuns.

Talking about today's shopping experience, oh mine, this young lady keeps pointing her finger to almost everything in the store and wanna mama to get them for her. Later on, she decides she wants to do it by herself that she's standing up in the grocery cart!