Elliette Rose

yeh-haw! Ellie, Tate, and I are settling into our lives as Texans! We're beating the heat with lots of swimming! Ellie and Mama are enrolled in a Mom and Tots swim class. She's a regular fish, already kicking, jumping off the side (from a sit), and going under water without any fuss or too much swallowed water. (She usually closes her mouth, but forgets sometimes, today she spit the water out in a perfect stream when she emerged!) She even ways bye-bye as I count to three and let go!
She's also starting to get quite independent, venturing off and playing with other kids at the 'splashpad' and the playground. The splashpad is the little kiddie area at the local pools, with lots of spouting and spraying water.
Ellie's 11th and 12th tooth popped through this week, which explains some of the tough nights we've had lately. Luckily, there's been a lot of improvement in the past couple of nights as Tate has taken over night duty between nursings. I was so upset by her lack of sleep that I took her to the Doctor on Wednesday. He was really supportive and explained that most of the time when little ones were up as much as Ellie was/is it is a calorie issue. Not that Ellie is starving, just that she is not eating enough during the day and was making up for it at night. Or, she was eating too much at night and therefore not hungry during the day. A vicious cycle, yes, but easy to fix by stuffing her with her favorites during the day (including adding cow's milk to her diet and making her smoothies) and putting Dada in charge part of the night. So far, so good. So much for all the baby books that proclaim sleep has nothing to do with solid foods - maybe just not for the ones without a dozen teeth!
Some of Ellie's favorite activities right now are rummaging through the kitchen cabinets, playing with our meager DVD collection, swimming, walking down the sidewalk on our street, sliding at the park, play with balls, which she calls maba, reading books (she likes to turn the pages herself, and she will look at books forever, but only reads one book for a minute before moving onto the next one. Also, we caught her sitting in front of our back door with two books, just slowly turning the pages and talking!), riding in her sling and her ergo, standing on her cart, playing 'mama's gonna get you!', and laying on Dada's feet as he flies her in the air and tickles her underarms with his toes.
Tate is finishing up his dissertation and will soon go by Dr. Tate. We're looking forward to a short break between defending his dissertation and starting law school.