Give a Dog a Bone

It's been a futile attempt at keeping Ella away from Remy's things.  So far, his water bowl is definitely off-limites.  His stuffed monkey with the dirty tail?  Mostly off-limits.  His plethora of Nyla bones that he leaves strewn everywhere?  A losing battle.  So I just gave in (figured germs can be good for a kid, right?) and now Ella spends most of her mornings (and afternoons and evenings) taking the bones from Remy mid-chew and trying to give him a different one.  He's a trooper and puts up with it, but you can tell he just wants to be left alone.

This is probably one of my favorite videos of her.  It's just so fun watching her play independently and be so intentional with Remy.  (And, yes, we have totally talked about just buying her bones to play with since they are currently her toy of choice, with the exception of her cylinder-shaped blocks.)

If You're Happy and You Know It

As you can see, I'm finally getting around to posting some videos.  Here is Ella's most recent one.  She loves music and now she can dance and clap to songs.  (Note her new dance move: The Spin Cycle.)

Vroom

This post is a little late in coming, but it was too cute to not write about.  While watching Ella for me one evening, Grandma Donna discovered a new way to play with a rolling bin that houses Ella's blocks in her playroom.  Adam quickly joined in on the fun.

I love how she instinctively knows to hold on (she does that while riding in her stroller, too).  And every time we tried putting something in there with her, she'd push it back out (including Remy--because you know we tried throwing him into the mix).  She had a blast and still hints at getting back in for a ride every now and then.

tete a tete

Every morning Ella and I have a little chat.  It usually goes like this:

Say Ella!

Ella loves her name (thankfully) and smiles and laughs when she hears it.  She even tries to imitate it (or so we like to think).  Here's a video* of her (warning, it's long) "saying her name" one morning a couple weeks ago.  We think it's fascinating (as most proud parents would).  :)  

* You may want to fast forward to the 40 second mark where I actually start talking to her.  I'm still figuring out how to post videos on Blogger so I didn't edit this one.