Well, I knew it was only a matter of time before Eloise's genetic predisposition to being quirky would show itself.  As it turns out, my wee girl is a very particular one!  She like things "just so."  For example, she was carrying her little bucket the other day (um...she puts one or two things in a bucket or basket and then walks around with it....too cute!) and needed to set it down to examine the garbage can (OY!)  I watched as she repeatedly attempted to set the bucket down "just so" on it's bottom.  The bucket was not sitting flat on the first few attempts, so she kept going until it was sitting nicely.  Good grief!  Ana still just chucks things on the floor with little care as to where they land, nevermind whether or not they land in an upright position!  Eloise also likes to put things away (this must come from my mother who used to play "who-made-this-mess?!-Well-we'd-better-clean-it-up!" when she was a girl).  Often when I am picking up toys, Eloise toddles over to pitch in.  This is great because her ever competitive older sister is then also encouraged to pitch in as well! 

Another part of this quirkiness is that Eloise gets ideas of how she likes things and gets very frustrated if they don't work out.  For example, the other day I heard her screeeeaming away in the corner of the room, only to find her attempting, with no luck to remove the sewed-on sunhat from a plush Easter duck (Ellie also likes to try on various hats and walk around the house).  Yesterday she became highly irritated when she couldn't separate the hands of her Glowworm, which are were sewn together (it's a praying Glowworm...but I snipped the thread so he can give hugs now too!)

Oh yes, and I am way overdue in posting a recent picture, so here is one of Eloise in her Tinkerbell costume.

Her hair is all pulled back into a ponytail...when it is all down, it hangs past her shoulders and is wavy and thick!  Richard was fawning over her lovely hair tonight...it was so sweet

We have been so busy lately I haven't had time to update!  Eloise had her 1st birthday on September 9th!!  She is now nearly 14 mos and just started walking last week.  She was taking steps since she was about 11 mos, but she has finally really taken off now and walks freely around the house.  You can tell she is just so pleased with herself   She has 7 teeth now and is working on her 8th.  She knows a few signs, which helps me understand her better, but she is also starting to try to talk more.  She says "all done" and "night night" now.  She loves animals and I am trying to teach her the animal sounds: so far she knows a dog says "woof" and thinks a cat says "fffffffffffffffffffffff" ha ha ha.  We were visiting people with two adult cats and two kittens on the weekend and one of them must have hissed at Ellie, lol.

I'm finding this a very fun age.  She is just so comical sometimes and always copies her big sister.  It's like Ana has an echo, LOL.  Another cute things she does is covering her mouth when she coughs or sneezes (must have learned that from watching Ana too).  She is very busy but plays nicely by herself.  She likes to sit and look at books or just play something quiet.  She is also very lovey-dovey and gives the bestest hugs!  After our long car trip this weekend (we were on the road basically all afternoon until bedtime) she just hugged me and hugged me and didn't want to let go!  She is friendly and waves and says "hi" to just about anyone.  She is fairly petite, but also nice and chubby: a little round 19 lber.  And she has big hair!  I will have to get a new pic of her up soon b/c her hair is really astounding.  It's down to about the bottoms of her shoulder blades.

Well, that's all I can think of for now!

One more month until my baby is a year old!!!!  She continues to delight me daily.  She is 2'2" now, has 6 teeth (and more on the way) and her hair is just LONG.  I can get it all into a single ponytail now!  On the weekend she took a bunch of steps just holding onto one of my hands and now it's her new thing...to take Mommy for a walk   On Monday we were visiting Richard's family in Hawksville and the kids were jumping on the trampoline.  Well, Eloise took one look at it and started squealing and flailing in my arms (lemme at it Mommy, lemme at it!!!!)  All I had to do was stand there to support her and she jumped and jumped and jumped.  She would have jumped for an hour.  Methinks she is getting her legs geared up for walking

Today we went to Dundas Park and I took the girls in the wading pool.  Eloise adores it!  She walks holding one or two of my hands, splashes with her free hand, squeals (of course) and jumps up and down.  Other children just love her and come up to play with her and exclaim how cuuuute she is

Then this afternoon we went to the library for French Rhyme Time and it became apparent to me that Eloise was recognising and enjoying the songs.  I'm hoping she is soaking up the french vocab!

Tonight we had chili for supper.  Eloise is such a good eater and gobbles up most anything I put before her.  She seems to really like chili too.  I just put little scoops of it in front of her on the table (a bowl of food would be promptly dumped onto her head, lol) and she grabs little handfuls and shoves them into her mouth.  Richard, Ana and I was enjoying our food and conversation when I looked over and noticed Eloise, eyes half open, slowly shoving kidney beans into her mouth and nodding her head every minute or so.  She fell asleep right in the middle of eating, sitting up in her chair, lol.  So I took a picture and then wiped the chili goo off of her and put her down in bed.  She's stirred twice since then (6:00) to nurse and gone right back to sleep, so I've had a nice quiet evening.

Oh yes, and in the middle of all of that fun today, she ate a dead fly.  She was looking out the porch door at Ana playing (as she loves to do) and when I went to get her I noticed something black in her mouth...and it was a leg.....and a wing.....eeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!!!  oh man, so gross.  She grinned happily as I scraped the fly leg off of her front tooth (gag).  Ana said "is she going to DIE??"  rotflol.  Needless to say I got out my trusty vacuum cleaner (thanks Carrie) and sucked the other dead fly out of the (what the heck do you call the place in the screen door where dead flies collect under the glass pane? - there).

I think I'll go snuggle up with my 11 month old sweetie.  Must. Savour. Every. Moment!

She is growing up.  *Sniff*.  She is such a good little baby and brings such joy to my heart.  She plays so well by herself...and does so for most of the day!  She is just content to do her own thing.  She is really starting to show some personality these days and asserting herself to her big sister...new words this week: "mine" and "no!" (eeek).  She basically mimics whatever Ana says (even Ana's new favourite thing to do: her tarzan yell).  She loves Ana so much though...she looks at her with an expression of wonder most of the time   Ana loves her too and runs to the bedroom to watch me change diapers...today I showed her how to put the new diaper on too.

Today Eloise stood unsupported for about 30 seconds   She got up with her feet wide apart and just stood there, oblivious to the fact that she wasn't holding on to anything.  She also found Ana's stepstool (IKEA), which was conveniently pushed up to the book case and climbed up...and there I found her teetering on the stepstool perusing the book selection...I took a picture of course (and then removed the stepstool to a safe location, lol)

On a rather embarassing (scary?) note, Eloise seems to like t.v.  Ana watches too much of it for my liking and I have noticed Eloise watching a little bit sometimes too.  I really have to make sure it remains turned off for most of the day.  Anyhow, Ana loves the show "High-5" and when it comes on she sits on her little floor mat and calls it "circle time."  It's a good show, educational with lots of action and singing.  Today when Eloise heard the theme music, she immediately looked at the t.v. held out her hand and said "high five" along with the song ("1,2,3,4, high 5! 1,2,3,4, high 5!" She did so at least 3 or 4 times and was clearly saying "high five."  

~ Edgar Albert Guest (1881-1959)

This one was taken by my friend Jen at her place last week.  It basically captures Eloise's general demeanor...

Yeah, I know, my job is so tough....what an ornery baby....LOL

Eloise's two top front teeth came in this week a few days apart...now she can really bite, lol.  I measured her today and she is 2' 1 1/2"!  She can *just* stand up under the desk and the table   She continues to be a big eater and has lots of energy.  This evening she is just motoring around the apt looking for stuff to do and stuff to chew.  Thankfully her big sister is spilling rice on the floor for Ellie to pick up with her little chubby fingers and stuff in her mouth  

Her new favourite trick is crawling up to the stereo and turning the volume knob waaaaay up - now that gets Mommy's attention!!  She knows she is not supposed to do certain things too...which is weird for me....I'm surprised she is so aware at this age...so she knows she is not supposed to do this with the volume knob (or atleast that Mommy is going to come running and stop her if she tries it, which is rather hilarious to her).  Just tonight Ana said "Mom!  Look what Ellie's doing!" and I noticed she was creeping up to the knob.  I said noooo Ellie!" in my sing-song voice and she just kicked it into high gear and reached for the knob as quickly as possible!  Good greif  

Her hair is getting so long and curls up at the bottom.  I have to put it up or else it hangs in her eyes and barettes only stay in for a few minutes because her hair is so soft.  Her pigtails sure do get a lot of attention...people have even just walked by and patted her on the head out of the blue, lol.

Her new words this week are "boo" (aka nursing) and "pretty," and she is crazy about waving at people and saying "hi" in her squeakly little falsetto voice

Well, gotta go....she is crawling into the bathroom for the umpteenth time today...

Can you belieeeeeve it?  Wow.  My baby is getting so big!  She now crawls all over the house just exploring everything.  She stands up to everything she can, but isn't standing alone yet.  She can now clap and clearly understanding the meaning of many words.  Another new thing is pointing and touching everything with her inquisitive little pointer finger   She can pretty much say "hi" and "bye" now ("haa" and "baa"...you'd think she was a southerner, lol).  So she can wave and say "haa" or "baa," which I love.  She said "baa dada" the other day when Richard left, which is the first phrase Ana said too at the same age

It's neat how much Eloise is like her big sister, and also how unique she is.  She definitely is a little monkey like Ana!  She follows me all over the apt now and the other day she was standing up to the tub while I was doing something in the bathroom...she was being very quiet and when I checked her she had her mouth absolutely STUFFED with ivory soap.   She looked at me as if to say "can I help you?" and only fussed when I took it out of her mouth...silly baby!

She has nearly cut her two top front teeth and now eats quite well.  She definitely has her mother's appetite.  Tonight I gave her some plain roast chicken for the first time and she loooooved it.  She ate about a tablespoon of chicken and then about a third of a small banana.  She also had her first real bottle of ebm this week because I had to leave her with her dad for several hours.  He gave the milk to her cold out of the fridge and she just drank it like that, lol too funny.

that's all for now...kids are needing me....

Eloise can really motor now!  In the past week she has gone from crawling one or two paces and then squirming on her belly, to being up on her knees and crawling all OVER the place.  She also stands up to the coffee table, chairs, the tub, laundry baskets, etc.  She'll get herself up and then just hang on with one hand, the little daredevil!  She is determined to explore the apartment and cries like her heart is breaking if you take anything away from her that she wants.  Tonight she tried to stick her hand in the A drive....babies!!!

She is also really vocal and whispers "da, da, da, da, da..." to herself when she is happily looking at something.  She's just getting to the age where she looks up when you say her name and looks at Daddy when I say "where's Daddy?"  She's so much fun!  She is usually in a great mood and really such an "easy" baby.  She reminds me so much of Ana when she was this age.  She is now wearing the clothes Ana wore when she was around 1 year...which is great b/c they are spring clothes! 

I'd have to say Eloise's favourite thing is her bath.  When I take her into the bathroom she stands up to the tub and bounces and when I turn on the faucet she lets out this shrill squeak: "Yi!"  Now she can crawl around in the bath, play with the running water, pull the bottles off the edge - fun fun! 

So far she has eaten rice cakes, rice cereal (just plain rice), carrots, peas, bananas, potatoes, broccoli  - oh, and I let her chew on a dill pickle once in a while b/c the garlic is good for her (I think that's it).  Tonight she had mashed potatoes with breast milk and loved it.  I give her some solid foods every day, but it's not always much.  She mainly loves her milkies still.