The price you pay for having a daddy's girl

I'm pretty sure it's worth it to him. And, I have a feeling he'll be joining many a tea party in the future. But, shhh, don't tell him I posted these on here.




I used to feel a little bad that Ella favored me over Anthony. She wanted me when she was hurt or tired. She only gave me kisses. She wouldn't go to sleep for him. But then... then I weaned her & it's been all down hill for me since then. She did a 360 is all about daddy all the time now. Except, if you listened to the video of her talking, she doesn't call him daddy. She calls him momma. When I tell her no & she pitches a fit, guess who she goes running to? And when she's exhausted and weepy about everything, guess who can get her to stop crying? Not me. She would stand at the window & watch him mow the yard for hours (if it actually took that long to mow it). Is it wrong that I'm a little jealous of how much she adores him now?

She's becoming a talker

Ella has a few words in her repertoire now.

She's been saying these for at least a month or two:
Ball - "bahl"
Uh-oh - "huh-hoh"
Momma
Bye-bye
(She was saying "da-da" for a long time, but she stopped a few months ago & has taken to calling Anthony & pretty much any other caregiver as well as Wesley by "ma-ma")

Just in the last couple weeks she's added:
Kitty - "ki-ki"
Shoes - "dues"
Ow - "ohww"
Thank you - "de-de"
No - "nahh"

I got her to say most of them in these videos. Warning: she bumps her head on the desk in the first one, but she's okay. Oh, and we let her play with the (non-toxic) highlighter because she likes taking the top off & putting it back on, but we don't let her put it in her mouth.

The many faces of Ella

I was sorting through some older pictures tonight (trying to get caught up with uploading some to flickr from last November until now) and found a sequence of pictures from Ella's monthly photo shoot at the end of November. She has some of the cutest & funniest faces.

So serious.

Dancing Queen and other videos...

Ella loves to dance. She cracks us up every time she does it, too. I think Anthony & I could be entertained all night just watching her boogie down in the living room. Here are a couple videos of her doing her thing to Dave Matthews Band and to some bluegrass music (Anthony even joined in for that one - shh, don't tell him there are videos of him dancing posted on the internet).






Here's one just for Sunny. She sent these squeaker shoes for Ella to wear. They're still a little bit big, but Ella loves shoes so I put them on her one day. This was her reaction...



I don't think I'll be sending her to daycare in those any time soon. Her teachers might want to kill me if I did.

Like I said, the girl loves shoes. We had to go shoe shopping for shoes for Anthony a few weeks ago. We didn't find any for him, but we left with a pair for her. We found out that you don't 'try' shoes on Ella unless you intend for her to wear them out of the store. She usually has to ride in a buggy in stores so she was really happy that she got to walk around all over the store in her new (slightly too big) shoes.



Disclaimer: that fall at the end of the video looks way worse than it was. This one was a few seconds later...



And, a couple from when Anthony's dad was visiting last month & the kids were playing in their new pool and on the slip n' slide.





Sorry about the video overload. I had a lot that I needed to upload and post.
I'm hoping to get a new video camera for Christmas so I won't have to use my dinky cell phone one anymore.