Six months and growing fast...

Eliana keeps growing and developing as the weeks go by. She is not yet crawling, but at least is willing to be on her tummy now (whereas before, she would start screaming after being on her tummy for 10 seconds.) Once on her tummy, she can push her torso up with her arms. Moving foward is, however, a different matter. She doesn't understand that she has to push herself foward with her knees...

She has decided that she doesn't like any solids that we've given her. At first, she would take the rice cereal. Now she spits that back out. Then we tried apple sauce, but she made a crinckly face at that. Thinking that apples were too sweet or acidic, we gave her mashed up bananas, but that got spit out too. So for now it's still just breastmilk and we'll try again later.

But Eliana loves her sippy cup. She'll grab on to that thing and drink water like there is no tomorrow. She does not yet, however, understand the concept of tilting the cup back. So once she drinks the top fifth of the water, she has a hard time getting to the rest of it.She loves her sippy cup so much that she fell asleep with it and we had to pry her little fingers open before putting her down in her crib.

And bath time has become a lot more fun because Eliana can sit up by herself. For the first few minutes of every bath time now, Mommy holds Eliana in the tub, where Eliana can suck on her toys or anything else within reach.

And lastly, here's a 1 minute video of her on our bed hanging out. She is babbling in between licking the bed and licking her beanie baby monkey... and otherwise just being herself.

Trip to the coast...

This past 3-day weekend, we experienced some unseasonably sunny weather. It's been the fourth day in a row of sunny weather and counting! We drove 2 hours to the Oregon coast with some friends and Eliana visited the beach for the first time in her life!

While other kids tromped around, Eliana stayed in mommy's arms. Even though Portland was in the 40's, the temperature by the coast was much higher.

As it was the middle of winter, the beach was mostly empty except for the occassional passerby.
We stayed there one night, and drove back home on Sunday.

Six months old!

On January 14, Ellie will be 6 months old! We can hardly believe how fast the time has gone, while at the same time, we can't really remember what it was like to not have her. All of a sudden, she is changing a lot, and hitting lots of developmental milestones. She can sit up on her own, reaching around for toys, and rebalancing when she gets off center. She is cutting her first tooth (seemingly without noticing, thankfully!), and started eating solids...which she loves! Elvin is already feeling nostalgic that she is growing up too fast, and his baby is getting "too big". Emily is enjoying the increased interactions throughout the day, though!

Are those mine?

Last week, Eliana started examining those five-fingered appendages that are attached to the ends of her arms and that she is learning to skillfully use. Every once in a while, she'll take a break from chewing on whatever is within arm's reach and study her hand. She always does this with her right hand (which makes us think she's destined to be right-handed). After she loses interest, she goes back to her chewing habit, of course.

And Eliana over the past weeks has learned how to sit up unassisted pretty well. She can sit up and only gets derailed if she sees something off to the side that is interesting--and makes a lunge for it. At that point, we have to lunge for her...