Other recent photos

Daddy and Elliott at the Natural History Museum.  Elliott is pointing to the stuffed giraffe that is bending down to drink water.  

Elliott and Mille Lou at the playground.  They have just met in the middle and are figuring out how to cross without knocking the other one off.  It is "Baby American Gladiators" if you can imagine.  I think that Mille Lou won......

Ah, the old standard photo titled "Baby: In Nothing but Diaper and Shoes."  We just had to.  

I taught Elliott to eat with a spoon.  It was so very messy but so very fun.  This baby loves to eat, especially cheese.  She starts hyperventilating whenever she sees a package of string cheese.  But then again, so does her father.  Actually, Spencer hyperventilates over our new Ukrops find called "Pirate's Booty."  This stuff is basically cheesy poofs but organic and good for you.  

And finally, this photo is titled "Baby Comb-Over."  She's growing lots of hair but it tends to want to fall over to one side and still isn't very thick so it ends up looking like a comb-over.  We are so ready for pigtails!

March already?

Elliott is almost 11 months old and it feels like yesterday that Spencer and I were counting down the days until her arrival.  Now we are chasing down a crawler, bending over to let her practice walking with one hand and teaching her words!  I know that everyone thinks that their child is a genius or gifted and we are no exception.  So far at 11 months she can say the following words: dog, duck, uh-oh, da-da, ma-ma, cow, kitty cat, croc (as in crocodile), good, and her personal favorite: No! No!  I love the photo above of Elliott cruising on Daddy's briefcase.  Maybe we have another lawyer in the making?

Here are Daddy and Elliott at Kyla's first birthday party last month.  She has on silly bows and a top that has her name on it.  We love this outfit.  Okay, I love this outfit.  Spencer thinks it is silly.  

Finally we are enjoying all the parks that are near our home.  Elliott really can't climb or slide yet but she loves to cruise on the balance beam and she squeals when she's in the swing.  The other wonderful thing about playgrounds is meeting other mommies and making friends.  Today Elliott met a 6-year old and her twin baby sisters.  They were all over Elliott and she loved every minute of all that attention.  She also loved the mulch on the playground.  I spent a lot of time pulling it out of her hands and mouth.  This frightens me a little bit as I remember my mother telling stories of me at the beach for the first time.  I'm pretty sure we were at the beach for the first day and after spending all her time cleaning the sand out of my mouth, we spent the rest of vacation on the deck of the house.  Like mother, like daughter.  

We recently visited Ya-Ya and Pooh Ba in Northern Virginia.  Elliott experienced her first Metro ride into the District as we took her to the Natural History Museum.  We only made it through the mammal hall and the ocean exhibit but she loved it!  She especially loved the zebra and the giraffe (yay!).  My favorite was the skunk doing a handstand.  What a show-off.  

Another reason we believe Elliott to be brilliant is that she loves her flash cards.  She recognizes about 6 or 7 of them and will crawl to them when asked for one and she'll hand it to you.  Brilliant.