My BFF

Eleanor is my best friend (well, besides Andrew). I love this little girl so much. It makes me so happy to spend every waking minute with her. Here are some of her birthday pictures. I still haven't set up the scanner yet, so these are just pictures of the actual pictures so the quality isn't the best. But don't worry, you can still see how cute she is.

Birthday Girl!

Eleanor turned 1 on Saturday! We spent the morning moving and getting unpacked and then we opened some presents! Here she is with her new car (and yes she spent her whole birthday in her pajamas)...

We had her birthday cake on Sunday. Here's a video of everyone singing to her...


Andrew's parents came from North Carolina for the weekend to celebrate with Eleanor.


We love our little birthday girl!!!

And to think a year ago we looked something like this...

And to close here are some parting shots of Eleanor on the go in her little car.

so big

Before we move this weekend, I wanted to get a video of Eleanor going down the stairs.

Yesterday Eleanor took like 5 steps in a row all by herself! She was so pleased with herself and is getting a little more daring. I got her on camera taking a couple of steps. The only problem is, when I am so close she just takes a step and then just dives into me. I'll try and get some better footage. But for now, here's the best I can get.

work it tootie

(Freddie, that title's for you)
Just some random pictures of Eleanor since fall has arrived.

Don't you just love her cute little smiley face?!

Here's her attempt at blowing kisses...


And to close, here are a couple of movie clips...

She loves to "brush her teeth" aka chew on toothbrushes...

And here's our dancing queen.

Less than a month

until this little person is one year old!

Can you believe it?? I can't. She is just getting too big. It is so fun to watch her little personality. Too bad every time I put a camera in her face she looks at me like I'm crazy or like she's scared so it's hard to capture just how cute her expressions are.
Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Good thing she's still herself for movies. Here's a clip of our little Cougar fan...



She's still too much of a scaredy-cat to walk by herself, but she loves cruising along the furniture.

She loves books, especially her baby book, and sometimes if I'm not watching carefully she likes to tear paper, like she did to one of my cookbooks she found in one of the kitchen drawers - playing/exploring in the kitchen is also a new development.

I really love spending all day everyday with Eleanor. She is so much fun and I think she's so cute! She says mama and dada, although I'm not sure how purposeful it is when she says them. But I'm pretty sure she can say hi and yum and she knows what they mean. Everywhere we go she just waves at everybody, especially other little kids. She's a friendly little person and it makes me so sad when people don't wave back to her. She also gets excited when she sees me putting my shoes on because she knows that means we're going somewhere. She isn't really into baby food anymore. Gerber Graduates are more her thing. Stuff like baby ravioli and lasagna and chicken and noodles. She also likes mandarin oranges, baby cheese puffs and cheerios. She hates getting her face and hands cleaned when she's done eating though. She also hates getting dressed. She is such a busy little girl. She's even figured out how to come down the stairs. She goes up and down them about 2 times a day. She loves to watch Mary Poppins sing Spoonful of Sugar and she even tries to snap her fingers. We love our little Eleanor!

Cousins

Last weekend for Labor day we drove down to Cincinnati to visit my sister Jessica who just had a baby - Baby Jane is just too cute! I wanted to take her with me!! Instead, I took her other 2 girls back home with us for a week so Jessica could have some peace and quiet.

(This picture isn't really relevant, but I think it's kind of funny. We put Eleanor in her cousin Ethan's old halloween costume to see how it fit.)

Meet Grace.

Meet Sophie.

Here are some of the things we did...
-Decorated onesies for Baby Jane.

-Watched Mary Poppins (a lot!).
-Created a hat like Mary Poppins.

-Tried on all of Eleanor's bows (multiple times).

-"Picked flowers" (By the way, this side by side pose they do is all their idea. I thought it was cute how every time I went to take a picture of them they would immediately assume this position and hang on to each other)

-Attempted to go to a little splash park but duh, it was closed because it's after Labor day.

-So we had to settle for just the regular old park instead.

-Went bowling.



On Saturday Andrew took Eleanor to the football game. She loves being outside so it was right up her alley. (Andrew took these with his phone.)


We had a fun time and Eleanor loved having her cousins around to play with. She didn't even mind getting the boot from her room. Eleanor slept in the pack 'n play in the bathroom, Sophie slept in Eleanor's crib, and Grace fell asleep in our bed and then we moved her downstairs when we went to bed. It was pretty exhausting but somehow we found a way to not go crazy in our little apartment.

I think our little Eleanor had a little too much fun and got tuckered out. She's been a little sick since they left. She threw up and has had a fever of 103 degrees. I've got a doctor's appointment in the morning to see what's up. It's so sad to see her sick. She just wants to be held and/or lie down. I actually kind of like being able to just snuggle up with her, she hasn't let me do that since she was like 2 months old. Since then she has been on the go! Here are some pictures of our little sickie.

Don't you just want to smooch those little cheeks?

Is there anything cuter

than pigtails?

I don't think so! Eleanor's hair has been getting pretty long so on Sunday I decided to try out some pigtails and I am SOLD!! They are pretty puny but I think they are just as cute as can be!

So cute in fact that she's sported them again on Monday.
Here's a look at some other things she's been up to...

Exploring in the kitchen

Exploring in the bathroom (I know, gross, right? )

Sometimes at church when Eleanor has gotten sick of all the toys I've packed for her, I let her chew on my (closed) container of floss. Well I made the mistake of giving it to her to play with on our ride home from the store and she figured out how to open it and absolutely LOVED what she found inside! This is what I found when I went to get her out of her car seat. She was licking her lips the rest of the afternoon.

We got DVR (Woop Woop!)
And I helped Eleanor discover Barney

She likes to cruise along the furniture

She likes to play peek-a-boo

Taking a break after a long day

She gets mad at me when I don't let her play with the camera
(she's getting pretty good at being a little faker)

She's trying out stage 3 baby foods and her favorite is lasagna

And she still loves her green apples!