More of February

 Milford on the Sea, another town that is part of the New Forest. We discovered we have this lovely little "beach" just about a 10 minute drive away. 

 Eliana really enjoyed looking at the Big Water, and feeling the breeze.

 It was a beautiful day, and it got us excited about the soon coming longer and warmer days:) The days are already longer, and we have been enjoying that very much!

Below is Eliana's first time in the Big Girl bathtub. We decided Ellie was getting a little big for her inflatable tub, and also has more bath toys now that were also taking up space. Dad said she enjoyed it!

 Eliana and her friend, Isabella playing while the Moms had hot chocolate. This was Ellie's and my first solo car trip in the UK. I have been practicing driving quite a bit, but had only driven around with John in the car as well. I braved it up, and drove to meet a friend where we parked our cars, and then took a stroll around the sea. It was actually the parking lot where John and I run through towards the end of our long Saturday run. It is at the yacht club, and there is a restaurant called the Haven right there that we had never noticed. It was a nice walk, and then Ellie and Isabella enjoyed crawling around the restaurant, and looking through the big window to see the boats.

 Ellie has taken a liking to walking with Dino again recently. She had not been paying him much attention lately, and would usually choose to walk her Doggy from Nana and Papa. Eliana's walking seems to be getting stronger and more coordinated, but she has not tried to walk alone yet. She has more often been letting go though to stand freely for a few seconds.

 Yay for being back at play group! Eliana and I have been quarantined the past few weeks from being sick, so we had not been here in a while. Ellie's face lit up when she saw her friend Lewis, and seemed happy to be around all the action again. She took quite a liking to this see-saw. She really enjoyed riding with Lewis as her partner, but then just stood for quite a while rocking it back and forth by herself.

 Rocking the whale with one shoe off:)

 Ellie and Lewis playing with the baby. Ellie has a doll at home, and has just recently started paying her more attention. She and Lewis were digging this baby:)

Ellie had what might be her first fit towards the end of play group. She had two different things taken away from her (baby doll and plastic cups the fruit was passed out in) and started screaming crying laying on her tummy with cheek down on the carpet (yay) tensing her body, and wriggling away from me. She was a little tired since she had a shorter nap that morning, but yikes!

 Yay for the milk carton!! This is Ellie's new favorite toy from her cabinet. She could sit playing with this continuously for quite some time. I was surprised to find when I was cleaning up, that she actually screwed the cap on by herself!

 Two of my favorite things: Daddy, and yogurt!!!! Did you notice my cute bobby pin holding my bangs back? Daddy and Mommy thought it made me look like such a big girl!!

 Woo hoo for the sunshine! We stopped to take a picture in our yard on the way to church. It was a beautiful day! We drove out to Milford on the Sea, another town that is part of the New Forest, later in the afternoon and walked along the seawall. It was gorgeous! Will post a few of those pictures once we get them uploaded...

 Hugs...Ellie is still loving to hug lately, and she was giving her daddy lots of good love this past weekend...

 My Daddy is so funny! This was after I was in bed, but he made yummy calzones!

 More of play group. Ellie chose to play with the pots and pans, she hadn't played with these before.

This is looking out the window at all the boats from the restaurant. The two girls had fun. Isabella is about 3 1/2 months younger than Eliana.

So, what else has been going on the last few weeks...Ellie has been talking more and more. She LOVES her yogurt, and says "gogurt" now when she sees it. It is fun because she says it both for her yogurt package, but also when she sees the yogurt package mom and dad eat. She crawled toward the kitchen the other day when I asked if she was ready for dinner. A couple of times when I said are you ready for lunch or dinner, she replied "gogurt" even though she only has yogurt for snack. Wishful thinking? She is really absorbing more words than we thought. I was reading a book with a giraffe in it, and when I said giraffe, she turned and pointed towards her giraffe teether. I was talking about cookies for some reason, and she looked and pointed towards cookie monster, and said "co-co." She also says "Kees" when she sees the keys; which still LOVES. The other day I said bowl, and she looked down at her cabinet where her bowls are, and said "bu." She also gets very excited for her cottage cheese still, and says "chis" when I get it out, or ask her if she wants some cheese. When we say are you ready for your bath, she now says "ba." I asked the other day if she wanted to go swing at the park, and she looked towards the door, and said "g." Last week Daddy walked in from work, and he got a full on "Hi" from Ellie. I guess she learned her walking Dino is called Dino too, because I was talking about a new toy dino that she has that spits balls out and makes music, and when I said do you want to play with Dino, she looked towards her Dino Walker. She still likes her puppy dog walker, and seems to be trying to bark now sometimes when she sees real dogs out walking. She gets VERY excited when she sees dogs:)

Another thing she has been doing lately is looking at pictures constantly. She loves to look through her picture book of family members that I made for her when we moved here, and has been learning who people are, and associating them with skyping on the computer. The other day she pulle the book open, turned to Papa's page, and said "Papa," and then pointed towards the computer. We were talking about Grandma another time, and she pointed toward the computer. She has been ransacking our tote trays of pictures in the study, and just loves to look at them. The other day she picked up a picture of John, and said "Dad." She says mom mom mom to me, or when she wants me, but wouldn't point me out in a picture until just the other day, when I pointed to myself and said who is that, and she said "mom mom." She still won't say it as much as she says Papa or Dad to pictures though.

We are down to one nursing before bed now. We started this past weekend eliminating the morning nursing, and it has gone okay with John getting her up, and giving her cereal right away. We have had a couple of instances when she has pulled at my shirt and got upset, but not too bad. We are a little nervous about the before bed feed elimination. We actually tried a week or so ago, and she woke up crying around 10:30 pm, and just seemed restless and sad. I ended up nursing her at about 11:15 pm, so we decided to hold off on that one until we were completely well, and also decided to try the morning one first. Ellie has been doing a little better with drinking. We have been giving her one cup with milk, and one cup with juice mixed with water, and she will take some drinks every now and then. We have noticed the more we offer, and just place them by her toys, the more likely she will drink. She mainly does her drinking at random times rather than with her meals.

 We have our first Mommy and Me swim lesson on Friday, so we will see how it goes! Ellie is still liking her bath, and has moved out of the inflatable tub to the real tub just a few days ago. She seems to be enjoying more space. Let's see, we also had a babysitter come for the first time today. We have hired a babysitter to come Tuesday mornings so I can go to a class at the gym here. I was nervous to leave Ellie (silly I know) but it went really well, and Ellie had fun with her. She wasn't scared when someone other than mom or dad came to get her from her nap, changed her clothes (she was actually nicer for that part than she is with mom and dad) had her snack, and then played. I was happy to get a huge smile when I walked in the door!