Santa!

The Shops at Willow Bend has an awesome Santa setup, so Ella and I went in the middle of a work day to avoid the crowds.  We got in line right when Santa finished his milk and cookie break and only had to wait for a few minutes.  Ella love the snow and tried to eat it.

Ella loved Santa and asked for some teeth so she can eat puffs!

Ella Grows!! 7 Months!!

I am way late on this one so I will just show you how stinkin cute this little nugget is and what she has been up to the last month.

Teeth:
None.  Girlfriend drools a ton, but no teefies yet.


Food:
Favorites:  pears, apples, green beans, squash, sweet potatoes, prunes, mangos. She loves oatmeal mixed with apples or pears and scarfs down her dinner every night.
Not So Favorites: peas and avocado (proof below)

 
She hated it but loved it when I mixed up some guacamole with her leftovers.  Weird.

Awesome Stuff Ella is Doing Now: 
Rolling - all over the place.  Seriously.  She can get across the entire living room in about 5 seconds.  Momma needs to childproof this place ASAP!   Ella has become much more vocal and loves to laugh and mimic sounds that we make.  She is sitting with support but lunges at anything nearby as soon as we stop supporting her.  She's very curious about everything around her.  She is a major flirt and squawks at people we pass in the store if they don't acknowledge her.  She is the happiest baby I've ever seen!

Girl loves her schedule and she gets fussy when we do something she isn't expecting. She naps easily in her swing (it broke so it doesn't swing, but I think she just likes she snuggle factor) and goes to bed easily without a peep every night.  Love her!  I need to work on getting her to nap in her crib this month.

Ella still loves swinging and hanging out with her best bud, Reesie

and being mischievous while Mommy is in the shower...

and hanging out nekkid with her kitties!

Ella also had her first trip to IKEA and we took full advantage of taking pictures of her doing funny stuff!

Happy 7 months my little chunky monkey!

It's beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!

Bobby let me put the Christmas tree up the weekend before Thanksgiving after I begged him for the majority of November.  I completely changed the tree this year to mercury glass, German glitter ornaments and just a touch of red.  It's my favorite tree ever!  

Ella loves to roll to it and touch the branches.  We turn on all of lights every morning and she giggles as soon as it lights up.  We may have to make her a mini tree for her room next year :)

We have a lot on the calendar over the next couple weeks and we started off with lunch with pretty Julie.  Julie and Kyle are going to have the cutest little hipster baby whenever they decide to expand their fam.  Ella can't wait for more little friends.   

We spent last weekend in Austin for my cousin Amanda's wedding and Turner Christmas.  It was a freaking monsoon the entire drive there, but Ella did great.  The rain and traffic delayed us about 2 hours so we missed the ceremony but made it just in time for the beginning of the reception.

Ella and the beautiful bride

We try to squeeze as much family in as possible when we make it down to Austin/Elgin/Hutto so we met my dad for lunch on Saturday morning.  He brought Ella lots of new little toys and promised to buy her a pony one day!  We headed to Aunt Kathy's house for the madness that is Turner Christmas.  I have a ton of cousins and the majority of them that are around my age had babies this year.  This is the best we could do to get a picture of all of them:

Twinsies on the ends, Devin and Daniel, Max, Ella, Pistol and Wyatt

Ella's future bodyguards!

Lunch with my dad - we still haven't decided on a name for him yet...

New Toys!

Cousin Katie

Cousin Terry

Ella had a great time playing with all of the babies - I am definitely going to have to get her in a play group soon!  Aunt Kathy got her a new play table that she is obsessed with.  I have a feeling her toy collection is about to explode all over my house!

Gobble, Gobble, Gobble

E had a fantastic first Thanksgiving at Grandma and Grandpa's house in Wichita.  The whole DiFulgentiz crew traveled to see her and she had plenty of entertainment the whole weekend. She has had a little stranger danger lately so I was worried how she would react around so many new people.  Turns out, she LOVED it!.

Grandpa definitely provided lots of fun and even Ella's first beer!  This is what I get for leaving her with the boys while we went shopping.

We had a little family photoshoot after Thanksgiving dinner, but Ella quickly decided that she was DONE and we cut it short.  

Our little family

Ella's Great Grandparents

Grandma and Grandpa

Aunt Sue, Dee Dee and Alyssa

The whole crew

Jake and Biz were very interested in the little intruder and wanted to be near her at all times.  We practiced petting gently and got lots of puppy kisses. 

E loved hanging out in her seat and helping Grandma cook her famous prune stuffing.  Her favorite new toy - measuring cups!

I kicked everyone's booty in poker and won my shopping money for Black Friday.  I will brag about this until next Thanksgiving when I will kick some more booty.  I will take money from three generations of Bob DiFulgentiz' any day.  

Some of the losers :)

It was an awesome weekend with ten people available to watch the monkey whenever I wanted!  I even got to shower while she was awake!  E loved being the center of attention and I know she was searching for all of her fans for days after we left.  

We have so much to be thankful for this year and this silly little girl is definitely on top of our list.  Happy Thanksgiving! 

Catching Up

Ooops - Looks like I missed an entire month on the bloggity blog.  Miss E has been a super busy girl.  Let's get started!

Halloween

The bug was the cutest little lamb you ever did see.  Zoe and Reese had a super fun party and Ella definitely would have won the costume contest if there was one :)

Ella and Reese are BFFs and they love to kiss.  Reese knows about 15 words and Ella just happens to be one of them! Ella's costume was super hot so we had to take it off half way through the party.  It should not be 85 degrees on Halloween.

Ella met her new friend, Alex, and he let her play with all of his fancy toys.  She had to wear her scary skeleton outfit to impress him (he could be her boyfriend one day!!).

Failed Photoshoots

Whit and I had the fabulous idea that we would get the girls all dressed up and play mommy photographer in the park for our Christmas cards.  Zoe and Reese cooperated for a couple good shots, but Ella was having none of it.  This is what most of our pictures looked like...

 
I tried again when she got up from her nap in the front yard, but Bobby thought she looked a little too jolly for the card.

Hanging Out With Momma!

Coming up next:  THANKSGIVING!

ELLA GROWS!! 6 Months!!

HAPPY HALF BIRTHDAY MY LITTLE NUGGET!!

Ella's Stats:

Weight: 14.83 lbs    27th percentile

Height:  25 inches   24th percentile

Here she is at her 6 month appointment.  Poor baby got 4 shots, but she loved eating the paper!

E girl is tiny but chunky.  She is right on track with all of her developmental milestones, but we need to work on sitting up a little more.  Dr. Terry said that she might not sit and play because Ella is an adventurous little thing.  She won't sit still for 5 seconds to even practice sitting on her own.  Oh well, she will figure it out eventually.  Ella has started scooting and rolling around the living room, so I can't leave her on her playmat without constantly watching her anymore.   I often find her like this:

Ella has decided that Chloe is her new best friend.  She loves to watch her every move and leans in to 'pet' her whenever she gets the chance.  Poor Chloe!  We are working on being gentle.

Ella is enjoying trying new foods and she currently eats bananas, pears, apples, sweet potatoes and peas.  Next week we will be trying avocado - mommy's favorite!!  She has been a little off on her sleeping schedule so we have added cereal before bed to keep her full.  I miss my 7am wake up call...4am is not pretty.  E should have a bottom tooth pop through any day now!  She loves the frozen foot to soothe her poor little swollen gums.

A couple more shots of my silly girl -

We are so blessed to be this little girl's mommy and daddy.  I wish she could stay this little forever, but we are having a blast watching her grow and learn new things every day.  I know Thanksgiving and Christmas will be extra special with this little nugget - Grammie already bought her a special Thanksgiving outfit!!

THAT FACE!