Walking & Talking. Well, Clicking

Here is Eleanor taking a short walk through the dining room. She showcases a few of her tricks. Waving, blowing kisses and clicking. And walking, I guess. She hasn't walked on her own just yet but she is getting closer each day. And cuter.

Good Advice

I love Conan O'Brien. I am sad at how things played out for him,
but I love how he handled it with class.
On his last show he made this statement.

All I ask is one thing and I am asking this particularly of young people that watch. Please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism for the record, it's my least favorite quality. It doesn't lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard,
and you're kind, I'm telling you,
amazing things will happen.
-Conan O'Brien

It's a good reminder for someone like me. It's so easy to criticize, so much harder to create. I often feel like I am trying to be the world's most under-qualified, self-anointed authority on all things that are none of my business. Keeping my mouth shut is often one of my new year's resolutions. This is a great reminder to speak sweetly, be more generous with praise and to "do" more and "talk" less. Starting.... now.

Eleanor's Messy Day and Other Bits

Eleanor makes us laugh constantly. It seems like each day she learns some new trick that cracks us up. She tries to copy almost every thing we do, and it always comes across so funny. Here is this mini version of"us" mimicking our actions. It often seems like she's mocking us.

Her latest.

-"Yawning." If you yawn, she responds by opening her mouth really wide and exhaling "Haaaaaah". Like you would to fog up a window in the car. I never noticed how much I yawned before until she started doing this each time I did. (In my defense, I am tired because SHE wakes up four times a night lately and wont go back to sleep without my help. So. Tired. Always. Trying to fix this.)
-She's learned to click and clock her tongue, and will stop in the middle of eating or jabbering to show you.
-She can blow kisses which is ADORABLE. (Sorry for the caps, but it really is.)
-She can do a fish sound too: "Bop, bop, bop."
-If you leave your feet out, she will tickle them with a high pitch "tcklklklklglgl" sound. It's from playing This Little Piggy. She will usually end it by biting your big toe.
-She also does this funny scrunch face whilst breathing quickly through her nose. Don't know where she learned it, or what she is copying, but we now do it back and forth with each other all day.

As she gets bigger we are introducing her to more and more foods. So far she likes just about everything. Today she ate a whole serving of pasta with marinara sauce. I started feeding her with a spoon, but she eats much better if I let her do it herself.
Here are the obligatory messy baby shots.
Crazed, messy baby shots it seems.

Here is a smidgen of her scrunched-face bit.

And... I'm not sure what she's doing here.
Getting her hair crusty, that's for sure.
What time is it? Bath thirty!

Hiding from the camera.

Later in the day we were having a lovely, quiet, Sunday afternoon. Eleanor was playing sweetly by herself, Clayton was on the computer and I was reading.
We were both on the couch about two feet from Eleanor.
Clayton comments that she is being awfully quiet.
We couldn't quite see her as we were reclining on the couch and
she was sitting on the floor right in front of our knees.
I lean forward to look and...

Yep. Eleanor had pulled out all the wipes out of the case. About 200 of them, one at a time. Here she has one on her head
and about 17 in her fist.

How can she cause such mayhem right under our noses? Such a naughty, naughty baby. To make up for it she "clocked" her little tongue about four times and then tickled Clayton's toes before crawling away from me at mach speed.
All right, such adorableness will atone for any mess.

In other naughty baby news, a few days ago I was trying my hand at plastic pom poms. You make them out of grocery bags to use as bows on presents. Here is a link if you want to try them. Eleanor got a hold of a finished one.
Both of these looked the same to begin with.
Her "after" version would be on the bottom.

And here she is on another day getting into the fridge. Her favorite sport. Like most babies, she loves to "unpack" any box, cupboard or fridge shelf. In this one she is trying to get out the Henry Weinhard cream sodas. She likes to hear them clank on the floor one by one.
P.S. The bottles unfortunately look a lot like beer bottles. The lady at the store even asked for my ID (Yikes! The very appearance of evil, yada, yada, yada. But also- so flattered to be ID'd!) before she realized they were just root beer. Not sure if it's worth buying them.

Love her tippy-toes! And I love that she is dressed like Audrey Hepburn (ala Funny Face) here. Only, not quite as trim as Audrey. Did you see her in those wipes shots above? CHUN-KY!

Why are fridge shots so embarrassing? Is that why they always show the fridge on Cribs? I promise there are some healthy vegetables in there behind the Costco-sized bottle of
chocolate sauce and all eight types of soda.
P.S. We are SO using all of those wipes. We just shoved them right back into the container, carpet germs be darned.

Come Out, Come Out......

Hey all you blog friends! If you are reading my blog, I want to read yours also! I honestly read every blog in those lists over there to the right. So if you have a private blog, I would love an invitation. You can send it to me at mariannemarguerite at yahoo dot com.

I also read (stalk) a lot of blogs from our friends in common, but wont add you to my RSS feed unless we've talked about blogs or you've commented on my blog. That's so you know I know that you know... I try not to be too creepy about it all. So leave a comment here if it's ok for me to add you to my list. Thanks!

P.S. Thanks to Lexie for doing this on her blog and giving me the idea.

P.S. I am a bit of a night owl, so I read a lot of blogs. Please write more.

Could You Take Her Seriously?

I mean, come on! Tell me this isn't adorable.

Our Little Fish

As I was going through photos for holiday blogging I realized that I had a ton of Eleanor just in the bath. So here they are in their own post.

Eleanor bathing in Utah.

We have a little, water-loving baby. Eleanor would love to spend her whole day in the bath if we would only let her. She gets so excited when I start running the water that sometimes she wont let us get her clothes off before she is diving off my lap. We really have to watch her carefully. She has no fear. She also will not subject to tub seats or other safety devices, no. She likes to walk around and reach for anything and everything. Babies are slippery.

Apparently the water tastes good.

This is in Tom & Jenni's tub. Allie gave Eleanor a swimming rubber fish for Christmas, so they took a bath together to try it out. (Sadly we left it in Utah on accident!) Allie was a little too nekked for me to post the pictures with her in them.

This is how she looks when I rinse her hair and soak her face. I don't try to get her face wet, but with all her aquatic mobility, it's a bit of a challenge. Luckily it doesn't phase her at all. Just a few extra blinks and she's good.

More bathing at Grandma's house. Mom had a little fun with the shampoo.

Lots of flash, lots of attitude.

Does anyone else think she looks like Jennifer here? (My older sister.) Or maybe Hannah? This is the look that I am talking about when I see the resemblance. (Also the shoulder shrug, that used to be Jennifer's signature move.)

No, that's not too big to bite. She cracks us up.

Happy, happy baby. Look at her adorable little teeth!
Did you notice how she is standing in so many pictures! Such a little daredevil!

2009 Holidays Part 2

Here is the onslaught of pictures you've been waiting for! These are in such random order, but I enjoyed them none the less. Hope you do too.

Let's start off with a shot of Clayton's study beard. He let it grow out during finals. I liked the indie-rocker look for a while, but...
Hooray for razors!

We had a fairly uneventful flight to Utah. We started super early, took the Michigan Flier to the airport and it leaves East Lansing at 3;30 AM. Poor Eleanor had a cold (us too) so no one really slept much. My parents picked us up and took us to breakfast. Eleanor really perked up when we stopped by Clayton's folks. She got to meet their new dog, Sunny.

Sadly, poor Sunny got ran over by a car just a few weeks after these pictures were taken! We are so sad for Rex and Kathy.

Eleanor loved playing with all her cousins. Especially Jack. Here she is showing him her
favorite thing. Cupboards.

And making his brother Calvin laugh...

And Megan too! It's pretty hard to look cuter than Eleanor in a picture,
but could Megan be more adorable?

Eleanor met her friend Millie. She is my brother's second cousin's daughter or something. But we are much tighter than that. I love how they are both fascinated by Tom in this shot.

I included this shot because it looks like they are showing off their best assets. Millie's insanely lovely, blue eyes and Eleanor's long lashes. Pretty babies!

Allie and Megan waiting in line to see Santa.

Daddy was a good sport to venture into the mall a few days before Christmas.

On Christmas Eve we went with a huge group of family to Red Robins. Even Great Grandma Marguerite came. Unlimited fries and root beer? We honestly could barely get her to leave. "But there is still food on the table!" (Reminder, alzheimers and lived through the depression.)
Here she is with my dad (her son) and Eleanor.

Karen and Steffi Smart were happy to see me. The feeling is mutual. And I really loved Steffi's headband. So freaking cute!

Eleanor has a new love of phones. Here she is finishing mine off.
(We got new phones for Christmas.)

We celebrated Grandma Marguerite's 90th birthday. She loved everyone singing to her. She sat there and looked so pleased. It was the cutest thing. That is her sister Kathleen, my great aunt sitting next to her. She is Eleanor's great, great aunt. (She is also a great, great, great aunt to my nephew and nieces kids. Dang!)

At the Firth family party Clayton played some Axis and Allies type of game with little airplanes with all of the boy cousins. Jeff, as usual always has some awesome-fun thing to do.

Christmas morning and all the fun.
Can you find Eleanor among the paper?

Allie got a suh-weet dress up box. Here she is rocking the tiara.

Spending a moment with cousin Kir. (Her hair is always glorious, btw.)

Eleanor just crawled around and around enjoying all the hoopla.
Allie decided on a late night snack a few days before new years. She wasn't very inconspicuous, so I snapped a quick shot of her. Her pigtails are so cute!

Allie got a hot new ride. Eleanor took it for a quick spin.

Still needs her license though.

All that fun, but we still got a few pouts.

We had a great time in Utah and are already missing family like crazy. Especially all the grandparents. Eleanor got spoiled silly and is adjusting to life with only two people to fawn over her. She came back with quite a few new tricks. She learned to clap, she honed her "Patty Cake" skills. (Before she could only roll, and roll, and roll...) She learned to take a bottle and can hold it herself. She learned to click her tongue and also learned to go down one step. She will be one in under two months and I can't keep up with her milestones. Where does the time go?! By the way, everyone is invited out to Michigan for her party.
Thanks to everyone for all of the Holiday fun!

Christmas 2009 Part One

Here are just a few of the 9000 shots I want to post of Eleanor enjoying her first Christmas. We had a great time in Utah visiting family and friends. We wish we'd had more time, as there were still a dozen things to do and several people to see, but alas. It goes so quickly. We were shuttling around like crazy everyday it seemed. It is nice to be home in Michigan to relax for a few days before law school starts back up.
So, on to the pictures!

We got the chance to go see our friends the Deifel's and their darling little Emma. She and Eleanor are only three weeks apart in age. Eleanor loved playing with Emma, poking Emma, stealing her toys...

Aunt Monica gave us some tasty lollipops. E kept trying to take Clayton's even though she had her own.

Christmas day at the Firths. Cousin Autumn gave E the darling monkey.

Opening her stocking Christmas morning at Tom & Jenni's house. Her big presents stayed in Michigan so we only brought stocking stuff from "Santa". Everyone else did a bang up job of spoiling her there.

Family portrait Christmas morning in our Christmas pajamas. (Which we opened early to attend a ward Christmas pajama party.)

Another shot of us.

And the big event! Eleanor seemed to really like Santa. She spent a good couple of minutes just staring at his beard. We bought pictures this year and they got a good one of her smiling. This is just the one from my camera.

These are just a few highlights. More to come when we are completely unpacked, Clayton is back in school and I don't have a lesson due.

P.S. Our Oprah taping is showing on TUESDAY! Set your VCRs! Oh, no one uses vcrs anymore? Fine, set whatever you want. I however need to go buy a vhs tape. Not even kidding. Do they still sell those?