Wasn't that long ago that little Ms Ella was a tiny baby. Last night, given the 9pm hour and the 80+ degree weather out side, many of the neighbors of our new little neighborhood street were out milling about, some ooh'ing and ahh'ing over the latest new addition to the street, a baby boy born just a few days earlier. It struck me that not only was the new, not quite so bouncing baby boy so small, but that our own most recent edition wasn't so small any longer.
Princess Ella is now fourteen months old. I know, in other postings I went on about how I really disliked the parental use of a number of months to indicate the age of their child, but fourteen months is much easier to type then ('ok, take the number of months in a year, what month was she born again, wait, that's not right... carry the one... no, there are twelve not ten months in a year... recalculate...') One Year and Two months. So, while it is easier to type, when asked I still respond 'A year and a couple of months' or 'A little over a year' - less actual math to perform in my head that way and I don't have to look like a super geek carring my pocket sized abacus around on my hip like a cell phone.
But getting back on track - Ella is really moving along, literally. She crawls faster then most other babies I've seen, not that I've seen a large number of babies seemingly hopped up on the latest major league baseball performance enhancing drug, but she seems to move pretty quickly, even without sports beat reporters chasing her. Ella actually prefers to be the one doing the chasing. She'll try and chase her older brother Aidan around the house, scampering as fast as a one year old on four appendages is able to do so - hands slapping on the floor, butt seemingly detached from the rest of her body as it adjusts right to left with each knee being thrust forward in an ever faster attempt propel her forward and keep up. All the while squealing with glee at the fun she is having.
Ella's seemingly always happy, well, at least most of the time. Did I mention cute as a bug?, at least any of those bugs depicted by Pixar - not necessarily any of your garden-variety bugs that you might find in, well, your garden. Ella enjoys playing on slides, and with water, but not really needing to actually be in the water, just to the side where she can reach in and splash around is fine with her. She's a bit dainty that way.
Ella also seems to be taking to boating at this early age. The noise doesn't seem to bother her, the rocking and bouncing doesn't seem to bother her, sleeping on the boat doesn't seem to bother her. She just seems to take it all in stride.
I wish I had some speech progress to report, however there really isn't any yet. She communicates with a few hand motions and various, random screeches and grunts which gets her message across, but certainly can't be counted as an actual language other then her own.
Overall Ella's a pretty cute, happy, fast crawling little girl who, while not yet really talking, is making strides towards standing independently, walking while holding on to someone's hands, and every once and a while tries to take her own single step for little girl kind.
