upsy-daisy

ella is pulling herself up on things and standing. a whole new world. she's so pleased with herself, too. this morning she pulled herself up at the coffee table and stood fiddling with her cd player for honestly 20 minutes. i am spotting her pretty good, because i'm so nervous about her clonking her darling head.

also, she can go from sitting to crawling to her knees to her feet and then from her feet to her knees and then into a sitting position again.

she waves a lot when you say "hi" or "bye-bye" or when she looks in the mirror. if i want her to look in a mirror all i have to say is "ella, who's over there?" and she knows to look for a mirror.

she knows the meaning of "no." sometimes she shakes her head at me just to be funny, but sometimes she will look at something i'm offering her and shake her "no" and she really means "i don't want that."

we still have a corner of our living room with too many wires exposed. we never really leave her for periods of time without supervision or without putting her in the jumperoo, so we've kind of just put a couple of boppies in front of the wires. anyhow, she now wants to climb the boppies. i just firmly say "ella no no." and she stops in her tracks and shakes her head and (almost always) turns away and does other things instead.

last night j. and i went out to dinner at harry's. (our waitress was a woman who has waited on us for years. it's been a little while since we've seen her, though, and the last i remember her she was pregnant. it doesn't seem that long ago that she was pregnant, so i asked her "did you have a boy or a girl?" "a girl...sadie...she's 2 today." how can these babies grow so fast?) after dinner we walked to a small theater to watch "the counterfeiters," which was a foreign film about WWII. it was really well done. the theater is an old one with a stage and curtains and beautiful architecture. as you get your ticket ripped the usher informs you that there is "coffee and tea and hand dipped chocolate turtles upstairs."

how nice is that?

today k. is coming over to go with elenora and me to russell orchards to see the thousand pound pig and the goats, horses, ponies, chickens, rabbits, and ducks. i can't wait to see elenora's reaction to these animals. we might head to the beach afterwards before ella's nap. it's going to be a hot one.