Ellie 18 Months

         

          Ellie at 18 months is so much fun. Her growth is steady - her head is still in the 90th percentile, her height in the 40th, and her weight in the 20th. But what's really fun is her talking. Ellie talks. A lot. She knows more words than I can count, and while many of them sound almost the same, I am getting pretty good at differentiating between the things she says. Some of the cutest things she says are,

Thank You (too doo)
Love You (Eee you)
Please (Pwease)
Cheese
Yes (Yesh, yup, yeah)
Yogurt (a goat)
Crackers (ka coo)

She says countless other words and understands most of what I say to her. She still loves the outdoors, but she also love books and likes to pull all her books out and lootk at them. She plays ring-around-the-rosie, likes to sing "If You're Happy and You Know It" with all all the actions and sing "Old McDonald Had a Farm". She even sings "EE-AI-EE-AI-O". It is so fun to watch her learn and to communicate with her. She is very engaged and responsive and is such a smart little thing (at least we think so). We love her so much and she adds so much to our lives.

The Flower Garden

The random seeds I threw out this spring have blossomed into beautiful flowers! I have no idea what any of them are, but I'm just proud that they actually grew.

Yellowstone

     We planned our first camping trip with Ellie over labor day. Kati, Jeff, and Finn joined us for the adventure. It turned out to be a bit more than we bargained for. We left on Friday and the weather was gorgeous. We drove up to Jackson and met Kati and Jeff at Jenny Lake near Jackson Hole. We hiked halfway around and rode the boat back across the lake. We drove to Driggs that night and stayed with my aunt Myra and uncle Darin. They were so nice to host us even though they were leaving in the morning to head out on a cruise. They even showed us where the spare key was so that if things turned out to be a disaster we could come back and stay. Boy were were glad of that later. Saturday dawned absolutely wet and miserable. We drove up through West Yellowstone in a torrential downpour. We still enjoyed seeing some of the mud pots, sulfur pools, and old faithful. Ellie was pretty happy considering the cold and the rain, but she still had her share of tantrums.
    We made it in to our campsite, still raining, though it let up enough to set up tents, put a pavilion over the picnic table and heat up our chili for the baked potatoes. Ellie was tired and grumpy at this point and the temperature was dropping. I decided to sleep with Ellie in the back of the car. She did ok, but I didn't sleep well at all. I was worried all night about her getting cold and suffocating under our blankets. The next day it was still rainy, so we decided to pack up and spend the rest of the day in Yellowstone and then drive to Driggs and spend the night there. We got to see more of Yellowstone and even finally saw some wildlife. We stopped and had dinner in Jackson and enjoyed the beautiful view of the Tetons on the way in. Of course, the day we drove home was absolutely beautiful. We stopped in Lava Hot Springs for a dip in the hot springs. Ellie had a blast. Overall the trip was pretty exhausting and not a total success, but I'm still glad we went and we still had fun. At least we made some great first camping memories!

The whole crew.

Maybe this demon crow was responsible for the bad weather...