Happy 9-month birthday, Ellie!*

Or, if you prefer, happy 3/4 birthday!

Our little lady's now been out in the world for just about as long as she ended up staying in mom's tummy.

Which is crazy.

Ellie is doing tons of cool and new stuff.

For starters, she now crawls. No more commando-style arm dragging. Well, some of that still. But crawling too.

She also pulls herself up on stuff. Like ottomans** and couches and parent's legs. Oh, and cribs. We were in her room today and Ellie pulled up into a standing position so that she was pretty much staring over the edge of the crib. Kind of awesome. Kind of terrifying.

She's full-on teething now. There are two super-cute bottom teeth and the top ones are making their way down. The sooner the better as far as we're concerned.

Ellie's eating lots of new foods too. She's trying new fruits and veggies and grains almost every day and she's pretty much obsessed with Cheerios. She's really into finger foods (like caviar crackers and deviled eggs***) and loves the scarily-named Biter's Biscuits.

Eleanor continues to amaze us every single day. She is sweet and brilliant and beautiful and we're so incredibly lucky to have her in our lives. The last nine months have been a complete blur, but when we stop and look back on all the changes and incredible moments, it's pretty overwhelming. In a wonderful way.

We're headed to the pediatrician next week and we'll hit you with the latest weight and height stats.

Until then, I owe you some video of all the new awesomeness.

And until then, I'll offer up this 9-month comparison between dad and Ellie. We were pretty convinced that this picture looked exactly like her. But when you look at them side-by-side there are actually lots of differences.****

THANK GOODNESS!






*Yesterday, if you're being technical.
**The furniture, not the empire.
**Take it easy
****Seriously, my ears are like full sized at 9-months. What I wouldn't give for that pre-broken nose though. Sigh...