Hi. My name is Gabriela Madeline Stark, but you can call me Ela. Welcome to my blog! I can’t speak English, Spanish, French or German yet, but my parents are going to write down some of the cool stuff I do, until I’m old enough to do it myself. I hope you enjoy reading about me. I’m completely oblivious.
It's been a while since I last posted about Ela and so I sincerely apologize to those who check back here for updates and pictures. I guess life has been busy, but we're still having a blast.
Let's see, what has Ela been up to? She just turned 10 months last Wednesday. Time has gone by so fast and I find myself fantasizing about her birthday party. I know she won't know or care but I will and I want to have the story to tell and pictures to show her when she's older.
She seems to have skipped right over the crawling stage and into the walking. The drive to get up and walk seems to be irresistible. There are times when she will simply insist that someone come help her walk around. This stage has been demanding on us parents since she requires our help all the time, although she's gaining more and more independence every day. She now holds on to furniture and tries to move from the coffee table to the couch and back (they're only about a foot apart). For a week or so she has stood on her own for intervals of about 10-60 second or longer. Today, for the first time, she stood and clapped her hands at the same time--this requires quite a bit of balance! She was giving herself a round of applause for having put her toy in the toy box.
We've been to the playground on the few days when the weather has been nice. She loves the swing. She hangs on tight and doesn't mind going high. We tried the slide but she doesn't get the fun in that yet so we pretty much head straight for the baby swings.
Ela walking the drive way with her abuelita.
I think this is the second or third time she stood solo.
Still loves bath time! She'll stand at the tub and dance around and try to climb in the tub while I'm preparing her water.
She had a blast pulling out all the books. I think she was also proud of herself.
Playing in Abuelita's back yard on a beautiful spring day.
Our days have been busier. It's been hard to find time to post on blogs these days. Thom got a new job so now he's working two jobs. I've also been working more. This is good, since we need the money. But we're crunched for time-- time together and time to get miscellaneous things done.
Ela, as always, is wonderful. Today she waved bye bye to Thom for the first time. She's been saying Dada for a few weeks now. She likes to sing loudly and she now eats big person foods. Her newest food is little pieces of green beans. She loves them. She's been refusing to crawl for a long time. She finally looks like she's on the verge of that milestone, but not quite yet. I hope I can get some video of her when it happens. She likes to stand up and sit down, over and over. She also can now stand while holding on to a chair or the sofa and she can take little steps while holding on to mom or dad's fingers.
Next Thursday is her 9 month checkup at the Dr. I'm eager to find out her weight and height. I'll be sure to let you know how her growth is once I know. It's been three months since her last appointment and I'm proud to announce that for the first time we didn't have to go in to see the Dr. in between checkups for some nagging illness, which means a healthy baby.
Well, that's enough of that. Here are some recent pictures:
Zebra shirt from Aunt Amanda!
Practicing use of sippy cup.
Eating something (Cheerio, I think).
Eating tortilla-- yum!
"Dada"
Oh yes, Ela's new little friend, Ava Rose entered this world on Feb 12th around 5:40pm. Ela, Megan and I went to visit her and her mommy today. They're doing great and Ava is beautiful. I can't wait to spend some more time with her and I'll be sure to get some pictures up here of Ela interacting with Ava. She was definitely intrigued by the little crying baby and wanted to touch her so bad--which just serves to remind me all the more that Ela is no longer a little baby. It also gets me thinking "big sister", but I should probably put that thought away for now.
It kind of looks like I'm helping her but I'm not touching her. She's been working on this for awhile now. We would help her sit and hold her, when we let go she would stay there for about two seconds before she tipped. Well, today I was playing that very game with her when suddenly she didn't tip. She figured out she can use her hands to hold herself up. I think this takes her one step closer to crawling. If she can incorporate using her arms like this into the moves you saw below then she might just get somewhere. We'll really have to keep or eyes open after that. Yikes.
Later on tonight Megan and Ashley came over and helped give Ela a bath. After her bath Ela was up to some more sitting. Here's what happened:
No, Ashley didn't push her down. She tumbled on her own and I didn't catch her quite in time. No damage was done.
