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.
Hello all. I don't have much time but I wanted to post some pictures and a quick update on what Ela is doing. She has started waving bye bye and drinking out of her sippy cup by herself (although sometimes I have to help tip it back far enough to get anything).
She is eating more and more foods, she won't allow me to spoon feed her anymore so I've gone to cutting everything up and letting her pick it up with her two little fingers. She's also eating larger quantities. This morning she ate almost a whole piece of toast and 1/4 banana for breakfast and for supper she ate almost a whole tortilla with beans and rice. That's a lot for a little tummy!
She loves to play all kinds of games. Her newest favorite game is one we invented tonight. It's called "Ela catch." The premise of the game is that we "toss" Ela back and forth between the two of us and she thinks she's actually being tossed and caught. We all laughed real hard.
She loves reading books, all the more when Daddy reads them with his funny voices. The ones with the lift flaps are the best. She has a couple of them memorized so she knows exactly where to lift from. She's always sure to put the flap back in place before moving on to the next page.
I know only a handful of people care about this but tomorrow his her 9 month checkup. At her last appointment on Nov 27th she weighted 14 lbs, 2 oz. and was 25 1/4 inches tall. Thom's guess for tomorrow: 16.5 lbs and 27 in. tall. My guess for tomorrow: 17 lbs 3 oz and 27.5 in. tall.
Ela and I went over to my parents house this afternoon. My dad found a little basketball in his drawer for Ela to play with. It's her favorite toy now. This is just a cute video of Ela playing with the ball.
Here's a fun video I think everyone will enjoy. One of Ela's latest things is shaking her head "no", although I don't think she knows it means no. She also can bob her head, "yes". Other new things she does are talk (at least she thinks so) and dance--well, more like keeps beat with her body. She also seems to be teething really bad. She already has one tooth completely in and a second one half way in. Lately, though she hasn't seemed quite herself and she has refused to eat anything but her milk during the last couple of days, which makes me believe she's got a bad case of teething. At least I hope that's what it is and not something serious. We've all been through a round of a couple of different viruses. Anyway, enjoy the video. It's great. Ela is great.
