Cleveland

Uncle Zach with Eleanor
Aunt Kristin with her "Ellie"
Eleanor and her cousin, Ireland, who is one month older than her.
Aunt Rita and Eleanor
Cousin Evan holding Eleanor for the first time.
SInging Happy BIrthday to Nane before we left for our trip.
The cousins helping Nana open her birthday present.

We took Caroline and Eleanor to spent 8 days with their Nana and Papa in Cleveland while Brett and I went away together to Vancouver for one of his business trips. They got to spend time with cousin Ireland (Uncle Jon and Aunt Audrey's little girl), too, who is 9 months old and had never met Caroline and Eleanor before. Caroline and Eleanor were very busy playing with their Aunt Rita, Aunt Sarah, cousin Evan, and met many little neighbor friends that kept them busy, too! The girls did great while we were gone. When we returned we went to a surprise 60th birthday party for Brett's mom! Uncle Ron, Aunt Kerri, and the girls' cousins Dylan, Brady, and Hailey came into town, too, to help celebrate. 

Teething Has Begun

Eleanor is starting to teeth. She is definitely getting her bottom left front tooth. Nothing has broken through yet, but she is very fussy at night. Oragel and baby Motrin have been helping  a bit. Hopefully it will come through quick!

Mother's Day at the Zoo

Caroline's jaguar
Checking out the "Mommy" Elephant
Riding the cheetah on the carousel
At the Children's Zoo playground
Daddy and Eleanor
Checking out the goat at the petting zoo.
Mommy and her girls

We went to the zoo for Mother's Day today. It was perfect weather, 85 degrees and sunny (perfect weather for us to mid-May!). Caroline had a fantastic time and we had just as much fun watching her play and look at all the animals. She decided before she left that she wanted to see a jaguar, like "Diego's" friend Baby Jaguar. Thank goodness the zoo did not let her down. Not only did she see her jaguar (napping, of course), but she got to ride a jaguar on the carousel, too.

Singing ABCs for Daddy

Caroline wanted to sing a song for Daddy and have me email it to him while he was away working in Australia.

Eleanor at 7 months

Ella Grace loves trying to drink from her sippy cup
Practicing holding her bottle
Watching the family from her highchair

Taking a snooze

Eleanor loves mealtime! She especially loves peas, green beans and pears and does not particularly care for sweet potatoes right now. When she is in her highchair being fed, she "talks" and makes happy noises the whole time. She eats three meals a day now. She has rice cereal with half a jar of baby food in the morning about an hour and a half after her bottle when she wakes up. At lunch she eats another small jar of baby food and at dinner she eats rice cereal mixed with half a jar of a fruit or vegetable again. She is drinking 6-8 oz. bottles on a regular basis now in between meals. Eleanor is starting to try to hold her own bottle and usually does a better job with it if there is not much formula left in the bottle.  She also has been starting to hold and drink a little bit from a sippy cup (although she usually ends up with half the water from the cup all over her front!). 

Eleanor also loves playing on her tummy and rolling across the living room or playroom floor. She can also scoot backwards when she is on her tummy, but I don't think that she realizes that she is doing it. Eleanor definitely makes a great effort to find objects if she drops them or if they are "hidden" under something else. Her favorite thing to play with it any king of tag-tags on toys, bibs, and the many tags on a "taggie" blanket that her "Aunt" Kelly made when Caroline was born. She will turn the little blanket around and around until she has put every ribbon "tag" in her mouth and made them all soaking wet.

She is definitely our little observer. She still LOVES to watch her older sister and will laugh and laugh at what Caroline is doing (even if Caroline isn't meaning to be funny!). She will jump and play in her exersaucer, while keeping an eye on everything that is happening around her. She is just such a mellow, happy baby all day...now if only she were like that every night, too!

Lack of Sleep-UPDATE

Eleanor is sleeping a bit better now (except for last night when she woke up again at 3:30am), but she is waking up super early. She'll sleep from 8:00 pm until about 5:30am and it is a fight to get he to go back to sleep for another hour to hour and a half. We usually give her her bottle at 5:30ish am and then put her in the travel swing in our bathroom with fan on, which usually knocks her right out. Then, of course, Caroline has been waking up at about 6:15 in the mornings, so we are usually up and at it pretty early around here.

Lack of Sleep-Still! HELP!!

Anybody have any great ideas on how to get Eleanor to sleep through the night??? Before she was sick with Rotovirus a week and a half ago (she catches every illness that goes around!), she has stopped sleeping through the night (she had really only slept though the night for the 5 nights in a row before she got sick). When she was sick, she was eating so much less during the day, that when she woke up at night, I would get up and feed her. Now that she doesn't have rotovirus anymore, she is cutting her first tooth. Earlier this week, she would wake up screaming at about 3:30-4:30am. Because I knew she was cutting a tooth, I gave her some Tylenol and Oragel and tried to get her back to sleep without much success. Every night since last Sunday, she has still been waking up between 3:30am-4:30am and will cry for an hour or more. One night she screamed from 4:30am-6:00am and then Caroline woke up at 6:15am. We did not give her a bottle though, b/c she don't want to encourage her to wake up. Last night she woke up about the same time and was just cooing and "talking" in her crib for about 10 minutes-obviously NOT in pain. Then she started get more and more annoyed and then finally started screaming. We have been trying not to pick her up when we go in and we have not been giving her a bottle, just trying to comfort her from outside the crib or rub some oragel on or give her some teething tablets. But as of last night, I'm not so convinced that her tooth is the issue, if she was waking up happy. I think that she is just really mad that she is not getting a bottle at night anymore. Any ideas out there???? WE NEED SLEEP!