Ellery thinks her brother is so funny...until he makes her start crying by being a little rough. He likes to crawl in her bed after she wakes up, so here are a few pictures of her laughing at him. He even looks like he adores her in a few pictures.

Ellery's day at the amusement park--Lake Winnie was not the great day for Ellery that it was for Elan. I know it was like dragging her around, although she did pretty well. She did get a ride on a horse with mommy and a train ride. Her favorite thing? Using the fencing around the rides to stand up and practice holding on!

What kind of a mother feeds their baby Oreos? Or what even worse mother feeds their baby dirt? Well this one tries to keep dirt away, but it seems Ellery just loves it. First the sand last week, and this week it is mulch/dirt at the park. We had lunch at the park with our friends, and Lizzy really enjoyed pushing Ellery in the swing. You can see from the smiles how much Ellery loves the swings.

Ellery is trying to work on walking, even before crawling. She doesn't want to crawl, and she will just roll over if you put her in that position. So I tried using fingers to let her pull up. This is her favorite thing to do now. I recorded this because she cackles and makes these funny sounds because she likes it so much. The last video is her pulling my hair which is really funny. Be sure to turn up the sound pretty loud to hear everything.

YUMMY-sand...ugh...Ellery likes to eat sand just like Elan did. We went to Rocky Mountain today, and it was her first time in the sand but she was shoveling it in. (I feed her, I promise!). Picture number two shows this quite well. She was a good baby and had fun.

Ellery's first Jeep ride--on Saturday afternoon/evening we went to a creek near here so Elan could play. Anthony thought we should take the Jeep with the top off of it. I was a little afraid of how Ellery might feel getting her face blown so much, but she didn't cry. Guess she would have cried if it was so bad. She just put her feet in the water and splashed a little. It was way too cold for mommy and Ellery to get in. We had a good time, though.

Nine months old! Ellery saw the doctor yesterday for her 9 month check-up. She weighed 18 lbs 14 oz, and she was 28 1/2 inches long. This is funny because she was on the chubby side when she was younger and was higher on percentiles for weight at that time. Now the scale is flipped! She was 74th percentile for height and only 45 percentile for weight. She has slowed down on eating quite a bit, but her iron count was fine (they checked that), and the doctor was pleased. She needs to get busy on learning to crawl and pull up.
Below are some pictures from the last couple weeks, labeled with what they were.

July 7th--a visit with my friend Amy (who I lived with in Lexington and who now lives in Arkansas) and her son, William. He was born in November, but he is bigger than Ellery.

Ellery's nine month pictures--thanks Aunt Erika for the outfit

June 28th--Ellery in her new Mexican dress.