Thomas Tidbits...

Our precious Eleanor is 7 months old today. Cue the sighing mother in disbelief... Ellie has had a big week:

: She finally cut her first tooth/teeth (can't tell if it's 1 or 2 of the bottom teeth). Ellie was teething like a madman last week, and she wanted to get everything but the kitchen sink in her mouth. The process left her incredibly fussy for about 4 days. "Calling irritable, party of 1!"

: She now crawls, sits, and pulls up, AND is able to transition from each of those movements with some sense of grace. Very few face plants and loss of balance now.

: While the amount of solids that she eats has doubled, she refuses to eat vegetables without fruits mixed in.

: Ellie's swimming skills were a huge improvement last week. She started to kick on her own, but the big feat was her going completely under. While she was completely unfazed, I had a mini panic attack after each dunk.

: The sleeping honeymoon is over. Ellie used to sleep until 7:30/8:00 a.m., and now she's waking at the still-dark hour of 6:15/6:45 a.m. I didn't realize how spoiled I was. I've tried to let her sit in her crib, but she immediately pulls herself up and grasps at the spindles of her crib yelling for us to come get her. Stinker.

: New button obsession

: Sticks her tongue out constantly. Thinking it's her feeling the new chompers?

Tailgate teether

Hanging out with Hadley Greager at the tailgate

Chewing on the tape measure as we were trying to measure her for her Halloween costume.

Bag Lady! Insisted on chewing on the brown paper bag from our tacos.

Cheery Cherry outfit courtesy of Meghan Hack

Trip to the pumpkin patch. Apparently I was asking way too much to get a smile. She was obsessed with checking out the big kids.

How can I get this in my mouth?

Tongue

A pillow covered in buttons? Fascinating!

This is the first photo shoot where she's been 100% mobile. Proved to be a big challenge, and Ellie almost fell off the bed about 10x.

Up to no good

My brilliant idea to distract her with the camera lens cap.

Grass discovery:

Veggie protest:

Kicking at swim class:

First full submersion at swim class:

Justin and I had the most amazing time in Sonoma with Maggie and Dylan Hale last weekend... beautiful weather, delicious food and wine, and all without schlepping baby paraphernalia. It was our first time leaving Ellie, and wouldn't you know, she got sick for the first time just 36 hours before we left. Needless to say, I was a total wreck. After a middle of the night call to the doctor and a doctor's visit the next day, we found out that Ellie's 102 fever was due to a virus.

Lucky for us, we had Nana to watch after Ellie while we were away (but that didn't keep me from crying the entire ride to the airport). Once we arrived in San Francisco, though, we immediately relaxed.

We stayed in Healdsburg in the Sonoma Valley, which is a quaint little town with a square that anchors the town. We stayed at The Healdsburg Inn, which was right in the middle of it all. We were able to walk to shops, restaurants, tasting rooms, and even some wineries.

A brief overview of our lineup:

Thursday:
Lunch at Healdsburg Bar & Grill
Shopping
Seghesio Winery
Dinner at Barndiva

Friday:
Tour of Michel Schlumberger and Harvest Lunch afterwards
Dutcher's Crossing Winery
Dinner at Campo Fina
Shuffleboard at the "towny" bar

Saturday:
Breakfast at Center Street Bakery
Driver Sid navigated us through Medlock Ames, Jimtown picnic lunch at Robert Young, Starlite and Hawley Wineries
Dinner at Dry Creek Kitchen

Sunday:
Shopping around the Healdsburg Square, a little football at Healdsburg Bar & Grill, then back to our favorite 6 month old!

Now, enough about us... onto the important stuff! It took Ellie a few days to recover from her virus, and once she was over it, she was back to her regular, silly antics.

What a lucky girl - Ellie had back-to-back grandmother weekends. Bama was in town this weekend so that Justin and I could go to Austin City Limits Music Festival. We had a great time with Clark, who was in town from KC. Meanwhile, Ellie was spoiled rotten with Bama love, song singing, and dance parties.

New happenings with Ellie:

: She is ON THE MOVE now... she army crawls like a pro, and can sit up on her own with very little support.

: She now knows when I leave the room (and doesn't like it one bit). This just started over the weekend, so we'll see how me leaving for work goes this week. I have a feeling it'll be a repeat performance of our drive to the airport last week:(

: She also threw her first temper tantrum. Ellie was obsessed with our laundry basket, so we thought it would be cute to put her in it. We soon realized how unsafe it was as it tipped with her wild movements. We took her out of it, and put it away. Cue the outburst.

: After a 3 day food strike (refusing to eat any solids), Ellie is back on track and eating like a champ. So far, she's had sweet potatoes, peas, green beans, black beans, carrots, peaches, mango, berries, bananas, pears, apples, and avocado. She's not so keen on green beans, but she's pretty open to everything else.

: Ellie was a great pupil at swim class this week. She barely sucked her fingers, engaged in all activities, and even acknowledged everyone around her. She seems way more comfortable in the water... all in all, I was a proud parent and impressed with her improvement.

: Ellie has a myriad of facial expressions now. Some of them are so strange that we don't even know what they mean.