Cute Moments -- July 22, 2009

Hi Everyone--

We're on the eve of our four month anniversary with Ellie-Kate. We held her for the first time on March 23!! To celebrate, I wanted to share some particularly cute moments that we've had just in the past few days. She is so adorable and expressive and smart, and we're so blessed for every moment with her!!

1. Chelsea loves to adorn her little sister with hair bows, and she must have really made an impression on Ellie-Kate. A week or so ago when Chelsea was away at camp, Roger and I started to go for a quick walk around the neighborhood. I said (in mock horror) "oh no, we're leaving the house without a bow." Ellie-Kate immediately whipped her hand to her head and exclaimed "BOW, BOW!!" Yup, she's trained well :)

2. Along those same lines, we were just at the ball park on Tuesday for one of Emmy's baseball games, and we had packed Ellie-Kate's ball cap. Chelsea HATES for Ellie-Kate to wear a hat instead of a bow, and Ellie-Kate must know it. She asked for her hat, put it on sideways, walked over to Chelsea, and said "Hat, hat" with a huge chuckle. Okay, Chelsea was not amused. We can't get over how smart that Ellie-Kate is that she's already able to give her older sister some grief :)

3. What would a budding "girly girl" be without an obsession for shoes? We were at the library last week, and I pointed out a picture book about different types of shoes (matching people from various professions/activities). Yup, she had to bring it home :)

4. She's so intuitive, and, as she walks around the house, she points at various objects (such as a sweatshirt on a chair, etc.) and says the name of the person to whom it belongs. Given that I'm most likely to toss my sweatshirts on chairs, I get to hear my name a lot :) Also, if Roger gets up with her early, she calls my name as she passes our bedroom room for her own. She knows that Mama is still snoozing!

5. Given her early childhood experiences, we didn't know how she would be with other kids. She's turning into a socialite! We knew that she was a tolerant child from her patience with some of the kids when they don't share (or take toys away from her) in the church nursery, but she never really initiated play until Tuesday. At Emmy's ballgame, she found a few "friends" on a nearby blanket. She walked over to them and tossed her ball toward them. Before long, they were all running around together, playing with the ball, rolling in the grass, and laughing together. She's very outgoing, friendly, and increasingly confident!

6. Until our trip earlier this month to Indiana, bedtimes had been a bit long and rough. She always seemed very nervous about falling asleep. However, since our return, she has become even more relaxed around us and falls asleep with ease. We'll never know for sure, but we wonder if this deeper calm stems from a trust that she's really and truly with us, that she's not going to be passed off to anyone else. When we returned home from the trip and we brought her through that door, she rushed to embrace her daddy and her toys, and she gushed with gratitude to be HOME! She really hasn't stopped smiling for the past few weeks!! It's as though she now knows for absolute certain that she doesn't have to keep wondering if (or when) someone else will take care of her-- she has US, and we have HER-- we're FAMILY!!

Of course, every moment is special, but I wanted to share these few particularly cute ones with you. In the next few days, I'll post a family update as well as some new pictures. (I just found some pics that Chelsea and Emmy took in China and here in Ohio, and I'll try to get them up as well.)

Hope that all is well! Thanks for reading about our family :)

Christie