Eliana is 16 Months Old!!!

First and foremost, I want to share that Eliana's lunch time with me was delightful!  Awe, what a difference compared to last night's dinner!!!  She gladly ate her apple slices, bread, and lunch meat.  She willingly drank her milk.  She then went down for her nap without a problem. 

We've been busy this month, so let me catch you up on Eliana's 15th month.

Eliana loves spotting cats!  She thinks they are hilarious!

 One of the blessings of living in an apartment is that when the refrigerator breaks, someone else pays to get it replaced.  We needed a container quickly to move the food into while the new one was being plugged in.  Kyle dumped Eliana's book box so that we could use the tub.  She didn't mind a bit and planted herself among her treasures.  I realized yesterday that Eliana knows how to hold books right side up.  There was a season where she just chewed on them.  Then she'd look at the pictures, but it didn't matter if they were upside down.  Now for the most part, if she opens a book upside down, she'll fix it!  I'm amazed at what my wee one knows how to do.  We spend a lot of time reading together.  It is really one of the few times she sits still any more.  She loves to be read to, and I LOVE that about her.  She has her favorite books.  There are a couple that I don't even have to read the words anymore, but simply looking at the pictures lets me know what I need to say.

Eliana loves to do as we do, so putting on her dad's splint made perfect sense to her.  Kyle and Eliana wore beanies for one of the few cool days in October.  It is pleasantly in the 70s this week.  

Thanks Katherine for the jean jacket!

I love this picture.  It encompasses so much of Eliana's personality.  One, she is off exploring about on her own.  Two, I'm close behind making sure she is okay.  Three, she doesn't always walk with her hands up, but it cracks me up when she does!  Four, it reminds me of the Peanuts Gang.

 

Eliana loves to go down the slide.  She also enjoys trying to climb up the slide too!

Faith, Zoe, Eliana, and I enjoyed going to the zoo together!  They were looking at the elephant exhibit in the above pictures.

 Check out the camel's eye lashes!  Awe, and a flamingo for GramE!

 I wish I could say that Eliana was delightful for our pumpkin patch excursion, but that would be a lie.  She cried most of the 40 minute drive there.  Eliana was difficult with Kyle during part of the story time.  She cried for most of the time I carried her through Timothy the rabbit's neighborhood.  She screamed like her life depended on it for most of the 40 minutes we drove home.  On the flip side, she learned to draw in the dirt with a stick, and she has been practicing since then when we go on walks.  I'll be making pumpkin something soon with the pumpkin we got.  Also, our friend captured some of the few happy moments Eliana had on his camera.  You can compare how big she has gotten by looking at the post from last time we were at the Hillcrest Pumpkin Patch.  I remember that she cried the way there last time too.  I think the difference was that she was okay while there for the most part.

Don't you just love the bows on her socks?  Eliana loves to walk, explore, and discover new things.

She loved to show me the pine cone leftovers from a squirrel she found.  Pine cones are some of her favorite things to find as we walk.  

Eliana is learning where things go.  We can tell her to put her shoes away, and she will take them and put them in her desk drawer with her other shoes.  She can do it all by herself without us having to follow and make sure.  She figured out that leaves are connected to trees.  So notice the yellow leaf?  In her mind, it isn't where it is supposed to go.

 So she took it to a near by bush to put it back!  HA!  I love our little girl!!!

Below are pictures from last October.  

 She has grown so much in a year.  My how time flies.  Last year at this time she woke up multiple times in the night to be fed.  She loved to be rocked to sleep.  She didn't know how to roll, crawl, or walk.  She was so little.  She took multiple naps.  She didn't have teeth yet, nor had she had anything other than mommy milk.  Each phase has it's blessings, and I'm trying to focus on them before the change.  And when things are rough, I remember that they too are a phase.