The Zim Life is making a come back!

For a long time I thought I created this blog to keep family and friends updated on Ella and our family adventures. But during this time off, I have realized that the blog is a way for me to preserve memories for Ella, Adam, and myself. Being able to extend that to our family and friends is also still very important to us, and so, I have decided to pick the blog back up J

Catching up on the last 10 months would be impossible, so I won’t try. I might post a few “throw back” stories once in a while but I am not going to recapture the entirety of the last 10 months.

Ella is now 16 months. She is clever, sweet, determined, very bright, funny, and feisty! Physically she has hit many big milestones. She took her first step on May 29^th (14 months), but started walking, unassisted, on July 8^th (15 months). During the month of June she would walk while holding my pointer finger (she only wanted ONE finger). She took both her first step and launched off on her own at the water fountains by our house. Bellow is a video of her first step and the day she walked without any help – I was incredible to watch.  

Ella’s personality is full-bodied! From the moment she wakes up, to the moment she goes down, she is full of spirit, curiosity, and energy. She wants to know the name of everything she comes in contact with and will often repeat it (yell it, sing it, say it in different ways) several times until she “banks it.” She will then return to this new object several times during the day to identify it, and find all the ways in which she can play with it.  

What has been most amazing lately is her ability to remember where we have been, what we have seen, and what I have told her. For example, if we see her best friend Jane in the morning. I can ask her, who did we see today? She will say "Jane!" and get very excited. If I tell her we are going to see the ducks, she will answer "ducks, wa-wa" (water) when I ask her, where are we going? She will get mesmerized by something she sees, such as an airplane, and will talk about it for days. She goes bananas when she see airplanes and helicopters. She will say “Airplane, sky!”

She is starting to use two words more and more. Brush teeth. BLANK, Please. Airplane Sky.  Please, help, thankyou (one word), and mama are often tossed on the ends of one-word “requests.” She can get very demanding when she sees or thinks of something she wants. This is where she becomes a little feisty. But if I acknowledge her, with eye contact, give a pause and then ask her to nicely ask for it, she will, with a big smile! UGH UGH UGH UGH then turns into “cheese, please” hahah.

Every day she is learning something new and applying it tomorrow. It is the most incredible experience watching and being part of her development.