What's she been up to?

We've been bad about keeping this thing up-to-date lately, but she's been up to a lot!

Within the last few days, she has been really working on pulling up on things -- bathtubs, coffee tables, couches, walls, etc. She then stands there indefinitely, holding on to her chosen anchor... "This is cool and all, but what do I do now?" She's still learning about sitting back down "gently" and "on purpose".

She continues to babble more and more, and really has been showing a desire to communicate. A few days ago, she had one of Julie's articles of clothing hooked around her leg and looked to Julie for assistance using her signature "Ehhh..?" Julie looked back and simply said "You want mommy's help? Oh, well just pull down your leg and around your foot, honey." So Elise looked back at her leg and proceeded to do exactly that. Of course, she gave herself a resounding round of applause for her efforts.

She has also been doing other things that lead us to believe that she really understands what we're saying to her. We were feeding her dinner last night, and one of her favorite things to do while we feed her is to bat the spoon away. So, I decided to try the obvious. "Here honey -- let daddy give you this food -- open your mouth..." And whaddya know.. it actually worked. She looked back at me for a moment, stopped trying to swat her hands in the air, and just dropped her jaw as if to say "Well, then -- let's have it!" Why didn't I think of this before?

She continues to dislike diaper changes -- she will wait until you've got the diaper off and, with little regard to whether we've finished cleaning her up, she'll take off -- "I'm free!" We have noticed that the best distraction techniques to use are post-card sized direct mail pieces and sun tan lotion bottles. She could stare at those things for hours on end!

She has recently gotten her 7th tooth in.. this 7th tooth is the tooth to the left of the bottom two middle teeth. She has the 4 middle teeth up top, and now the two middle and the one to the left of those on the bottom..

And speaking of teeth, she has become quite good at brushing them! What's a little odd is that we never really had to work with her on that. We handed her a toothbrush one day with a small amount of toothpaste on it, and she guides it all around her mouth like a pro, actually _brushing_ her teeth. I'm not sure if it just feels good on her gums or if she's seen us doing it, but it's really cute. She actually enjoys it too much sometimes and it can be difficult to get the thing away from her at bed time.

We had scheduled an appointment to have her "Yay, I'm 1 year old now!" pictures taken and had to reschedule. Julie and Elise actually went to the appointment, and Elise was in great spirits all the way in, waving to people all the way back to the JC Penney photo studio, but once Julie put her down in the studio and the photographer went to work trying to make her laugh and "smile for the birdie", Elise had anything but laughing on her mind. She has been generally going through a stranger anxiety phase lately, and her feelings seem to be exacerbated in uncertain surroundings (like the very dark and at the same time very bright, strange JC Penney photo studio). So I guess that's that. We'll try again on Sunday, and this time I'll be attending -- hopefully I'll be able to help out a little bit. I'll give an update once we get those pictures back, and hopefully we'll eventually have some of the pictures to show here.