11 Months Old Today!

It seems funny to be saying that Ella is turning 11 months old today because it is only the 28th day of the month...but since this is the last day of February, we are saying that Ella is 11 months old today.  One more month to go and our baby girl is one year old!  Ahhhhh!  Baby Ella is still the sweetest and cutest thing, but boy does she keep us on our toes.  She is still this incredibly active baby who crawls everywhere and is into everything.  She also stands like a champ and can be found many times a day just standing in place somewhere in the house.  Surprisingly enough, Ella is still not walking.  Although she started crawling and pulling herself up at a really young age, she really did plateau (which is fine with me).  She has taken one or two steps at a time on several occasions over the past month, but normally will plop back down on the ground whenever we try to encourage her to walk to one of us.  However, this past month she really discovered the stairs and with very little practice mastered all sixteen of them.  She even figured out how to go down them backwards with very little instruction!  The only problem is that we have gone looking for Ella several times and found her upstairs just hanging out in the loft area or playing with toys in Lia's or Logan's bedrooms.  Oh dear.  Needless to say, the baby gate got put up after that happened a few times.  On a different note, Ella discovered how to click her tongue this month and does it all the time.  She still is taking two naps a day and sleeping well at night.  Ella still is a great eater and really hasn't refused any food we have thrown her way.  Besides eating baby food with her rice cereal in the morning and a meat and veggie baby food at night with dinner, Ella is only eating table foods.  She loves to laugh and giggle and readily chases her siblings wherever they go.  She also gives the BEST bear hugs whenever she is in the mood.  It's the cutest thing as she will wrap her arm around our neck and just pull us in tight.  I love it.  Ella also went on her first plane trip this past month to California and added another state to her little list of places she has visited.  She survived 8 marathon days while on vacation with shortened naps each day and interrupted sleep at night (due to her brother waking her up), but hung in there like a champ.  However, I know that she was SO happy to be home as her entire demeanor changed the day after we got home.  We were both so glad to be back in our own home and sleeping in our own rooms and back on schedule.  She is a girl after my own heart!