Elise is 1 year old!

Yesterday was Elise's first birthday - my, how time has flown by! She had her 1-year-old checkup at the doctor's today - she weighs 21 pounds 6.5 ounces, she is 28.75 inches long, and her head circumference is 18 inches (all of which are either slightly above or below the 50th percentile).


Last Saturday we had the Niehaus' over - Jeff, Jayne, and Kurt - to help celebrate her birthday. I made up some fingerpaints (which ended up being the consistency of mashed potatoes) and we let the kids go at it. (I was surprised that it was much less messy than I was anticipating.)

Unfortunately because my hands were also covered in finger paints, I wasn't able to get any good pictures of that experience. I did, however, get some pictures of the kids eating cupcakes...


...and playing.

Elise chased Kurt around, smacking him on the head and occasionally trying to give him a kiss. Fortunately, Kurt was a great sport about taking Elise's attention or else I'm sure it could have turned into a very ugly baby brawl mess! Kurt never got upset, though. He seemed to take the strategy of trying to ignore her, and, when that didn't work, he'd try to escape and get away from her. Unfortunately, for Kurt, there was only so far he could go and Elise was always right behind him!

Finally, here is a picture of Elise on her new bouncing zebra toy that she received as a birthday gift from Grandma and Grandpa Schniter.


I think she had a very happy 1st birthday!

Mobilizing

It took little more than a week for Elise to go from just a few steps to being able to cross the house on two feet alone.




The music is We're All Connected from MMW's totally awesome kids album, Lets Go Everywhere - highly recommended for parents and kids!

Toddling into the new year!

Its been forever since we have posted anything on our blog. The holidays consumed us for a while, with grandparents in town, and a lot of activities beyond the normal routine. This news event was quite worthy of a posting, though:

In the past week of this new year, and since Elise has turned 11 months, she has been taking her first steps! She seems to be quite proud at times, looking to us with a big smile after successfully taking two or three steps on her own. It seems like everyday she is spending more and more time traversing the house, usually with one hand out touching the wall on occasion for balance, but also with her new little push-toy/car/walker thing which she holds on to and walks behind (until it crashes into a wall).

Here she is going up and down the hall, and working on some of those first steps:

Cruising, crawling, and sloppy kisses at 9 months

Elise is 9 months old today! And, over the past month, she's been one darn cute, sloppy-smooching, raspberry-blowing, drum playing, cruising (walking while holding onto furniture, etc.), and crawling girl!


She's given up the belly crawl for crawling on all fours. She still loves to pull herself up to a standing position and has been cruising around the furniture, walls, baby gate, dressers, bookshelves, etc. for a while now.


She's also started giving "kisses" over the past few weeks -- big, sloppy, drooly, open-mouthed kisses. They are definitely kisses, though, because she occasionally even makes the "mmm-waa" kissing sound. Sometimes, when she's feeling especially goofy, she'll even blow raspberries on our cheeks, necks, arms, whatever piece of skin she can get her mouth on.


She still says "mama" and "dada" pretty indiscriminately, but it is starting to seem like its correlating more and more with the correct person. Jake is convinced that she is trying to say his name, too. It kind of sounds like "hike" (some combination of "hi" and "jake"?), but he may be right. She does seem to say it almost exclusively when he is around.

I love these next two pictures...

Elise's First Halloween

Elise got to experience her first Halloween out of the womb. She fell asleep just as the first trick-or-treaters were trickling by (kind of late - after 6:30 - our last group was by at 9:15 !), but was up an hour later, and in her "anatomically incorrect chimpanzee suit" (called such because it has a tail, but chimps and apes don't have tails). Dad was a spooky vampire, and mom was a gypsy. Jake who got back from a cross-country track meet in the evening was already in costume, and so he was a "cross-country man" for Halloween. Our pumpkin was even in disguise - as Jack Skellington. Here are some pictures of this year's home-based festivities.

Elise's 1st camping trip

Elise went on her first camping trip with her dad this past weekend, where we met up with on old friend of Eric's and new friend of Elise's: Geoff. Unfortunately Jessica couldn't make it because she had to conduct some research and was also volunteering along with Jake at the local senior center.

The camping trip was to Pinnacles National Monument. We spent Saturday relaxing at our campspot. Elise got to meet Geoff for the first time, and enjoyed her opportunities to pull on his beard, and to get some botany lessons. Hopefully she retained the most important message which Geoff kept repeating: "these plants are good for looking at, but not for eating..."


On Saturday, after getting our camp set up and getting Elise well fed and settled into the great outdoors we went on a little practice-hike with her in her new backpack carrier. It worked out great, she was excited to have a great vantage from up above and soon was asleep with the motion of her dad walking along.


That evening Elise got to see her first camp-fire which she was mesmerized by --but after about 15 minutes, she was out like a light. The night got very cold, but bundled in her bear-suit, lots of fleece blankets, and sharing her dad's sleeping bag, she managed to stay snug and toasty. The morning was quite chilly, and she was content to pass the first few hours tucked away where she knew it was the warmest:


We made breakfast, and let Elise play in her corral a bit before heading out on our hike.


On the hike, we saw tarantulas, and enjoyed many nice vistas from the high peaks.


Elise slept most of the way up, and woke up as we neared the ridge line. She was quite excited at the top and was hooting and making all sorts of happy-sounds. It was pretty cool to think that she was enjoying the same gratifying "on-top-of-the-world" emotions that drives us out-door lovers to climb to high places with beautiful vistas.






Now we are back to our usual. Elise is cozy at home, and mom, dad, and Jake are busy with their school work, and all the other demands of day-to-day humdrum. Fond memories of this outing just might be creeping into her daydreams- I know they certainly do with mine.

Elise is 8 months old!

Its hard to believe, but, yes, Elise is 8 months old today.

She is still doing her belly-crawl, but has recently started pulling herself to a standing position. Who knows -- maybe she'll start walking without ever crawling on all fours.

Besides standing, one of her other new favorite things to do is to crawl through her Ocean Wonders tunnel.

She's recently started cutting her two top teeth (consistent with her bottom teeth, they are coming in at the same time). The tip of the tooth on the right finally poked through the gum yesterday, and by the looks of it, the other one is not going to be too far behind.

Elise and I recently took a trip to Cincinnati to see some family. She was awesome on the plane -- actually, all 5 planes we rode due to layovers, switching planes, etc. She slept a lot, would wake up occasionally - smile, laugh, and talk to people around us - then go back to sleep.

On our first flight from Santa Barbara to Santa Cruz, there were very few other passengers so she got to sit by herself for a little while. Here she is intently watching the safety information video before takeoff...what a good little traveler, huh?


She seemed to have a great time in Cincinnati --playing with cousins and our good friends the Hooks, seeing aunts and uncles, and hanging out with Nana. And, of course, they all seemed to really enjoy spending time with her too. Here are some of my favorite pictures from our trip, and as you'll see, she definitely was not lacking in attention.

Here she is being held by her cousin Marley...
Here she is being taken for a walk by her cousin Rainey...

Here she is with India (daughter of a close friend), who was reading her a story...

Here she is sitting next to her cousin Brianna, who (although you can't really tell) is 7 weeks younger than Elise...

and, last but not least...here she is hanging out with with my mom, her Nana...