It's official!

Elinor can walk now. She walked across about 7 feet of the living room with no help at all yesterday! She still doesn't do much, but there are a few moments each day that she will just trot a few feet. Really quite exciting and fun! What makes things all the more exciting and fun is that now I'm spending more time with her... Caitlin has started working so I get Elinor when I finish work two days a week and the two of us walk home.. And then on Sundays I have her to myself for about eight hours! This week it'll be even more as her mother is working today and every night for the next five days so I'll meet Elinor at work to walk home everyday!

The other exciting thing is that walk home. Yes, it gets a bit much as she fidgits and now weighs over 20 pounds, making it a bit too much of an exercise to carry her for 40 minutes across town, in fact I may switch from carrying her home to using the stroller. But regardless, I think that it is good to get her some outside time, around the people and animals and plants that surround us. Two days last week while walking over the pedestrian part of the Steel Bridge, there were a gaggle of Canadian Geese with a mob of little greenish-yellow goslings down below us on the riverbank! Maybe not as exciting as the Sea Lion that I saw frolicking in the river the week before, but still a fun thing to be able to show little Elinor! And then today, on our stroll back from Whole Foods, we were walking down Flanders, which is a nice little street with lots of flowering bushes, and she was having a grand time brushing her hands across the flowers as we rolled by. Since we aren't fortunate enough to have any sort of yard, I feel very good about any relaxing time that I can get her outside to experience the world.

One big ol' year!

This weekend we celebrated Elinor's first birthday! Due to my silly obligations, we didn't actually celebrate it on Saturday (her birthday) but on Sunday instead. But Sunday was grand! Caitlin covered the key points of the day on her freshly revitalized blog, The Gauge, but I'll hand over my own rendition here.

Caitlin and Mom spent the whole morning preparing all sorts of good food, including two different kinds of cupcakes, both of which were very good (well, too good, actually,... I've had three more today and I can't get the last one out of my mind) and our dear friend Brooke and her wonderful Douglas and Sebastian generously donated their house and yard for the festivities!

They have a wonderful yard (complete with three adorable young chickens milling about) that even had a nice blanket out with a sun umbrella! It was all fun with lots of friends and family, including some that I hadn't seen in a while! After extensive socialization, we sat down for present time, and the blanket in the backyard was perfect for this. Though Elinor still doesn't really understand the opening of presents (and I become a little flustered trying to get her focused on getting them opened one at a time) it all worked out dandy... Aunt Jennifer even gave her a nice wicker chair that she could sit in for present opening time while Sebastian brought her presents to open and even helped her open them, as she's not quite up for that yet. She got all sorts of good stuff: her wicker chair, an xylophone, books, plastic singing/noisemaking things, a metal chicken that moves around and lays eggs, her first "little people", summer outfits, and much much more! Now we'll need to expand her toy storage beyond just the one wicker basket we use at home...


and though I, of course, wasn't planning on giving her any cake-like stuff, she ended up getting to enjoy a birthday cupcake after all! She seemed to like it quite a bit.

Excusing myself, and more big news.

Ok, so I'm still not going to get around to making a big post or putting any pictures up today. But... Elinor has finally had her first tooth (or are those teeth) begin to emerge from her gums! Not super visible, but you can certainly feel those little razors peeking out! It's very exciting, though it is causing her occasional pain and a lot of drooling... Also, any minute, her Grandma Mickey will be here from Vermont (Caitlin is at the airport right now), so this will be the quite exciting family time and fun for all of us, as we prepare for Elinor turning one this weekend!

And I will get some pictures up here... This blog certainly doesn't get its fair share of my blogging time, but I'll try to even it out for a bit.

little frenchie...

Yes, I do hope to make a bigger post sometime today, but I just had to put up a picture of how cute the little lady looks right now...