i suppose ellie reached a hand-eye coordination milestone recently: throwing. things never go very far, but she’s definitely throwing. and i use the term “things” very generally because she doesn’t seem to discriminate when she throws. if it’s small and close by, it’s flying through the air in no time. this includes such things as pieces of quesadilla, raviolis, and a variety of toys, to name a few.

ellie put on a recent display of this new talent while tossing around the new sesame street figurines we bought her. she loves them, but it’s really hard to tell from watching this.

in other news, today marked a huge milestone for her: she went the entire day without a bottle. zero. zilch. nada. nothing. she drank all of her milk from a sippy, and ate her raviolis with a fork.

our little baby is growing up!

she also had her 15 month well baby check-up where we found out that her height is in the 50th percentile (a whole 2 ft. 6.5 in.!), her weight is still in the 95th percentile (25 lbs. 8 oz.) and her head circumference is … off the charts, but there’s no cause for concern since the rest of her is so big. our baby is just proportionate.

go ellie!

this kid kills me. she hates things on her head: ribbons, bows, any sort of hair clip, head bands, hats, WATER. you name it, she doesn’t like it. she’s even started to pull her hair out on occasion. well, one thing she loves is the bath (who doesn’t, right?) and she loves to splash. one recent bath resulted in a soaked mommy, so the next time around she got out of the way and busted out the camera.

ironically, while she doesn’t like water dumped on her head or getting in her eyes, she can’t get enough splashing, which … that’s right … gets water in her eyes. you can even tell she’s getting annoyed. but does she stop? no. why would she?

one thing we’ve always worried about is how bruiser, our cat, would behave around ellie. from the day we brought her home from the hospital we’ve kept a watchful eye on him whenever he walks by her or even looks at her. to date, it’s hard not to give the guy credit, he’s been pretty good with her. there have only been about three instances where i wanted to kick him half-way across the room because he’s swiped at her or given the indication he was about to pounce.

well, the worst habit he’s developed over our eight years with him is a penchant for unprovoked attacks. he has jumped and latched onto bryn’s leg in the middle of the night for no reason, bitten her (and sometimes me) again, for no reason, and generally been a little shithead seemingly out of the blue. this has always pissed me off and it’s why we’ve always been skeptical of him when around ellie.

this finally came to a head last night when, for absolutely no reason whatsoever, he lunged at ellie’s little chubby arm and latched on with his sharp teeth. she cried, of course. i kicked him square in the ass, of course. and bryn consoled and made it all better with some ice chips (which ellie loves to eat) and an awesome elmo band-aid.

now whenever the band-aid is visible she points to it or touches it and talks to elmo. it’s really pretty cute, her first band-aid. i’m sure there will be many more band-aids but, as far as bruiser is concerned, he has been warned: one more incident like that and he’s gone. nan and pop might be getting a new cat soon.

ever since ellie starting taking steps we’ve avoided the backyard. there were a million reasons for this, many don’t even need to be listed, but the main one for us was the fact that the cement had big gaps between sections. we had ventured out once before and her inability to walk very well resulted in her tripping on one of these gaps and falling face first.

these days she’s walking much better than she was then, so we gave it another shot the other day. as you can see, it went pretty well. the problem now is that she doesn’t want to be inside if she can see the backyard. i guess it’s not such a bad thing, but it’s not always warm out and mommy and daddy don’t want to be outside! silly baby.

either you’re reading this in a feedreader or you’ve noticed we’ve changed a few things around here (if you’re in the reader, click through!). the purpose of the redesign was two-fold: to spruce up the blog and to make it more of a site than a blog. while we loved the old version, and its style, it was simple.

and with that in mind, we went ahead and changed the theme we were using and added a few features here and there. for instance, you now have to click through to the blog (in the top right) instead of just landing on it. there’s a photo of the week, which we’ll obey loosely (i think i’ve already added a second photo this week). and there’ll eventually be a calendar. bryn likes to keep track of things, so we figured why not keep track online?

funny, i talk like we did this, that we added these features and made all these changes. that couldn’t be further from the truth, actually. our friend, and my co-worker, sean offered his design skills for this little project. he put in time outside of work at night and on some weekends to get this done, and we couldn’t be more appreciative. now all i need to do is get him to teach me how to be such a great photographer. but, i guess one thing at a time is ok.

do i kid? yes, but in all seriousness: thank you, sean. we don’t know what we would have done without you.

the easter ellie came to the lack house a little early this year. it’s so strange, though, her ears kept falling off and she didn’t hop around either, she walked. something’s fishy here … she didn’t even bring candy!

ellie had been to the zoo before … with her grandmas when she was approximately four months old, so we knew taking her again last weekend would be like the first time. couple that with the fact that she’s really starting to pick-up on new words and short phrases and you get one fun family outing.

we hit the road after ellie’s first nap and arrived to what was a surprisingly packed zoo. after we paid $22 + $6 in parking (!) to enter, we headed for the first exhibit, a fan favorite: monkeys. recently, ellie learned what sound a monkey makes (“oooo-oooo-AH-AH” she says), so we figured she’d really like this part. what we forgot, or at least i did, is how little zoo animals perform for spectators. this was no marine world. they mostly just sit there, but, hey, it was still cool to see some red butts. sick!

after checking out the monkeys for a few, we went to see the lions and, boy, were they lame. this marked the first exhibit of four to not have any animals visible in it. it was quite awesome. mommy was sad and ellie didn’t seem to mind much, she was just thirsty.

while the lions slept, presumably, we went to see some far more interesting animals: giraffes and assorted plains animals. we even got some decent pictures!

surprisingly, i think the big winners of the trip were the elephants, or “elliephants” as we call them. she loved them.

after a short pitstop for lunch, we headed out again down the backside of the zoo.

on our way out we saw a bunch of other animals, like more monkeys, parrots, alligators, otters, and barnyard animals at a small petting zoo they had there. i think ellie really like the petting zoo, except for the part where she almost got stampeded by a small group of goats.

all in all, it was a great day. i just can’t wait until she knows what everything is and can point them out.

next up, the aquarium!