At naptime today, Elliora nursed and then declined to actually go to sleep. So we got up and played with Photo Booth instead.

(0:58)

In this one, you can hear her saying “yeah,” one of her favorite words; and you can see her bottom teeth pretty clearly a couple of times. Every time she leans forward, she’s touching the monitor where she could see her face, and occasionally banging on the keyboard.

(1:07)

When I say “ow” in this one at the :49 mark, it was because she flung herself backwards so suddenly that her head connected with my cheekbone rather painfully. I don’t know if, when she says what sounds like “back,” if she was actually saying that word. But I figured it wouldn’t hurt to repeat it and move her back to the laptop. At the end when I tell her to say bye-bye, she actually says, “ha,” which means “hi.” Contrary little twerp.

(0:39)

If you only watch one of these videos, watch this one. It’s the shortest, and there’s lots of laughing (plus me pulling faces) in it.

(23 seconds)

(12 seconds)

(53 seconds)

Happy Friday! Have a good weekend, y’all.

Friday wrapped up another fantastic run of 7 Days. I wasn’t really in the mood on Day 1 last weekend. But as usual the week of taking self-portraits; viewing everyone else’s creative, silly, honest, fun shots; and commenting up a storm worked its magic and brought me right out of my funk. It’s a fact: 7 Dayers are the defunkifyingest group on Flickr. I’m already looking forward to the next one in December.

This was my alternate for Day 7. I felt left out of all the dottery photos, so I took a photo of me, drinking my tea, looking out at the rain. This photo has two 7 Days connections: I was with Lauren C. when I painted this mug, and the tea that I’m drinking is the PG Tips that Lauren H gave me when we met up with her last summer.

Just for kicks, here’s a short video I shot at the Ontario airport in California last month, right after Elliora learned to play peekaboo. It cracks me up how she doesn’t quite get that she needs to cover her face for this game to work, though she’s gotten better since then.

Part of the reason I’m randomly posting this second video now is because I was scrolling through old blog posts today, looking for one I was sure I’d written about our three-day power outage last January when my parents were here…and I didn’t find it because I never wrote it. I also never wrote about Elliora’s baptism and Rachel coming to visit! I can’t believe how many things have gone unblogged in the past year. Sheesh. I need to just start blogging things, even if the posts aren’t well-organized and the photos aren’t all edited and uploaded yet.

While we’re being random, we might as well end this post with an adorable photo of Elliora and Annalie driving a grocery cart at the store recently.

This little punk is in the thick of the eight-month sleep regression. Basically, her brain and body are in overdrive, learning and perfecting new skills like waving hello,

crawling,

pulling herself up,

and standing.

Not to mention all the teething that’s been going on.

Clementines make good teethers. Also limes.

With a nod to Jen.

Her two top teeth and two more on the bottom are working on poking through her gums, too. They haven’t popped through yet but we’ve been able to feel how swollen her gums have been in those spots.

And then of course there’s the fact that we just got home from three weeks in California and Oregon, which means she’s three time zones off schedule. And we’re back at home with our cats (exciting!) and all the toys that she hasn’t seen for ages (whee!) and all this familiar furniture she’s apparently been dying to pull herself up on for ages because as soon as we set her on the floor that’s what she immediately does every time (ZOMG being vertical is AWESOME!1!!).

There are many, many reasons for her to be having trouble sleeping easily and peacefully right now, is what I’m saying. But that doesn’t make it any less frustrating to live through.

Last night, after three hours of me and Troy taking turns trying to gently parent Elliora to sleep—rocking, back-patting, nursing, walking, singing, etc.—we gave up and brought her out to the living room to play happily with her toys while we watched TV, exhausted. She went to bed with us an hour later.

Tonight she took a one-hour nap at 8 o’clock, fooling us into thinking maybe she was going to sleep better. Hahahaha, what suckers we are. She woke up at 9. Around 11 we brought her out to the living room to play while we caught up on White Collar. (Do you watch? We love that show. It seems to get better every season, doesn’t it?) She managed to keep herself awake and relatively happy till 1:30am. That would be 10:30pm PDT, which would still be at least two hours later than she ever stayed up when we were on vacation.

Babies, man. They’re so unpredictable. At least my babies are when it comes to sleep. Oh well. It won’t be too much longer and she’ll be sleeping peacefully again, I’m sure. By then I’ll probably be spending my days chasing her around and cursing our lack of child-proofing, wishing she were still trying to figure out how to stand up.

Elliora’s latest thing is bouncing. And she doesn’t quite crawl but she does get around.

My Photo Booth has been freaking out lately. Or possibly my webcam. It always seems to work fine when we use it for Skyping, though, so I think it’s Photo Booth. Often movies will randomly have no sound. This is the first time a movie ever froze like this, though. (The freeze lasts only the first few seconds, then it’s jumpy. But still cute.)

Elliora was so smiley during a middle-of-the-night diaper change that I grabbed my camera to document it as a happy thing. Then I realized I was in the photo too (faintly, but I’m there) and it was after midnight. Boom, Day 6.

Yawn.

Happy baby is happy to see you! Even at 1am. To answer the question many of the Flickr commenters had: yes, Elliora went back to sleep pretty easily after this, even though it looks like she was wide awake. She usually goes back to sleep quickly as long as she can nurse.

Annalie said, “Ever since I was one year old and started walking, I’ve run to my Gramaw at the airport.”

Annalie took this alternate self-portrait in the mirrored side of the moving sidewalks at the airport.

Elliora loves to eat, and she eats a lot of food. It’s kind of startling how much she can pack away in one sitting. I feel like I spend most of my time these days feeding her or cleaning up after feeding her. (Yes, you can see me in every one of of those pictures. Click here for the large version.)

My Day 3 alternative. Painting pottery keeps me sane. After a rather annoying day, coupled with ongoing sadness about things happening around me (not to me), I needed to paint in the worst way. I felt much better after dotting a mug.

Big bubbles!

The Day 2 theme for 7 Days is BLACK. So I played a song on the black keys only. “Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater” is one of the very first songs I learned how to play on the piano, even before I started taking lessons. My older cousins taught me on the piano at their house.

And here is Annalie, in the BLACK phonebooth.

Elliora has been talking in this weird guttural voice lately. It’s pretty funny. My mom took this video of her, with my brother in the background growling back at her.

Elliora is sitting up pretty well now. In just a day or two she went from being able to balance in a sitting position for a second or two, kinda, to being able to sit for 15-20 seconds at a time. I expect by the time we leave Omaha she’ll be walking and reciting her ABCs.

(Sorry for the lazy blogging. I have a half-dozen other posts in my head, but you’re getting videos of my kid sitting instead. I meant to post a photo yesterday for Wordless Wednesday, just a photo, and didn’t even manage that. You’re lucky you’re getting videos.)