19 months on Valentine's Day!

Ellie and Mommy all dressed up on Valentine's Day!
Look at that face! Could you get more adorable that this? :) Not to this Mommy!
Sporting a new Valentine's outfit from Grandpa and Grandma Johnson!

And I couldn't resist including this one of little Ellie with her new bear from Uncle Josh and hairbow from Uncle Andrew and Aunt Kristin!

How can this be??? Our little chipmunk is quickly approaching 2 years old... Just three more months until sweet Ellie is not our only little girl, so we are trying to soak up every single moment with her. She is doing lots of new things these days and saying lots of new words. Here are some highlights from the last month...

• She's started trying to say lots of our staff's names! So far she's only got Bob and Tracy down well...but she's working on the rest! Today when she try to say "Betsy" it came out "Beppy", which I thought was pretty cute. :)
• Her new hobby is working on counting to five! It is SO cute! We're trying to teach her to hold up her fingers as she counts, but she struggles with anything more than holding up her first finger and then she goes straight to holding up 5! :) It's a challenge to keep those others fingers down.
• She constantly points to Mommy's belly and says "baby"! But often will point to her own belly, Daddy's belly and sometimes other bellys, too! We're trying to help her understand that there is NOT a baby in EVERY person's belly. :)
• She LOVES getting pulled around by Daddy on her little pink horsey on wheels. It's become her and Daddy's favorite pasttime together. He even put a rope on it so he can whisk her around the kitchen as she squeels with delight! Often as soon as Daddy walks in the door, she goes to get her horsey. :)
• Ellie loves having a "bite" of everything! If either of us are eating, she will quickly walk up to us and say "bite?" and if we don't respond quickly enough she'll add on a loud "peeeeease?" (please)... it's adorable.
• She is still our dancing queen, spinning in circles and bobbing her little head. I will soon post a short video from our Valentine's Dessert where she was cutting a rug with the students.
• She's still a mere 23 lbs - but getting taller by the day and her feet seem to be growing fast!
• Ellie is still not a fan of having bows or ponytails in her hair, so when you see pictures of her with her hair all crazy, I promise we didn't start the day that way. :)
• Ellie is VERY independent and wants to do everything herself! She is also as ornery as you can imagine! She can get into anything like drawers, cabinets, etc and is even starting to figure out how to get baby proof lids off! YIKES! Last week she took a baby proof cap off of baby oil, but thankfully I caught her before she did too much damage. She has crazy good fine motor skills!

The list could go on and on, but I will stop for now! Love you all... Thanks for checking in!