Weeks 14 & 15

Well, it was bound to happen and now it has! I just didn't have time to make a post last week, so here are two weeks combined! With Christmas and break and the general craziness of the holidays, I never had a chance to sit down. But today I have some time off, so here are the best pictures from the last 2 weeks.

She's gotten so much better at holding her head up! It's amazing how much stronger she gets every day.

Her new trick: she's trying to roll over.

She can only get onto her side, but she lays there and sucks on her fist and talks to herself. It's really funny to watch. Certainly can't leave her laying on the couch or anything anymore! She will flail herself right off.

We went to Grandma & Grandpa Looten's house in Springfield for the weekend before Christmas. Mommy forgot to pack a church outfit for Sunday AND Monday, so we had to open a present early. We found this really adorable outfit, that started out with some serious high-rise pants...
And ended up looking so adorable that we had to have ourselves a little photo shoot...This is Elena right before she yakked on Uncle Tim. He was holding her and she spit up just a little in her mouth, so it wouldn't have been a big deal. But then she sneezed, and blew cottage cheese chunks all over him. It was pretty hilarious.
She was a stinky baby (from all the yakking) so she had to get a bath in the sink. Kinda like diaper changes, it took every woman in the house to get the bath taken care of!
But she's so adorable, who would want to miss giving her a bath?!

We finally got the four generations of Lootens together for a photo op...

We opened presents with the Lootens on Christmas Eve... guess who got the most presents?! :)
Christmas morning at the Price's... has a santa hat ever looked cuter?
Great-Grandma and Grandpa Price came to visit for the weekend after Christmas, so we went to Aunt Ellen's for dinner, and had some good conversations with Grandpa Price!

Well, it's been a crazy couple of weeks. I've gotten to spend a lot more time home with Elena since I have Christmas break off. She really is changing so fast. She's been going through a little "nursing strike" (they really call it that) where she would arch her back and scream instead of nursing. I guess she wanted to eat out of a bottle, since it's so much easier! But I out-stubborned her, and she's settled back into our routine now. As the pictures show, she really has started trying to roll over now. I know she's got a lot longer before she really makes it over, but it's awful cute. She also has decided to really focus on sucking on her hands. She tries to get both of them in her mouth at once, which is pretty entertaining. She will pull her hands up to her chest and stare at them, then try to jam both in her mouth at once. I also think it's funny because when I first started taking her to the daycare there was a girl there who would sit in the swing and pull her blanket up over her face and rub it around and just grin... and now Elena does that, too. I can't hardly put a blanket over her without it ending up covering her face. Any day now she's going to realize that those darn hands are attached! :) It's hard to believe that, in just a couple of weeks, she's going to be big enough to start eating cereal. That will be a whole new experience... and a whole new set of really cute pictures!

Nursing strike and yakking included, I love being a mom. Watching her grow and change is definitely the coolest thing I've ever done. Christmas was so fun this year, even though all that really changed was was kept sticking bows on her head. Next year is going to be a whole new experience! Check for more Christmas pictures on the other blog... sometime! :)