Cerin Amroth

Maybe this is something that happens to all parents, but as soon as we named Ella, we started hearing about all sorts of other people who had named their kids Ella. Then there was that movie _Ella Enchanted_. Suddenly what we thought would be an unusual name seemed to be, at the very least, not uncommon.

Turns out there’s “hard data”:http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/ to back that up. In 2003, ‘Ella’ was the 44th most popular name in the U.S., up from 92nd, 195th, and 268th place the three years previous. When the 2004 data comes out I expect another huge jump up the charts.

At least her full name, ‘Elanora,’ remains pretty darn rare. That’s not surprising, though I _was_ surprised that ‘Elanor’ hasn’t cracked the top 1000 in any year, considering that it’s the correct spelling of the Tolkien reference.

Ella was in West Michigan last week to attend Aunt Becky and Uncle Adrian’s wedding and related gatherings and festivities. At times the number of people actually overwhelmed her — a rare event — but overall she had a great time, especially hanging out with her grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins.

“150″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella150.jpg — Ella likes food, as this picture illustrates. The sign that she’s not hungry any more is when her mouth resembles a sliver instead of a gaping maw.
“151″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella151.jpg — Here’s Ella demonstrating that she has already mastered the important skill of zoning out when Matt Sahr starts to hold forth.
“152″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella152.jpg — Still a slave to the bottle, I’m afraid . . .
“153″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella153.jpg and “154″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella154.jpg — Ella with great-grandma and great-grandpa Pek. There are already some pictures up here of her with them, but these are much nicer.
“155″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella155.jpg — Here we can see Ella staring at The Necklace, which at the time was worn by David Vanderlaan. Shortly after this pictures was taken, Ella trounced Dave in a 7-point backgammon match, with a 3-point handicap, thus winning The Necklace. (I helped a little bit.)
“156″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella156.jpg — Cousin Lydia _thinks_ she’s about to pick up the soccer ball. Little does she realize that Ella is about to execute a Leaping Crane Double-Ear Yank and claim the prize for herself.
“157″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella157.jpg — Aunt Becky, Lydia, Ella, Gumpa. Look at each of their eyes. Which one seems to be plotting world domination?
“158″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella158.jpg — While in Michigan Ella had her first foray into eating Cheerios. So far it’s not so much “eating” as “flinging” and “hiding in crevices for later.”
“159″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella159.jpg — She’s really close to being close to crawling, as this pictures shows.
“160″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella160.jpg — Here’s me getting a pre-wedding neck trim from Mar-Mar while Ella just . . . chills.
“161″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella161.jpg — Fun in the pool with Mama and cousins Caleb and Clara.
“162″:http://www.polytropos.org/mt-static/ella/ella162.jpg — Aren’t they pretty? Suanna made Ella’s dress, by the way.

It’s hard to believe that a gesture Ella learned only a couple weeks ago has become the basis for much of her communication. The Imperious Gesture is usually executed when she’s being held by someone, and occasionally when she’s sitting upright. It consists of extending one of the arms, stick-straight, in a particular direction, held at an angle a few degress above horizontal. Her hand usually hangs limp at the end. Depending on its target, the Imperious Gesture can mean “take me there” or “bring that thing to me”; in either case a closing close of “my loyal minion” is clearly implied.

The Imperious Gesture has resurrected the Apartment Tour, a favorite activity of hers from earlier in life when she wasn’t able to grab stuff herself. Now she’ll sit in my arms and gaze patiently around the apartment, finally settling her eyes on something that catches her fancy. Then _woosh_, up goes the arm, and away we go.

The Imperious Gesture is sometimes mistaken by strangers for “I want you to hold me,” when in fact it usually means “I wish to squeeze your nose . . .” or “I wish to yank upon your hair . . . my loyal minion.” “I want you to hold me” is a two-arm gesture that is almost exclusively reserved for Suanna.

The coolest thing about the Imperious Gesture is discovering just what stuff fascinates her. Why the plastic hangar and not the wooden one? The bottle of kahlua and not the bright red bottle of grenadine? The stuffed lizard on the right (Rutherford) and not the on the left (Binky)? Who can say? It is not for a loyal minion to question, but only to obey.

Reverse Roll-Over is now official. Ella can roll back-to-front as well as front-to-back. The former is still a little tricky — not a maneuver that she performs with balletic grace or anything. The only use she really has for back-to-front is so that she can follow it up with another front-to-back, thus engaging in a very rudimentary form of locomotion. So far she hasn’t gone anywhere in _particular_ yet, but she did spend a good twenty minutes the other day making her slow way across the living room floor.

I can tell this is going to be a big adjustment. The days of Stationary Ella are coming to an end. And considering the gritty determination with which she reaches for things now — invariably the things we don’t want her to reach for — Mobile Ella is going to be a handful.

Ella was very well behaved at her checkup yesterday; she screamed like a banshee when they gave her her shots, but it lasted all of fifteen seconds, and then she was back to normal. This was due in large part to the fact that she got to keep the tongue depressor the doctor had used to look down her throat; she kept in in hand (and/or in mouth) pretty much the rest of the day.

So here are the stats:

Length: 28 1/2 inches
Weight: 20 lbs, 1 ounce (!!!)
Head Circ.: 17 3/4 inches

95th percentile across the board. Her weight is average for an 11 month old.

Ella even got to freak Dr. Klapp out a little bit. When the doctor asked me whether she passes object from one hand to the other, right on cue, Ella moved the tongue depressor to her other hand.

“Well, there it is!” said the doctor. “And is she babbling syllables?”

“BA BA BA BA BA BA BA,” said Ella.

Coincidence? _You_ decide . . .

Last week, a photographer named Charlotte, who I knew in passing from the coffee shop, asked if she could take some pictures of Ella. “It figures,” I thought to myself. “If I had a dollar for every professional photographer who’s pestered me for a shoot through the years — it must run in the family.”

Ha! I’m jesting. Believe it or not, that’s never happened to _me_ before, but for Ella, it doesn’t seem all that surprising. At any rate, we met Charlotte at the Netherlands Carillon, not far from Iwo Jima, for a little photo shoot late Thursday afternoon.

Ella was a little fussy, probably because 6:45 is her usual hanging-out-with-Mama time, and all this lounging around in the flowerbeds must have seemed a little strange. But Charlotte got some terrific pictures nonetheless. They’re not up on her main website yet, but she posted some highlights on her blog. Here are the links:

“Charlotte Geary’s website”:http://www.charlottegeary.com/

“The entry with the Ella pictures”:http://www.livejournal.com/users/charlottesweb/191099.html

We thought it was such a great thing when she learned to sit up by herself. It meant she could sit on the floor with a toy and entertain herself. We could walk around the apartment without carrying her, read email, surf the web, or knit (in my case), while she entertained herself. Ella quickly learned that this meant she didn’t receive all of our attention, so now she sometimes uses her strong legs to resist sitting on her own. If she senses a move to the floor when she’s not in the mood, she’ll immediately make her legs straight as a board and arch her back to avoid the sitting position. This is usually accompanied by a low growl or outright crying. Sometimes if you’re persistent or distract her with a toy, she’ll still sit down and play happily, but not always.

Her other display of will comes when she’s sitting in her feeding chair or booster seat. She doesn’t like it when we’re in the kitchen fixing food and leave her in the living room. Nate discovered that she’s happy to sit in her booster seat and play with a toy, as long as she’s sitting in the doorway to the kitchen where she can watch us. One day she was in the booster seat longer than she desired, so she started throwing her toys on the floor. I came over and put them all back on her tray. I wasn’t back to cutting vegetables when she had them all back on the floor. It became clear that she was doing this not only to indicate her disatisfaction with sitting in the seat but also so that I would walk over to her. I played along for a while, but when the whining started I gave in and waited on the rest of my food prep until she was napping.

I’m just glad she hasn’t shown any inclination to start crawling or scooting. If she can control us this much while she can’t move, I hate to think about when she can take off on her own. Actually, I know what that will be like because I saw a mother scurrying around after her 18 month-old boy in church last Sunday. Yikes!

This has been a month without major milestones, but that doesn’t mean that Ella doesn’t seem like an entirely new baby all over again. That arm still holds her up when it comes to back-and-front rolling — not that she has much interest in trying it in the first place. She’s clearly getting to the point where her lack of mobility is frustrating, but doesn’t seem particularly close to crawling. She might be a straight-to-walking girl, but then again, it may be like most other things, and one day she’ll just up and crawl. In the meantime she greatly enjoys standing up and taking steps forward with me yanking her arms up and down like a puppeteer.

She can now gulp down 6 ounces of milk or formula all at once and not spit up afterwards. She can hold the bottle all by herself, something she’s _very_ pleased about. Just because she _can_ do it doesn’t mean she always _wants_ to, though — she’s perfectly content sitting on your lap and grabbing her feet or your nose while you hold the bottle, too. She has baby food at lunchtime (peaches, sweet potatoes, and mixed vegetables have been her favorites so far) and cereal around dinner.

No sign of teeth yet, and if she’s teething it’s not bothering her a whole lot. She still loves to gnaw on things and generates tremendous amounts of drool, so it’s only a matter of time.

She will now sit still — sort of — for a board book. I’ll sit next to her in her bouncy chair and hold it just out of reach, and I can usually get through a short book (_But Not the Hippopotamus_ or _There’s a Wocket in My Pocket_) before she completely loses patience and has to chew on the corner of the book right then and there. _Dr. Seuss’ ABCs_ is a bit long, but if she’s getting sleepy she’ll sit through that, too. In any case, she’s not really paying attention so much as patiently humoring me with this whole “reading” thing because she knows she’ll get to chew on the book (and/or toss it back and forth) when I finish.

In the past couple of days, I’ve caught her staring with great interest at her hands as she rotates her wrists back and forth. Guess she just figured that out. And on the language front, there have been two recent occasions where’s she’s said “boh-boh” in seeming reference to her bottle. That’s not enough data to decide anything for certain, but I’ll be keeping an eye on it. Babbling in general is very common, and is slightly more frequent in front of strangers, though they’re still more likely to get the piercing stare instead.

She has the same nap schedule — four short ones throughout the day — despite my gentle efforts to consolidate them. Wakeup time is closer to 6:30 than 7:30 these days. All those times go right out the window whenever there’s a change in routine, though, especially if there’s other people around. Ella is an extrovert, like me — she loves being around people, and will firecely resist going to sleep if they’re still doing things around her. She’ll sit on the floor and play happily for indefinite periods as long as there’s conversation going on — she could care less if it’s directed at her or not.

Her only approved mode of transport remains the Baby Bjorn. Put her in the stroller and she’ll slouch back with a mopey expression on her face. Put her in the car seat and she’ll strain her head forward periodically until she can get out again. But do so much as strap on the Baby Bjorn in her presence, and she’ll smile and start waving her arms and legs in anticipation. I just hope her growth slows down, because when she outgrows that thing, we’re in trouble.

A couple days ago, our friend Jen commented, “It seems like she’s got a _personality_ now.” That’s probably the best way to describe how she’s changed in the past month, though trying to actually describe that personality is tricky. She’s congenial, and stubborn, and curious curious curious. Playful. Very easily upset, but rarely so much that it lasts more than a second or two. But all that has been true for a while now, and while she does seem to have an ineffable something that makes it all hold together in a “personality,” I’m at a loss to say just what that is. It’s a thrill to watch happen, regardless.