Ella is a walking machine now - she is walking around like an old pro

How many babies can we fit on the dumptruck?

Alex and Ella "help" fold laundry

Ella likes trying things on to see how they look

Helen gets creative with figuring out how to reach the TV and VCR

Attack of slimy Ella with food smeared all over her face and in her hair!

Alex chills out in the new coolest place to be - up in the chair

Helen and Ella are pretty happy to be in the big chair too

Helen is SO BIG!! (either that or she is celebrating a touchdown - we are not sure which one)

Alex has to figure out how to think outside of the box

Precious Ella

Helen plays with the castle

It has been a week of changes and new things. Some are adjusting better than others. On Monday we said goodbye to bottles for good. It took about a day for Alex and Helen to adjust to a sippy cup. Ella is still on strike. She refuses to drink milk from a sippy cup and will not let the cup come near her while she is in her highchair. But as soon as she gets done eating, she goes in the playroom and guzzles a whole cup of water. I think she figures that as long as she does not drink it when we want her to drink it, she is winning. It will be interesting to see how long her strike lasts before realizes the bottles are never coming back.

But Ella is walking around like a champ. Very little wobbling and no more "Franken-baby." She is sure and steady on her feet. Alex is still trying to take some wobbly steps. Helen is great at standing. The other day she did take a few steps. But she would only inch her feet along where she knew she would not risk falling. For every ounce of devil may care that Ella has, Helen has equal parts caution and planning. Should be very interesting to see how these Felix and Oscar personalities develop as they get older.

We also started doing time outs this week. It took a few times of them doing stuff they were not supposed to (i.e. pulling all the tiles up off the floor - Alex's personal favorite) for them to figure out what is going on. Let's hope we've made out point and don't have to keep rotating everyone through the time out pack and play all day!