"How big is Elliana?"

"SOOOOOO big!"

Well, actually thats not totally true, but it is something she loves to play. So we ask her "how big is Elliana?" and then she puts her hands up and says something that could possibly be "big" and then we say in a very exagerrated voice "sooooo big!" She giggles and thinks it is just too funny.

So speaking of how big she is, I just wanted to do an update on our "big" little girl.


She actually is still pretty small compared to other babies her age, weighing in at about 18 lbs. She has a check up in a few weeks, so we will get her exact weight and height then. She has almost graduated from the 6-12 month clothes to the 12-18, but her feet are still super small- wearing an infant size 2 and sometimes a 3. Which is totally fine of course, it is still so weird to me to have a baby who can still wear the same clothes and shoes she wore 6 months ago!



Speaking of 6 months ago, today January 22 marks 6 months exactly since Elliana's gotcha day! Oh my. It is seriously so hard to believe that she has been with us for that long. To be honest, the first few months were really hard and time seemed to pass pretty slowly. But after we got past those few months and her real personality started shining through and her development started exploding... wow it has gone by sooo fast! We will be finalizing in the next few weeks- awesome! I still do not forget the pain of the waiting, but having her home has definitely caused me to be so much more thankful for that time of waiting. I know it sounds cliche, but I truly cannot imagine our lives without this precious gift from the Lord. She is such a joy and delight to our entire family!



She is such a funny girl- constantly making us all laugh with her little antics. She is so proud of herself when she accomplishes something new or remembers something she had learned earlier. Well, you saw the video of her learning to walk right?! Now everytime she takes a few steps, she has her hands up in the air and just giggles until she plops back down! Of course all 5 of us standing around her giving her lots of praise may be helping too!



She is still a little delayed, but she has had her weekly "therapy" with teacher Paula (which is really play time with a purpose) and it seems that each week that Paula comes, Elliana has accomplished yet another milestone. As you know she just is starting to walk at 17 months, which is such a huge deal because our "goal" was for her to be taking this many steps by her 2nd birthday in August! I have a feeling it will only be a couple more weeks until she will only want to be walking and crawling will be a thing of the past!



Cognitively she is doing amazing as well. In fact she is pretty much on target and even a little above for this area of development. She understands more and more each day and is communicating with us so much more than she was a few months ago. Elliana points at EVERYTHING and wants to know what everything is. She knows some words: mama (actually she says mom most of the time- lol! I think because she hears the boys say it) dada, bubba(brother), no no no , bye, ow (if someone gets hurt), dog(sounds like dah), out, uh oh, and believe it or not Brown Bear.(she says it when we read the brown bear book) And she knows a lot of signs- which is so cute to see her do them! Dog is her absolute favorite sign and everytime you say "where's Biscuit?" (our dog) she slaps her leg and says dog. Other signs she knows: milk, bath, more, please, all done, cracker, up, bye bye, ouch, bread, phone, play, eat, and drink. We are working on all of the animal signs and sounds and also she is learning body parts as well. She knows eyes, nose, hair and teeth so far.
She loves to blow us kisses, pretend to feed her baby and get into everything!


She absolutely shocked us about a week ago when she somehow climbed OUT of her crib at naptime and was knocking on her door to come out! Yikes! Needless to say, that crib is now at its lowest setting and way too high for her to escape from now! And as much as we love how sweet and funny she is most days, she can be a downright stinker at times too. Especially lately in the area of sleeping- ugh. This is sometimes the face I get when she doesn't want to cooperate...


Or maybe this:


But most days she wakes up like this:

So happy to have her big brothers to play with her and adore her!

All in all, it has been an AMAZING 6 months!



I don't post all of these things to brag by any means, but to give glory and praise to our Lord! Those of you who have been reading or who have seen her since the beginning can truly appreciate the HUGE progress that she is making! All glory be to Jesus!

She went from this





To this


And this


And this


What a miracle! I can't wait to see what God will do in these next 6 months!