
May has actually been the Madness Month for the Gramkows! We traveled quite a bit the first half of the month. Ellie's princess suitcase has gotten a lot of use! AND, she loves wheeling it around!

Ellie and I headed to the North land to spend some time with my sister, Wendy and her family; got to surprise my mom and dad at work with our visits; to Northwest Iowa for Micah's son, Kahle's 3rd birthday party; got to see the brother, Wade too. Then we took our first long, driving trip with Ellie to Kansas City to see our friends Esther and Dieter before they left for Qatar; we got to see all of Ben's siblings too! Ellie traveled pretty well! She took a long 3 hour nap the way up, and two naps on the way home! The latter part of the month, we have been catching up with Apartment Life stuff with our apartment community the last half of the month - Garage sale and BBQ today, and then teaching cake decorating on Tuesday. Clearly this is why this post is indeed a month later.
So what is our little princess up to these days;
1. Jumping. It's more of a lot of bounces before she actually manages to get one foot up and the other...not at the same time. Kind of reminds me of a horses gallop. She is getting better though and just thinks it's the coolest feeling ever.
2. Sweet corn...ah yes, paying our respects to the homeland of Iowa. She loves eating corn on the cob. Grandpa, I knew you'd be proud!

3. Pony tails and hair ties are over-rated. She pulls them out with a lot of hair. So she sports the borderline mullet most of the time these days. How do you train your kids not to pull them out all the time? It is growing long though! I'm needing to cut her bangs one of these days. Ben still is just in love that she has blonde hair just like him.

4. Pen writing. She has become quite the writer. Not just on paper anymore. Walls too. I knew this day would come. Still need to get that off with a magic eraser, now that I'm thinking about it.
5. Words - She says: mama, dada, all done, thank you (even when she gives you something), uh oh, shoes,attempts please and Ellie. And of course, she still babbles a lot. She signs "milk" and "bed" now.
6. She loves putting on her shoes. She tries for a long time with the socks, but can't master that. However, it's blasted hot here, so it's usually sandals.
7. Stairs! She's mastered stairs thanks to our travels. She did experience tumbling down stairs a few times at Wendy's, and then got more practice at David and Audrie's where she went up and down like 500 times!
8. Running. Yep, she does it mostly while laughing and looking behind at me!
9. Tantrums have started. She likes to get what she wants. I've had to re-read my parenting with love and logic books.
10. Hugs and Kisses. She's a hugger. Here is a picture of her hugging cousin Bodee and he's had enough! LOL. She loves to blow kisses too. Sound effects and all. She also will give real, slobbery, noisy kisses to us too! It's too cute.

11. Praise Jesus she's been healthy. She hasn't gotten another ear infection since the last series of three about a month ago. She's gets Nasonex up her nose each day to help with the fluid in her ears. Seems to be helping. She is a champ, she totally takes medicine better than I do!
We just LOVE, LOVE, LOVE being with Ellie. We got to take her to Log Cabin Village on one of Ben's afternoons off.

It's fun to have a curious little one to take out and about. She's so much fun! Until next time. Enjoy some pics!