Mark & Mandy

Elsie doing her best Happy Birthday song…

If your birthday is coming up, Elsie is ready to sing for you! She has recently been mentioning her upcoming birthday (a mere 8 months away) and how much she likes birthdays in general. Whenever we see a candle in anything, she automatically assumes it’s her birthday and starts to sing (to herself).

When we were up in Montana for July 4th, Elsie found a tiny porcelain cat that she named “Baby Mittens” after the character in the movie Bolt. She was forever searching for “Mommy Mittens” and a whole Mittens family. Baby Mittens did not return to Colorado with us, but imagine the joy when Elsie received a gift from Grandpa Michael and Grammy Alison that contained a tiny family of porcelain cats and a bucket of spilled milk. The cats were something that Elspeth had in her office to relax her children and give them something to focus on and now Elsie is greatly enjoying role-playing with them.

See the video below:

Greg D visited us in Boulder a few weeks ago and came bearing gifts. Elsie was very excited about the t-shirt and looks forward to visiting with her complete entourage!

I recently got a Mac mini, so I have felt empowered to start doing something with all the raw video footage we have shot of Elsie over the last years.

I am going to try to do this a bit more frequently so we can see how the little bean is progressing – she is a chatty lady.

The below video is from May 4th 2009

Michael was in town for a visit a couple weeks ago and he was a big hit! Elsie instantly loved his glasses and enjoyed constantly playing with the case. Elsie wanted to show her papa all her cool stuff so she first took him to the Denver Zoo!

Elsie enjoyed a great view on Papa’s shoulders

then they had some fun on the train

And finally they HAD to ride he carousel because its her fav!

The next morning we headed out to Gymnastics. Elsie helped Papa get warmed up, making sure he knew how to wiggle his toes

and then she showed her stuff on the bars

After the gym, we headed to the Children’s Museum for Playgroup (our week to host). Papa read her some books

and shared some fun with Saffie

The next morning Papa took us out to breakfast in Boulder and we decided that a little walk in the hills would help work off our big meal and give us a chance to look at the changing leaves. Elsie happened upon a shelter that she and papa explored.

It was fun, but nothing was as fun as collecting rocks! (there are just sooo many rocks to find)

It was an action packed weekend – we had so much fun showing Papa Michael all of our hangouts! We can’t wait for the next visit.

Elsie went in for her 18 month check up and all is well. She is still in the 25th percentile for height and the 5-10 percentile for weight – she’s just a little one! We had another round of shots (but this was the final round until age 5!) – there were some tears, but all tears were gone with the simple taste of a sucker!

Grandparents don’t really follow any rules … the day after Saffie’s birthday grampa allowed elsie to eat 4 cupcakes. Each time she would go to josh and amy’s house, she would some how hunt down the cupcakes and point to them – each time grampa couldn’t say no.

Even saffie loved them!

for Saffie’s first birthday, Grammie and Grampa got her a tunnel … Elsie and Kai gave it a test run at Saffie’s party – here a few of the tunnel shots.

I hope it wasn’t elsie that gave kai that bruise on his head!

Last Saturday we started Gymnastics with Elsie. We have tried Gymboree and during the week Elsie goes to Kangaroo Kingdome which has lots of activities but we wanted to make sure we were giving Elsie the proper instruction on how to do a perfect somersault.

We found Little Gym and signed up for the Little Birds Class. This place was so cute – we arrived and met Miss Melissa (our teacher) and were amazed at the facility. Each week has a theme – and this week was backwards week. We worked on walking backwards and a backwards somersault as well as just exploring the different apparatuses. Little gym does a great job of providing lots of short little exercises/activities for the kids, but allowing them to participate when they want to. We found that any time music was on, Elsie would run to the red mat to show off her dancing moves.

Here she is practicing the beam with dad…

doing it on her own

Trying out the parallel bars

practicing on the bar with miss melissa

and now with dad

and her favorite activity, doing a backwards somersault!

If you are looking for a great gymnastics program – Little Gym is awesome!

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Favorite quotes of the day, both from mark…

before class: “from a dexterity point of view, Elsie is definitely above average”

after class: “she’s just like shawn johnson, only shorter!”