Ella is starting to walk

Right before the family left for the U.S., Ella began to take some steps on her own. So while we'll be away from each for the next month, I'm full anticipating seeing Ella make the transition to walking full time.

Up until the day they left, she never would walked for me. Whenever we tried to get her to walk, she would end up walking on her knees with her arms outstretched and grunting - looking a lot like baby Frankenstein.

But here she is walking around and enjoying the laving praise we pour on her.

Ella and her walker

Anthon likes to climb up on the counter in the kitchen to help Shelley with the cooking. He's quite a good mixer. He uses one of our kitchen table chairs to climb up. Ella, who freely crawls around and pulls herself up on things, especially the kitchen chairs, realized one day when Anthon was on the counter, that the chair is light enough to push it around while standing, yet strong enough to support her.

She can't quite steer the chair, so she'll walk until she runs it into something. Then she does these little leg squats to complete the work out. She is quite pleased with herself, as you can see in the video below.