New day, new milestones

Ellie continues to amaze me. Today she has done so many new things--some good, some bad--and I am beginning to realize she is moving out of the baby stage. So here is a quick recap of Ellie's new tricks as of today:
--She pulled herself up on various things and let go and stood on her own on purpose. Up to this point, she would usually only stand by herself when she didn't realize she was doing it.

--She learned how to lift the toilet seat up (yea. I guess I will be fishing out the toilet lock to keep her from "swishing")

--She climbed onto a kitchen chair and sat herself down. Quite cute but she did the same thing on my sewing chair when I was washing up the lunch dishes; having her that close to needles makes me nervous (for those who don't know, I swallowed/inhaled one of my mom's huge sewing pins as a toddler and had to have it surgically removed from my lung).

--We went to the library today for singing time with Ms. Penny and Ellie beat a drum without any guidance (we don't have a toy drum in the house for obvious reasons).

--While at the library, one of the librarians (just to give you a visual, she is the most stereotypical librarian I ever saw--older woman, glasses, petite build, soft spoken--you get the picture) said to me, "your little girl is beautiful". Before I could respond, Ellie said "thank you". I'm not sure who was more surprised, the librarian or me. The librarian then added, "and polite!" As we were leaving, the librarian told me that she will be bragging about Ellie for weeks.

--On the way home, I asked Harrison what he wanted for lunch. He himmed and hawed but Ellie quickly responded with "cheese!" Are they really that smart at 13 months? Scary.

Ellie added cookie to her vocabulary yesterday (guess what we made the other night). We also went to playgroup at the church and to a friend's house for lunch. Ellie proudly put a handful of strawberry jam in her hair. Harrison learned how to jump on a trampoline (just a small one). We told him he could play with it and he just gave me this curious look. So I said "you're supposed to jump on it". He stepped onto the tramp, jumped off, and repeated the process. I just laughed and then showed him how to jump ON the trampoline, not off.

Nothing too earth shattering, just your average day with kids.