All Our Ducks in a Row

We finally found a good reason to put Ellie in this duck outfit we got at a baby shower. Since we didn't have regular church meetings on Easter, we didn't bother with the big frilly Easter dress.
Sorry, I couldn't pick just one picture. Ellie is a pretty good sport. We had a really nice, quiet conference weekend. Brady was around a lot and got to spend a lot of time with Ellie.

Quality time. As you can see, they will both be reviewing the Saturday afternoon session together when next month's Ensign comes out. I think it's also worth noting who has most of the space on that beanbag. Not hard to see who's really in charge around here.

Also, Ellie turned 5 months old on Saturday. She's trying to be helpful here.

Very excited to be getting older (not sure why some of the pics are sideways, I fixed them before uploading them). We are very excited about this too. We hate to rush her, but we are excited for her to hopefully outgrow her reflux soon. I had heard about babies having reflux before, but I never knew how demanding it could be. I think we may be on the downhill slope of the battle, though. Ellie seems to be more comfortable and hasn't been fighting her feedings quite as much over the past few days. I'd read that reflux symptoms peak at 4 months, and several people have told us that by 6-9 months it clears up quite a bit. Fingers crossed.
For all the trouble that the reflux has been, though, we realize that it could be much worse. This is something she will likely outgrow soon, and in the meantime she does have so many happy times. She seems to be enjoying her life so far and is pretty playful most of the time. She loves being outside, sometimes even just going out on the balcony (as long as all the neighbors aren't outside smoking--ugh, that's a different post). She's been experimenting with her voice a lot lately, finding she can get our attention without crying (though that still seems to be the preferred method at times). Fake coughing and fake laughing are some of her favorites. She loves music, particularly They Might Be Giants' Here Come the 123s album. We got the DVD from Netflix and I don't know if we'll ever give it back (This is one of her favorites that we sing to her a lot). All in all, things seem to be going pretty well* for Ellie.
*Ask me again in a couple weeks after we've spent long hours in a few airports, flown across the country a couple times, and switched time zones back and forth to see if I feel the same way. More on that later.
A couple leftover pictures. This one is St. Patrick's Day.

This is a frilly dress that she loved wearing because she could play with the top layer and put it in her mouth. I guess you have to set priorities and standards in fashion somewhere.