From the picture of the day, you can probably guess that Eila is learning how to use her hands to hold things. This is very cool for holding her rattles and helping her self soothe with teething toys, but for trying to drink or do anything else we are entering the danger zone. A case in point, while nursing this morning I was drinking a glass of water and Eila reached up and knocked the glass spilling cold water on both of us.

While she is working hard on this new skill, she still has no real control and often is much stronger than she needs or wants to be. She also has very poor aim. For instance, in trying to get her favorite star rattle to her mouth, she usually smacks herself upside the head, often poking her eye in the process.

Eila is also great at taking her pacifier out of her mouth, but not as good at putting it back in. This is very disturbing to her especially when she is on the verge of sleep or has just fallen asleep.

Her hands that grab most often end up grabbing at mom's hair and getting all tangled in those little sweaty palms. So, today Eila's mom will solve this by chopping the long locks.

And, just this weekend, Eila has figured out that she can grab her own feet and that those feet provide lots of amusement. At the current time, this is very helpful during diaper changes as she holds her feet out of the way and sort of rocks up on her back.

It's pretty remarkable what a little baby can do with just two grabby hands... for good or bad.

Eila now officially weighs 14 pounds and is 26.5 inches long. She impressed the nurse with her enormous 16.5-inch head circumference. The girl is in excellent health! She almost had the nurses crying when she wailed after they poked her, but she recovered fairly quickly from the ordeal.

The entire staff at the doctor's office was gathered around or brought to our room to admire Eila's beautiful face. Everyone was oohing and aahing. It was almost embarassing, but I think Eila enjoyed every second of it - smiling and soaking up the praise!

In actual baby-related news, Eila has started the first signs of rolling over. While on her back, Eila can now flip her legs over which makes her get onto her side...then she promptly falls back over to her back.

This is, however, quite a bit step. Not only because this is the first sign of mobility, but because we're going to have to watch her much more closely now.

I'm excited to see when this proto-rolling will turn into the real thing.

I've been able to get the site somewhat working. As you can see, there are still a few (bunch) of things that are going to be on the fritz for a few days. Hopefully I'll have it all cleaned up and some updates for you soon. Please bear with me for the time being.

UPDATE: (8:33PM) I've managed to get the site back into (mostly) working order. I imagine that there are still small things that will show up still (I haven't even *tried* comments). But this is an improvements. Maybe I'll even try to put up a picture of the day in a bit.