Ellie's New Dress

On Sunday Eliana wore the new dress Uncle Robert made her for Christmas. When I pulled it out of the closet, she looked at it and exclaimed, "Robert! Robert!" I was pretty amazed that she remembered it was from him, especially since I'm not very good at reminding her of people we don't get to see very often. But she did remember! After lunch (when we'd taken the dress off her so it wouldn't become a mac-n-cheese victim) she brought the dress to me again saying, "Robert!" So here she is in her Sunday finery:

When I was trying to get her picture, she wouldn't stand still, so I had to sit her in the chair. Then she sat just fine, but wouldn't look at the camera. So I finally resorted to the age old trick of having her say "CHEESE!" It worked! Sort of... The picture above is cute, but the one below is pretty exemplary of the face I got in most of the pictures.

I did not get a picture of the back of the dress, but I will sometime. The engineer in my brother comes out in the most delightful ways and the back of this dress is one of them. He designed it in such a way that you don't have to fight with a toddler to hold still to get the perfectly tied bow in the back. In fact, the bow is fixed (and perfect, at that) and to tighten it all you have to do is pull the streamers to cinch the dress. It's ingenious! And beautiful... Thank you, Uncle Robert!