As James and Ola Jordan chat to HELLO! for their latest Strictly Parenting column, baby Ella is falling asleep in James' arms. "She doesn't want to sleep by herself," Ola explains affectionately. 'She wants to sleep in our arms. Sometimes you just want to put her down to sleep and do your thing!"
READ: James and Ola Jordan reveal how baby Ella injured her dad
The pair reveal that Ella's favourite thing to do is to be with the pair of them. "She likes hanging out in one of our arms," James says. "She likes to be picked up all of the time. We've only just recently started letting my mum and Ola's sister hold her and that's it really." "I'm going to blame the lockdown for that!" Ola jokily adds. "But once lockdown is over, I think she'll be fine, she'll be alright."
At five months old, Ella has now big enough to sit in a high chair and hang out with her parents, as seen in our exclusive clip below. Speaking about why Ella prefers to sit up high, Ola says: "She's enjoying it! She's quite high so she feels like she's part of the family. If I put her on the green mat, she knows I'm going to leave her there, so she cries. She never plays with it anymore because she wants to be with us now."
WATCH: Baby Ella is growing up so fast - and has her own high chair!
James adds: "She's happier when she's around us. She's happier when she's on the table, wherever mum and dad are. She loves being up high, she likes trying to grab my phone. She knows the phone is something interesting so she always tries to grab it. She finds it interesting."
While in the clip little Ella looks at her mum after she calls her name, James jokes that she doesn't quite recognise her own name just yet. "I think it might be a fluke that she responded to her name," he says. "You could say 'Bob' and she'd turn around!"
Baby Ella has started going upstairs to bed for her naps
Although Ella clearly loves chilling out with her parents, at five months old, James and Ola have decided to start putting her down to sleep upstairs on her own. James says: "She's still sleeping in our room, but what we used to do was put her in the lounge with us, and she would fall asleep there and we'd have our dinner with her there, but now we put her upstairs in her cot next to our bed."
He continues: "It's strange having her there because she'll fall asleep and we'll come downstairs and do our own thing and it's quite strange not having her with us!"
Ella is now five months old and growing up fast
Ola adds: "She's five months and she needs to be able to go to bed without us. And we need to have dinner and watch TV and do our own thing. And if she's down here we're very quiet and don't want to wake her up. In the evening if she falls asleep, I don't want to wake her up. She has a camera which we have on the iPad so we watch her every move from downstairs. We have our dinner with this iPad out watching her now!"
READ: Strictly's Ola Jordan enjoys sweet bonding moment with baby Ella
While Ella has had a low couple of days because of teething, the former Strictly pros proudly open up about their daughter's usually happy personality - and in what way she is just like her dad.
"She's really cute," Ola says. "She loves kisses and she's a very smiley baby. She grabs my face and she tries to kiss me. She's really adorable! You can tell when she's in a playful mood, she has a cheeky grin like her dad."
James and Ola opened up about her happy personality
James adds: "Everyone who sees her says, 'Oh my God, she's so good.'
The proud parents also reveal that Ola took Ella to the shopping centre for the very first time earlier this week.
"She was so cute," Ola gushes. "We changed her buggy from the one where she's laying to the one where she can sit right up, so she can see around. She was looking at all of the different shops and colours, and she was so quiet."
Little Ella went to the shopping centre for the very first time
Although Ella was enjoying herself, Ola admits that a shopping centre isn't the best place to be at the moment with a baby as there is nowhere to feed her. "I'm not going to rush out to shop again, I didn't really like it," she says. "I wanted to go into a coffee shop and feed her, but you can't just sit down and order. You had to queue, get the coffee, then see if there's space.
"And if there's not, you have to leave, and I thought, 'It's no good for me to just get a coffee, I need to sit down.' So I ended up having to feed her in the toilets. There are no benches either so I couldn't even just sit down on one with her... All of the shops are prepared with all of the cleaning stuff, but it wasn't great for me. I'm not going to rushing out to do it again."
Tune in next week for the latest updates on James and Ola's parenting column!
