Some days I lose my daughter...

Some days I lose my daughter. Inevitably, I think she's playing downstairs and I go down to check on her, only to find her missing. So I wander through the house, looking for her, and I just about always find her in the same place... curled up under the blankets in bed, sound asleep. When she gets tired in the afternoon, she doesn't complain, she just goes and puts herself down for a nap. How great is that?

One... Two... Three... GO!

One...

Two...

Three...

GO!

Do you see the sheer glee in this child's face when Daddy lets her ride down the stairs in a laundry basket? She loves it!

Eric and Terry's Birthday

Last Sunday while I was in Missoula, Leif and Eliana went out to Billings to celebrate Grandad's and Uncle Eric's birthday. As stated in my last post, we've had some unseasonably warm weather, and it was even warmer over in Billings! Warm enough for some frisbee in fact! Looks like the whole family joined in the fun...

Like father, like son... both born on January 19! (Leif's dad and brother, for those who don't know them)

Eliana and Grandad

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!

Sledding with Ellie

After the little heat wave we've been having, we finally got some new fresh snow last night! It snowed all day yesterday and last night and this morning, the slow kind of snow that just wafts from the sky alighting on trees, like this:

Flocked trees are great! Not as great as sledding, however, so that's what Leif and Ellie did this afternoon, using Ellie's NEW sled!

(I guess when Leif and Ellie were at Walmart yesterday Leif had a gift card from a return to spend, so he stopped to look at sleds. He and Ellie decided we needed a new sled, and she spied this purple one, exclaiming, "A GIRL sled!!" Guess which one made it home with them?)

We got a two-person sled, and Leif rode down the hill with Ellie a couple times, but mostly she wanted to do it herself. That's pretty common these days. She even dragged the sled up the hill by herself a couple times.

All in all, she had a great time. They were out sledding for quite a while, despite the fact that it was in the single digits. I dressed Ellie in layers and layers of clothes, with two pairs of mittens and hand warmers between them, in hopes that she would stay warm enough. Apparently, it worked! She didn't complain about being cold until Leif said it was time to go. She called me and asked if she could have some hot chocolate, so I got it ready for her while they came home. She enjoyed her hot chocolate, and then, tuckered out as she was from the sledding, collapsed into bed, happy as could be.

Happy Birthday, Poppy!

Eliana called Poppy tonight to say, "Happy Birthday" to him. And somewhere along the way she ended up singing the sweetest, cutest little Happy Birthday song to him. The best part? I think the best part was how she tacked "cake" to the end of "happy birthday" every so often. It went something like this:

Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday Poppy's birthday cake!
Happy Birthday! and cake!

It was sweet.

Almost as sweet as the voicemail she left them last week. It pretty much consisted of a series of "I love you!"s, as though repeating it enough would convince them to pick up the phone. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way with voicemail, but that's what it reminded me of. In any event, it was pretty sweet, too.

Perhaps the greatest show of love for Mommom and Poppy today was simply a question. She colored a flower for Mommom and then asked me if we could give it to Mommom. I said we could mail it and she responded by asking if we could get on a "jet" (her word) and go to Mommom and Poppy's house and give Mommom her flower. She asked not just once, but several times. Today she REALLY wanted to go. I hope airline tickets get cheaper soon, because I'm not sure I can resist too many more questions like that!

Song Maker-Upper

All of my life I have been making up songs. It's just one of those weird things about me. I choose to think that it's a gift rather than an oddity, but I'm pretty sure it's genetic.

And I appear to have passed this marvelous gift on to my daughter.

Just now Eliana was happily singing "Jingle Bells" while I was making some cheesy eggs. So to the tune of Jingle Bells I started singing, "Cheesy eggs, cheesy eggs, cheesy eggs today..." and without skipping a beat she chimed in, "Oh what fun are cheesy eggs while we're at the farm!"

Now, I have no idea where the farm line came from, but I'm impressed with her ability to improvise like that on the spot! She kept the tune, started the line the same as the regular song, and then improvised on the subject I was singing about.

Yep! It's definitely genetic....

Another Ellieism

I remembered another thing Eliana says wrong...

She refers to headbands as "headbandaids".

And they're her new favorite fashion accessory, so she says it a lot.

Cute, and worth the watch....

Makey Macon

It seems that as Eliana's vocabulary and syntax skills have improved, she has slacked off in the enunciation department. Sometimes she mumbles things or doesn't say them clearly, or just doesn't say them correctly, even though she once did. Today it took me quite a while to realize that when she was saying "Makey Macon" she really meant "Canadian Bacon".