A message for Robert

So... Robert sent a mock-up dress for Eliana to try on to help him with some project he's working on, which I'm guessing is a dress for Ellie, based on the mock-up. =D She tried it on last night and I took a couple pictures to send so he could get an idea of how it fit. I also took this little video, and Ellie added her own personal message for Uncle Robert. It's sweet. =D

As a side note, Ellie tried it on last night and we haven't been able to get it off her since. She loves it. She slept in it. She's worn it all day. I just hope she likes the real thing as much as the mock-up!

Interviews with Eliana

Since I now know how to post videos again, I figured I'd give you some interviews with Eliana. These are from a few weeks ago. =D

Parties R Us

There's a relatively new play place in Bozeman called Parties R Us that we checked out earlier in the week. It's full of those inflatable obstacle courses and bouncy houses and slides and a really fun way to get some energy out on cold days, which we've been having a lot of lately! Just for kicks I tried out the video camera on my new phone (which uploads the videos directly to YouTube for me - woohoo!), so here's Eliana having fun on the inflatables!

If you're local, I recommend heading over there sometime. It's fun!

Here's what I spent my weekend doing....

Living Proof Live Billings Montana from Rich Kalonick on Vimeo.

I signed up to go to the Beth Moore conference in Billings a number of months ago, and I'm glad I did. It was a good conference, and I got to spend time getting to know the women of our church better. And Leif was wonderful to take Ellie for the two-day event so that I could go and have a break. I'm sure I have more to say on the subject, but I'll just sum it up with the verse we focused on over the weekend:

"The noble man makes noble plans and by noble deeds he stands." (Isaiah 32:8)

What do all these places have in common??

1. White House
2. Colosseum
3. Neuschwanstein
4. Eiffel Tower
5. Mt. Rushmore
6. Stonehenge
7. Old Faithful

Well, aside from being places listed in the landmarks flashcard set from the Target $pot, these are all places Eliana can identify by name. Our not-quite-2 year old is like a sponge these days and loves these flashcard sets. We bought them yesterday. Here she is today:

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(If you're having trouble seeing the video, as I am for some reason, you should be able to see it on Google Video here.)

I'm sure it's not polite to brag on your children, but I thought it was too cute not to share. =D

Ellie disproves the theory...

... that if you try hard enough at something you will succeed:

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Never once that day did she succeed in blowing bubbles, but it was funny to watch her try. That was back in March, mind you, and now she is pretty proficient at it, though we don't blow as many bubbles now that we discovered the giant bubble wands.

Oldies but Goodies...

It appears that we uploaded a whole bunch of videos of Ellie back in March. As I'm in the process of uploading more videos (from a few months ago!) I found them, so I figured I'd share a few. I'll try to get some recent videos up soon, but in the meantime, here's a glimpse of Ellie a few months ago...

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It's crazy to watch these and realize how much she's matured over the last few months! She's still a crazy busy girl, but she's bigger, has longer hair, talks SO MUCH MORE (and in full sentences), and is just all around so much more a big girl and less a baby. It's amazing what a few months can do.

Hello, Goodbye

Hello!



Goodbye!

and have a good day!

Reading Books in Bed

Here's a video from a while ago, back when Ellie had her ear infection. She was laying on her bed reading books when I found her, and it was just too cute not to video:

Piano Time!

Can you hear how much she's jabbering while she's playing the piano? She pretty much jabbers like this all day long. She's going to have to pay for her own phone minutes when she's a teenager if she keeps this up!

Silliness

It occurs to me that some people just aren't silly. I guess I'd never realized this before because I come from a long lineage of silliness. I never really considered the possibility that I may someday have a child who isn't silly. I'm not sure what I would do with a child like that, since I am pretty much silly to the core. Fortunately for me, my daughter is silly to the core, too. As if to prove that point, here she is playing a couple weeks ago:

There's no end to the fun...

... you can have with zippers.

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Ellie's Fort

We saw the coolest snow fort in a neighbor's yard the other day. It had several rooms and what looked like tunnels leading between them. Very cool!

Ellie doesn't have a snow fort. Neither she nor I have the patience to go out into the cold and build one! So she has the next best thing... a fort in the living room! It's just one room of the pop up train we got for her birthday, but she has filled it with pillows and stuffed animals and has been playing in it for about 4 days now. She loves it! It's how she entertains herself. And I'm glad she does, because boy does she have a lot of energy! She can play in this thing for an hour!

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Yes, we're still alive...

... We just haven't been taking many pictures of Ellie lately. Not much has been going on, I guess. And so, it's been a week since we've blogged. Eeek! I know, I know... it's completely unacceptable. So to make it up to you, here is a little video of Ellie singing "Old MacDonald":



This is her favorite song lately. She comes into the room and says, "Donald E-I-E-I" when she wants to sing it. So far we really only do the duck, cow, and cat, but it's fun anyway.

In other news, Ellie can now go up and down the steps all by herself. She still does it on her hands and knees for the most part, but is very good at it. She's very careful about it, too.

She has also gotten quite proficient at talking on the phone. She carries the phone around nodding and pointing and talking about the things she sees around the house. She also babbles long strings of "words" very seriously! Unfortunately for the person on the other end, it's hard to know what she's talking about unless you can see what it is that she's pointing to. The other day she told Mommom all about the bunny, moon, trees, and cars she could see outside. Then when I asked if I could talk to Mommom, Ellie told me, "No." and continued to babble at Mommom. I think she had a 30 minute conversation all by herself!! She did NOT want to share the phone and threw quite a tantrum when I insisted that the conversation was over.

And yes, we have landed ourselves squarely in the middle of tantrum-ville. Ellie thinks she's two, with all of the kicking, screaming, and "No!" outbursts that come with it. Thankfully she is delightful much more often than not, and we enjoy most of our time with her, making the tantrums a little easier to live through.

I did take a couple pictures today of the types of things Ellie is doing lately, but I have to pull them off the camera still, so I'll save that for a little later. In the meantime, enjoy the video and I'll try not to wait so long to post again!!

Picture Book

Ellie is not so interested in having books read to her lately. She really wants to sit down and look at the pictures. She wants to name the things she sees. And she loves it when you do this with her. The other day I was looking at a book with Ellie when Leif caught us with the video camera. So here is Ellie demonstrating her mastery of the picture book: (It's over 4 minutes long, so it might take a while to load)

Christmas Videos

Eliana opening her present from Mommom and Poppy:



Ellie and Daddy having fun in the wrapping paper mess:

Ellie's First Time Sledding

This afternoon we took Ellie sledding for the first time. She loved it!



First Leif went down the hill with her. I think he enjoyed it more than she did!!







Then he followed her down, holding onto the rope so she didn't get away.



Finally she got to go down all by herself and she thought it was great!




She could go really fast in the little sled we got for her. I got it at a garage sale for $5 and thought it would be perfect for a toddler. I was right! It is SO stable and the high back keeps her secure.



She really liked to watch the other kids who were sledding, too. I think she felt like one of the "big" kids and I know she likes that. She is always wanting to do what the big kids are doing.



We will definitely have to take her out sledding more often. She had such a great time with it - as she does most times she gets to go fast!! She is a little speedster, just like Leif.

Barbie

While we were in Texas this month we got to open gifts with my family and with Barbie. Barbie is a LeTourneau student who has been living with my family this semester. Ellie absolutely adores her. Even now that we are home Barbie is always included in the list of family members as Ellie rattles through them. She says, "Mommom! Poppy! Barbie! Robert!" and at some point we will have to tell her that Barbie is not really part of our family.

But family or not, Barbie had a Christmas gift and card for Ellie. I don't think anything we could ever get Eliana will compare to the card from Barbie. Ellie LOVES it. And it's perfect:

Ellie opened that card over and over just to hear it say "Hi! It's Barbie!" and she'd giggle and giggle and giggle and say "Barbie!!". It was just priceless, until it got annoying and we had to hide the card from her. Now it comes out on select occasions. Eventually, though, that card and these pictures will go in Ellie's scrapbook to be preserved forever. =D


Now, one thing I forgot to mention about Barbie (though perhaps you can tell from the pictures) is that she's 6 feet tall, with long blond hair, and (having grown up in Pensacola, FL) tan. She IS Barbie. So her gift to Ellie was particularly fitting and she's probably the only person on earth I would let get away with giving my 17 month old a.... Barbie doll!

The first thing Ellie did was pick up the Barbie hair brush and start brushing... her teeth! It was cute! (and proof, I guess, that we have indeed taught her how to brush her teeth...)

She did eventually learn that the brush is for Barbie's hair.


Now Ellie totes the Barbie doll around the house saying, "Barbie!". And for the record, I have taken all the small pieces and put them away for later. But she loves her Barbie and it reminds her how much she loves the "real" Barbie.


And really, how many little girls are able to say that they got their first Barbie doll from the REAL Barbie?

(As a side note, last year we got Ellie's picture taken with the Grinch. This year her picture was taken with Barbie. I guess we don't do Santa.)

She's a musician at heart!

Aside from playing the piano, singing, and dancing, Eliana also likes to play the harmonica. Here she is, playing her premiere performance in Longview, TX.... Eliana!

How's a piggy go?

The last few weeks Eliana has been toting around the book "Moo, Baa, La La La" by Sandra Boynton. It's her recent favorite. She will bring it to you and say "La La La" and sit happily while you read it to her. She can point to and name the duck, the dog, and the cat. She can also make little piggy snorting noises. In just the last couple days she has started putting the "La la la" and piggy noises together, and saying them at appropriate times during the book or just during the day as she's playing, which is hilarious. Today I was reciting the book to her (that's what happens when you read something too many times!) and I got a little video of her making her piggy noises. It was just too cute not to share with you all. As an added note, the book in the video is NOT "Moo, Baa, La La La" in case you were wondering. Enjoy!