Booster seats and potty chairs....

Ellie has officially graduated out of her booster seat at the table. The past couple weeks we've been having to fight with her over mealtimes because she didn't want to sit at the table. Finally a lightbulb went on and I asked her if she wanted to sit in a big chair at the table. She did and she's been happy to sit in the big people chairs ever since! So we finally took the booster seat off her chair and stored it in the basement with all of the other equipment she's outgrown. She used that booster for about a year and a half, so I guess we got our $20 out of it. It was definitely cheaper than a highchair! I guess our little girl is growing up...

In other growing up news, even though we haven't *really* been working on potty training with her (other than the occasional trip to the bathroom to sit on the potty during a diaper change or asking if she needs to go potty, but nothing consistent) she is getting ready. Yesterday we were in the car driving when she called from the back seat, "Diaper change, Mommy!" That usually means she's *going* to need a diaper change. So we asked her to wait a bit (though she kept insisting she needed a diaper change) and headed in to the first grocery store we saw and found the bathroom. Of course, someone was in there so we had to wait. But when the person finally came out we went in and (though I was sure it was a lost cause at this point) I sat Ellie on the potty and she peed!! It's the first time she's ever told us in public and then waited until we got there! So we did a little happy dance, especially since we were planning on really working on the potty training once she turns 2, in a couple weeks. All told she went potty in the potty 3 times yesterday and even went when she woke up dry after her nap today.

So that's the exciting news from our neck of the woods!! =D Booster seats and potty chairs.

Baking Cookies Together

Today Ellie and I made cookies together for the first time. She is getting old enough to do more and more activities together, and I thought she might enjoy a little baking. With 6+ inches of fresh snow outside, we needed a nice indoor activity and I thought this might just be the thing. She was hooked from the moment I gave her an apron.

I thought ahead and pre-measured everything so that Ellie could dump the ingredients into the bowl on her own. And aside from her snitching a pinch or two of sugar here and there, it all went very well.

She had quite the technique to her ingredient dumping...

She was very patient while the batter mixed. I thought for sure she'd lose interest and want to go play, but she didn't. She just kept watching and saying things like, "Cookie!" and "Baking."

Soon it was time to put the cookie batter on the baking sheets, and she wanted to be a part of that, too! So every time I scooped some batter up, she'd grab the handle and say, "Squeeze!" and squeeze as hard as she could. Of course, she couldn't squeeze the batter out, but she didn't know that I was the one really doing the work. It seemed to make her very happy to have a job for this part of the cookie making process, too.

She also seemed to think that one of her jobs was to pick the craisins out of the cookies when she thought I wasn't looking and eat them. So I just gave miss sneaky her own pile of craisins to munch on so our cookies didn't have to go without.

All in all, it was a fun little adventure. She is definitely ready for this sort of activity, so I'm hoping to do more of them in the future! She was excited and engaged through the whole process, and she listened well when I told her what to do. It was fun to do together, and best of all we got to sit down and eat cookies together afterward. That's the best!

Control

Currently, Ellie seems to value being in control of a situation over receiving a positive outcome. Case in point, when she takes a bath, she would much rather be in control of the cup which dumps water on her hair than allow me to pour the water. Of course, when she controls the cup, much more water runs into her face and eyes, but that doesn't seem to matter. She lifted the cup. She dumped the water. She cheers at her accomplishment through clenched eyes. I certainly encourage the cheering because she is managing to get her hair washed, somewhat, and because she's overcoming her fear of getting water in her face.

She's also taken to climbing into her crib when it's time for bed. I taught her to use my hands as footholds as she shimmied up the bars. It was great fun, which of course was a good enticement to climb into bed. It was also interesting because it was another chapter in the ever morphing going-to-bed ritual. Once crib climbing was discovered, pushing the CD player's play button lost its luster and closing the door and turning out the light were long forgotten. Of course, going to bed became a less contentious process once she decided that climbing in was her idea and that she chose to scale the bars.

The last few nights, however, climbing into bed hasn't worked so well; she's decided that she needs to do it by herself. No footholds provided by dad will be accepted. She's tried piling things to create a starting point from which to shimmy up, but to no avail. She can't get in on her own, yet. Eventually, she or I get tired of her attempts; she'll wander off to something more interesting in the room and/or I'll just pick her up and drop her into the crib. Then she gives me a sort of "You didn't do the ritual right, so I don't have to go to sleep" look and proceeds to bounce around her crib, rather than lay down to get tucked in. It's a bummer because I don't get a good night kiss and she doesn't seem to fall asleep for an hour or two.

The going-to-bed ritual has also picked up running off to give Mommy a kiss. I used to suggest it to her and she'd go find Elizabeth, or more likely, try to find Elizabeth and get distracted on the way, at which point Elizabeth would hear her getting into something, find her, and ask her if it was time for a kiss. Now she'll decide it's that time, say something about "kiss," and go running off to find Mom, without prompting.

In other news she seems to moving out of the peek-a-boo phase into the ring-around-the-rosy phase. Great squeals of joy follow every song ending "down!" which she will merrily interject at any point beginning with "ashes, ashes." She's now working on the phrase "play again" to tell me it's time to get up and restart singing and dancing. In case you're wondering, the song's title seems to be "Ashes, Ashes" according to Ellie.

Playing by Herself

Ellie has been in a play-by-herself sort of mood today. We went to the Children's Museum this morning and she played very nicely. She played in the rice table (went right to it, climbed up on the "short kid" platform, and played) and even kept most of the rice in the table. She dropped little tiny handfuls of rice through the "spinner funnel" (for lack of a better term - it's a funnel with a wheel underneath that spins when you pour rice through it) and generally played nicely. She didn't even try to eat any of the rice, which is a first, I think. When the other kids in our playgroup arrived, I took Ellie over to say hi to them and she wasn't very happy that I moved her away from the rice table. She got over it quickly, though, and played with the balls back in the basketball area. Then she meandered around the museum, playing with this and that until she finally settled on drawing. I was a little apprehensive about how the drawing would go... she's 14 months, and what 14 month old would actually sit and color instead of eating the crayons?? But I let her do her own thing and she VERY CAREFULLY clutched the crayon with her thumb and first two fingers, then delicately colored little lines. She didn't try to eat the crayon, and she didn't color on anything but the paper. She just carefully colored back and forth, back and forth, on her paper. She did that for about 15 minutes straight and was still going strong when Leif called to say that he was ready for us to meet him for lunch. I picked her up to go and she let me know in no uncertain terms that she was NOT ready to leave. Yes, we have hit the tantrums, folks. But it was relatively short lived and by the time we got outside she was excited about seeing Daddy for lunch.

After lunch she fell asleep on the way home. Unfortunately, she woke up on the transfer from car to bed, so she didn't actually take a decent nap. She played in her crib for a while, then cried for me to get her up. She's been playing by herself all afternoon now. It's funny how hard it is to predict how a day will go. Usually no nap means a grumpy girl. But she's just been a doll today and I've been able to get some stuff done while she's entertained herself.

Just when I think I've got her figured out, she goes and surprises me again.

New Words

It seems like every day Ellie is picking up new words. It's getting harder to keep track of how many she has now, because she just pulls them out and uses them like she's known them forever, even if it's the first time we've heard them. Just now she brought over her bowl from breakfast and handed it to me saying, "bowl." Didn't know she knew that one....

And this weekend we drove down to Yellowstone. When we got there she told Leif "get out" about getting out of the car after the long drive. She also pointed to a waterfall and said, "waterfall" pretty clearly. Her words are getting longer.

Ellie can now identify by name and point to ears and eyes. She can also point to your mouth and nose, but I haven't heard her say those. She can also make a distinction between your eyes and glasses, or "glass" as she calls them. Usually this is something like grubby little fingers smearing on your glasses "glass!" and then the grubby little finger reaching under your glasses and poking you in the eye "eye!" - back and forth. Fuuuun. But it is fun to see her learning.

So let's see how well I can do at coming up with a "complete" list of Ellie words these days:

1. hi
2. yellow
3. blue
4. purple (this is very cute)
5. green
6. bye
7. this
8. that
9. shoes
10. no
11. up
12. down
13. please
14. thank you
15. uh oh
16. what is that (like one big word-phrase)
17. whatcha doin'
18. bowl
19. juice
20. water
21. waterfall
22. window
23. door
24. eye
25. ear
26. face
27. diaper
28. pants
29. hot
30. yum
31. poop (her favorite word for a while)
32. dog
33. cat/kitty
34. pig
35. cookie
36. cheese
37. beep
38. poke
39. jump
40. hot dog
41. ouch
42. wow
43. peek-a-boo
44. cock-a-doodle-do (which is much more like "doodle-do" or "cock-do-do")
45. duck
46. pretty
47. banana (usually "nana")
48. stinky ("tink")
49. grass
50. ball
51. chair
52. Roomba
53. Daddy
54. Mama
55. Mommom (have heard #55-58 at least once in context without prompting)
    
56. Robert
57. Barbie
58. Poppy
59. Zack
60. Lily
    
61. flower
62. zebra
63. cracker
64. fork
65. book
66. read (and "read book" or "read this")
67. kiss
68. yucky
69. more
70. yes
71. yay
72. hat
73. glasses ("glass")
74. bump / bop (it's sort of hard to tell which, but it's when she runs into something)
75. tree
76. dance
77. cow
    

I'm sure there are more that I'm missing, but these are what I can remember off the top of my head. The list is getting longer. She's repeating more words every day, and using them on her own.

Here's an interesting development... she was just hanging onto my leg and whining, so I said "Hey Ellie, go bring me the elephant magnet." I didn't point or anything, just that. She scurried away, ran to the refrigerator, made an elephant noise, and returned to me with the elephant magnet. Well, I guess she understands more than I usually give her credit for. I'm impressed.

Shrek Baby

Last night I put Ellie's hair up in pigtails for the first time. It was cute as could be. Yes, I realize that she just barely has enough hair to pull up, but she has just enough and that's what matters to me. I've been waiting for the day I could put her hair in pigtails for a whole year now and I revel in the fact that I finally can.

Happy First Birthday, Eliana!

We love you!

Birthday Party!!

Here's the birthday girl!! We had her party on Sunday afternoon. It was the 2nd hottest day on record ever for Belgrade at 105 degrees. We had the party at 4:00 in the afternoon, so at least we had some shade on the deck. We had 30 people there, including children. Despite the heat, we had a good time outside.



The kids played in a pop up train I found at a garage sale Saturday (perfect timing!!) and Ellie was THRILLED to have friends to play with! Here are Ellie and Zoe playing:


Poppy made a banner to fly behind his model plane for Ellie's birthday. It said "Happy Birthday Eliana". The wind started picking up and it looked like it was going to storm, so the banner had a short, but exciting flight. Then, sure enough, it rained and we moved everything inside, plus all 30 people, to continue the party.


Inside we had cupcakes and sugar cookies and homemade strawberry ice cream. Even though we practiced blowing out candles ahead of time, Ellie got a little gun shy with so many people watching her. But they sang "Happy Birthday" and she got her cupcake just the same.


At the end of the party Ellie opened some gifts from Grammee and Grandad. I'll post about her birthday gifts in another post, but here she is opening gifts with Daddy's help:


I'll post more about the gifts and other activities later, but Mommom and Poppy are still here and we have plans for this afternoon, so I leave you with this for now. Happy first birthday party, Ellie! We love you!

A Step in the Right Direction

...actually, several steps in the right direction. Tonight Ellie became a toddler; she managed to string together enough steps that we're willing to bestow her with that title. Take a look.

The Difference

We got a Roomba a while back. Ellie thinks that she needs to touch it; we do our best to convince her otherwise. Yesterday Ellie decided to unplug Roomba's home base and stick the live end of the power supply into her mouth. Then there was much crying.

About an hour later, I found her pulling the cord out of the home base again.

It reminded me of this comic. Perhaps she'll be a scientist.

Little Mover

Ellie is on the move all the time. She is a busy little girl, but such a delight. She's always on the lookout for new things to get into, and as she has gotten taller, more things have become available to her. Thankfully, she is (for the most part) obedient when we tell her not to touch something, so we have been able to let our curious little girl explore some. It is wonderful to watch as she learns new things and plays new games. She wears me out some days, but it is rare when I don't end the day with a smile in my heart and thankfulness for the silly little girl God has given us.


One of Ellie's favorite things these days is to crawl into our room and pull up on the bed, then "hide" from us by burying her face in the comforter. She giggles and giggles when she's "hiding" and she'll peek out to see if we're looking at her, then quickly bury her face again and giggle some more.

In the same way, she loves to roll around on the comforter on top the bed. I think the softness is fun for her and she is just plain cute when she rolls to get away from you, then rolls back to surprise you with a hug or kiss. It really is heart melting. Here I caught her in a brief moment of quiet as she looked out the window at the birds outside. She really is a curious thing and a very careful observer.



For a long time now Eliana has liked playing the piano. She thinks it is so fun to sit on the bench or on Daddy's lap and play and play and play. Recently, though, Ellie discovered that she is now tall enough to play the piano by herself. And so, in the middle of playing in the living room she will take a break to come over and play a few notes on the piano. It's delightful to both her and me and I hope that her desire to make music is something that grows with her. She likes to sing and dance along with her musical table, and when there is music playing in public she will often bob along with it. Music is good and I hope she holds on to it.



A favorite passtime (and an almost sure sign that she's up to something) is closing doors. Often I will notice that the house is unusually quiet and I will go searching for Eliana, only to find her in her Daddy's office, door mostly closed, playing with a book or the fringe on a blanket. When I open the door and spy her, she giggles at me guiltily and holds out her hands for me to pick her up as an admission of her naughtiness. She's never really gotten into anything bad, but it is true that when kids are quiet, too quiet, they are up to something.

And now I close this post with the best feeling in the world - the tug of small hands holding fast to my legs as I'm trying to do something. That tug is almost invariably followed by a grin and sparkly blue eyes and is sure to make my day 100 times better, no matter what.

The Sandwich Snatcher

During the nearly two weeks that my mom was here Eliana decided that she is now a big girl. She got a new big girl car seat and she rides in the "big girl" seat in the shopping cart. She is also not interested in eating her baby food anymore. She wants big girl food. The other day we were going to go shopping, so mom made a quick sandwich to eat in the car. While she was getting ready to go out to the car, she sat Ellie up on the counter and grabbed her sandwich. Ellie was intrigued and lunged for it, so mom let her bite a little bit off. Apparently Ellie liked it a lot, because she ravenously grabbed it and ate it like she hadn't been fed in days. I should mention that she'd just been fed rather large lunch. Mom had to eat her sandwich as quickly as she could, just to salvage some of it from Ellie! It was hilarious. All told Ellie ate half of Mom's sandwich. Thankfully I had my camera in hand to bring you footage:

The first taste of peanut butter sandwich

Careful observation

Let me try!

Give me that sandwich!

Yummmmmm!

Now let me feed YOU some!