It's been a while since I've done a post just updating about Ella and what she's up to. What is most apparent to me right now is what a fun age she is at - I keep waiting for "terrible twos" to hit and while she is certainly strong willed and earns her share of time-outs, overall her personality is just amazing.
She is so much fun to be with, sweet and affectionate, and is a precious little companion. It's like she's at the perfect age. She can be really funny and will do silly things, she loves laughing, and loves making us laugh too. I love her laugh and her sense of humor is so silly. She gives lots of hugs and kisses and loves cuddling and snuggling (on her terms of course).
She is so very chatty, and talks all the time. I just LOVE her voice and just about every single thing she says. She is so funny, talks with so much inflection and seriousness, and many hand gestures. It's amazing how much of what she says actually makes sense and how we're able to understand about 95% of it. Very rarely there are a few words that she'll repeat over and over, so we know she sincerely means something but we just can't figure it out. Most of the time though she makes sense. She strings several words together, and here are some of my favorite things she's said lately: "Cory, I'm nice!" (when Cory was trying to get away from her), "ohhhh, nice baby", "I did it!" (she says this one all the time to announce her many achievements), "I want some water please" (this is her longest sentence so far I think), "yesss", and then when she doesn't want to do something but knows she has to, she says "o-taaay" in this little Eeore voice that is so funny. She also says "no way" a lot and had a little phase of saying "nope" every time instead of no. Oh and she'll throw in a "sheesh" if she's annoyed!
She is using the potty fairly often and does both #1 and #2 in the potty a few times a day. She tells us she wants to go but then once we get her settled on the potty, she wants her privacy, so we need to go in the hallway and wait until she calls us to come in and look at what she did and give her lots and lots of cheers and praise. She is always very proud of herself.
Ella LOVES taking Cory for walks, and at the beginning of each day, she wants to know exactly when the walk(s) will be taking place. This Saturday I told her we were going to go for a walk after her nap. So, we're driving home from some errands and I told her we were going to eat lunch, then nap time. Well she knew that "walk" was coming after nap time, so she wanted to get right to nap time. She said "no eat, nap" so that she could get the nap going. I took her up to change her diaper before nap and she said "nooooo, nap" ...she did not want even the slightest delay in getting to that walk. Of course I still changed her, but she was not pleased with that. She went right down, didn't even want to read before her nap. She took a good nap, over an hour and a half, and as soon as I went in to get her when she woke up, she said first thing with a giant smile on her face "Cory, walk?" So of course we went just like I told her, and she acted like she had won the lottery. She is so happy and enjoys everything, it's so neat. We have a greenway in our neighborhood and we always go in there because it's a paved trail and so nice to not need to worry about cars or the street. And Ella loves it because she can be a little adventurer and doesn't need to hold my hand while we're in there. (You'd think my hand was coated in battery acid sometimes the way she does not want to hold it!) Steve usually takes them for a long walk during the day and then we go once I get home from work. So, Cory has never been happier either!
She is still the Dog Whisperer and hasn't met a dog that she doesn't love. She'll say things like "oh, nice dog" and then many "hi puppy", "ohhhh, nice" while she sweetly pets them. She also equally loves cats and she refers to all cats as "meows".
She's now wearing 2T clothes, is just about a size 6 shoe and still in size 4 diapers.
I've written before about she nicely let me push her stroller when I walked with my and my friends for about 9 months and then all of sudden started rebelling on me so I couldn't even take her with me when we walked. Well, it finally hit me that this could be a semantics thing because I say to her "we're going to go for a walk" but then I put her in her stroller, so maybe she is thinking "that's not a walk!" So, a few weekends ago I tried again. I told Ella we were meeting Miss Christine and Dominic for a "ride" in her stroller at the lake. I had no clue if it would work or not but it actually did! She did such a good job. I told her that if she did a nice job in her stroller the whole time then at the end we'd put the stroller back in the trunk and take a walk. I was amazed, but it actually worked. And this weekend we were able to do it again. I'm really excited, especially because the weather has been beautiful the past few weeks and now with the time change we've got so much more daylight.
We're back to Little Gym and the playground, Ella is fully back to normal with her leg and I'm guessing she's all but forgotten that she ever hurt it. She'll frequently surprise me with her memory and the stuff she talks about, but she hasn't mentioned her leg in a while, which I think is a great sign.
Ella really knows several of her 'friends' now, and knows that she gets to play with Katie at Little Gym and Ryanne at church. We met up with Katie and her parents at the playground last weekend and Ella walked around looking for her saying "oh, Katie, oh Katie"...it was so cute. On Saturday mornings while we're getting ready she says excitedly "katie!". And as soon as we get to church nursery she says "Eyan?" (= Ryanne).
Ella loves singing. Her favorites right now are ABCs (and she says "more ABCs" over and over), If You're Happy and You Know It (= Happy), the Ella song ( = Ella), and Little Einsteins theme song (she'll just start singing out of nowhere RA RA RA and we're supposed to pick up with "ra ra rah, for rocket").
One of her favorite things to do is point to many things in a row and say "what's that?" - you give her an answer, and then you get another "what's that?"...then, repeat 10 or 20 times! It cracks her up though and it's like she tries to stump us because she'll come back to something that she already asked and then see if we'll give the same answer. She is also starting to say "why?" to ask about things. She's definitely very curious and seems to observe everything around her.
I could go on and on and on, but will wrap it up for now, and here are some other pictures from the last few weeks!
Hard at work sweeping
Big hugs for Cory
Playing in a laundry basket
Ella the Adventurer
