Bad blogger!

The future's so bright...

Choo choo train maintenance.

New hat.

No shirt!

Last weekend we went to Jeff's bosses' 50th anniversary party at their office. All Ella wanted to do was go up and down the stairs. She's good at going up, not so good at coming down.

Ella loves sitting on top of the recycle bin. She runs over to it and says "Down, down!". (We're working on the difference between up and down...) Her Daddy is the only one who puts her up there, so she doesn't bother asking me. Once she's up there though, she wants to me to know it. Usually she yells "Mama! Mama! Mama!" over and over again as long as she's up there.

Monkey jammies! We got a new box of hand-me-downs from Ella's cousin Avery this week. Everything in there is adorable as usual, but I think these pjs are my favorite. Unfortunately they're already a little too small for her, length-wise, so I had to take a picture since she'll probably only wear them once.

I can't believe it's been so long since I've written! We've been so busy lately with nothing in particular. Just work, life, and a very, very busy toddler. Ella is learning new words every day. We go around pointing to things and saying the names all day. She gets obsessed with certain words for a while- like right now two of her obsessions are flowers and boo-boos. She seeks these things out every where and when she finds them, she points and repeats the word a million times. A few of the other new words- head, hair, toes, belly button, eye, eye brow, ear, mouth, cheek, jelly, piggy, puffs, shoulders, shirt, shake, hat, hot (everything is HOT!), ouch, no, please, breast (what can I say, I'm a nurse, we learn the right word for things), block, kitty, WooWoo (LaRoo- which is any dog apparently), puppy, baby, cheese, teeth, brush, keys (both for actual keys and short for milkies which is what she says when she wants to nurse), owl, book, shoe, sock, outside, down, BaBa (Grandpa), Gramma, Erin, Maggie, and Ella. These are just the words I can remember, I know there are more. Of course, we hear Mama and Dada eleventy billion times a day.

Last week I came home for lunch and sat down to read a book with Ella. It was Dr. Suess's Mr. Brown Can Moo. Can You? I don't read this one with her very often, but apparently she and Erin read it a lot. So, as I'm reading it I start to realize that she's got the book memorized. Not only does she know pretty much all the sounds Mr. Brown can do, but she was doing them before I even turned the page to that sound. We would be finishing the page with the bee or whatever, and she would start to whoo, whoo, and I would turn the page, and there's an owl! I was so impressed and she was very proud of herself.

Ella is so silly and funny. She loves making people laugh and if she does something that gets a laugh once, she'll do it fifty more times (wonder where she gets that from...). She loves dancing and will do so to any music or anything with a beat. And of course, the more we laugh and cheer her on, the more she does it. We have to be careful because if she does something she's not supposed to, even if we say no, she can tell if we're amused and will keep doing it. She is also a big fan of airplanes. If we hear one, we have to stop whatever we're doing and try to go find it so we can point and wave.

Ella has also discovered her dramatic side. She can go from happy to complete melt down in no time flat. Before when she got upset, we could usually distract her and she would be ok. But that doesn't work any more. She's definitely testing her limits and seeing who will let her get away with what. We're trying to be consistent, but man it's hard. And it's hard to know when she's being defiant and when she really just doesn't understand. This age is so much fun, but it's really challenging too.