Talking

Ellie is a little talker lately. She's picking up words as fast as we can say them. New additions are tater, moon, up, uh-oh (pronounced uh-ooo), car, brown bear, milk (pronounced 'kkkkkkkk') and much more. Before you crown her genius though, you should know most of these are unintelligible to any but the most loving and forgiving ear!
Today Ellie went potty in her little toilet, twice. Crazy, you say? Yes, but I've heard from some reliable sources (including our Dr.) that Ellie could be potty-trained by 18 months if desired. So, we're giving it a low-stress try. We'll see!
Every activity with Ellie is so much fun. She is such an easy little girl to please. Sometimes I have to get creative, but in general we're just having a blast! For example, at the grocery store she is happy and charming, as long as she is allowed to put the produce into the bags. I did end up with a few more Yukon gold potatoes than I had originally planned on, but hey, what are kids for if not to talk you into things you weren't planning on?
Ellie is drawing a lot lately with her crayons. She is scared of play-doh (the homemade variety nonetheless). She is getting very good at bossing us around. For example, she will grab our hand and make it do whatever she wants us to do. This usually entails feeling her touch and feel book or grabbing a toy. Yesterday she tried to push Tate onto her little chair. Last week it was to coerce me onto her scooter. Tonight she was maneuvering my hand to make it point to things in her book as I told her what they were. Why couldn't she have just pointed to the things?
Last week she walked all the way to the playground unassisted. It is about a 1/4 of a mile away. You would think she would have slept well that night, huh?
We're taking a music class together and Ellie has started singing along! Our teacher was super impressed. Ellie even cuddled a bit with our teacher, Miss Gila during the lullaby portion. The climbing phase of toddler-hood has begun. So far it is relatively graceful and non-dangerous. Ellie's babies are still getting lots of attention. She likes for at least one to tag along almost all the time. I think it is almost time to find them some changes of clothes as Ellie made me put her babylegs (little girl leg warmers) on the dolls!
We had our 15 month check-up the other day. She weighed 20 lbs fully clothed (cloth diaper and all). That puts her in about the 10th percentile. We didn't get a height as she was not too keen on our Dr. fiddling with her. Her head is still off the charts. Even the Dr. was taken aback by its size. He tried to assure me that she had no other signs of any of the horrible diseases associated with large heads, but I still worry a bit. Oh well, I guess we'll just be shopping in the adult section for hats within the year.
Oh, so much to share! She's a little angel and we couldn't be happier!