Like a Weed

I'm sure you all know what this title is about, but can this kid slow down already? We've definitely hit a growth spurt lately. For a while Ellie was sleeping 13 hours at night, taking two naps, and still so tired she was a total grump. Now we're back to one really good nap in the day and sleeping through the night most nights, which is GLORIOUS. But, instead of sleeping all the time, she is never full these days. She can eat half a can of ravioli and 15 minutes later down a bowl of peaches these days. Speaking of eating, we've been working on Ellie using her own utensils lately. And suddenly, after buying some toddler sized silverware, voila! Oh the joy of tool use!

In other news, this kid gets cuter by the day. It's kind of ridiculous. Here are a few pictures of our cute girl from last couple of weeks in chronological order.

Real pigtails! I'm winning the war of doing her hair! And I can't believe it's long enough for pigtails already! Don't mind the part.... I may have won the war that day, but we did take some casualties....

We got absolutely dumped on with snow a couple of weeks ago. When it warmed up some we tried to take Ellie out to play in it, but we'd gotten some freezing rain too, so it was no good for playing in thanks to the inch thick layer of ice across it all. We carved out this whole to try and get some interest, but failed.

As a result, Ellie just liked walking around in it.

But she got cold pretty quick and went to Daddy to bring her back "side" (her inside or outside). On a side note, seeing what our neighborhood looked like 3 days after the snow here, we were so grateful to have the Durango!!!

When we went back inside Ellie had to play with these headphones. She likes to wear Steve's shooting muffs for a few minutes at a time too.

This kid cracks me up. She will make cute faces for half a second if I have the camera and tell her to "smile big" while I smile at her now. I just need to get faster so I can capture more of her cute cheesy grins.

Her feet have grown, but not this much. But this girl loves wearing shoes and will try to put any on that she can find.

Have I mentioned this kid has spunk? Maybe once or twice? Here she is rocking out with the hair and attitude to complete the look. Believe me, flowered thermals are all the rage in rock and roll right now. She's a kid ahead of her time.

We live in a very pro-Husky area, which drives Steve nuts where he was a Cougar for 3 years. So, Ellie always has some WSU gear. She was all decked out this day and looked so cute! This was right before she pulled every last book down on herself and read books from her buried position.

This isn't a very good picture (crappy phone) but, she looked awfully cute this day too.

Some other random Ellie facts. In a few pictures you see her carrying around her foam letters. She's totally into B and O right now and will find them on her alphabet chart in the hall, find the letters and carry them around, or say the name of those letters with her alphabet blocks. I guess it's time we start working on the alphabet! She'll also call just about every letter O or B right now, even E which she has known for months, but we're still pretty impressed. You know you are too.

She's started saying Please and Thank you beyond just signing them, and the Nursery leader (from church) told us she said Thank you to her without prompting yesterday, so we must be doing something right! Our favorite recent development is that she's saying words to get what she wants without needing prompting all the time now. If she does wake up at night and can't put herself back to sleep I'll go in to have her say "mouf" while she points to her mouth and then usually follow it up with either "hurt" or "molk" (milk). It's FABULOUS! Even if she's upset, if I ask her what's wrong, she usually tells me!

She also knows what the potty is and we have her sit on it and sing songs any time she has a messy diaper so she gets used to the idea that she sits on the toilet. She actually asked Steve to sit on the potty yesterday. Nothing happened of course, but we're just happy she's starting to show interest for down the road.

She's also learned how to climb up on furniture, although she sometimes forgets to get a leg up and just strong-arms it. It's fun to see her get up and then "Yay!" and clap for herself. Other times it makes me nervous because even though she's my cautious little girl, she still likes to run and plop on the couch and stand in the middle of the coffee table!

I've decided parenting is one heck of a hard time on your emotions. We haven't even gotten to very tough stages yet, but it doesn't matter. Over and over I'm so proud of her learning new things and becoming more self-reliant (she needs no help being independent), but at the same time it makes me a little sad to see my baby growing up. To everything there is a season I suppose.... On the bright side, every stage is more fun and full of even more personality than the last, so we're just hoping that our girl remains so happy and cheerful all the time so we can enjoy laughing at how quirky she is every day!