Lately, Elise has been stringing more and more words together, often using three-word phrases and seldom having trouble letting us know exactly what it is she wants. And as Elise has become even more vocal, I feel like her personality is just blossoming.
I love how she has a curl trying to form over her right ear these days, and she is still as bald as ever over her left ear.
Here's a list of just a few of her quirks/obsessions/preferences/strange habits that I find amusing:
-Elise likes to talk about "owies." Anytime she gets hurt, especially if it leaves any kind of mark, we have to talk about it endlessly, and of course kiss it. Any blemish or "owie" I have is also a favorite subject. We talk a lot about the difference between moles and owies, since she seems utterly convinced any mole or freckle I have is an owie. (But I guess "owie" is a lot better than "nipple," which is what she once called a mole on my neck.)
-She likes to randomly blow her nose. In her sock, in her hand, in her baby doll's clothes, whatever is handy. This is not my favorite thing, since it's pretty gross and I have to clean it up, but it still kind of makes me laugh. It's not like she only does it when she has snot issues, either. Even if there's no snot running down her face, or even if I have a tissue available, she still does it sometimes. And she knows how to ask for a tissue. She blew her nose into her hand yesterday at the zoo, and my sister Holly's comment was, "Wow, she's really good at blowing her nose." Snot was everywhere.
I wasn't necessarily trying to get a video of this grossness, but Elise was caught blowing her nose into her baby doll's clothes today anyway.
-As soon as we blow up her beach ball, she immediately deflates it. Not only does she open the valve (with her teeth), but she squashes the ball with her face until the ball is flat. I think it's funny to watch her use her head to deflate it.
-As you can also see in the above video, she loves to talk about when people are sad. If she ever overhears someone crying or sees someone acting sad, she wants to talk about it every time. That book is Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I thought this book would be too wordy for her, at least until she gets a little older, but she loves it. She especially likes to talk about how Alexander gets soap in his eyes when he is in the bath.
-She is pretending more and more. She loves to pretend that there's a bee flying around in the bathroom while she is taking a bath. We talk about where the bee is flying and what it is doing. She especially likes when it "lands" on her. The only way to end this game is to tell her the bee had to go home to its hive to go to sleep. She then spends five more minutes saying, "bee, home, hive" before we can really give it up.
Another thing she likes to pretend is that she (or her baby doll or teddy bear, or whatever) is eating. She uses anything cup-like as a bowl and anything stick-like as a utensil; for example, she often uses one of her stacking cups and a xylophone mallet. One of her favorite things to pretend she is eating lately is rice. "Breakfast," "lunch," and occasionally "dinner" are new words in her vocabulary that she likes to employ. Sometimes she fantasizes about things, and she might say something like "eat, cheese, breakfast." She would love it if I would give her cheese for breakfast.
Translation: "What are you doing?"
"Licking. Licking."
"Are you going to eat the food? What are you eating?"
"Rice. Rice."
"Rice? That looks like grapes. Are you going to eat grapes? What else to you have to eat?"
"Eat. Eat. Loud!"
"What else do you have to eat? Grapes, and what else?"
"Grapes."
"Where's the apple?"
"There."
"Over there. Where's the orange? That one's a peach. Where's the orange? Yeah, good. What else do you have? Where's the banana?"
"Foot."
And husbands sometimes wonder why their wives crave adult conversation after being at home with a toddler all day.
-She asks for candy about a thousand times a day lately. (She only actually gets one piece a day.) Easter candy has ruined her. Hopefully she doesn't go into hysterics when we run out.
-She loves octagons. If she sees a stop sign, she immediately identifies it as an octagon. We also have a window that is shaped like an octagon that she likes. She doesn't know what a triangle or a square is, but she knows octagons.
-She loves to undress. Not just at night anymore, although we do still have to duct tape her diaper at night. She's getting pretty good at getting naked fast these days, though I only encourage it when she's getting ready for the bath.
-She loves to help me vacuum. If it were up to her, we would vacuum every day. Her job when we vacuum is to help move the toys out of her room so the floor is clear, and she is a very enthusiastic helper. Then while I vacuum, she occupies herself with running to the corner I am trying to vacuum, and I have to coax her out of it.
-Elise likes to push the kitchen chairs around, and she especially likes climbing on them so she can play with the light switches. She's getting so tall lately, though, she won't need to climb on chairs to get what she wants much longer. She can already reach the drawer with the stickers in it.
-She loves jumping, spinning, hopping, and throwing. Of course, she's not coordinated enough to jump with both feet at once, and what she calls hopping is really just shifting her weight while standing on two uneven surfaces. She's pretty good at spinning and throwing, though, although she definitely can't catch yet.
In this video, she is saying "round, round," which means she is going around and around in circles. I love this video because I feel like it captures Elise's happy, lively personality. I even love the look on her face at the end when she gets too dizzy and falls on her bum.
What a sweet, lovely little girl we have in our lives!
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