Headbands

Elise put a headband on herself once, and I told her it was cute. Now she's obsessed with headbands. She likes to wear multiples at a time. She put both of these on herself (one's around her neck).

And, yes, her pajamas are on backwards. If you are wondering why, I explained in this blog post. And by the way, she can get the duct taped diapers off now. I've found her completely naked on two separate occasions even though I had duct taped her diaper on. We also had a poop smearing incident a couple of days ago, but thankfully I was gone to the dentist. But I guess that really has nothing to do with headbands, so I'll spare you the details.

Ummm...YES!

Elise's new favorite word is YES! She just figured out the concept of answering questions with yes instead of just repeating what we said. For example, if we ask her if she wants a drink, she now responds with a resounding "YES!" instead of repeating drink back to us. She is so proud of her new accomplishment. It makes me laugh every time because I always forget to expect it. Kind of like when she suddenly gets really loud when saying prayers. (It's okay; I think the Lord understands, and probably laughs a little too.) It also makes me laugh when she says this because she always has to pause for a minute to think about it first. Our conversations often follow a question-pause-YES! pattern.

So today, I guess I really should have seen this coming, but I was still surprised. Elise and I were talking about showing your muscles, as in flexing your biceps (a concept she learned from Froggy Goes to the Doctor). Lately, she likes to talk about being fast and strong and takes great pride in being a "fast runner" and lifting things she deems "heavy" (like a piggy bank). Then, kind of out of the blue, she says, "Mama big." "Mama's big?" I clarified. Pause. "YES!" was her resounding answer. As if, in the start of my third trimester, I need to be reminded of how big I am.

Another favorite response to questions, when the answer is no, is nope or not. Nope also came from the Froggy books, specifically Froggy Goes to Bed (We literally have a dozen Froggy books by Jonathan London checked out from the library right now. Elise loves them, but they're not all favorites of mine. I do like Froggy Plays Soccer, though; Elise sometimes randomly chants some version of, "Head it! Boot it! Knee it! Shoot it! But don't use your hands!") Her use of not, though, doesn't always make sense. I sometimes ask her, "Do you want this or not?" to which "not" is an appropriate answer. But now if I ask only, "Do you want this?" she sometimes still answers with "not."

One day she'll figure out this whole question thing. In the meantime, Mama grows bigger and bigger.

Daddy's Girl

Elise loves her daddy. She is always so excited to see him. We have to get used to him being gone for work all over again every single Monday. Elise is so lucky to have such a terrific father.

Last week, I had been sick and Matt let me sleep in on Saturday morning. He got up bright and early with Elise and took good care of her and played with her while I slept in a couple of (golden) hours. (Did I mention he's an awesome husband too?) Then when I finally got up, I went downstairs and took my time having breakfast. I came upstairs to find Matt playing a new game with Elise that he had invented. A blanket made a cave, and they were repeatedly acting out the story of "We're Going on a Bear Hunt" by Michael Rosen. Elise was loving it. I just thought to myself how glad I am that she has such a great daddy who loves her so much.

in Daddy's boots

putting on Daddy's socks and shoes

all dressed in Daddy's clothes!

She wants to be just like him, and I hope someday she will be.

These two have such a good time together.

(Matt is perfecting the fine art of multitasking.)

Happy Father's Day! Especially to my Matt, who is a great Daddy to Elise and will surely be to the one we have on the way.

Cousins Make the Best Friends

Last week, Matt and I got to watch my sister Holly's three oldest kids while she and her husband went to an overnight convention for his job. Unfortunately, they took their sweet, squishy, nursing baby with them, so I missed out on his cuteness while they were away, but the older three were a lot of fun. Elise had the time of her life. She has missed them so much since we moved out of Holly's house about five months ago. It was like a play date all day long with her three favorite friends.

hanging out with the cousins, playing with Star Wars figurines

Ryland, Leighton, and Savannah

(I love the face Ryland is making.)

Ryland and Elise play so well together. Ryland is about six months older than Elise, and he is pretty much the sweetest kid ever. I love him, and so does Elise. Can you tell?

This one makes me laugh because it looks like Elise is yelling and Ryland is plugging his ears.

Did I mention he's a sweetie?

I spun the kids in the chair for awhile, and then Ryland took over. I love how Elise is just laughing and laughing.

Cousins really do make the best friends.

Talk Like a Toddler

This post is inspired by another blog post by my friend Megan, written about her adorable son, Elijah. He's just a little older than Elise, and he says some funny things too.

Unrelated to this post, Elise loves to put things, especially headbands, around her legs, then shuffle around. I have no idea why she does this, but it sure is funny to watch.

Elise is 21 months old now, and she has been talking like crazy lately. She is stringing words together all the time, not necessarily in sentences, but close. Like tonight, when she wanted to watch this video of Jesus being baptized, she said, "Watch video Jesus baptize water." She definitely can get her point across.

She also constantly asks to go to the pool lately. A typical request might sound something like, "Shoes, diaper, suit, water." She knows that in order to go to the pool, we need to put on our shoes and bathing suits and get her a special swim diaper.

She is usually pretty clear when she speaks (at least to me), but I thought I'd make a list of some things she says that would probably need translation. Sometimes I even have to translate for Matt, like tonight when he thought Elise was saying something about her shirt being wet today. She was actually saying "red day" and patting her chest because she was wearing a red shirt today.

Here's a brief list, with the word or phrase she is trying to say first, followed by my best spelling of the way Elise really says it:

tomato = made-oh
bathing suit = suit
today = day
motorcycle = cycle
pineapple = apple
strawberry = strawbee
peanut butter = butter
sour cream = crean
ice cream = cone, or ice crean
pinecone = cone
kitchen = chichen
couch = chouch
sandwich = chanchich
library = ahh-bwee
thank you/you’re welcome = tan too gwelcon (said like one word as she gives you something)
washcloth = foff-foff
pacifier = faff-fie
up high = pie
hold it/them = hole-mum (usually with both hands on chest)
eat it/them = ee-mum
excuse me = scuses
basket = bassick
quesadilla = dadda

If you don't already know what she means, some of these things can get confusing. Like how she uses "apple" for both apple and pineapple, or "butter" for both butter and peanut butter. She says a lot of other typical things little kids say, like "baff" for bath, but this list includes a lot of the things she says that I think are amusing or unique to her toddler speech, although I'm sure there are many more things she says that are amusing that I can't think of offhand.

She also occasionally adds "es" to words, like "feetses" for feet or "toeses" for toes or "clotheses" for clothes. She's still figuring out the whole plural thing. And if she adds "too" to the end of a sentence or a phrase, you can usually ignore it. It doesn't usually signify much; I'm not sure she really knows what "too" means, but she uses it a lot. She can also say most of a prayer by herself, although she sometimes gets really loud suddenly and inexplicably while she prays. Occasionally she will stop playing, look over at me, fold her arms, and say, "Favver (Father), thank thee, Jesus Christ, Amen."

We sure do love this sweet girl, and we love how talkative and spunky she is.

Spoon vs Slurp

Usually Elise shares my cereal with me, but this morning Elise insisted on having her own bowl and spoon. If you watch this video, you will see why I have avoided this situation until now. She was doing pretty well with the spoon until she decided she could eat faster without it.

Similar situation with yogurt recently. She wants to feed herself yogurt every day now. Sometimes we use a lot of napkins. "Dude it self" is her mantra ("do it myself"). I love the progression (or digression might be a better word) of this second video. She started off okay, but once her fingers got into it, it was all downhill from there, ending up with all ten fingers in her mouth at once.

And if you're wondering why she is rubbing the spoon all over her chin, she isn't missing her mouth (most of the time). She is trying to copy the way I scrape the food off with the spoon when some gets on her face.

Moral of the story: When you're not yet two, slurping is more effective than using a spoon most of the time.

Emotions

Elise is fascinated by emotions lately. Her "sad" face makes me laugh every time. Matt is a big fan of "surprised."