Elea-isms

Elea walks up to you and says "pingers" (Fingers) and grabs your hand, pulling you to wherever or whatever she wants help with.  Since she figured that little trick out, her tantrums have nearly disappeared (thank goodness!) it was a rough couple of months with the tantruming.

She still does sign language while using words with a lot of things (milk, dog, more, eat, etc.).  It's kind of fun to watch her randomly bust out a sign that I didn't even realize that she had learned- i.e. "juice" yesterday, for the first time.

"Stuck" is one of her favorite words.  She gets stuck trying to climb the baby gate we put in her door during nap-time.  Or stuck in her booster seat.  Or stuck in her stroller.  Or stuck trying to put pants on.  Or stuck trying to take shirt off.  Or stuck trying to pull a barrette out of her hair. Or stuck trying to pull things out of the bathroom drawers.

Another favorite phrase is "_____, watch this," and then she proceeds to do something she thinks is cool- normally describing the action while doing it.  For example, "Mom, watch this, jump!" while jumping up and down.  A couple weeks ago we were at a friends house and she was jumping on the trampoline, so she kept telling the dog across the yard, "DOG! WATCH THIS!"  Or yesterday, we were on Skype with my parents and she said, 'Papa, watch this!" but I don't remember what she did.  It's usually pretty cute & endearing . . . until she says it before dumping all the leftover food (which is usually a lot) left on her plate onto the floor.

Her favorite show is "agins" (Backyardigans).  Which is fine with me because they aren't annoying.  We tried the Little Einsteins thing for a couple of weeks, but then I had an intense desire to break my eardrums after hearing "I CAN NOT BELIEVE IT!" for the hundredth time.  Backyardigans is pretty fabulous.

Any sort of jewelry or hair accessory is "pretties" or "cute."

We're still in the process of taking away the binkie(s).  We cut the tips off of all of her binkies, and she still uses the 0 month size so they aren't that big to begin with.  When she first saw them, she called them "yucky binkiy" and made a major stink face when she tried to use them.  It's cured her of whining for her binky ALL DAY LONG, but she still wants it at bed-time, even though it falls out the second she falls asleep.  But, she doesn't wake up crying for it in the night.  So baby steps I guess.  Maybe we'll take them away completely when she turns 2 next month-- kind of a cruel birthday present though, huh?

I had a delusional moment or two a few weeks ago and thought it would be a good idea to start the potty training.  But then one morning I had her sitting on the toilet, she climbed down, peed on the floor, and then climbed back onto the toilet.  So, we're post-poning that for a few months, at least until we are settled in the new place.

She's been waking up between 5:45- 7 am every morning.  So she just comes and climbs in bed with me and says "Mom! Shows!" so I turn on sesame street and lay there with my eyes closed, hoping to fall back asleep.  Until she pats my head or face and says "Mom! Drink!" which usually takes a couple times before I stagger out of bed and make her chocolate instant breakfast which is her main source of vitamins since she still has a major aversion to the texture fruits & vegetables & every brand of multi-vitamin I have tried so far!  Mother of the Year Award right here, thank you very much.

Elea is a pretty polite little kid so far.  Sometimes she needs to be reminded to say please & thank-you but a lot of the time she remembers all on her own.  If we remind her she usually says "thank you, ________, thank you!" 

Elea is learning (as much as a 23 month old can) the difference between right/wrong, nice/mean, etc.  While watching disney/animated movies, she has started pointing at the "misbehaving" characters and telling them off.  Yesterday it was Toy Story-- I don't remember what part, but she was pointing at the TV yelling "Stop it Buzz!  Stop it!"

She thinks it's hilarious if we copy what she says.  She's at the age where she says our names over and over and over and over and over and over without any reason.  So one day in the car out of sheer desparation whenever she would say "Mom," Jeff would immediately copy her, before she could even get the second "m sound" out.  Once she realized what he was doing she thought it was hilarious and started changing the speed, pitch, volume, etc.  It's turned into a game that gets us all laughing, especially when she does her various fake laughs and we copy those.  I realized last night that one of these days she is going to start mimickinig US, when we are trying to be stern or serious and we will have a major parenting back-fire on our hands.

There was a while there that she was throwing tantrums/whining often.  When she would starts whining I remind her to "Use your words," and she usually responds with "words."  . . .Obviously that was not quite what I had in mind, but it works to distract her from the whining!  Law of unintended consequences or whatever.

We haven't had any chairs around our kitchen table except for her's and the 2 pinned against the wall because Elea loves to climb.  Everything.  And she figured out how to drag the chairs around the kitchen, so we had more than the top of the kitchen table to worry about.  The baby lock I had installed on the oven melted, imagine that, so about once or twice a day I find her standing on the open oven door, dismantling the stove top burners.  The other day I looked into the living room and she had opened the dresser we use as an entertainment center and had opened 2 rows of drawers and used them as a ladder in an effort to get into the drawer on the top row.  Luckily, it's a sturdy dresser and she still weighs less than 25 lbs.  Scared me to death.  We have child safety locks installed on every permanent drawer, cabinet, and the dishwasher- she loves to empty the contents of whatever she is able to get into, onto the floor, so that will be the first thing we install when we move in a couple of weeks.  No messing around.

She likes to randomly count to 10 and sing her abc's (or atleast 3/4s of them).  I don't honestly know how she picked them up- it wasn't Jeff or me trying to teach her them, that is for sure.