Silly Me

That’s how Eliana pronounces her name these days.  I’ve lost track of her word count and couldn’t even begin to guess how many she has, except to say A LOT.  I’m sure most are understood only by Tony and I, but she still has many many that the regular cashier at the grocery store would understand.  

When she wants something she points you in the direction she wishes you to carry her.  ”Dat way!”, usually in a crying, whiny voice since it’s usually after we’ve told her no.  Thankfully, she is easily distracted and those fits don’t last long, even if they happen frequently.

She would love to be read to all day long.  The same books over and over or different ones here and there.   Tony is only allowed to read to her when Mommy is sick or sleeping.  Otherwise she only wants me.  All the time.  Forever and ever and ever.  Not that I mind really, but Bunbun is starting to get old.  She also loves anything by Sandra Boynton and I’m slowly working on aquiring them all.  

 She loves to color.  And even the lovely artwork I found on the windowsill doesn’t upset me too much.  She will make 20 finger paintings in a row if I’d let her.  My only job is to replace the paper every now and then and squirt paint on there.  I’m trying to come up with more crafty things for her to do.  Unfortunately, I’m not so crafty.  We may dabble in glue soon.  

She knows her shapes, including hexagon, octogon, and pentagon, even if sometimes she confuses them.  Tony taught her that trick.  She knows all the colors and knows the sign for each color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, gold, silver, black, white, pink, brown), but she rarely labels them correctly.  Most things are yellow or red to her, even if it’s blue.  She can count to 10, but never says the number one.  I always start off by saying “One..” and she says “Two..” and then I just repeat every number she says.  So now she never says one.  I’m trying to fix that, but it’s not going well.

She loves to sing her ABC’s and Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  Sometimes she’ll climb onto my lap and say “Baby”.  This means she wants me to cradle her like a baby and sing Rock-a-bye Baby.  When you tickle her, she says “Tickle! More.”  She loves to be tickled.  

When she wants something, she’ll say “Okay.” like you just offered it to her.  For instance, in the mornings she’ll say “TV? Okay.”  or “Eat? Okay.”  It’s one of the cuter things she does.  The cutest is her thinking face.  She taps her chin with one finger and says “Hum.”  I have tried over and over to get a video of this, but no luck so far.  

Eliana loves to play outside.  She climbs on her little slide and slides down forwards and backwards and sometimes on her belly.  She goes in and out of her playhouse and pretends to do the dishes in her little sink or cook on her stove.  She loves to color with sidewalk chalk and hides pieces all over the backyard.  Her very favorite is swinging.  She easily swings for 30 minutes at a time.  Every time you stop and suggest something else, she just sits there, “More?”  

When she turned 18 months old things got hard.  I assume it was a phase of suckiness and I swear I thought it would never end.  It lasted all through our trip and made travelling so hard.  About a week after we got home, it stopped.  She is so happy all the time now.  When she wakes up she plays and giggles and eventually calls for “Daddy!”  She gives up the pacifier every morning and says “bye-bye binky” when we leave the room.  She plays or runs around and laughs and is so silly every day.  I know this won’t last.  I know we’ll have rough patches again and then they’ll get better.  I guess that’s just the way parenthood goes.  But I am loving every minute of right now.