elsie - twenty one months

She can't be less than three months from two.  She just can't be!  But she is.  I just can't wrap my head around how fast these kids grow up.  I swear it seems like time is dragging, and then I look at my kids and wonder where the heck I've been!!

I didn't weigh or measure Elsie again this month, but she seems tall!  She was standing next to our friend's not quite 2.5 year old, who I think is tall for her age, and Elsie wasn't much shorter.  E is wearing mostly 2T clothes now, however the onesie she is wearing in this photo is an 18 month.  I don't have any onesies in the 24 month size, and at this point I don't feel the need to buy a pack just for these pictures.  In dresses and regular pants she still needs an 18-24 month.  Shoes are a size six, and diapers can be either a four or a five.

heaband

Sleep hasn't changed much.  She goes to bed bewteen 7 & 8, depending on when (or if) she napped.  She wakes up between 6:30 or 7, but will lay there without much of a peep for a LONG time.  I think it takes her a while to actually wake up in the mornings.  I generally try to put her down for a nap at 1:00 at the latest, sometimes she falls asleep in 20 minutes, sometimes she can be in there for well over an hour without falling asleep.  In those instances I check on her every 30 minutes or so to make sure she hasn't pooped, but she doesn't care if I leave her in there.  Sometimes she throws all her buddies out (still holding strong at NINE), and lately she has been taking her clothes off.  So that's fun.  Not.  She hasn't taken her diaper off yet, but I have a feeling it is only a matter of time.

 

I just don't get it.  Ryann went through a little phase of not napping, but I don't think it lasted this long.  And we didn't have her give up her nap until she was a little over 3.  I refuse to let Elsie stop napping until she is at least 2.5!!  E pretty much puts up a fight at nap and bedtime every day.  Once she is in her crib, again, she doesn't care.  But the actual process of getting her there sucks.

Elsie vocabulary just keeps exploding.  She is rarely quiet anymore.  She tries to repeat everything I say, and has started repeating TV shows (she sings the Mickey Mouse intro a LOT :o) and the radio.  She can still be difficult to understand, and occasionally I can't figure her out, but for the most part we don't have too many communication issues.  E sings her ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle and Baa Baa Black Sheep, but can also sing a lot of the words to Let It Go and In Summer as well.  Those two on YouTube have helped me through many difficult diaper changes.  She has picked up this really exaggerated please whenever she wants something.  "Juice peeeeeeeeeeeeeease!"  "Pay wit me peeeeeeeeeeeese!"  Sometimes it's cute, sometimes not so much.  My favorite thing she says right now though, is 'miss you'.  Whenever Chris comes home from work it's "Miss you Daddy!"  Today when I came to pick her up from the child care center at the gym she said "I miss you, Mommy!"  And when we got home after being at my parents for a couple days, she went around to all her toys and said "miss you ____" and gave it kisses.  Too flipping cute.

Miss E is really starting to learn more, and quickly.  It is like something clicked in her little mind and she is just absorbing more and more information.  She can count to 17, but almost always skips 1 and 10.  I find it funny that she skips 10, because that is a number we regularly end on.  She can name a triangle, circle, oval, square, rectangle, star and heart.  Her color recognition is also getting better, but her quick response if you ask her what color something is will be blue or yellow.  She throws one of those out first, and then if you ask her again she'll get the right color about 50% of the time.

As much as Elsie HATES getting her diaper changed, you'd think maybe she'd have an interest in using the potty and getting out of diapers.  Yeah no.  She screams anytime we try and sit her on the toilet.  However... we were in Target a couple weeks ago getting diapers, and she saw a Minne Mouse potty.  She was super excited and pointing at it, because she loves Minnie, and I told her that is for big girls who use a potty seat and don't wear diapers.  She looked straight at me and said "I poop in dat.  I poop on Minnie."  I about died laughing.  But it might be worth a shot.  Later I had her tell Chris what she saw at Target and she excitedly told him while trying to get her pants off.

A couple of her favorite things are school buses and horses.  I've been trying to settle on a birthday party theme, and was struggling to come up with an idea.  I was going to get to work on a school bus theme, but lately she has been pretending everything is a horse.  If she can sit on it, or even she can only somewhat straddle it, it's a horse.  Last week she hopped on her lunch box and said "I rid-in a neigh neigh!"  I'm not feeling a cowgirl type pony party just yet, but I think we'll have a horse theme of sorts.

And speaking of straddling things, haha, recently I had the vacuum out.  Elsie managed to get her legs around it and yelled to me "Bye! I going to Mimi's house!"  She never fails to make me laugh multiple times a day.  She is still constantly asking to go to Grammy's house, I doubt that will stop any time soon.  My girls love their Grammy and Papa.

I aksed Ryann what I should put in my post about Elsie, and she said that she is really really cute.  So I figured I'd toss that line in here too.  Because she is really really cute.  :o)  Even if she has become a master at pushing Ryann's buttons.  I swear they must actually enjoy fighting.  They do it so well.  I anticipate several cat fights in my future!

Nonetheless, Elsie girl, you're amazing.  I'm so happy you're mine.