Spring Update

We have gotten really bad about keeping the blog up-to-date. Needless to say, we’ve been busy.

John William is about to crawl. He almost gets there when he’s sitting upright (by leaning and twisting), but when we put him on his stomach and try to get his knees under him he just gets mad. In the meantime, he gets frustrated seeing his sister run around the house. He wants to move! He’s happiest when we help him stand up and let him practice walking or help him jump. He may skip crawling altogether!

He’s still an eater though. He’s eating “solid” food now, and Mom has been busy making all kind of homemade treats. He really likes oatmeal, cheerios (which he can eat on his own), apples, prunes, bananas and mangoes. We’re not sure if he likes avocados or peas, but he eats them. He pretty much eats anything we choose to give him. He’s a hungry boy, and once you get him started he complains if you stop feeding him for even a minute.

Elinor, in the meantime, has started potty training, and she’s doing really well. At first she would only use the potty when prompted, but recently she’s started recognizing the signal regardless of what she’s doing, jumping up and running to the bathroom announcing “Elinor has to potty!” She get stickers each time she potties, prizes when she gets 20 stickers, and it’s all tracked on her own weekly “potty chart.” She loves it, and we do too.

Elinor has also become quite the conversationalist. She speaks in full sentences, and would have no problem with a multi-syllable word like, perhaps, “conversationalist.” We definitely have to watch what we say these days though because she repeats everything. Daddy got caught recently when Elinor started repeating one of his inappropriate phrases during dinner (don’t worry… it was fairly mild, but not a phrase a two year old should be using).

Here are pictures from February and from March.

Random Thoughts…

* Elinor continually talks about and looks forward to visiting the “bouncy houses” at the Multnomah Athletic Club. The last time she was there, she somehow managed to bounce out of one of them in spectacular fashion (one of the employees described it as flying like Superman), but she was bouncing again before she had even stopped crying. She LOVES the bouncy houses.

* John William’s face brightens whenever his sister (or his mommy) enters the room. He usually follows up with something like “huh huh! huh huh!”

* Elinor isn’t always happy that John William is playing with/chewing on a toy that she considers hers. In those cases, she’ll take the toy (we make sure she gives him another one), put it in her room and close the door. When she gets back she says, “baby can’t play with that.”

* When John William gets mad, tired or bored, he beats on his tummy with his hands and vocalizes with each beat. Kind of like Tarzan.

* Daddy sometimes “boops” Elinor (pokes her tummy), but lately she gives daddy a really serious look and says, “no boops today.” She often then immediately comes back and says, “just one boop,” and when she gets booped she laughs and runs into the closet.

* Elinor loves to plant “seeds” (anything that resembles a seed) in her garden. She uses a dump truck to get the job done.

* Elinor and John William are now taking baths together. It’s more fun for everyone.

December and January pictures and update!

Another two months have gone by and both kids have changed SO much!  John William is sitting, rolling all over the place, and laughing as much as ever.  He also babbles a lot (“bababa” “mamama”) and continues to delight us with his smiles and giggles and laughs.  He is also sleeping wonderfully after a weekend of “sleep training” two weekends ago.  He’s sleeping in his crib and sleeps a good 6-8 hours without eating.  He constantly is grabbing and putting things in his mouth.  He loves his exersaucer and his jumperoo.  He loves being out in public with lots of things to watch, but most of all he likes to watch his big sister.

And Elinor…talk about change!  She is like a completely different child with all the talking that she does!  She is talking in very complete, elaborate sentences and it is so joyful to have complete, understandable conversations with her.  I’m so relieved that I am able to hear her most of the time.  It seems that through context and knowing what her words sound like, I can figure it out.  She did start preschool on January 10 (two days/week) and I am finding that I do have a harder time understanding when she talks about things she does when I am not there.

Elinor is attending a school called Treehouse Nursery which is about 2 miles away from our house.  She goes on Mondays and Thursdays even though my work days are Mondays and Wednesdays.  We have her on a wait list for Wednesday, but until then, I am enjoying having a few hours with just John William on Thursday mornings.  Elinor has had some days where she cries a lot, but her teachers tell us that it’s getting better with every day.  The school has 16 kids per day and 4 teachers.  Elinor talks a lot about the food!  She really likes their oatmeal and bread!  She eats breakfast, a snack, and lunch there and then she is picked up at 12:45 and comes home for her nap.  We are paying for full days right now but I just can’t imagine her napping at school!  Eventually we will give it a try!  She loves doing art best of all.  They go outside pretty much every day; Elinor talks about finding worms under rocks.  They also have a circle time, do yoga, read books, have free play, watch puppet shows, etc.  We are very pleased with it so far and have had fun meeting the other kids and parents.

Here is a link to pictures from December.  We had a nice Christmas season.  Elinor loved our Christmas tree and helped decorate it and redecorate it daily!  I loved driving around with her after dark and hearing her exclaim, “There’s some lights!” as she spotted a house with lights.  She walked down Peacock Lane, rode through the PIR Festival of Lights, and went to Zoo Lights and rode the train! She also rode the Holiday Express Train which is an old steam train complete with lights and Santa  It was so fun having a toddler who appreciated doing all of these Christmas related things this year.  On Christmas Eve we all went with Miney and Jake to the downtown First Methodist Church for their children’s service and then to Kenny and Zuke’s for dinner afterwards.  On Christmas morning, we had fun hanging out here and skyping with Grandma and Grandpa Stoll before we went to my parents’ house for brunch and for the afternoon.  Then we had dinner with GrandJan at our house.  Elinor’s main present this year was a neat little play kitchen.  She got lots of food and dishes and cookware for it too.  I think her favorite present of all was a ladybug that shines stars and the moon up on the ceiling.  This ladybug has been named “New Ladybug” so as to differentiate from “Old Ladybug” which is a ladybug pillow pet that she got from her friend Clare.  She is very into ladybugs and also has “ladybug finger puppet” and “itty bitty ladybug”, which is a ladybug beanie baby that we got for her to take to school with her when the big pillow pet was proving to be an issue at school!  She wanted to have it sit with her at the table and take it on their outdoor walks and it was just getting filthy and in the way. 

With all the ladybug love going on at our house, we decided to give Elinor a ladybug birthday party!  She had ladybug cupcakes and a ladybug balloon and ladybug stickers for favors.  Here is a link to pictures from January including Elinor’s birthday party.  Aunt Bean was in town for the week of Elinor’s birthday and that was a huge treat. 

I’m going to list some more random tidbits of things going on around here, since this is the only place I’m keeping notes right now!

*Elinor and I have a conversation every day that I am home with her and Burke is at work.  Elinor:  “Where’s Daddy?”  Me: “He’s at work!” Elinor: “What’s he working on?”

*Elinor loves to get into our bed and pull up the covers and say, “Night night, Elinor’s going to sleep now!”  Then she’ll get out and say, “She’s awake”!

*She will go and “pick a flower” and bring it to me.  Definitely lots more “pretend” going on at our house!

*She’s starting to get a bit more jealous of baby brother.  She’ll want me to do something with her and I’ll tell her I can’t because I’m holding the baby, and she’ll say, “Put baby down over there!”.

*Elinor still likes the iPhone but her latest is “typing” on the iPhone.  She will ask to “send Jake a message” and want to type him a text message (gibberish).  She would rather type on the “puter”.  Now she likes Word documents, typing big or little letters or upper-case or lower-case ones, changing the color of the words, inserting charts, shapes or clip-art, etc!  We are finding out about lots of functionality of Word we didn’t know about previously!

*She sang the ABC song out of the blue one day while we were driving in the car.  We’d never even heard her try to sing that song before, and then we heard her do the whole thing!  The “lmnop” part is a bit hard, and she ends it with, “Now I ABCs, next time won’t you sing with me”.

*I think she might be an early reader.  She points to words and asks what they say.  She asks us to spell words and then she finds them on the keyboard and types them.

*Elinor and GrandJan looked up the meaning of Elinor and it means “Shining Light”.  Elinor likes to tell the story about looking it up on GrandJan’s iPhone.  I think she is quite pleased by the meaning of her name. 🙂

*We were at brunch with Aunt Bean, Miney and Jake, and Miney entertained Elinor by drawing the lights hanging from the ceiling at the restaurant.  Now Elinor still asks us to draw lamps and lights!

Ah, well, there are probably a million more things I could write that I’m not remembering.  This is what I get for not writing often enough!  Now that things are getting easier with two kids and I have my evenings back, I hope I can rectify this!

November pics and post!

Here is a link to pictures for November.  We didn’t take very many! 

Things are fun and crazy in the house!  John William is doing well.  I was a bit worried because he was not taking the bottle (and I had to go back to work last week) but he did have a bottle breakthrough today!  He is just a precious little boy.  He smiles, giggles, and talks a lot.  He likes looking at himself in the mirror and likes staring at his fingers and toys.  He loves when we sing to him, especially Where is Thumkin? and the Itsy Bitsy Spider.  He is getting better at tummy time but we probably don’t give him the opportunity nearly enough!  And, of course he is still big!  He is NOT the world’s best sleeper but would sleep the day away if I could hold him all day (and shhh….sometimes I do).

Elinor is still doing great as a big sister.  She loves to kiss and hug on her brother.  She helps her parents out so much too!  On the way out to Grand Jan’s the other evening, John William was really crying (he still hates the car!).  Elinor kept saying “Almost home, baby” as this is what we say when he cries in the car.  It was so cute.

Elinor’s all about cute these days.  She does and says so many precious things every single day.  I’m just going to randomly list some things here because I don’t want to forget them!

*She sleeps with 3 blankets, a ladybug pillow pet, Ellie Bellie, Kitty Cat, Sleepy Sheepy, two owls, and a bear every night.  It was getting a bit extreme with wanting all of these to read books and rock at night so we have instituted a one animal rule for that.  In the morning when we go get her from her crib, she hands us all the animals/blankets one by one, and then says, “And Elinor too!” 

*She can count to ten and really seems to have a sense for what counting means, not for just reciting the numbers.

*We have been really successful with telling her “5 more times” or “10 more times” and counting, and then she’ll stop doing whatever we’re counting (usually something fun) and move on to the next thing (usually something not so fun).  I don’t think this will continue as she figures out she doesn’t HAVE to stop at 5 or 10, but it sure is nice for now!

*She sings “Wheels on the Bus” and it is the cutest thing ever.

*She is getting more and more into pretend play.  She loves for us to build forts or houses with blankets.  She loves to play with play food and kitchen tools and have us “eat” her creations.

*She loves to listen to the Beatles. She still loves her bouncing/spinning zebra (“horsey”) more than anything else.  She knows she can’t do the toys that make noise when her brother is sleeping.  She’ll say, “Baby sleeping. No horsey right now.”

*She likes to make an O out of the train track.  She is starting to get more into the harder puzzles.  She can really get focused on completing a task.  She must’ve spent 20 minutes yesterday trying to figure out the nesting Santa Claus dolls. 

*She has discovered ice cream.  There’s no going back now!

*She loves for us to draw cats or trains using shapes on Microsoft Paint.  Then she will pick the colors and we’ll fill in the ears or the wheels or whatever.  We’ll ask her what color should the kitty cat’s nose be, for example, and she’ll point to the color on the palette and say, “How bout THIS one” or “How bout THAT one”.

*She loves to make pictures with watercolor, markers, and stickers.  This is not new but she now likes to hang her art on the wall!  She was very into making turkeys by having us trace her hand.

That’s all for this month!  I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season!  Julia

Finally an update!

Finally, a blog post!!  Here is a link to pictures since we brought John William home from the hospital in late August.

Oh, where to start?  We’ve had such a nice few months since John William was born!  Burke had 4 weeks of paternity leave and spent so much wonderful time with Elinor.  For two weeks, he took her to daily swim lessons in the afternoon.  In the mornings, they went to the park, for walks, and to OMSI and other fun places.  His last week off, we all took off to Oceanside to GrandJan’s house.  GrandJan joined us the first half of the week and Miney and Jake the second half.  We had a wonderful time, especially Elinor, who just couldn’t get enough of the beach.  The week after Burke went back to work, Aunt Jennifer came to visit.  We all went to watch the swifts at Chapman school and to Sauvie Island to a festival where we went on a hayride, listened to music, picked out a pumpkin, and watched rescued barn owls be released into the wild.  We’ve been hanging out a lot at home but have really been enjoying a beautiful Indian Summer and gorgeous fall color.  I return to work the week of November 29 and am very sad about that, but I know that once we get back into a routine with me working 2 1/2 days a week, it will be fine.

Now onto John William!  The big thing about John, well, is that he’s big!  At his two month appointment a couple of weeks ago, he weighed nearly 17 pounds and was 25 inches long!  To put that in perspective, Elinor did not weigh 17 pounds until she was 9 months old and wasn’t that long until she was 6 months old!  Obviously, he is a great eater.  His sleep is sometimes good, sometimes not so good.  He’s gone as long as 7 hours at night without waking up, which is nice when it happens!  John loves to look at our faces and talk to us.  He has a great voice and a beautiful smile!  He doesn’t seem to like the car so much, and when he gets mad, he gets MAD!  He has just started having enough neck strength to face out in the Bjorn and I think he likes that a lot.  He is starting to watch his hands and bat at toys a bit, and like his sister, he loves the black and white toys (cow and zebra) and the baby stim-mobile a whole lot!

Elinor continues to change and amaze us with every passing day.  She is most certainly a talker now and hardly ever uses sign language anymore.  She can pretty much repeat anything we say and often says 4-5 word sentences, such as “Daddy likes mustard too” and “Elinor get off the bed”.  She often mispronounces words which is normal for this age.  One of our favorites is “oppopus” instead of octopus. She knows her colors and most of the letters of the alphabet, and she loves to count, but gets a little hung up on the 4 (1..2…3…8!).  She is very physical and loves to climb and dance. She still loves music and recently has been asking for the Beatles! Unfortunately she has discovered the television which I must admit, despite being determined to withhold TV until age 2 as per the AAP recommendations, has really come in handy when I am dealing with two children who both have immediate needs!  She brings us the remote and says “esame eet” (Sesame Street) and then puts our finger on the button to push and says “Mommy push that one”!  She had already discovered Mommy’s iPhone months ago and, very scarily, can manipulate it to find the apps she wants.  Yikes.  She is still a sweet, loving girl but has been getting into a little bit of trouble from time to time, so we are STILL reading discipline books and trying to develop a repertoire of techniques that will work.

The only reason I have gotten this post written at all is because John has decided to nap for a very long time today after falling asleep in his car seat on the way home from the playground this morning.  Unfortunately, Elinor has decided NOT to nap during her normal time, and I am listening to her talking transition to crying, so I’d better go figure out what is going on.

I hope to do monthly updates from here on out!

Love to all of you

Julia

Our latest addition: John William Cumberland Stoll!

John William is now 7 weeks old and I have yet to write a blog post announcing his arrival!  Needless to say, we’ve been busy around here!

John William was born at 10:19 PM on August 21, 2010, weighed 8 lb 13 oz and was 22 inches long.

The origins of his name: 

John (my father’s name)

William (Burke’s father’s name)

Cumberland (my maternal great-grandfather’s middle name)

Seven weeks later, we are still not sure if we will call him John or John William!  Something will stick…eventually.  The only thing we know for sure is that he will not be “J Dubya” or “J Dub”!

Here are a few pictures from the first few days of John William’s life.

I am working on updating pictures from the past 7 weeks and will write another blog post soon!  I am going to try to move towards monthly posts from here on out, and more frequently if I have time or want to share some exciting news!

Love to all of you!
Julia

Elinor at 19 1/2 months

Here is a link to our most recent Picasa album with pictures of what Elinor has been up to lately.

Another busy month for all of us!  I have been suffering from really bad back pain the past 2 weeks, to the point that even walking has been impossible.  So, Elinor’s grandparents (and Burke on the weekends) have really taken over and planned so many fun things for her to keep her occupied.  Big Truck Day, a trip to OMSI, lots of walks to the park, sprinklers and pools in the yard, and bike rides.  I am so thankful for our families.  It’s been so hard to be so dependent, but our families have made it incredibly easy to be that way.  And Burke has been the best dad and husband ever…every chore has been his for weeks!

The annual “Not Laurelhurst” block party was in front of our house a couple of weeks ago and was so fun!  We really love our neighborhood and our neighbors.  Good food, a DJ, a pinata, a band, a keg, tons of children…a fantastic evening!  I look forward to it next year when I am not pregnant!

In July, Elinor and I went to Long Beach Peninsula with my parents for a getaway during the week.  Elinor has always loved the sand, but for the first time she got to get her feet wet in the ocean.  She can’t stop talking about it and wants to watch the video of the water going over her feet over and over and over.

In fact, Elinor wanting to look at pictures and videos of herself has gotten to be a bit of a problem lately.  Every time I bring out my iPhone she says “Elinor” (“El-no”) and points at herself.  She used to sign “cat” every time she saw my iPhone because she wanted to watch cat videos but now it’s all about El-no! I am VERY bored with watching these videos so I’m hiding my phone a lot.  And, of course, out of sight, out of mind!

Elinor is still learning new words every day.  She can repeat almost everything we say to her first.  She’s still signing a lot of basic words like cat, dog, milk, but she’s wanting to say more complicated words like microwave, tic-tac-toe, hummus, etc.  She’s also combining words, like “mommy home” and “red dot”.  It’s a very fun time!!! 

One of our bedtime traditions is to talk about her day and then say prayers while we are rocking in her chair.  The past two weeks, she’s started participating in talking about her day.  She’ll interject signs (like telling me about the helicopter she saw land at Big Truck Day) or words (like “red dot” to remind me of the things she saw at the park with Miney and Jake).  This absolutely makes my day!  I love what she remembers and reminds me to not forget to talk about!  Sometimes I have no idea what she’s talking about, especially recently when others have been taking care of her so much during the day.

Some other fun things that Elinor is doing: drawing O’s, playing tic-tac-toe (she’s always the O!), identifying colors and shapes, sorting, jumping (or trying very hard to at least!), walking backwards, and climbing up into the crib (only can do this if the rail is down, so it’ll be awhile yet before she’s climbing out!).  She also is getting interested in the potty and even tee-teed in it one night (we think this was an accident!).  She’s getting more demanding at bedtime, always wanting one more book (she holds up her finger in front of her nose) or to be rocked one more time, or wanting Daddy to rock her instead of Mommy.  She also is finally taking just one mid-day nap which was quite the transition (it took a couple of months to finally get to that point!). 

So, we all know things will change for ALL of us once we bring this baby home from the hospital!  Motherlode, one of my favorite parenting blogs, just had a post yesterday about going from a family of 3 to a family of 4.  I loved reading all of the comments.  One of my favorite comments was that bringing home a new baby is one of the best gifts that you could give your other child–and that is the gift of knowledge that they are not the center of the universe!  🙂  But of course the sibling that she will eventually love so very much (and not imagine life without!) is the biggest gift!

Blogging from the hospital!

Here’s our last (only!) belly shot before our induction got started!  We have been having false alarms all week…the one on Wednesday even sent us to the hospital to be evaluated but we were sent home.  For the past 4 nights I’ve had painful contractions at night that have eased up during the day.  Anyway, we are here for an induction and things are going well so far.  I thought I would take the opportunity before things get too painful to get the blog updated!

Happy Half-Birthday, Elinor!

Elinor is 18 months old today!  And I have not written a post in three months!  I don’t even know where to start!

I think I will start with linking to our latest batch of pictures on Picasa.  My camera bit the dust (or shall I say sand!) after our spring trip to the beach so we have not been taking as many pictures, except on the iPhone!  But here are a few pictures to show how much Elinor has changed and what she’s been up to in the past 3 months.

Since we last posted, we completed the sales of our two houses and purchased another one.  We’ve packed, made countless trips to Goodwill, moved, and unpacked (mostly).  Whew!  We do love our new house and I can actually say I have not thought about our old house one bit (except to be very glad I am not there dealing with the cherry tree right now!).  We love the additional finished basement space, where we have Elinor’s playroom and our TV.  Elinor has a slide, tent, train table, and lots of other toys down here.  It is also nice and cool on these hot summer days we are finally getting!  We have really enjoyed getting to know our neighbors.  Our immediate next-door neighbors have a 3 year old and a newborn baby.  Two houses down is a couple with a 9 month old.  And three houses down is a couple with a 2 year old and a newborn.  We have Mazama friends right around the corner.  We are 1/2 mile from Laurelhurst Park, and there is a “church park” just a block away with lots of toddler slides, playhouses, etc.  We like to go there in early evenings and on Saturdays, and we’ve heard that the church people don’t mind that the neighbors use it at all (if we ever see the church people we will ask and make sure)!  There is a big block party every year in August and our house is one of the houses that plans it, so we have a list of tasks to accomplish before then.  Our street is a bike street, so it is low traffic (except for bikes!) and tends to see a lot of pedestrians as well.  We are really happy here and so is Elinor!

Elinor did have a rough couple of weeks around the time of the move.  I think that our stress and of course witnessing all the change really affected her.  We also had to put our cat Beatnik down right in the middle of all of this, due to a spinal tumor that honestly seemed to materialize overnight.  So lots of things going on all at once.

But it seems that she has really rebounded and is smack dab in the middle of a period of rapid development–especially with language and with growth!  She is talking up a storm, sometimes with recognizable words, sometimes not so much.  I am continuing to work on signs with her, to help me understand her when she talks.  As she starts saying a new word, I try to teach the sign as well, so that she will do them together.  Some of our favorite words to hear her say: All Right, Oh Wow, iron, yuck, ice and ice cream, big toe, bubble, pop, olive, and hummus.  Most of these do not have signs that I know at all, so I’m glad they are pretty distinct and recognizable!  She also is identifying letters and numbers on things…her favorite is the letter O.  When we read books, she is quick to point out all the O’s on the page.  Her comprehension of language consistently amazes me.  We’re already having to spell words out in this household to make sure she doesn’t comprehend them–crazy. I am able to get some things done around the house these days by giving her instructions to go do things for me (put clothes in the hamper, pick up her shoes, “help” on the kitchen floor by playing with measuring cups, etc).  Hopefully this will bode well for “help” with a new baby around!

Elinor is still fascinated by trucks, tractors, trains, etc.  She’s not so big on animal sounds (except for meow, moo and whatever you want to call those sounds elephants and monkeys make) but she certainly can tell you what an ambulance, motorcycle, helicopter, sound like!  She loves sandboxes, tools (allen wrenches!), pebbles, rocks, sticks, and as of today, drawing on the sidewalk with chalk!  Our foolproof (but messy) distraction technique remains a cup of uncooked rice and kitchen implements.

She still is as sweet as can be, offering lots of hugs and kisses (when she’s in the mood!), snuggling up for book-reading before naps and bedtime, and lingering in bed with us in the morning after she wakes up.  She is paying a lot of attention to my big belly, giving it lots of pats, hugs, and kisses.  She knows a baby is inside, but she doesn’t know how this is going to affect her when it’s not inside anymore!  There’s only so much preparation we can do…but we are trying hard to do what we can.  The pregnancy is going well but definitely has been a lot harder on me this time around.  Who knows whether my excessive fatigue is due to pregnancy, a new house, a toddler, or a combination of all of these (plus work, etc!)!  We know from ultrasounds that this is a big baby (and I know for sure that I am bigger at this stage than I was with Elinor), so I’m sure that is not helping matters much either.  We only have 6 weeks left and are quickly realizing that we have a lot more preparation to do!  It is sneaking up on us. 

We’ve had fun with visitors this past month.  My high school friend Erin and her son Jack (4 years old) came and stayed with us for a weekend.  We had a blast.  It was so much fun seeing how it will be in a few years with two kids in the house.  Jack constantly entertained Elinor with his dancing, fake sneezes, and general silliness.  Burke’s dad and stepmom came for a long weekend and got to spend a lot of time with Elinor and with Burke by himself as well.  I was in the midst of grading for my community college class so was unavailable a lot of the time but we all got together for some good meals and nice times visiting on the back porch.  Then Aunt Jennifer and Dan came and visited for a weekend too.  We got to take Elinor with us to pick them up from the train station (they rode down from Seattle) which was fun for Elinor. We fit in lots of fun things.  Elinor seems to have a difficult time sleeping when we have guests around…she is to that stage where she knows we are up having fun without her, and she wants to be in on the action!

Burke turns 40 (!) on July 20 and the two of us are going to get away for a weekend and let Elinor have a trial run of staying with Miney and Jake like she will be when the baby is born.  I did have my first weekend away without Elinor in May, when I went to the coast with my friends Jen and Sarah.  It all went really well and Burke did great holding down the fort.  I could tell upon coming back to town that it was really great for them to get that daddy-daughter time together.  So when can I go again? 🙂

There is no way I could capture all the joys of life with Elinor that have taken place in the last 3 months, but thank you for letting me share a little bit here with you.

15 months of Elinor!

Life with Elinor continues to be an absolute delight!  She is absolutely the sweetest, most loving baby.  We get so many kisses and hugs all day long, as do many other people (we are trying to teach her the high-five and blowing kisses to minimize the lip kisses to non-family folk!).  She is sensitive and empathetic.  She loves to color with markers but doesn’t always listen when we tell her to stay on the paper.  She would rather be outside than anywhere…playing in sand, smelling flowers, watching cars, picking up pebbles, watching bugs, looking for airplanes.  Some days she wakes up and the first thing she wants to do is go outside, and she doesn’t understand that it’s often too cold or rainy to do so, so we do see some whining!  She is currently fascinated by tractors.  We went to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Festival the other day (my camera’s battery was dead so no pictures!) and she couldn’t get enough of the old tractors on the property (oh, or the mud).  She actually is currently fascinated by all forms of transportation–cars, trucks, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, airplanes.  And emptying containers so that she can try to climb inside them.  And balls, bubbles and stickers.  We went to a birthday party this morning and there was a sandbox, tons of digging toys, toy dump trucks and tractors, all different kinds of balls, bubbles, and a big-old fruit salad.  Let’s just say Elinor was pretty happy.  She walked away from me and didn’t even look back!  It’s so fun to watch her explore the world every day!  Click here to see pictures from the last month or so.  My dad sure did take some good ones of her at the Elk Rock Gardens of the Bishop’s Close.

14 Months Old!

I am a little behind on posting this month!  Click here for a link to pictures from Elinor’s 14th month.

Between getting our house ready to sell, getting Burke’s house ready to sell, work, being pregnant (Yes!  We are expecting #2 on August 21!), dealing with all of us having a nasty stomach virus (grandparents too!), and of course, enjoying Elinor every possible minute, I have not done a great job lately of documenting all of the wonderful and fun things that Elinor has been doing lately.  I thought I would take a few moments and reflect on Elinor’s life these days.  At least this will be documented here!

*Elinor has been imitating a whole lot over the past few months.  She takes rags around the house and “cleans” the floor, the cabinets, etc.  She sweeps.  She carries keys around and “opens” things.  She puts toothpaste on her toothbrush, brushes her hair, and takes the nail clippers and holds them up to her toes (but doesn’t let us cut her nails!).  It’s amazing all that she picks up on.  Time for us to model excellent behavior!

* She’s starting to talk a little bit.  She says da-da, ma-ma, duck, uh-oh, and up.  Da-da is by far her very favorite word.  It’s the first thing she says in the morning and the last thing she says at night!  When I try to get her to say ma-ma (she can do it, but she usually does it when I’m not around) she gives a big smile and says Da-Da!  She points at Burke’s picture during the day and says Da-Da and then holds her hands up questioning “Where’s Da-da?”  It’s pretty darn cute.

*She is still signing a lot.  We are taking another class and learning lots more signs.  The latest that she does all the time is airplane.  Whenever she hears a plane, she does the sign and then looks around for the plane, even when we are inside.  Luckily we just learned the sign for outside so mommy can sign that the plane is outside!  She also loves the sign for help, and she asks for help a lot, especially for help doing things she shouldn’t be doing, like opening doors or forbidden cabinets or climbing up on tall things!

* Elinor is starting to have some little minor whiny tantrums when she doesn’t get something she wants!  Mommy has 4 books on toddler discipline on her bedside table!

* She has 9 teeth (just got her first molar).

* She is turning into a climber. She loves to climb up on the little chairs in her bedroom and just is starting to climb up on the furniture also.

* Favorite foods: grapefruit (#1 favorite food!), cottage cheese (#2), macaroni and cheese or pasta of any kind, cream cheese, berries, watermelon, grated apple, tangerines, beans, rice, cheese.  Notice not a vegetable on this list, yet her new thing is going out to Miney and Jake’s garden and eating purple broccoli right off the plant!  Go figure!  We are now to the point that we can go out to eat and find something for her to eat there.  It sure is nice to not have to worry about packing a meal for her if we don’t have time.

* Favorite “treats”: watching Sesame Street videos on YouTube (her current favorite: Feist singing 1234), playing with rice (she loves to put it on her feet and between her toes), going to the park and swinging and sliding (she can come down the baby slide by herself!), going to Portland Nursery and walking around or being pulled in a red wagon, riding in the cart with the car at the grocery store, twirling around and tumbling on the floor, and sticking stickers on everything but paper.

* She gets absolutely hyper after dinner at night.  We let her run around naked (Naked Baby Time!) before her bath and it’s one of our favorite times of the day.  She is so full of energy and enthusiasm and just makes us laugh and laugh and laugh.  It’s hard to be stressed about life at all when it’s Naked Baby Time.

We sure do love our Elinor!