Ellie-speak

As I wrote a few posts ago, Ellie's vocabulary and ability to pronounce words has exploded over the last couple months. Right around her birthday, something clicked in her toddler brain and off she went. She's stringing together several words, which tickles me to no end. Other than her tendency to answer every question with "yeah", we are enjoying the ability to have a conversation with our kid! The other night, she was calling out "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" And then, out of nowhere, she yells "Daddy! Sit there! Eat supper!" Keep in mind that for her, each word has it's own little punctuation, so it sounds more like "Daddy! Sit! There! Eat! Supper!" Which makes it even more precious.

I've captured some of her speak in little video snippets, where I ask her to say something and then she repeats it. I'm hoping to someday be savvy enough to edit all of these into a little film, but now we all just have to be satisfied with one or two words per video.

I hope you enjoy video #1. Topic: Exercises, Banana, but no Toast.

Kargers x3

Right before Ellie's birthday, one of Bonner's brothers and his family came through town on their way to a wedding. I alluded to their visit in the previous post when I mentioned that we went swimming at their hotel. I was digging around, looking for a new video to post, when I found these four photos. These three kids are so stinking cute! To be fair, all the cousins on all sides of the family are cute as can be, and B. and I really do wish we all lived closer. As Ellie has gotten older, she's really started to appreciate the awesomeness of cousins. Or as her daddy taught her, "cuzzies".

I am completely baffled by how, in this sequence of photos, the cuteness quotient increases exponentially. It's one thing to maintain a level of cuteness, but I've never seen such a thing.

Here's Ellie, showing off her mad popper skillz*.

And here you'll find Ellie, Ridley and Bryce.
I don't know why E. and B. don't have any pants on.
Maybe that's part of the cuteness quotient?

OK, seriously. Does this not just make you giddy inside?
Look at Ellie; she looks like she's about to explode with glee.


And our final, parting shot. One of only two boy cousins of the seven total on B.'s side.
This is a picture I expect to see posted on one of those potentially
embarrassing "photo boards" that parents and siblings put together
for high school graduation:

Show's over! Did I not try to tell you about the cuteness quotient? Did I not forewarn you of the expanding balloon of cuteness that just exploded?

*A quick story about the popper, which I think is funny and I remembered it when I saw the photo. Grandma Cindy gave that popper to Ellie for Christmas this year. At the same holiday gift opening extravaganza, Grandma Cindy also gave cousin Z. a similar popper, but this one was more of a rolling cylinder that sounded tinkly and fairy bell-y when you rolled it. So as the girls were running around with their new rolly/poppy/tinkly toys one day, Z.'s dad piped up and, speaking as if he were Z., explained how "First, you have to pop the floor. Then, you can fairy dust it."

Happy 2nd Birthday!

My baby! She's 2 years old today! As we drifted off to sleep last night, Bonner and I reminisced about Ellie's birth. "What were we doing two years ago right now?" I asked him, at about 10 p.m. Without going into gory detail, I can tell you that we decided my water had broken, and I was in the bowels of hell. Had I known then what I know now, you can be damn sure I probably would have worked even harder to get the little munchkin into the world. Who wouldn't be eager to experience a day like this, her second birthday?

We eased into the day with a birthday serenade before her eyes were even fully open. She loved it! She loved it so much she wanted me to sing it 'gin, 'gin, 'gin (again), and then she wanted me to change the words and sing it to myself, and then sing it to daddy. At some point in the day I even sung happy birthday to Dora and Mickey Mouse. Next stop was a hotel in town, where Ellie's cousins had stayed overnight. We joined them for about an hour in the pool, where Ellie got to use a floaty for the first time. After nap, we skyped with Grandma, and I frosted the cake, and then we went to the doctor for her 2-year check-up, which she came out of with NO shots and a clean bill of health.

Ellie received some wonderful gifts. Thanks to my Aunt Dianne, Bonner's aunties Bee and Glenda, and Grandma Cindy.

Special thanks to Grandma Cindy for the book of 2000 animal stickers!

On to the cake!

Time to blow out the candles!

Blow, blow, blow!

Didn't quite get it...

Try again!

Yay! Ellie did it!
(With a little puff of air from Daddy...but I won't tell if you don't!)

A close-up before the frosting hits the fan...

Mmmm...num num num...

Fingers work better than forks.

The girl may just love this frosting more than I do.

Don't worry...it's not a real knife.

This is sure to make some of you flinch. Someone generously gave us a play kitchen set, including the giant plastic structure (which has been relegated to the side of the house until winter) and a big bag full of plastic food and utensils. Some of the plastic food is fruits and veggies that are actually two pieces each, stuck together with velcro (excuse me...hook and loop closures). As you'll see in the video, there is also a plastic chefs knife and a cutting board. Ellie had, up until the filming of this video, been satisfied to sit on the floor with the veggies, knife and cutting board, and she had a decent amount of success cutting those veggies in half by wedging that knife between the halves.

On this day, however, I discovered her standing in the living room attempting to cut those wiley foodstuffs with the knife in one hand and the produce in the other. Keep an eye out for classic concentration faces, right at about 25, 45, and 57 seconds. 25 is our favorite.

Eye-eee!

Ellie continues to grow almost as fast as the weeds in our garden. About a month ago we got this quick video of her messing about with a Fisher-Price Little People house (an awesome collectible I found at a garage sale but didn't pay nearly enough for to keep them away from little hands...and she loves them). She's pulling the house around and knocking into the little dingy bell. For some reason she really liked sitting on it's peaked roof on this particular afternoon, which gave me the opportunity to ask who, exactly, is sitting on the house.

New Pictures

Too ...

tired...

to be witty.

Just...

pictures.

Here's little miss sunshine herself:


Here she is having fun with the packing fluff:


Here she is eating a tortilla:

Tortilla shot #2 because one just isn't enough...
did you notice the perfect little half-circle bite marks?

And a video of a budding artist:

Words

Just a quick note to impress you all with Ellie's expanding vocabulary. Up until a few weeks ago, I was getting a tad concerned that she didn't have as many words as she "should". (I do pride myself in not freaking out about milestones but this one got me.) Out of the blue, shortly after her 18 month appointment, something clicked in her brain and zzzzoooommm, off she went. She went from signing "please" and saying mama and daddy and no* and puppies, to saying...just about anything we say. When she's alert (i.e. not tired) her repetition of our words is astonishing and astonishingly cute.

For instance, a lot of things are plural. We talk about the puppy, and she says puppies. And to top it off, her "s" has a little bit of a lisp, so it sounds sorta like puppiesh.

The real reason I'm making this post, though, is to update you all on the next phase of lanugage: multi-word statements! Yes! She's using two and three words together! The first time I realized that she had strung two words together was when she asked for "more bites." I said, OK, I'll get you more bites. It took me several minutes to realize that she asked for "more bites" without prompting from me and oh-my-gosh... that was two words! TWO words!!!

And only then did I realize that REALLY the first time she had used two words was when she starting imitating us when we say "Where'd it go?" And she says something that sounds like "Der go?" As an aside, listening to her say "der go?" is truly one of the cutest things in the world. If I can capture it on video I will post immediately. She's recently added the gestures to accompany the phrase: upturned palms and a slightly quizzical look. (Funny story about der go?. Anty Mary and Grandpa were here this weekend and we took some time to "hide" eggs in the backyard. Mary and Ellie were collecting the eggs and Ellie had one in each hand. Out of the blue, completely un-prompted, Ellie throws the eggs to the ground, turns up her palms and looks up at her aunt and asks "Der go?")

And this morning's big accomplishment: "I got you!"

She does got me!

Pictures next time.

*A note about her use of "no". It was cute until this weekend when she started using it to let me know she's really, really mad. Rewind to first 100,000 times she said it and it was still cute because she was starting the sound before she parted her lips, so it sounded like mmmno. mmno. Who can say no to that? Not me.

Ellie's House

We ordered an item which arrived in a box which was obviously, obviously, destined to become a little house for a little girl named Ellie. It has provided hours of fun in the weeks since Daddy put his construction skills to use. Note the skylight! One evening of particular fun, we caught some moments on film. The highlights are: a little hand reaching a snack out the window to share with Mama; and at the very end, as the camera zooms in, Ellie has so much fun that she falls out the door.

Weekend at Grandpa Lindy's

We spent a fun-filled weekend at Grandpa Lindy's farm. Lots of family members were in attendance for Grandpa's 65th birthday. 65! Despite inching his way towards inevitable codgerdom (that one's for you, Dad!), Grandpa did not hesitate to grab Ellie and scoot down the little sledding hill. During the first couple runs you could hear Ellie laughing all the way down. It got to the point where we had to drag her inside (complete with the requisite toddler kicking and screaming). She is officially an outdoors kid. In a moment of inspiration, I grabbed the camera and, with Grandpa and Ellie in one sled, and me in the other, I captured a few moments that I consider to be truly priceless. (Be sure to watch to the very end...)

Errr...Mother's Day 2008

Yes, I mean 2008.

Mother's Day 2008 was my very first mother's day as a mother. I loved it! I can't wait for the next one! And I now have no clue what we did that day. I think I remember a turtle sundae from Culver's, but I can't be sure. What I am sure of is that I documented the day with the following pictures. Now that I'm looking at our outfits, I recall something else: that Ellie had been wearing something really cute and awesome and precious and I think she urped or pooped on it and I had to put her into a t-shirt. Which turned out OK, because then we matched, and the pictures of us cuddled up were that much more special. Evidence of said specialness is below:





Kisses for everybody!

Compare that little button of a baby with the child she is now... sitting on a big-person's chair to eat dinner (don't mind the phone book), or creating art and tasting the markers.

Valentine's Day Bubbles! Bubbles! Bubbles!

Or should I say, Fantastic Bubbles...

Static Electricity Can Be Cute

Ellie the Improver

In this short clip, you can see where we taped the outline of where we plan for new carpet to butt up against new kitchen flooring. After months and months of discussion interlaced with total disregard, we finally sat down one Saturday morning and made a plan. BK/Daddy and I did a lot of pointing and talking and making invisible demarcations with our arms, and Ellie couldn't help but get involved. However, as you know, a toddler's attention span can be short (unless the topic involves fruit snacks), and you will see her first dance inside the taped-off space (her other favorite thing to do within the magic box), then point and talk about the lines like a pro, and then head off to pick up a small bottle of hairspray. Short attention span may be an understatement...