Dr. Ellie

For Christmas, Ellie received a doctor's kit from her Great Aunt Sue. She really got a kick out of it and for months we were subjected to shots, blood pressure screenings and temperature checks. She really likes the stethoscope that really works, too! Whenever she gives us a shot we playfully shout "ouch!" which she thinks is hilarious and then does it over and over again to herself and us. The thermometer has a "healthy :)" reading and a "sick :(" reading. She loves testing us out to see which we are and then she follows suit and takes her own temperature, twists the end to change the setting, and hands it back to us to read her results. We all have fun with it! I think I have many more check-ups than Randall...maybe she just likes giving mommy more TLC ;) And, I can't forget to mention that her baby dolls and animals get the temperature checks and bandage, too! 

Ellie is a nurturing soul, or at least she is from what I've seen so far. She shares well, shows gentle attention when Randall and I are sick, and is very aware of emotions of those around her. [A more recent story to illustrate this was during our OBX vacation in July. I had a cold the whole week and had just about gone through the boxes of tissues in our room upstairs and in the living room downstairs. Randall and I celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary the day before we left the beach and decided to go out to the outlets for some shopping and then dinner while Ellie stayed with Nana and G-Diddy (a huge perk to vacationing with family!). When we got back to the house at the end of the evening Ellie came running outside to greet us and kept saying something we thought sounded like "fishy". Being at the beach with ocean themed toys it seemed to make sense to us as there are a lot of fish and sea creatures to explore. It wasn't until we went inside that she darted straight for the box of tissues and ran them over to me. She had been saying "tissue"! Such a sweetheart-- it was the first thing on her mind when she saw me.]

When Ellie is sick she is a very good patient! I've never seen a little one take medicine as well as Ellie  does-- and not just the sweet, over the counter stuff, even the not so great tasting prescription medications go down smoothly. She snuggles, lets us take her temperature without any struggle, productively blows her nose on command into a tissue, and doesn't fight sleep with tantrums you would normally expect from a small child who doesn't feel well or understand why they don't feel well. This is all just another way we know we have been so lucky with her, she's such as easy kid!

One of the things that warms my heart the most is how she illustrates this sweet compassion in her imaginative play with her babies and with her doctor's kit. One morning, on the way to daycare I heard what sounded like Ellie lightly blowing her nose. She had been having some sniffles and insisted on holding a clean tissue of her own for the car ride after I had already helped her blow her nose. At the stoplight I turned around to see if she was blowing her nose and asked her "are you blowing your nose?" She replied "baby." It didn't even occur to me to look in her lap but sure enough Ellie was holding the tissue over the baby doll's nose and pretending to help her blow her nose. I snapped a quick picture which you can see below :) I've also caught her feeding her baby doll "medicine" (water) from a medicine cup she found around the house. I wonder what goes through her little mind? I'd love to know.

 A friend of ours said that Ellie is so sweet to her baby dolls because she is showing her babies the same love she has been shown by us. While I am humbled to consider that thought, I think the truth is that she is truly just a loving soul. I'd like to take credit for it but I think a certain omnipresent entity deserves the real kudos! She is incredibly attentive for a little girl her age, it amazes us to see how she applies things from tv, daycare, church, and home into her playtime. When we stand back and just watch her play we are always left with a smile on our faces in awe of her heart, her humor, and her intelligence. There's only so much of that which can be nurture, the rest has got to be nature. We are so blessed to have Ellie, she has enriched our lives and shown us a love we never knew before she graced our family with her beautiful life. 

Take Me By the Hand

I think Ellie has a persuasive personality. Maybe that's because as her mother I just can't resist her charm. If she isn't successful in persuading you to follow her with just her sweet excitement she will not be shy about taking you by the hand and leading you to what she wants you to see. She has learned that this tactic has a very high success rate with mommy and daddy-- we just can't say 'no' when she's tugging our hand saying our name over and over in an encouraging way, not a whine-until-I get-what-I-want way. Her tone says "Come on! You HAVE to see this, you'll love it!"

I can't exactly remember when she began leading us to stuff around the house-- which is exactly why I wanted to do this blog, so these cute things wouldn't be forgotten-- but I definitely began to notice that she had a purpose for leading us around the house and that it wasn't just for attention or company. At some point Ellie mentally noted that I follow her around the house and take pictures of her and the cute things she does. Well, our little opportunist began to stage things around the house for me to see, not only see but take a picture of too. How do I know she was purposefully placing things around the house for me to see and capture? I know this was her intention because one day I left my phone on the kitchen table as she lead me to her most recent silly staging. When we got to her creation she looked at me with disappointed eyes and ran back to the kitchen, got my phone, and delivered my phone to me with a thrust and the silent demand of a point to her construction and a look as if to say "Mom, this is funny. Take a picture!" so I snapped the picture and she immediately said "me see!" as if to confirm that I had completed the task. What a trip! 

You can see some of the things she did around the house in the pictures below. While she doesn't lead us to silly things around the house anymore she still has a knack for persuading us, for example her incredibly endearing "Come on, mommy, come on!" You can insert any one's name where "mommy" is, she won't discriminate if she wants your attention!

Necklace on the ball.

A sock in the vase cabinet she knows she's not allowed to go in.

Ball in a basket.

Pretzels in the dip in the back of her bouncy turtle.

Cereal in her kitchen sink.

Krispy Kreme hat on a baby doll.

Rearranged kitchen mats.

Tea set spoons in the plastic bags.

Necklace on the bouncy turtle.

Babydoll stuck in her zoo slide.

Jewelry in the stroller (this is the one where she brought me my phone because I had left it in the kitchen). You can sort of see the satisfaction on her face :)

Baby "eating" in her chair.

Sippy cup in the jogger.

"Look where I can fit!"

Using a sock as an oven mitt to remove the penguin finger puppet from the refrigerator.

Cup on the footrest of her highchair...but wait there's more!

Tada! A green ball underneath!

Girly Girl

I haven't meant to take such a long hiatus from blogging. I'm going to do my best to catch up and share some of the great things that have been happening and capture them in this blog for safekeeping. I've been logging blog topic ideas in the notepad on my phone and I have a list of 17 topics I want to share! Time to get down to business :)

Back in the winter time we discovered that we may have a bit of a girly girl on our hands-- without any prompting mind you. Randall and I have been careful not to go the "everything pink and princess" route, but it's definitely creeping into our lives faster than we think from sources beyond our parenting. We don't object to it by any means, we'll encourage anything she loves and support her favorite things (as long as they are healthy and not harmful to herself or others!).

One of the ways we've seen this girly girl develop is in her love for her jewelry and her zebra striped fur coat. The coat was a wonderful surprise gift from Ellie's former babysitter also the neighbor diagonally behind us. And, more recently she has been very interested in the color pink-- right down to refusing "yellow" yogurt (banana vanilla) and only eating the "pink" yogurt (strawberry banana, or mixed berry). Before she would keep the purple things for herself, give Randall the blue, and me the pink stuff whether it's jewlery or the cupcakes from her kitchen. She will spend a good deal of time putting necklaces and bracelets on and sharing them with Randall and me and wearing her fur coat even if we're sitting by the fireplace with no plans to leave. She enjoys using her Vera Bradley purse she got for her first birthday from Nana, the dress up Minnie Mouse doll from Grandma she got at Christmas, talking on her phones, using mommy's Chapstick whenever she can, tea sets, and of course this girl LOVES her babies!

One morning as I was getting Ellie ready for daycare she threw a tantrum, which, at that point, was still pretty rare for her. Through some prodding and guessing I discovered that the issue was her coat. She didn't want then warm, fleece-on-the-inside-waterproof-on-the-outside more casual coat I had selected for the weather outdoors. Nope, she wanted the dressy fur coat. As soon as I put the coat on she BEAMED with happiness. This was my first experience as a mother where I took my daughter out in public in something I knew looked ridiculous (fur coats weren't meant to be paired with hot pink fleece pants!). But, it made her happy and I instantly gained an appreciation for the moms out there who are just looking to make their kids happy by letting them wear what they want to wear out in public. There's something about allowing them to have a say in their appearance, right? They have to feel good about themselves, even if she wasn't even two years old yet, it was important to her so it was important to me :)