16.5 months: Elise and the letters (this was taken about 3 weeks ago and includes some of her very favorite letters... now she knows almost all of them)
Elise is changing so quickly! She is really a joy to be around at this stage. I feel like I am actually having conversations with her. In the last few days, she has started saying "wub you!" when I say "love you!", "tank you", "help", and "yes" without being prompted. She also says "here you go!" (she usually shortens it to "gee go" but can say the full sentence) when she gives you something to hold. We hear that about 50 times a day. She also says "night" when you say goodnight. Her pronunciation continues to improve and she can say the ending on words like book, milk, work, etc. She says a lot of two syllable words very well, including "apple", "buckle", "yogurt", "chicken", and many more.
If you ask her how old she is, she'll smile and say "one!" and will usually hold up one finger. Next time you see her, say "What is your daddy's name?" and she'll happily say "Mike!" When a piece of food is really big, she'll say "big big bite!" and ask for help. She also uses the "big big" description for big trucks, big steps, and big balls, haha. The other day, I asked her where she wanted to go and out of the blue she said "Barbucks! (Starbucks) ". If she says or hears a word, she often says another word that is associated with it (like "book" and "read", "car" and "ride", "daddy" and "work/golf/lawnmower", "mimi" and "pop" and "austin", "more" and "please"). She will repeat everything with a high degree of accuracy.
She loves letters and says/identifies almost all of them. This month we are going to start working on numbers. I just ordered her some fun number magnets from amazon.com. She is still working on colors. She usually guesses blue first and red second, but occasionally she will correctly identify something that is green or yellow on the first try. For eating/sleeping info, see my last post... nothing has changed. She mostly wears size 2 clothes and size 7 shoes. She has 14 teeth.
We love our sweet girl!
Videos are coming soon... I promise! :)
Elise loves playing with the squirt bottle that we use to keep Boss in line during our walks.
She also loves playing with her magnetic letters and dancing to the alphabet song.
I have a bunch to blog about but for some reason, I've been working on this post for a over a week and it never got finished. I have so many funny videos from the last few weeks but I haven't made the time to shorten them into clips. Maybe this week. In the meantime, there are some pictures at the end of the blog for your viewing pleasure. We've enjoyed a lot of great time as a family during the past month and now we are adjusting to Mike's return to work. Elise only asks for her daddy about 100 times a day. When he was on leave and not at home, she would say "Daddy?" and I would say "Daddy's playing golf." Elise quickly learned the word "boff" and loves to answer the question "Where's Daddy?" with "Boff!". She also loves to play boff with Daddy in the living room.
Soon after my 16 month post, Elise started showing signs of wanting to drop her second nap. It only took about 2 days to establish our new schedule. Now, she goes to bed by 7:30 and wakes up between 8:15 and 8:30. I put her down for a nap around 12:30 and she sleeps until 2:30 or 3. I am surprised at how smoothly it worked out!
She is crazy about letters right now and knows about half of the alphabet. I have some videos of this that I need to post. She loves to point out letters on billboards and storefronts. Her favorites are A, B, D, E, G, I, O, Q, S, T, U, and Y. She really likes her bathtub letters and her refrigerator letters. We drove by Bed Bath and Beyond the other day and she went crazy because she saw three Bs!
I need to put in another plug for the Fisher Price Laugh and Learn Learning Home. She still loves this thing and never gets tired of playing with her "owss" (house). She says the words open/close, up/down, on/off as she is playing with it. She also uses it to point out her letters and shapes. It has shape sorters on it as well which is good for her fine motor skills. She is a shape sorting expert now and will actually look for the correct hole on her shape sorters before putting the shape in (instead of just trying to shove it in the last hole that worked). It is quite impressive!
We play with one toy at a time from her toy closet. The other day, for the first time, she took her toy up to the closet to put it back so that she could get another one. She is so funny with mimicking us. She will blow on her food to cool it down ("buffs" really need to be cooled, haha) and she whispers when we whisper.
She understands many more questions and will answer appropriately, like... What is your name? "Eeese" What is daddy doing? "Boff" (at the golf course) or "werrr" (work) or "wanmo" (if we are watching him mow the lawn, haha) Where's Mimi? "Ossss" (Austin) Who is in Austin? "Mimi" Who is playing golf? "Daddy" Who loves Elise? "Daddy" Who else? "Mimi" Who else? "Bop" (Pop) Who else? " Dondon" (John) Who else? "Mommy" Sometimes Boss makes the list too. What was that? (in response to an ultra-feminine noise) "Toot" or "whoa"
She turns electronic toys off and says "off" or turns them on and says "on". She loves the "wings" and the "wide" at the "bar" (park) and just started going down the slide all by herself. Some new words include "wanmo" (lawnmower), "pee pee", "toot", "ott" (hot, which she says when she gets in a hot car), "phone", "tights", and about a million more. She seems to have a word for everything. Any little piece of food is considered "trash" and therefore can't be eaten. She loves to give kisses/faceplants and hugs. When she wants to kiss you, she makes the "mmmm" sound and leans in. It is too cute!
The discipline is going very very well right now. She is really responding to "uh oh" and actually says it when she drops something or walks up to the "bee bee" (TV) (the buttons are a big "uh oh"). She is doing very well at understanding her limits and not freaking out about it. She got over her high chair/booster tantrums last month and actually asks to sit in her "iiiii" (high chair) or her "booooos" (booster) when she is hungry for a "nack" or a "bite". She also asks to sit in her "roller" (stroller) every time she sees one. I really hope this trend continues! Her appetite is very good but sometimes she is unwilling to try new things. Thankfully she still likes her fruits and veggies. I bet that 90% of her food comes from these:
grilled chicken baked ham black beans cheese steamed peas steamed carrots steamed broccoli steamed lima beans steamed squash baked sweet potatoes corn (corn on the cob is a huge hit!) plain yogurt with fruit mixed in bananas strawberries blueberries (she LOVES these) blackberries raspberries mango watermelon cheerios raisins grapes cantaloupe steamed apples pears bananas
Grandparents, I will try to make it a priority to upload some videos for you this week. We've got some pretty funny ones. In the meantime, here are some pictures that I took a few weeks ago while Elise was eating a snack.
Flirting with Daddy...
Roll it and roll it...
And throw it in the pan!
Here is the snack that she was so happy about... lima beans and corn.
