18 Months

Nursery here we come!!!! I am so incredibly excited to be able to pay attention in relief society and sunday school again! But I will admit, I will miss Ella. I'm slightly attached to her. I miss her after she's been put to bed. And when Andrew and I go out without her. Sad, I know. But I'm sure the spiritual learning will help with the missing her.

At eighteen months (can you believe it!?) Ella is learning stuff faster than I keep up with. We've been trying to send her missionary uncle a letter a week so he can stay updated and the letters are always a page an a half. Most of the letter being about Ella. Don't worry, I won't make this THAT long but here's a brief description of Ella's amazing little personality.

*Ella loves to imitate. As depicted above, she loves to "clean her ears" "read" "cook" and "garden" She also will "talk" on the phone. The reading and talking on the phone are my favorite! She'll open her book and start "reading" aloud to herself. She's so animated in her "narratives". I wish I could get it on video but as soon as I pull that out she wants to play with the camera. Then there's the phone talking. Basically, as long as she's not actually talking to anyone she'll put the phone up to her ear and babble for 15-20 minutes. But, if we actually have daddy or gramma on the other end she just smiles into the phone. Such a silly girl. I do love that she likes to cook and garden with me but she gets in the way and makes things a little more difficult. Oh and she likes to "pray" I've mentioned before how she's such a good example and folds her arms as soon as she's sitting at the table. Well now, once I start saying the prayer, she does too. She babbles right along with me and once I'm done says "Amen!" It's very sweet.

*Ella has been getting better with animal noises. When it comes to the words she knows she'll only say stuff that is useful to her. Such as "more" "please" "milk" etc. This means, she only made fun animal noises. Like a cow and monkey. Now she will actually woof, meow, caw (which we actually didn't teach her. The stupid crows here in Logan taught her that one) She does elephant noises, snakes, cats, chickens, sheep, giraffe, and penguin. What noises do giraffes and penguins make, you ask? Well a giraffe chomps on his food (so Ella makes nummy noises and pretends to chew something) and a penguin waddle, waddle, waddles. Its very cute. Oh! And she now does pig. She never caught on to the oink oink bit. So I tried the actual snorting thing which she wasn't interested in either til conference weekend. So funny story, conference Sunday we went to Andrew's parents. And as is usual for conference someone always falls asleep. This year it was Andrews father and the man SNORES! Andrew was trying to get Ella to go to sleep and she could see grandpa was sleeping. So she'd close her eyes and "snore" But her snore was more like the throaty spitty sound when you hock a loogie. Anyway, now that grampa has taught her to snore, she snorts like a pig. Oh and thanks to Maximus on Tangled, she neighs now too. (He was the only part of the movie she'd watch with us)

*Ella's word list is expanding. Here are some new ones (and probably some repeats of old ones. I can't remember what I've written) Up, Down, Milk, juice, water, walk, ride, Jesus (sounds like cheese), go, thankyou (which she also signs) drink (also signs) dog, cat, amen, deer, bird (she occasionally just calls them "caws") help (also signs) shoes, teeth, hot, cold, brr, baby, bed, toes, chair, cheese, cookie, cracker, tickle, banana (this one varies between ba and nana) eat, poopy and ew often in the same sentence, and sometimes I swear she says good grief but I can't be sure. Thanks heavens Andrew says that and not something else around her!

*And for the random cute things she does. In the mornings I bring her into bed with Andrew and I (Andrews a lot nicer when she wakes him up instead of me) She loves to get under the covers and have us make a "cake/tent" for her. One morning Andrew kept getting under the blankets with her and "gobbling" her up. So now she gets into her tent and makes gobbling noises every morning. Funny stuff.

She also LOVES to hide. Behind doors, under her bed, behind the couch. But her favorite hiding spot is a variation on behind the couch. Quick, background. Our couch is ugly. My mom made us a nice and pretty afghan for Christmas one year. So I drape that over the back of the couch to hide at least some of the ugliness. On a sidenote, we do have a couch cover but they never fit perfectly and it comes untucked and ends up looking just as bad as the naked couch. The afghan works much better. Anyway, the Afghan covers the back of the couch to the floor so Ella likes to hide behind the couch, under the afghan. She'll even take a book back with her sometimes and "read" while she hides. I'm hoping this is a good sign that I'll have an intellectual child.

My girl is so SWEET! When she's naughty, she gets in trouble and cries but once she's done she comes and gives me hugs and kisses. We've been working on apologizing since she's not the nicest to her friend Adam. Recently, I was showing her butterfly and eskimo kisses. Now she does one of each followed by a regular kiss and a hug. And it's not only when she's been a little stinker! She just loves me! And Andrew too.

And the list of short cute things. She bats her lashes (what a flirt) pretends to sleep, picks her nose to tease mommy, tickles, dances like a maniac, cleans EVERYTHING with her wipes (don't worry, I give her clean wipes to use) climbs on Andrews tool box to watch people, birds, animals out the window, hands me her jacket and tells me its cold (she thinks that I'll be tricked into taking her outside once her jacket is on) brings me her shoes when she wants to go outside, brings me my shoes when she wants to go outside, knocks on the door when she wants to go outside, basically if I let her she would live outside. Bring me diapers when she's stinky, tells me when she wants to go to bed, jumps on her bed, points to my tummy and says baby (No, I am not announcing anything. She just knows that babies grow in tummies) She loves to sit in her cardboard box while she eats her graham cracker and watches sesame street. She loves to lotion herself. We have to watch closely with that one because if I'm not looking she'll eat the lotion. She LOVES to swing.

Well I said I wouldn't make this too long and I failed but for those of you who don't get to see Ella as much as you'd like you at least get to read about her.