Ellis discovered she is a huge fan of mustard. Huge.
Here she is on her 18 month birthday, doing one of her new favorite things. Running away from me.
Lately she has been all about bringing us books to read to her. She sits and listens very well and turns the pages when it's time.
We had the pleasure of playing with Keri and Amanda and each of their little guys, Nico and Jude (and new little girl, Lucia). Nico took a dip in the kiddie pool and the following diaper resulted...
Jude!
Ellis noticing the full diaper:
A couple of those awkward hold-the-camera-yourself-with-one-hand-while-holding-toddler-in-other-hand pictures:
For a few days in July Ellis sported the Mrs. Brady hair-do:
Now that she can name and locate her elbows, Ellis enjoys folding her arms from time to time. It's pretty cute:
So the 18 month check up went well. Mostly. Ellis seemed to think the doctor's plan was to cause her serious harm and therefore reacted accordingly. Her height measures in the 4th percentile, weight (19lbs.) in the first, head circ. in the 20th. When the nurse -and Gabe and I- were holding Ellis down for her shots she managed to wiggle enough that one of the shots came out before it was complete. The nurse had to leave the room and find out what to do because she said this had never happened to her before. So apparently Ellis still deserves the label her NICU nurses gave her of "tiny, but mighty" :) At the last shot (the re-do to complete the one that she wiggled out of) Ellis quickly began shaking her arms and saying, "All DONE. ALL DONE!" It caused all of us to do that chuckle while frowning you do when something is sad, but also pretty cute. So she survived.
Ellis has managed to pack around 50 words into her budding vernacular. Words she says and understands what she's saying. She constantly says something that makes Gabe or me say to the other, "She just said ________! Did you know she knew that??" Some of her favorites are avocado (aho-caho), thank you (dit-doo), Ellis (Eh-Wis), elbow (eh-bow), fingers (fing-now), cheese, cereal (che-rail), eat (ite), open (oben), no/no way... Often when she can't repeat a word, it comes out sounding an awful lot like "Buttcheese." No joke. Over and over.
She has started to make-believe which is so fun. Just about anything (including her own empty hand) can be a cell phone, which she paces back and forth with talking into. "Heh-WO!...Yeah...Yess...Jiberish...Buh-bye!" She also hands us invisible snacks that we are expected to chew up and say yum to. Her new favorite game is to tell us "Nie-Nie" (which I'm pretty sure we never taught her?) at which point we close our eyes and play the narcoleptic, snoring until she touches our face and says, hello!
Basically, she's a whole lot of fun. :)
