E Lately

Ellery is full of so much personality, and she blows me away every day with her sweet spirit, her love of life, and her quirks. I could write several novels on my love for her and all the wonderful and funny things she says and does, but I don’t have time for that or even for an organized, well written blog post, so here goes my random, bullet point list of Ellery things lately:

-She constantly makes her toys have conversations, and they help me recognize the things I say to her often, “You need to be nice” “Say ‘okay’!” etc

-She is not a huge movie fan yet (well, even less so now than she used to be). We mostly just watch short Youtube clips. She loves these silly youtube videos where they feature toys. Also, the ones that show people making things out of play dough. ha. She loves Anna and Elsa from Frozen, but she never wants to watch the movie. But she talks about Anna and Elsa all the time. She has a blue hooded towel that she puts on to look like Elsa, and she’s forever singing “Let it go! Let it go!” from the movie. Sometimes she even says, “Go away Anna! Okay Byeeee” from the movie, which of course led to her telling us to “go away..” so we’ve had to explain why that’s actually not very nice ha. She also likes to watch Shirley Temple clips on youtube. She loves “Animal Crackers in my Soup” and sings it often.

-She LOVES to go into Capri’s room when we hear her waking up. She goes in, unzips her pac and play and crawls in the crib with her, saying things like “HIII Capri!! Do you want some Mommy’s milk?! HIII!” Capri likes this too, usually : ) She is completely and totally in love with Capri. It melts my heart constantly. When Capri is asleep, Ellery begs for her. She always wants Capri to watch her. She is so incredibly sweet and gentle with her. She does tend to snatch toys out of C’s hands, but she always gives her another toy to play with (this is fine for now, of course, but will need to stop eventually….). Ellery loves to sit in the rocking chair with us and play with Capri while I’m trying to nurse her, which makes it very difficult and distracts Capri big time, but it’s still really sweet. Ellery also loves to jump (onto the couch and on her bed and our bed), and she always insists on Capri watching her or jumping with her. Capri likes this too, of course.

-Ellery loves and looks forward to church and nursery every week. She has been to two baptisms now, both recently, and she enjoyed both of those and is looking forward to being baptized on day : ) Her prayers typically start with “Dear Heavenly Father, thank thee for nap!” No idea why haha. The girl doesn’t even nap!!! haha. But she also often adds “Thank thee for Jesus Christ, church, temple” etc. She LOVES scripture stories, and her Book of Mormon books and figurines. She likes to point out the bad guys and good guys.

-She loves the story of Little Red Riding Hood. She is going to be her for Halloween and cannot wait! I bought some fabric to make her costume, and she’s been wearing the fabric around the house non stop. She also loves the story of the three little pigs and the gingerbread man story. She loves the book/song “Roll Over.” and the primary songs “Popcorn popping,” “Once there was a snowman,” and “the house upon the rock.” Oh and she often sings the “One two buckle my shoe” rhyme. 

-She loves all things strawberry. She has always loved strawberries, and anything strawberry flavored is her very favorite (ice cream, soda, cereal, cake, yogurt, etc). I need to get her some strawberry milk. For about eight months, she has been talking about her strawberry birthday cake she’s going to have when she turns three. Soon!

-Some days she is extremely picky, and other days she’s not very! It’s kind of random. She also seems to throw up fairly easily…we sort of forced/tricked her into eating a bunch of Chilean Bean stew the other night and she threw it all up. She also throws up when she’s really upset and when she’s been way too active (like majorly jumping and spinning).

-She has a new best friend named Kaitlyn. She is in one of her play school groups and they both go to the childcare at the gym. She is almost a year older, and Ellery loves her. This was perfect timing because she very much misses her best friend Sophia, who moved to CA over the summer. She still talks about her often. Playschool seems to be going well. We do it twice a week. Tuesdays are with one group and Thursdays are with another. The Tuesday group is just Ellery and a set of twins that are her exact age. I love these sweet kids and their mom (my Visiting Teaching companion). The Thursday group is Ellery, Kaitlyn, and two boys that are four and six months older than her. So far I taught once, and she did great! They all did really well. Then someone else taught, and I believe she did really well. But then the third time, another mom taught and I guess she did fine until the last ten minutes she screamed and cried until I got there. Ugh. I hope that was just a one time thing. I think it’s so good for her to have this social interaction, learn to cope with me leaving and coming back, and of course the little lessons. With one of the groups we are doing a different theme each month (this month is counting). The other group is a letter of the week group. I think it really has had an impact on her because she is always asking me now “What letter does _____ start with?!” And she knows a few of the letters and what some words start with like “Apple” and “Fish.” Ellery is doing really well at the gym childcare and enjoys going.

-Ellery is back in a drawing phase. She goes through phases where she will color for hours every day and other times she doesn’t care to draw at all. Lately she’s been drawing people really well and sometimes animals. Her people are very recognizably people. She even names them. We still go to the library every week, and she reads and reads after getting a batch of new books. She loves loves loves being read to. She loves doing crafts and using scissors, glue, and tape. Also, stickers, of course.

-Ellery loves to help me in the kitchen. I basically don’t make ANYthing anymore without her help BESIDES prepping raw meat and chopping onions. I won’t let her help me with the meat, because she has her hands in her mouth every 2 seconds, and we learned the hard way that she’s sensitive to onion chopping like her daddy! ha. So she runs away when I tell her I’m going to chop an onion. But she is a great helper and really enjoys it. It used to be messy and slightly stressful and frustrating, but I actually purely enjoy cooking with her now. I wouldn’t change it! Her favorite, of course, is baking cakes : ) But she also quite likes helping with cheese! haha. Oh and pancakes too. She is a BREAKFAST girl! She could live off of only breakfast foods and die the happiest kid ever.

-Ellery sits still well and loves being pampered. She likes me to do her nails and trim her bangs. She also does really well with me brushing and doing her hair. She doesn't seem to have a very sensitive head, which is nice!

-Ellery loves bath time and stays in forever playing with her toys. She loves having Capri in the bath with her, and can’t wait until Capri can sit on her own and stay in longer (I wish we would have bought something to help Capri sit in the tub, but now I feel like it’s pointless because she’ll be sitting on her own soon!).

-Ellery says “pretty please!” and “I love you SO much!” often : ) She sort of has a little bit of a stutter…or it just takes her a while to think of the words for what she wants to say. Not always. Just sometimes. But over all, I think she’s a very good talker. She always speaks in complete sentences, and I have no problem understanding her (of course, I’m her mother…).

-We went to the beach a few times in August on our family vacation, and Ellery was BORN for the beach! She is a total beach bum. She was in heaven! Mostly with the sand, more than the waves, although she liked that part too. She gets so tan too! She also learned how to swim on her own with floaties this August. We are so proud of her. She swam across our giant apartment pool all by herself the other day with her floaties on.

-She loves it when we have people over. She gets so funny and shy, but shows off at the same time. She brings all her toys and things out of her room to show our visitors. She particularly likes the missionaries who have been over several times recently, and our home teacher. She thanks Heavenly Father for the missionaries in her prayers.

-Ellery loves to play I spy. She says, “I spy with my little eye…!” She’s pretty good at it too : ) We often play this in the car, as well as other places.

-Ellery is her father’s daughter, for sure. She is a picker! She can’t leave mosquito bites or scabs or her nails alone.

-Ellery is actually quite good about cleaning up (simple things) when we give her direction and help her. She does it cheerfully and often sings “Clean up! Clean up!”

-Ellery thinks that her grandmas make everything. I mean everything! Anything new I bring home she says, “My grandma made that for me!” Or “My grandma Shurtliff made that.” “My grandma Stevens made that for me!” It’s too funny! Obviously she does have very talented, crafty grandmas! They probably COULD make anything! She talks about her grandparents ALL the time. And she now always distinguishes which ones by their last name.

-Ellery is not mischievous at all. I never have to worry about her trying to escape the apartment, or coloring on the walls, or getting into the flour or my makeup. It’s very nice!! Let’s hope Capri is like that too…ha.

-Ellery does tend to get easily offended when we have to tell her not to do something. Even if we word it really carefully, she doesn’t like being told she’s doing something wrong (who does, right?). We’re still trying to figure out how to approach this. She also has a very difficult time saying sorry, a lot of the time. But she always ends up apologizing eventually and then we have good cuddles and usually read a book or something, so she knows we love her.

-We recently attempted potty training again, and it did NOT go well. We transitioned to a toddler bed at the same time with the idea of now being a big girl. She took to the toddler bed great (I was worried about it because she loves her crib so much). There has only been one night when she was somewhat difficult to put to bed, and she came out of her room. Our typical bedtime routine is reading a book in bed, saying a prayer, and then taking a drink of water. Then we turn off the light and say “I love you so much. Good night.” and then she’s off to sleep! So easy!! The first several weeks she would get out of bed in the morning, and yell for us from the side of her bed, like she used to when she was in a crib. For the last week, she’s been coming out of her room, into ours, and poking me until I wake up. She wakes up pretty happy these days if it’s me who gets up with her. If it’s Clay or anyone else (when we have visitors), she is not a happy camper! Fortunately for her, Clay goes to school before she wakes up Mon-Fri these days, so she gets me in the morning most days. So the potty training nightmare: I won’t write down every detail. Basically we had five whole days with zero successes, only accidents. After day three she starting holding it…she would only pee about three or four times a day, and she went three whole days without going number two, which is so unlike her. She was clearly in pain. She was completely miserable all week. She literally moped around the house all day long and slept the afternoons away. She does NOT nap anymore! So this was so weird. She even fell asleep on our kitchen floor (after lying there sadly for a while). SO SO unlike her. She was quite literally depressed. It was the saddest thing to watch. The first few days we tried being super positive with tons of rewards and a sticker chart. When she would have an accident we would say things like, “That’s okay! We’ll just go on the potty next time.” Etc. After a few days we decided to be a little more stern. That didn’t work any better…She would sit on the potty fine, she just wouldn’t go on the potty. Anyway, we decided that she obviously was not ready. In the end we straight up asked her, “Do you want to wear underwear or diapers?” She sadly said, “I want to wear diapers!” So we gave up. All well. She’s back to her normal happy self, so that’s good!