A Few Eleanor-isms

Each night, before we put Eleanor to bed, we have family prayer. I sit in the rocking chair with Eleanor on my lap, and Grant kneels in front of us, resting his arms across my knees. Some nights, Eleanor folds her arms the whole time and repeats many of the words spoken in the prayer. Other nights, she just isn't that interested. On one of the latter mentioned nights, Eleanor sat fairly quietly in my lap during the prayer. She waved her arms around and touched her daddy's eye and wiggled her body in other various ways. Grant and I tried not to pay too much notice to her and tried not to laugh as the prayer went on. This was pretty much routine for us by now. The end of the prayer went like this:

Me: "Amen."
Grant: "Amen."
Eleanor: (reaching up to touch Grant's head) "Cuuuuute haaaair."

Grant and I both laughed and she went on. (Touching her hair) "Noree cuuute haair." (Back to Daddy) "Daddy cute hair." She eventually, after several times complimenting Daddy's and Noree's hair, made it around to touching Mommy's hair and pronouncing it cute, too. I didn't mind. My hair wasn't looking exceptional that evening anyway. Now she mostly waits until the prayer is over before she compliments the entire family on our hair. I think it's a stall tactic now because she delays giving Daddy a goodnight kiss and being put to bed.


Another tidbit about Eleanor lately might not be quite as funny, but it sure tickles me. Her words are evolving each day. Some change to a better pronunciation, and some regress to a less correct pronunciation. Our latest example: apple juice. She used to say "Bappo" for apple, but now it's "appo." Juice, on the other hand, has gone the opposite direction. She used to do a fairly good job of pronouncing the j at the beginning of juice. That j somehow turned into a d. The last few days, she has been repeatedly asking us for "appo duice." There's something about hearing her say it that just tickles my funny bone over and over again.