All about Eleanor

I can't believe another month is already over. Eleanor is very much more a little girl than she is a toddler. She (and her hair) seems to get longer every day. I haven't measured how tall she is recently, but the other day at my doctor appt. she hopped on the scale and weighs 24.4 pounds with all her clothes. LOL! Here are a bunch of pictures of her I haven't gotten around to posting:

These were a little over a month ago. She found her box of headbands and wanted to put them on all by herself.

She also took them off by herself.

Kari reading to Eleanor and Audrey about a month ago. I just love how Eleanor gets into reading. She LOVES to be read to and loves to participate and ask questions. Audrey and Eleanor play really well together, which is nice because Kari is such a good friend, and I love spending time with her.

Ooops! Do you see what's lurking in my pizza dough? Someone got too interested in watching the kitchenaid and let her binky slip right out of her mouth. I might not have noticed if it wasn't for my toddler screaming about wanting it back.

Mmmm. Tasty. We were even having friends over for dinner (now the truth comes out). The dough was cooked in a hot oven afterwards, so no harm done, right?

She found these boots in a bag of hand-me-down clothes for her to grow into and had to wear them all morning. The hat is one I have hanging around. I keep meaning to give it to my little sister when we go to Utah, and Eleanor finds it now and then.

We started swim lessons this month. This is Eleanor's third year in this class. We do it once every summer. As always, she LOVES it. She's really able to participate more this year since she's catching on to some of the words of the songs and wants to do the actions like splashing and blowing bubbles. She loves to jump in the water, and I'm getting her more comfortable with not having to hold my fingers when she does it. This week, she enjoyed gliding to me from the stairs that enter the pool. I would often let her go under the water before I would catch her, and she still loved it. Her cousin, David, is in her class, so they have fun playing together, too.

Ouch! I don't know if you can see this (or if you want to), but Eleanor is finally getting her 2-year molars (back right-our right, not hers). I knew they were trying to break through the gums, but I figured it would still be quite a while, considering her usual pattern of teething. She really wasn't all that moody. Then, one time, she was pretty whiny, and I couldn't figure out why. So, I decided to feel her teeth and see if they were making any progress. Both sides of her molar had broken through on the right side of her mouth, with just a string of gums in the middle. All I could think was, "What a little angel!" I wouldn't have blamed her if she had been much more irritable, but she actually wasn't that bad the days leading up to that.

This is her "sheepy" she fell in love with at my Aunt Kathleen's house in Utah. She always wanted to nap/go to bed with it, and Aunt Kathleen let her take it home. It has already been well-loved. It only has one eye, and I had to re-stitch the ears, tail, and legs so they wouldn't fall off. Lately, Eleanor has been calling it Annabell (like the baby goat at my dad's house). After I changed her stinky diaper one morning, Eleanor decided Annabell was also stinky. She put that diaper on it all by herself!
Eleanor also calls herself Annabell sometimes, and then proceeds to cry to me, "Maaaa, maaaa." She likes to pretend to be people/things other than herself. Recently, the most common are Annabell or baby. When she tells me, "I'm baby," she comes to me whining and whimpering and wanting to be held and coddled. It gets a bit old, but I figure this is her chance to still be the baby before her sister gets here.
In her "mucky-mucks," enjoying some nice weather in the back yard.
Grant took these pictures today at his parents' house. The dog knocked that flower off with his tail, so they put it in her hair. That's her "cheese" face. I've learned to just ask for a big smile.