This was Eleanor's Thanksgiving dinner. For years, Grant and I have been in charge of appetizers for Thanksgiving. This year, we arranged them all on a TV tray. Eleanor loved being able to reach everything, and treated the tray as if it was her own plate. She stood there for quite a while, just munching away. She didn't eat much Thanksgiving dinner as a result, but we weren't worried about it. She ate the fruits and veggies just as much as the chips and crackers. The girl loves dip!
The evening before Thanksgiving, the girls and I went to my mom's to help make pies. Eleanor loves being able to help in the kitchen. Here they are mixing up the pie crust dough.Clothing size: 3-4T tops, 2-3T bottoms.
Shoe size: 6½
Weight: roughly 26 pounds
She really started to enjoy ABCs this month, and can sing the alphabet almost perfectly.
The other day, she said, “Look Mommy, an M!” Sure enough, on the paper she had been coloring, there was a neat upper case M. I’ve tried showing her how to write an E to get her started on her name. She gets the line going down and then tosses on a bunch of sideways lines. I don’t recall showing her an M anytime recently, so she either has a great memory, or I have Sesame Street to thank for that one.
She still loves reading to me.
She’s really on an independence kick, wanting to do everything herself. Even if I try to sing a song I hear her start to sing, sometimes she starts frantically waving her arms and tells me, “No. Don’t sing. I will say it.”
Other times, she will ask me to join in. She’ll open a book and say, “Say it with me.” Then, she’ll try to say the words along with me (I think she’s trying to memorize them for later). She also will encourage me to sing with her sometimes. I guess it all depends on the mood.
She likes it when everyone does the same activity. When she gets around other kids who are dancing, she happily declares, “We are all dancing!” I took her into nursery last Sunday and watched as she went over to the toy vacuums. She started playing with it and announced happily to me what she was doing. Then, when one of her friends came near, she grabbed another vacuum and practically chased her down with it, saying, “Here. Here. Here.”
She still likes to help me around the house as long as I catch her at the right moment (when she isn’t engrossed in some other activity or trying to get her way about something else). I love how she gets into it, telling me, “We are workin’. We are workin’ hard, huh? You are workin’, and I am workin’.”
She has such a long attention span when she finds something she enjoys doing!
Her Halloween costume continues to get regular use. She likes to pretend she’s a character from Dragontales (a show I wish didn’t exist—I’ve got to be more careful about what DVDs are in those toddler backpacks from the library!). She gives the whole family dragon names, and we have to use them as long as she’s in her costume. As soon as she takes it off, we go back to Eleanor, Mommy and Phaedra.
My little angel who didn’t even come up with the idea to tell her parents “no” until she was almost 3 is really testing limits, throwing more tantrums, telling us no, creating drama whenever possible.
- She has made huge strides in potty training this month. After she finally wet on the potty that first time, I went and bought some pull-ups. I called them her “big girl pants,” and I told her that we don’t go potty in big girl pants. We only go potty in diapers. Ever interested in the exact parameters of the situation, she asked me if we gas in big girl pants. I told her she could gas in them but not go potty. She often tells me when she “just gassed in them.”
- She has only had a few accidents in the big girl pants. She doesn’t wear them all the time. I give her a choice between big girl pants or a diaper, and when she’s wearing them, I tell her she can go potty on the potty or ask for a diaper if she needs to go. She usually goes on the potty.
- If she has a diaper on and wants to go potty on the potty, she always wants to put on her big girl pants before she goes on the potty. Somehow, she holds it until the big girl pants are on and then pulled down.
Reading to her baby sister. - She still isn't really showing any resentment or jealousy over her sister. Sometimes, she seems to be oblivious to her. Others, she interacts with her, wanting to hold her and talk to her.
- She is great about helping me out with Sister, bringing me diapers, clothing, blankets when I ask her.
- She does always include her sister whenever we're pretending to be someone else. When we are Dragontales, Phaedra is Orc or Cassie. When we are Grant's brother's family (a more recent one), Phaedra is Isabel while Eleanor is David, Grant is Michael, and I am Lucero.
- Eleanor asks some crazy questions. She's never gotten into the incessant "Why?" phase, but she ends almost all her questions of "What is it?" with the word "for." So, the question ends up, "What's that drink for?" It makes for some pretty obvious answers.
- She also asks questions such as, "What do we do when we are eating our cereal?" Doesn't the answer to that one seem obvious? I don't quite know what to say to those questions.
- The other day, she was coloring as I was trying to make lunch (I was past hungry at that point) and get Phaedra down for a nap. Eleanor kept telling me over and over to come look at what she made. I kept having to stop making lunch to run back and get Phae asleep again. I finally told Eleanor, "I'm sorry, Hunny, I'm too busy to come see what you're coloring right now. I have to get Sister to sleep, and I'm trying to make lunch. When I get that done, I promise I will come look at what you did and I am sure I will be so very impressed." When I finally got a moment to look at it just before I tried to convince her to come eat lunch, I told her it looked really good. She looked up at me and asked, "You are so very impressed?" And of course, I was.
Enjoying a sucker earned by going potty on the potty!
Your baby's growing up. You know you're in trouble when she starts using words like "impress"
ReplyDeleteYou read that whole thing? Now I'm really impressed.
ReplyDelete