Eleanor

These are the pictures you get when the 27th falls during a major heat wave. I had to hose her off just to get her to cooperate.

This month was rather fun-filled for Eleanor (at least I hope she saw it that way). Here are some of the things she got to do (many of which I still want to post about if I can ever find the time):

• She slept in a tent in the back yard with her daddy.
• We went to a pancake breakfast, the zoo, and a BBQ with friends where we watched fireworks for 4th of July.
• She got to go to a baseball game with her daddy and grandparents and cousins.
• The girls and I went to the zoo again while Grant was in class, and then we walked around PSU campus a bit so Eleanor could see where her daddy goes to class. (I think she was more excited about "going to Daddy's class" than she was the zoo --odd duck!)
• We took a family trip to the beach, and some friends came to stay with us part of the time. Eleanor got to have her very first sleepover with their daughter.

Sometimes, Eleanor will be really excited to go somewhere, but if I ask her on the way home if she had fun, her answer is no. It drives me crazy. The least she could do after all our efforts is tell us she had a good time. Most of the time, I know she enjoyed it, even if she says she didn't. She just says she didn't have fun because she tends to focus on one bad thing that happened, such as her parents telling her it was time to go home. Oh well.

It's fun to observe Eleanor in social situations. She loves other kids. She is rarely, if ever, shy with other kids relatively close to her age. She just wants to jump in there and treat them like a friend. Adults are a different story. It all depends on the mood. If she's pleasant at the time, she'll usually interact with adults who treat her like a little person. If they treat her like a little baby or try too hard to win her over, she doesn't want anything to do with them; they lose all her respect. This is describing her interactions with kids/adults she doesn't know. She's quite comfortable with good friends and family members.

I love how she's at the stage where she tries to join in on a laugh, even when she has no clue what people are laughing at. She lets out a loud, boisterous laugh, and everyone around tends to laugh with her.

I don't want to jinx anything by mentioning this, but we may be done with diapers. We decided to try letting them run out again. This time, we prepped her by talking to her about it before they ran out. Grant was mostly the one to talk to her about it, so we could try to move away from it being a power struggle between her and me. Of course, as luck would have it, we used the last diaper just as we got home from being at the beach for a week with Grant around, just before he ran off to go to a Friday evening class followed by a Saturday all day class. Talk about ripping off the band-aid! The biggest difference this time around is that she hasn't really been fighting it. The first night, she told me she didn't want big-girl pants. I told her, "Fine. Take them off." When she tried to tell me she wanted diapers, I told her the diapers were gone. If she said we should go to the store to buy some more, I told her to talk to her daddy about it. I don't think she ever said anything to Grant. She has had accidents. She's really bad when we aren't at home under our usual routine, but we haven't been at it for very long. I think this might be it, though. She has been surprisingly compliant about most of it. I don't know how much she likes her potty merits being discussed, so don't talk about it with her unless she brings it up. Cross your fingers for us and hope it works this time!

Eleanor still loves to have stories read to her, and she reads many stories to her toys. I try to take her to the library often.

She is still full of questions. She's also in the "look, Mom" phase. She loves to tell me what she's doing and have me acknowledge it.