I’m here!

I swear I really am around, I just don’t know where my time goes anymore!

Eleanor is growing and growing and growing. She’s getting huge. Even her dinky little feet aren’t so dinky anymore. : ( She’s also learning new words at an amazing rate, and strings two or even three together pretty regularly. Usually it’s just something simple along the lines of “more please” (or “mow pea”). Too cute!

She’s become obsessed with spoons and other kitchen implements, so we’ve decided to get her a play kitchen for Christmas. In the meantime I gave her one of my old pots and a couple wooden spoons to play with, and she has a grand time! She’ll also walk around the house with a “purse” over her arm (really the little box with a handle that came with her sorting blocks), saying bye-bye to you.

It’s not all fun and games though, of course. She’s also becoming more bossy and physical when upset. Out of nowhere she started biting. She doesn’t do it often, but still. We have no idea where she picked it up! None of the other kids she sees on a regular basis has done something like that around her, and she didn’t see it on TV that I know of. It’s odd.

She’s still nursing, but is down to just once a day. I’m really worried she’s going to decide to wean herself before the cold and flu season is over, and that makes me nervous. I had finally wrapped my head around nursing her to 2-2.5 years just a few months ago, only to find out she may not want to nurse that long! It’s such an odd concept that she could so easily negate something that I decided for her benefit. I suppose this is the first in a long line of decisions that will be taken away from me, as she gets older. It’s pretty bittersweet.

Two word sentences!

For the past week Eleanor has been making two word sentences.  At first it seemed like she was just copying what we were saying, so we weren’t sure.  She’s been saying things like “there it is ball”  or “there it is bowl” (there it is comes out as “theh-tis” and we think is one word to her).   But this morning she very clearly asked for “more bread”!  I know girls develop more quickly than boys in the language department, but I didn’t expect two word sentences for quite a while longer.

She was slow to start talking too, so I kind of expected her to end up being more of a physical toddler, but lately she’s really been focusing on language.  She’s been picking up a new word a day it seems.  It’s becoming much easier to figure out what she wants, since at least half the time she can tell you now.

She has also learned what the potty seat is for.  She doesn’t yet get that she shouldn’t go pee in her pants anymore, but she definitely gets that that’s what she’s supposed to do when we set her on the seat.  We haven’t really been pushing it, but maybe in the next month or so I’ll try putting underwear on her.

And, finally, she’s sleeping through the night on a regular basis.  All of a sudden she just started sleeping from ~8pm-6am.  Woo-hoo!

She’s just growing and changing so much right now!  I really love this age, when they start being able to communicate and really interract with their worlds.  So much fun!

Doc appt

Eleanor had her 15 month appt on Monday. She now weighs 19lb 13oz and is 30″ tall. So still a skinny-mini! We weren’t able to see her normal doc because of scheduling conflicts, and the doc we were supposed to see was delivering a baby, so we saw a pediatric nurse instead. I actually really liked her! It was a good appt.

Then Eleanor had to get shots. Apparently there’s still a nationwide shortage of HIB, and since she’s already had the first three and is no longer an infant she isn’t high priority for it anymore. So she just got Pc (meningitis). I was hoping that would mean she’d have little if any reaction, but no: she has been one cranky baby the last few days! Ugh. Today she was more her normal self, so hopefully tomorrow she’ll be completely back to normal. Someone had told me before that the reactions get worse with each shot, so I guess I should have expected her fourth Pc shot to be bad. She’s always reacted a bit to that one, though I never knew for sure if it was the Pc or HIB shot. Guess I do now!

Other than that, life’s going well. Enjoying the crazy warm weather here lately. It’s been over 20 days without rain, which in Seattle is unheard of in June. My grass isn’t happy about it, though. Our home improvement project still isn’t done since it seems like something keeps coming up every single weekend. My brother just graduated from high school (woo-hoo!), my SIL/BIL needed help moving, my MIL did something funky to her knee and can’t walk much so we’ve been down at her place helping out a bunch, etc. etc. It’s nice having things to do I suppose, and I like spending time with family, but I’m really hoping we can finish this project soon.

OK, time to watch Burn Notice!

We have a walker!

For about a week now, Eleanor’s been walking!  On April 9th she took four steps, though she didn’t realize she had done it.  Every day after that she took a few more, and now she totters everywhere!  It is amazing to both of us how quickly she went from just barely taking steps to out-and-out walking.  She’ll even “run” a bit if she knows she has somewhere safe to land, like the side of the couch.

I started taking her to toddler classes a few weeks ago, at the local Gymboree.  She loves it!  It takes her about 15 minutes each time to warm up, but then she gets into it.  And I love having somewhere to go with other grown people, haha!  I’ve been trying to take her to story time at our library as well, but she suddenly decided that 10:15am (when it’s supposed to start) is her new favorite nap time.  Ah well. Wish they had a later option for this age set.

In other news, we took a little trip to Forks, WA (the home of Twilight) with my folks a couple weeks ago, which was fun.  We drove around the Olympic Peninsula checking out beaches and such, and went on a little hike at Cape Flattery, which is the northernmost tip of WA state.  It was absolutely gorgeous! We lucked out and had sunny weather the whole time.

Now we’re doing some home improvement.  I’ve decided that I’ve had enough of carpet in our main living areas – it’s always disgusted me, but now especially with Eleanor on it all the time – so we’re starting to put hardwood floors in (bamboo).  We’re starting on one of the smaller rooms, since we don’t exactly know what we’re doing yet.  Plus it ain’t cheap!  Hopefully it’ll go well and we can move on to the other rooms.  I also want to put in a second bath tub though, and we need to do some closet work (for which we already have most of the materials), so the rest of the floors might be a while.  It’s nice to finally be doing work on the house again, though!  We took an almost two year hiatus with my pgcy and then Eleanor being born.  We bought this house in ‘05 knowing it needed work, so not doing anything for half the time we’ve been here has been a little aggravating.  It was for a very good cause though.  ; )