Passing the winter days...

What to do today? I think this almost every morning during these trapped-in-the-house winter days. Playdates are keeping our boring days filled with a lot of fun & laughter, thank goodness for friends! Ellie loves getting together with her little buddies to “play toys!”. It's been in the mid 20's lately, decent for February, so we've been going out for little sled rides around the block, too. Fresh air is a nice change. It's perfect to pull her with abut 1/4 an inch on the ground to make her glide down the sidewalk. There's a small hill at the end of our block that I pushed her down today- she loved it and squealed with excitement yelling "Do it again!"

Besides weekly playdates with her friends Ellie has been very busy learning her letters and letter sounds while staying toasty warm in the house. She knows all of them now and can identify each one! We have an ABC book that she loves going through to point out what all the letters say, thanks Grandma & Papa "Pit" (Schmidt). We’re a few years from kindergarten but this little lady would probably belly up to a desk and “go a work” as she says. We are just so proud of how well she is doing cognitively. I know, I know all parents are proud of their children. But when I think back to the day the doctors told us she may need help in school because of her low oxygen sats as an infant I just think to myself how wrong they were!

Ellie's two new favorite sayings are “Okey dokey artichokey!” and the other “Oh, I can’t beweve it!”. She always covers her mouth when ‘she can’t believe it’. What a funny girl for 2 1/2 yrs old!

Ellie the comedian is turning part monkey now, too. Maybe she's just pretending to be in the jungle where it stays warm all year round. Since setting up the big girl bed she has only taken one or two naps per week. That’s fine as long as she gets that down time, like I said before. Well, that down time is now turning into MONKEY time! To keep her from playing instead of napping one day I took all the toys out of her room. What does Ellie do? Moves her stool (because she is too short to get in bed without one!) to her dresser to try and get things off of it. So, the stool goes into the hallway. Next up is the beanbag, trying to use it to reach books on her dresser. I think to myself, ‘Ok, there is nothing left in her room so she should stay in bed now’. Five minutes later I hear loud banging and screaming. Hmm, what could that be? Ellie (or should I say Monkey Girl) had moved her little rocking chair across the room and was able to reach the books this time! The only problem was the bookstand slipped. So there she was standing on her rocking chair, holding a pile of books screaming for fear they were going to fall on her! Goodness girl. I put her back in bed and when “nap” was over I went up to get her. She was sitting IN her baby’s cradle, the only thing left in her room (the cradle base is about 6” wide just to give you an idea of how silly she looked in there). I just laughed. The funny or should I say ironic thing about all this is that we were in therapy for over a year trying to get this little lady to crawl, climb, and walk. All of which she did on her own timetable and not all during the time we were in therapy. So are we proud of her now or do we think we’ve created a monster?! What a “nap” that was!

After a good laugh compliments of our little funny girl I will leave you with some mommy/daughter photos. I have very few pics with Ellie since I’m always behind the camera so Daddy took these a couple weeks ago of “the girls”, thanks Kevin. Aahhh, I love my little lady more than anything in this world! I will treasure these moments forever...