Practicing

Eliana is really in the phase of toddlerhood of trying so hard to be competent, and practicing hard!

Today Eliana would turn off a toy's on/off switch and say, "Oh no! It's broken!" With a pout on her face and putting her head to the side and her hand on her cheek. "Elly has to fix it!" Then she'd turn the switch back on, and operate the toy. "I fixed it! Yay!" or "Tada!" with arms outstretched.

Unrelated but cute - "... eighteen, nineteen, tenteen, eleventeen..."

And singing, she sings lots of songs that she makes up the words to now. Often it's to Farmer in the Dell - today's was

"Boogers in the nose
boogers in the nose
Oh hi the derrio
boogers in the nose"

Then it developed into "all the boogers in the noses" and "boogers in all the noses". Then it was "all the poos in the bottom."

She is also still practicing lots of face drawing. She enjoys having me draw our family. I differentiate us simply by the hairdo. Well, today Elly drew herself - she drew a happy face (circle, eyes, mouth) and added on a line on each side of her head - ponytails! Also today, she told me I needed to put hair on my drawing of Kes (I'd been drawing her bald). I said, "well, babies don't have much hair" and she went over, pet Kes on the head, came back to me and said, "Kes has lots of hair!"

She is really reaching a point where a lack of competence leads to BIG frustration. She will throw things down on the ground, throw herself down on the ground, scream, do what I call a "monkey dance" (hopping around making short grunts), or start stuttering (her newest response, usually when trying to say something just so). She doesn't want to hold Kes because the first time she tried, Kes was cranky, and she now thinks she wasn't good at it.

Kes is practicing too. She's gotten really good at holding her head up, and is tracking a little bit. Today she cooed at me communicatively (as opposed to just making a random baby noise). I can't wait to see all her quirks when she is Elly's age!