Oh, she's talking up a storm! Ella has always been highly verbal, and small wonder, given her parents are pretty talkative folks too.
I (Julia) must confess I am finding parenting easier and more fun now that Ella can tell us what she wants. Of course, this also means she knows just how to NOT tell me what she needs, in the way best designed to get under her mother's skin: by whining.
The Whines come in several forms, all kid-perfected, mother-detested: there's the Classic (w/w/o foot stomp); the Heap O' Bones (w/w/o dramatic flopping to the floor) and the ever-grating Slow Simmer (w/w/o full tantrum at end). I'll have to see if I can get some photographic evidence here to support my typlogies.
Other news: This spring, we've been spending lots of quality time with Auntie Heather in St. Paul. Here's a pic of Ella and "Andie Heder" riding in the little race cars at the new amusement park at the Mall of American. Sorry for the grainy texture-- I was pretty far away when I took the pic, but I just loved the looks of their faces after the ride had just whipped them around the corner.
Ella's language abilities are tremendous. Last week, I had my first parent-teacher meeting with Ella's awesome pre-school teacher at the Child Development Center. The little written report on E. describes her vocabulary as 'vast,' and notes that she 'readily contributes to group discussions.'
That made us laugh- we've been working on learning not to interrupt at home, because she does, indeed, contribute readily to conversations.
A few fun little verbal quirks she has developed (along the lines of, but nothing quite as cute as "Hepaloo," described in an earlier post):
Her toddler egocentrism and uncritical self-esteem are in full flower, and show up in proclamations like the one in the title to this post. She announced that at a party. She also sometimes announces, upon re-entering a room, "Here I am! Here is Ella!"
She sometimes transposes the first letter or sound of two words in a phrase. So she'll enthusiastically praise her Auntie with "Jood gob, Andie Header!"
With the colder and nastier than usual winter we've had, the kids at her daycare have spent a lot of time indoors, using a well-padded and supervised room at the Child Development Center called the "large muscle room," AKA the "marge luscle room." Kent says, if we had the money, he'd like to endow the U of M's snooty Carlson School with the Marge Luscle Room, and let future generations of MBAs wonder who the old lady was who donated the meeting room....
