Life as Ellie

Ellie is at such a fun age. OK, it's a great age when she's not being a difficult, ornery two year old. She had a bad month, which made all of us miserable. But that seems to have lifted about a week or so ago, and she's really been a lot of fun since then. (Or maybe that's just the non-stay-at-home parent talking.) Here's a glimpse of life as an Ellie:

1. Running in circles in the foyer is great!

2. Classifying everyone you know is very important, but whatever criteria you can think of. Typical questions in our house: "Grandpa John--guy?" "Ben--baby?" "Julia--potty?" "Baby Zoe--diaper?" "Ben--penis?" I'll stop there.

3. "You" and "me" are such confusing concepts. I was chasing Ellie in circles in the foyer (yes, I mean that literally) and when I grabbed her, I would say "I caught you!" So she started saying it back to me--I would grab her, and she would say "I caught you!" My attempts to correct her now mean that she says "I caught me!"

4. Hide and seek is fun. But Ellie is only good at seeking. She won't stay in one place long enough to hide. But she loves looking for people who are hiding, and when she finds you, she says "Boo!"

5. Food is terrific. All the sudden, she's become an adventurous eater! Since moving to Cambodia, she has started to eat cucumber, watermelon, cantaloupe, ply mien (tropical fruit-- maybe longan or longsat in English?), fish, chicken, and even pumpkin custard.

6. Sharing is tough. Ellie doesn't want Ben to play with many things, and of course as soon as Ben starts to playing with something Ellie was ignoring, she wants it.

7. We miss other kids. And playgrounds! The swimming pool provides fun outdoors (thanks, Jess!) but we wish we had more options. And it's been really tough to find other kids for Ellie to play with. Nathan spent an hour looking for a playgroup today and never found it.

8. She can count! Just tonight she counted to five for us. Then she counted to four. Then she counted to five but skipped four. She has it down mostly.

9. She speaks in full sentences...sort of. They're complete thoughts, just without all those extraneous verbs, pronouns, and prepositions. "Mommy...crawling...baby...also?" translates into "Hey, Mom, I'm crawling on the floor pretending to be a baby. Would you care to join me?"