Ella update!

Happy June!

Enjoying a juice date with her friend Zoey on Memorial Day...

One of her favorite past times...guess she sees Mommy doing this a lot!

We've been spending lots of hot days at the park by our house! Classic Ella face.

And...it's a splash park! Ella loves it but is a little intimidated-some of that water is pretty strong! I'm not sure if Ella is more fearful than other kids, but I usually feel like I'm the only mom having to run through the water with her child! Oh well! I've learned to just wear my swim suit whenever we go-I usually end up more wet than she is! This day there happened to be just a few kids. We went today though and it was PACKED. When I left, there was someone sitting waiting on my parking spot. It's a popular place!

Ella loves the playground equipment they have there. I like it too because it's easy for me to keep track of where she is. Some of the parks we've visited have so many tunnels and bridges, I lose track of her all the time!

Ella and her friend Ally, planning their escape! They didn't get far.

This picture cracks me up! Ella, practicing her matrix moves, with her friend Ally again :)

So it's been awile since I've given an Ella update! She seems to be changing every day. She goes to Rusty's Mom's every Monday and Tuesday and it seems every Monday, they comment on something new she's doing since they saw her the past Tuesday! Her vocabulary grows by the second it seems. She's very curious and constantly asks "what's that?" She has started walking up to people we don't know (usually in the park) and will look up at them and say to me "what's that"? It's a little embarassing! But she just wants to know who that person is and I guess she doesn't know to say "who's that?" :) Here are some other tid bits about Ella at 20 1/2 months:

*she's quite the perfectionist.

*she hates for things to be dirty, messy or out of place. She was pretty upset at Walmart the other day when one of the tubes of chapstick had been knocked out of the box, so we had to fix it. She's extremely persistent and will not let it rest until it's put back into place!

*Her favorite foods are blueberries, strawberries, peaches, (soy) cheese, (soy or almond) milk, and juice-in that order! She is a pretty good eater overall but dinner is by far our hardest meal with her. I've learned to just not push bites on her and eventually she'll take bites on her own. Her favorite dinner is spaghetti!

*She had gotten really good at feeding herself until recently-she wants me to feed her. It's a little annoying and my food always ends up cold. But as much as I persist for her to take her own bites, she'll just say to me "YOU do it"-even if it's taking a bite of toast.

*Has finally transitioned into 1 nap. We were going back and forth between 1 and 2 naps for over a month. Finally I got sick of never knowing from day to day what our schedule was going to be and just decided to do 1 nap. Eventually her body figured it out I guess, because now she'll consistently go down at around 12:30 or 1 with no problem and sleeps about 1.5-2 hours.

*LOVES bath time! This was such a triumph for us-we struggled with bath time for quite awhile but now as soon as we say "bath time", she runs to the stairs. Actually, a few nights we tried to skip bath time but as soon as we tried to put her PJ's on without doing a bath, she would just cry and point to the door, saying "bath...bath". So now we pretty much just do it nightly as the start of her bedtime routine.

*Her bedtime routine is great right now. Bath starts around 7:30 and by 8 she's usually in bed and close to asleep. I used to sing to her and rock her before putting her in her crib, but now she prefers reading 1 Pooh book and Goodnight Moon. Wake up time is around 6:30. She usually wakes up talking about something-not sure if it's something she had a dream about or what. This morning she woke up saying "swimsuit! Water!" haha! She also is still in her crib and has not shown any signs of trying to climb/jump out so we're not planning to put her in a toddler bed any time soon!

*She loves Finding Nemo and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse-she'd probably watch those 2 over and over all day if I let her. We've scaled back a LOT on TV-she usually watches 2 Mickey's in the morning and part of Finding Nemo after her nap in the afternoons. Other than that I try to keep the TV off! Definitely a challenge on rainy days!

*I've bought her a potty chair but haven't really tried using it yet. She's just recently started telling us (sometimes) when she's dirty or wet so I guess that is the first sign that maybe she is getting ready!

Well, I could go on and on but I'm sure this is getting boring! If you're still reading at this point, thanks! :) I'll end by this video of her, which I find hilarious. Most of you that read this blog probably already know about how her new favorite word is "dangerous". She likes to point at things and say "that's dangerous!" It's pretty cute. So here she is saying "dangerous".

Oh, and one more thing. We live for Disney in 5 days!!! Any tips on long car trips/vacations with a toddler would be greatly appreciated!