what's going on?

tonight as i fed ella her dinner a car alarm started beeping in our neighborhood.  elenora said "what's going on?" and then she said "what's going off?" because she wanted it off, and then she laughed at her own joke.  she does that a lot--makes herself laugh.  her most common joke is to take any word and to add the word "pickle" in front of it: "pickle puppy" etc.  she thinks it's so funny.  

after her tubby tonight she was holding her little toy snail and she covered it up with her hands and said "snail disappeared" and i said "where is it?" and pretended to look around confusedly.  and then she pulled it out and said "there it is!" and laughed delightedly.

as i washed up the dinner dishes i could hear her over the monitor singing "skinnamarinkidinkidoo i love you" to herself.

we met up with aurora and s. today at long hill after ella's nap.  on the way there i said "how old are you?" and she said "one" and then i said "how old is aurora?" (she just had her birthday) and ella answered "two."

yesterday as j. changed elenora's diaper he asked her "when we went to miss suzy's house, did she have a cat?" now, this was an event that happened once, about a month ago.  ella said "yeah."  j. was impressed so he threw out "what was the kitty's name?" and without missing a beat ella said "tigger" and she was right!  j. couldn't believe it and elenora started laughing because she was also so pleased with herself.  

we took ella to aurora's birthday party on sunday afternoon.  the girls are just so sweet together.  they give each other hugs and are very interested in where the other one is.  ella was really good during the present opening and just stood to the side putting the tissue paper in and out of a large gift bag.

at long hill ella suddenly exclaimed "bunny! bunny!" and there was a real brown bunny right in front of us on the path of the gardens.  it wasn't even too afraid of us, and we followed it around the gardens for about 20 minutes.  ella said it was "eating clover" and that it was a "humongous bunny!"  well, it's certainly the biggest one she's ever seen.

she sings more and more every day.  she always wants us to sing, or to sing herself.  it's so sweet to hear her little voice.