auntie h. and uncle j. babysit

h. and j. came over so that i could go to j.'s violin concert at gordon. we are so lucky to have family nearby to babysit for us. i don't know how people do it without family close by.

ella has a really precious relationship with her auntie h.

here she is reading stories with uncle. j.

the concert was amazing. j. was able to sit with me for the first half, and then he went down and played Tchaikovsky's symphony number 5. i don't think i've ever heard that piece before, but it was absolutely gorgeous. i'm so glad i was able to go.

the best kid

elenora loves holding small objects. she always has. you can look back through the blogs at the photos and in almost all of the photos she has something in each of her precious fists.

flowers, rocks, chapsticks, little toy dolls, pom-poms, barrettes... these are all things that she loves to hold. when we go out on walks she fills her fists and pockets with rocks and pine cones. i find them everywhere around the house, and they are so darling to me that i have a hard time throwing them away.

now that she has learned how to open the chapstick, she is practically addicted to putting it on over and over again until either j. or i confiscate it. once when i was in the kitchen cooking dinner i noticed she was being quieter than usual, so i peeked into the living room and she was dabbing chapstick on each of her dolls.

so sweet.

airplane game

playdate with nathan

ella and i went to visit with m. and nathan and we all took a stroller ride in the mild afternoon air. it was the first stroller ride ella's had in a long time, since most of the sidewalks still have piles of snow that prevent us from getting very far.

here are the two kids together.

first train ride

this morning i took ella on her first train ride. s. and aurora met us at the station and we rode the line 2 stops, sat at the newburyport station and ate a snack, then reboarded the train and came back to our town. it was terribly fun.

here's ella outside of our house with her snowman (who is quickly melting away).

this afternoon we went to target and got a new bookcase for ella's room. her 6 foot tall bookcase is full, and the toy box has become a place to stack books on top of. but the books have started to overflow onto the floor. so it was time to get rid of the toy box and replace it with a bookcase.

she is still insisting on being called frances. the first thing she wanted me to do when i got her up this morning was to take "ella" out of the crib, too. then she put "ella" next to her on the changing table and made sure i wiped "ella" as well. she even picked out a sweater for "ella" to wear, and walked about the house either carrying her or holding her hand.

it's very elaborate. i think it's adorable.

frances and her new mother

i have lost elenora. every time i try to talk to her i am told that it is "frances" who i am talking to. "i love you so much elenora mae," i will say. "frances mae," responds ella. "i mean frances mae" i say. "do you want a snack?" i ask. "frances," she prompts. "frances." i say.

during lunch today she looked at me and said "i want a new mother." i said "what about your old mother?" she said "i want a new mother." i said "do you want her to be different from me? or just the same?" ella said "just the same." i said "then maybe you should just keep your old mother, because i love you more than anybody."

this afternoon i took ella to the grocery store and she said "i always go grocery shopping backwards" and turned around and walked backwards through the store.

i initially thought this comment was just ella playing around, but the next time we went to the grocery store as a family and put ella in the shopping cart, j. pointed out that she actually does travel backwards that way.

tonight we took ella out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants. it's the first time j. and i have gone to windward with ella, and she was so well behaved. of course, she insisted that she was frances the whole time, and that she was going out to dinner with her "old mother." when we sat her in the high chair she had us sit "ella" next to her. when her food came, she kept on offering bites to "ella," who was beside her. when i took her out of her seat she made sure i also took ella out of the seat. then she carried ella to the car and showed her the moon as we walked ("it looks like a smile," she said). and she buckled ella in next to her in the car.

we all split the following brownie sundae (including both frances and ella).

i read recently that an active imagination and imaginary friends are a sign of high intelligence.

i just never thought that my daughter would be replaced with a badger named frances and that ella would be her imaginary friend.

before bed i asked her what story she would like to read. one of the options was "a bedtime for frances." ella picked that one. "a story about myself," she said.

ideas

the other day as we were driving ella said "i have 3 ideas." and she must have liked how that sounded because she kept saying things like "i have ideas. i do. i have 3 ideas." and then we'd pass a field of horses or something and i'd say "look at the horses" and she'd say "that's my idea." and then we'd pass a person walking a dog and she'd say "that dog is my idea."

today as we took a walk around the block elenora said "i see an orange squirrel" which made no sense to me, so i was looking and looking and ella was insisting that she saw an orange squirrel. suddenly an orangish little chihuahua ran out in front of us and started yapping at us and ella just kind of looked at me like "see?"

this afternoon we went to m.'s house to visit with her and nathan. m. laid out a platter of sliced bananas, muffins, blueberries and honey for us to snack on. (i caught ella just in time as she was raising the dripping honey spoon directly to her mouth.) i noticed ella dipping her finger into the honey on her muffin and she then stated "honey is different from maple syrup."

what a good observation.

happy valentine's to frances.

friday we stopped at a little card shop to pick out a valentine for momby and ella asked the shop lady "what's your name?" the lady responded and then asked ella "what is your name?" "Frances Mae," said elenora. the lady said "oh, what a pretty name!" i just looked at the lady and shook my head. "her name is not 'frances mae'" i said. then i had to explain that elenora likes to pretend she is frances, from the books.

i dropped off ella with momby for the night and then j. and i headed to the country garden inn. we had dinner at our favorite thai restaurant before really crashing for the night. it's always so relaxing to stay there, with the fireplace and jacuzzi.

saturday we took a day trip up to kittery ME to the outlets. we ended up getting some clothes for j. and ella, and a shoe rack (badly needed) to help us organize our lives a bit better. when we got home we were able to spend a lot of good time with ella and momby.

this morning when i got ella up i said "do you want to go to Rockport today?" and ella replied "we'll see the ocean there." which surprised me, because i think we've been there about twice in the last year and i didn't know she knew what Rockport was. so i said "that's right, and what else will we see there?" she replied "a big christmas tree." which is completely correct, because the last time we were there (3 months ago) was for the live nativity. so i decided to see how much more she remembered about that time and said "what song did we sing the last time we were there?" and she immediately said "silent night." i just can't believe her memory sometimes. so i pushed her a little further and tried to see if she remembered the other time we were there in the last year (last spring, i think it was) and i said "one time, we went to gloucester to bass rocks before going to rockport, and what did we see at bass rocks?" and she said "we saw the big waves!" and i said "and what did you say about them?" and she said "that they were too big."

completely accurate.

then i brought her into the living room and noticed that my dad had sent photos of his time in africa. she sat with me as we scrolled through them, and i came across a photo of an outdoor market. i asked her "did we go to an outdoor market like that one time?" "yeah," said ella. "who were we with?" "mimi." "who else?" i asked. "grandma betty." she said. "what did we eat there?" "tacos." she replied.

this was last year, the first week of november.

today was focused around celebrating valentine's day for elenora. i gave her some new barrettes and some heart-shaped lollipops. then i took her to rockport, a beautiful town on the ocean where j. proposed to me. s. and aurora met up with us, and we had a lovely mommy-daughter celebration with special cookies from j.c.'s cafe. it was a really sunny day, and if it weren't for the wind it might have even been mild. as we walked through the town, ella started singing "happy valentine's day to frances" at the top of her voice.

swimming with daddy

j. has been taking ella swimming on thursdays at noon at the YMCA. elenora just loves it!

here she is afterwards, all bundled up to go home.

what does this spell?

this afternoon i took ella ice skating for the first time! we'd picked up some double skates for her at the h.'s last saturday and this morning she said she wanted to go ice skating after her nap. it was a pretty nice day, and the sunshine is staying out later, so i figured it was as good a time as any. there's a large field/parking lot that is flooded over and icy at the fairgrounds. i'd seen kids skating there over the past weeks, so i was hoping it wasn't so warm out that it was a puddle. ella and i arrived and i carried her out to a small patch of grass where i put our skates on us, then i held her hands and helped her skate around. it was such fun. the ice was smoother than i thought it would be, and elenora just loved it. it was quite a workout to keep my balance as well as hers while stooping over a bit to hold her hands. when she got tired i sat her on my coat in the middle of the ice and i took off in circles around her. she loved seeing me race around. i even skated over her and she laughed. by the end of our time there she was taking steps while holding my hands; but keeping her balance pretty good for a few steps at a time.

something that ella's been doing a lot of lately is imagination play. she just this week started pretending to be someone other than herself, and pretending that we were other than ourselves, and making up scenarios about going to someone's house. she likes to pretend that she's frances from the frances series of books. she packs some bags and says "i'm frances" or "i'm going to frances' house."

on sunday morning she packed her bags and said she was running away and then scooted under the dining room table, just like frances in "a sister for frances." and i heard her say "then frances sang a little song to herself" and she started singing.

for brunch on sunday we went to the pancake house. as we waited for breakfast ella colored in a coloring book that they'd brought us. mostly she likes to sort the crayons by color and pick out her favorites. but j. took a crayon and wrote the word S-T-O-P and said "ella, what does this spell?" and ella took one look and said "Stop."

we just could barely believe it.

elenora has also been jumping for real. she actually gets a bit of air under her feet. it's exciting to see so many things happening all at once.

ella wanted to paint her own toe nails last night. here's the result (to which ella exclaimed "aren't they beautiful!")

one of our favorite books lately is "the pied piper's magic," which is a twist on the pied piper story, but it has a very pleasant piper who helps people instead of seeking revenge on them. and it has spelling in it, so elenora likes that too.

i'm almost done with Moby Dick. just 50 pages left. the white whale itself has yet to make an appearance in the book. but i've really enjoyed it. i went to a used bookstore last saturday and got 6 books for myself. so i really have lots of choices. i don't think i will have to buy myself another book for awhile, since i already had about 4 books on the shelf that haven't been read.

ella said today that going to the aquarium and going ice skating were her 2 favorite things.

"want to do them again sometime?" she said. definitely.

first haircut

today i took ella downtown for her first haircut. she was such a good girl and sat still and was so precious. every now and then she would look around and exclaim "that lady over there and that man over there are getting their hair cut also!"

really, it was just a trim so that the ends are healthy again. and the mullet is gone (even though you can't tell there's a mullet because of the curls.)

i saved some of the hair, of course.

afterwards, ella and i went next door to zumis and got a piece of raspberry crumb cake to share as a special treat.

also, i made brussels sprouts for dinner tonight with a new recipe from c., and both j. and elenora loved them. i am so glad that my family will eat brussels sprouts, because they really are delicious.

blood test...

negative. i think i can finally chill out. phew!

twenty!

yesterday elenora counted to 20 for the first time unassisted!

this video is not that time, but it's pretty cute and she almost gets it:

she's been pooping on the potty regularly for about a week.

i took another blood test today and am waiting on the results.

we went to j.'s final salem philharmonic concert yesterday afternoon. we got to 3 this year, which was so nice since last year i could only get to 1 because of ella's napping schedule and how far away it is. she's so fun to take along to these things, and she's so well behaved. the old ladies behind us always comment on how good she is. and i know it really means a lot to j. to have us there.

i am so happy that it's february. spring is coming so soon, and we'll have so much fun exploring this year!