Ellie's newest accomplishments

Other than finding the floor more comfortable to sleep on than her bed (I've lost track of how many nights I've picked her up and put her back into bed now), Ellie has had a developmental explosion these past few weeks. She totally knocks my socks off.

The most amazing development (to me anyway), is this newfound ability to string pronouns, nouns, verbs, and direct objects together to form complete sentences. No more, "want" with a pointing finger or a simple "yes" or "no". Today she actually walked up to me with her monkey book and asked me, "I bring this book to Teri's?" How can I say no to that?

What floors me the most is her correct usage of pronouns. I noticed that most of the kids at daycare would say "me like" or "me have" or "give to she" when they first started talking in complete sentences. Ellie says "I like chocolate" (heh heh), "Can I have chocolate?" (heh heh) or "Please, give me eggs?" (M&Ms - yep, more chocolate). Ellie's also a chocoholic like her mommy, if you haven't figured that out.

Besides proper sentence structure (as a former English major, I'm geekily tickled pink that she's picked it up so easily), her imagination has kicked into high gear, too. She cooks in her kitchen, she makes her stuffed animals talk, and she "reads". She'll sit and flip through one of her books, saying "Once upon a time" at the turn of every page. Books that we've read to her numerous times she's actually memorized and recites verbatim. And then there are other books, like her Minnie Mouse book, where she makes up what's going on in the book by looking at the pictures. I love sitting there, looking over her shoulder, listening to the story she thinks the book is telling. It's fascinating.

She's also a number fanatic and loves to count things. I'm really hoping she's been blessed with a head for numbers like I was; it made school so much easier. I kind of lost the knack after college and manage to screw up my checkbook at least a few times a year. Oh, yeah. I feel like an ass every time I realize it. I used to be in advanced placement calculus for Christ's sake!

Lastly, she's interacting with Noggin shows bigtime. Backyardigans, Diego, Dora, Wubbzy... she follows the stories, answers the questions, and laughs when things are funny. Again, I sometimes just sit there and watch her watching TV. To see something dawn on her all of a sudden is spectacular.

My little girl is growing up. And I'm so very proud of her. So very proud.