Ellis at 19 Months

Ellis's little quirks that I never want to forget, because they're all so fleeting:

• She loves this book of sounds with farm animals. The farmer is looking for one of his piglets, and everywhere he goes to look for it, he just sees other animals, and you can press the buttons to hear their sounds. Ellis loves it because she knows the names of the animals and the sounds they make, so it makes her feel like she's mastered something. She knows what to expect. She responds in exactly the same way with every reading, which I find so endearing. One page ends with, "Uh oh! One of the pigs is missing!" and she repeats "missing." Just that word out of the whole page, and every time. Then when the farmer checks the barn, there's a barn owl at the top of the page. She squeals and points and says, "Owl!!! Hoo, hoo!" every time, as if she didn't know she'd find it there, despite having just read the book three times. She just gets so excited by owls and elephants, recognizing them everywhere and pointing them out in the smallest of places. Then when the farmer finds the pig, the book says, "There she is! She's resting in the shade of the apple tree," and Ellis says, "yeah!" I die.

• At day care, the staff pat the babies on the backs to help them fall asleep. They say Ellis is one of the ones who needs that, but they start with the youngest/neediest and half the time she's asleep by the time they get to her. Anyway, Ellis has started doing this with dolls and even with us. She pats her stuffed animal on the back and then just walks away when she decides he's asleep. My wife, Nicole, sleeps on the couch many nights because bedsharing makes her very anxious but Ellis goes hysterical at being put in her own space, so she has a setup of sheets and a blanket down there. One of Ellis's games now is to pull the blanket over Nicole, pat her and say "shhhh" with a finger to her lips, and then wake Nicole up. She will push Nicole's face down if Nicole is supposed to be pretending to be asleep but isn't, and she wakes her up pretty roughly when it's time! It's the sweetest thing to see her do these little rituals. She also offers food to her toys and sometimes even lets them nurse with her!

• Ellis's language is astonishing. She's learning multiple new words every day, and has started to pair them together to get a point across: "elephant sticker off," "shoe on," "mama, up." One time she wanted to go outside and had to string together a whole series of words. She started by saying, "Mama, hand," and walking me to the back door. Then, "coat on? shoe on? Door. Door!" This morning she wanted to play with her little Daniel Tiger figurine but couldn't find him. She knew where he was, but I didn't, because I had been working the night before when she played with him with Nicole. She said, "Dannel. Trolley. Dannel trolley. Attairs (upstairs)." She then took the trolley and went to the bottom of the stairs and waited for me. We went up, and sure enough he was next to the bed. Communication does much to ease everyone's frustrations. It's an incredible thing to watch develop! For AGES, she's been saying "na na" to indicate she needs or wants something - food, a toy, help doing something, etc. It was so constant that it was often annoying, and now we can go a whole day without hearing it sometimes. She just has so many words now that she doesn't often need this generic word to get our attention.

• Some of her baby words are evolving, and it's actually a pretty sad loss! For apple, she used to say "bapple," then it became "appool," and now it's just "apple." She says "nan?" for "again" and I dread the day we lose that. It's been with us for so long, and was so refreshing when she was able to say it because it's something she needs to communicate frequently - when she wants a playful move repeated (like playing airplane), hear a song again in the car, read a book again. She says "epplane" for airplane and "effant" for elephant.

• When Ellis asks for a song to be repeated in the car and I say, "Okay," she says back to me, "Okay, baby." It's absolutely hilarious because it's like holding a mirror up to myself. Like oh, I must really say that a lot to her!

• The other day, Nicole was going to get a snack of Lucky Charms, thinking she was being sneaky but she wasn't, not nearly enough. Ellis caught sight of it and went nuts, so Nicole sat on the kitchen floor with her and traded off spoonfuls. Ellis sat right across from her, cross legged and with straight posture, like she was waiting for an organized activity to take place, and just waited patiently for her turn for a spoonful. Then she looked at me and said, "Mama, sit," and patted the floor next to her. I sat down, and she pointed at the cereal, waiting for me to take a spoonful too. I never want to forget that moment, the three of us sitting in a circle cross legged on the kitchen floor, taking turns eating Lucky Charms.

I've waited my whole life for this stage, and now that I'm in a place to better appreciate it, I'm just savoring every morsel. These little games, the interactions, the squeals and giggles, the full body tackle hugs. Her repeating the names of her friends over and over to herself in the stroller, singing to her music, clapping her doll's hands to a song or putting it to bed, saying "mama" and my whole heart just collapses into a puddle as I scoop her up and say "yes, baby?" and feel grateful that it doesn't yet bother her for me to do that.