Elise Update

Today as we were sitting at the park I realized Elise is just 2 years and one month old. I'm not sure why, but I feel like her 2nd birthday was more than a month ago. This past month she has changed so much, becoming even more vocal and communicative. She is still a sassafrass through and through, but what 2 year old isn't. She is darn precious and I love her so much. One of the cutest things she does right now is hop around everywhere. She hops when she's excited and she also hops just for fun. Sometimes she'll hop all the way down the hall. It is adorable but also looks exhausting! I can't imagine hopping as much as she does! I tried to get some pictures today to go with this post and Elise wasn't having it so I just took some pictures with my phone at the playground and I'm adding some other recent pictures.

Our sweet girl!

She went from saying a few 2-3 word sentences and phrases to spouting new phrases on the daily as well as creating her own sentences. She definitely understands a lot and is able to put lots of words together to convey what she wants. There are still some words that I have a hard time understanding. One is bottle which she asks for to give her baby dolls. When she says it I usually think she said potty and try to take her to the potty. She's picked up yelling out, "Watch me," before she does tricks. It's so cute to hear her yell watch me and then turn to watch her run across the yard and throw her body into a swing. When she tells me to watch her she always waits to make sure I am looking. She's picked up saying, "No, I want mommy do it," from Carter. He insists I do everything for him when he's tired and sometimes throws fits when Ty or someone else tries to help him. Elise has started saying that sometimes when I ask Carter to help her with something. She used to love having her big brother help her! When she falls she'll yell out, "I'm okay," as she pops back up and continues on her way. One day she climbed up onto something and as she did yelled, "Gekko muscles!" I guess she hears that quite a bit from her PJ Mask loving big brother! If she sits in my lap and I put my arm around her, she often says, "Let go of me!" She also says, "I need that," a lot, especially when she sees her brother playing with something she'd like to play with. One night as we were picking up the house I asked her to go throw away some trash I found on the floor and was met with, "No, I want mommy do that!" I was so shocked by the sentence she put together it took me a minute to respond! She also says "Look at that," when she points at things. We hear "Me too," the most. At first she said it when she saw someone else doing something and also wanted to do it. Now she uses it for anything she wants to do, whether someone else is doing it or not. One day Carter was yelling for a Kleenex but wasn't using his manners so I ignored him. Next thing I knew Elise was running through the room with a Kleenex in her hand. I am continually amazed at her ability to follow directions! Little Miss also loves to sing and sings random songs all the time. My recent favorite was when she sang, "I love you," over and over one day as I was carrying her.

I'd say Elise's favorite thing this month was baby dolls. Before she mostly played with her stuffed animals but called them babies and treated them like they were babies and she still does that. When we go to the library for playtime all she wants to play with is the babies. She loves rocking and singing to her babies and then putting them to bed. She also feeds them using a bottle. My parents got her a baby doll that laughs and cries. She adores it and will play with it for hours at a time. She'll tell me, "Baby laufing," or "Baby cying." When it cries she'll tell me it's hungry and feed it or tell me it's tired and rock it while shushing or singing in it's ear. She always pats her baby's back when she rocks it. She likes to tuck her baby into bed in the crib she got for Christmas from my Uncle Mike and Aunt Judy. It has been amazing to see how innate taking care of a "baby" is for her compared to how Carter played with his baby doll which was almost never gentle. It does make my heart twinge a little at the thought that she'll never get the chance to be a big sister. But I remind myself it's all great practice for being a mom someday. Carter says he's the baby's daddy and steps in to take care of it when Elise leaves the room. It's so cute because I've noticed he's picked up some of the things Elise does with her baby. He'll hold it just like a baby in a way I've never really seen him do before, even when I was holding Elise as a baby all the time so he had me to model. I think the cutest thing I've seen with Elise is when she takes Otter out in public with us. She treats Otter as if he were a real person and holds him up so he can see things such as the exhibits at the zoo and the aquarium. She also held him up at storytime so he could pop bubbles. Bubbles at storytime is her absolute favorite and she starts hopping up and down every time. It is the cutest!

Carrying her dolly at the playground.

This month Elise had some firsts. She went to her first movie in the theaters on a whim. We went to McDonald's for lunch using a gift card my grandparents got Carter for his birthday. The toy in the Happy Meal was a Smurf toy. Carter was asking about it so I showed him a trailer to the movie and told him it was a show I watched when I was a kid. We realized the movie was coming out that night so I called Ty and we decided I'd take the kids that afternoon. She did pretty well at the movie, sitting in my lap and only getting up a couple times. I think she would have done better but the movie was messed up so they had to re-start it multiple times which caused her to lose interest. Based on that first movie experience I'm planning on taking the kids to a couple of the dollar movies this summer as long as it works into our schedule and they are movies we are interested in. She had another first, taking her first trip to the dentist on April 11th. Our doctor told me we didn't need to take the kids to the dentist until they turn 3 but when I called the dentist's office to schedule Carter's appointment they said they recommend starting dentist visits after a child's first birthday. I felt really badly that Carter had never been until I saw all they did was look at Elise's teeth and put a little flouride treatment on them at the end of the visit. It was exactly what our pediatrician has been doing in his office for the past few years. Elise did a great job at her appointment, opening wide and following directions. This Easter Elise hunted eggs for the first time. She only grabbed one at her first hunt but at all the hunts after that she did a great job and had a blast!

Although I saw more tantrums with Elise around 1.5 than I have since she turned 2, she has also become more stubborn and wants more independence. So she demonstrates part of the "terrible two" behavior although it really doesn't bother me. I just wait and wait and wait until she asks for help. She wants to dress and undress herself. She has also suddenly decided she doesn't like her teeth to be brushed and went from sitting so nicely while I did them to flinging herself around just in the past week. I'm hoping it goes back to normal after this week! She still likes it when I floss her teeth and even licks the floss, I think she likes the taste of it. She does a great job on hikes and walks. She has been peeling her own Cuties (easier to peel mandarin oranges) for a while now but I don't think I've ever mentioned it. During Harper's birthday hike Elise ran/walked most of the way. She amazes me with her toughness and her energy! I don't put her hair in pigtails often but she has gotten better about it when I do, leaving them in all day instead of ripping them out almost immediately! She also loves to blow her nose and does a great job really blowing when I put a Kleenex up to her nose. Something random and funny is that she really wanted to open Addison's presents at her 2nd birthday this past weekend after having no interest in opening her own presents at her 2nd birthday party. Go figure!

It still surprises me at times how Elise acts differently when Carter isn't around. When we go places while he's at school she tends to be more timid and more attached to me. When Carter is around she runs off and takes off playing even if she isn't playing with him. When I've taken her to storytime while Carter is at school she typically wants to sit in my lap the whole time until the bubbles come out. At the playground instead of playing on the equipment she often times chooses to play in her stroller or better yet the car, if I'll let her. She still goes up to other kids and initiates playing, she just wants to hang with me for a little bit first. She has figured out a lot of playground tricks during her 2 years of playing. She puts her legs out and presses them to the side of the slide to slow herself down when she feels like she's going too fast. She also takes her shoes and socks off so she can climb the slide, even at home in our backyard. She still loves to play in my purse, pulling everything out if I forget to put it up where she can't reach it. Her favorites are my keys and my wallet. She loves to pull all my credit cards and membership cards out of their slots!

Climbing the slide, notice she's barefoot. Her shoes and socks were at the bottom of the slide!

Elise's best friends are Charlee, Addison, and Jake. Well and Carter, of course, she just adores him! When she wakes up from her nap she always asks me if Carter is awake yet if he doesn't come in with me to get her. I love hearing her ask for "Carcar." There for awhile every Thursday while Carter was at school we were going to a program with Charlee and her mom while her sister was at school. It got to the point where after dropping Carter off at school Elise would start saying, "Cha-lee? Cha-lee?" wondering if we were going to see Charlee that day. She calls Jake "Dakey" and Addison "Addy". Erin came over with Hayden this past weekend and Elise started running around yelling "Addy," while looking for her. It was so cute! She also loves her extended family and asks about them all the time. She asks for Oma, Taco, and J quite a bit and also throws Opa in there at times. When we go visit Gma and Gpa or Facetime with them she asks for "Pau" and to see the baby (Wyatt). She definitely loves babies! She sometimes refers to Oma and Opa as just Oma. The same goes for Gma and Gpa. Sometimes she just refers to them as Gpa. She has a special book her Gma and Gpa recorded themselves reading and gave her for her birthday. She will carry it around and hug it tight to her chest, yelling, "MY GMA," as though she's afraid someone is going to take it from her.

Elise still loves animals and is mostly sweet to them. She loves to pet Harper and lay her head on Harper. She also pulls Harper's fur sometimes which keeps Harper on edge with her, she's never really quite sure what to expect out of her. Elise adores kitties and always wants to go check on the kitties at Oma and Opa's house. She will also go into the closet in Ty and my room to peek at Skippy since that's where he spends most of the day. She has decided that cats live in closets because of Skippy. When we were at Gma and Gpa's house she opened a closet and yelled, "Kitty?!" Then she inspected the closet looking for a cat. That one had me cracking up! She's also a little bit scared of Skippy. One afternoon she was in Carter's room playing while I laid on the bed with Carter because he had just woken up and asked for some snuggle time. Elise looked out the doorway and screamed kitty in terror before quickly running over and climbing onto the bed. I couldn't stop laughing over the whole ordeal. Carter thought it was pretty funny too!

Sister is still an awesome sleeper! She goes to bed between 7-8 pm and usually sleeps until 7-7:30 am. She takes a 2-3 hour nap in the afternoon. It's usually 2 hours but every once in a while she goes for a longer nap. The only trouble we ever have with her is typically when she gets overtired. Then it is difficult to get her to sleep and she'll get upset that others aren't napping or sleeping when she is. Typically if she falls asleep in the car I can carry her into the house and she'll either stay asleep or go right back to sleep. She's had a few times this month where that didn't work out and then she couldn't fall asleep at her regular naptime which is 1:00. She cried and threw such a fit that I had to get Carter down and then go back into her room. Of course it worked out that it happened on a day where Carter actually napped (he's down to only napping once or twice a week for the most part). When I went back in to help Elise fall asleep I had to take her into Carter's room to show her that he was asleep before she would settle down. She was just so upset thinking no one else was napping! One day she was having a hard time at naptime and ended up climbing out of her crib and leaving her room. It was the only time she's done it since that one time she did it a long time ago and she hasn't done it since. We've talked about transitioning her to a toddler bed but see no need to do it yet, especially since she isn't prone to climbing out.

Snuggles at naptime.

She is getting closer and closer to being ready to full on potty train. She likes pulling her pants down by herself. She often says potty and wants to sit on the potty chair. Usually it turns out that she had just pottied in her diaper but she usually still squeezes a little more out for us. Today she actually told me she needed to potty while we were at the playground. We made it to the bathroom and she had already gone but she still wanted to sit on the toilet and pushed more potty out. She likes to say she "tinkled" when she does that which is simply adorable! She needs help getting her diaper off but will sometimes find a way to rip it off on her own. I still let her go without a diaper when we are at home for long periods of time unless she doesn't want to. She still is pretty stubborn and if I tell her to get on the potty it becomes a power struggle. We went through the same thing with Carter so I'm going to learn my lesson and not force it this time. I think it's a sign that she's not quite ready and we'll wait a little longer. I have been thinking of putting her in a pull-up though because she wants to go on the potty when I go out in public and it would be easier to do if she were in a pull-up.

We love Elise so much and continue to enjoy watching her grow and learn. I love that she learns from Carter and he also learns things from her. She is smart, sassy, sweet, and snuggly, just a wonderful combination of traits!

I love her silhouette!