August was our family vacation to Toronto and Niagara falls. We were originally going to Japan with our friends the Hoaglands, but with the house not yet rented we didn’t feel comfortable spending so much money. We ended up going to Toronto and Niagara for a fifth the price.
Elia’s diction and vocabulary have really taken off this month. She no longer is measured in her speech when she makes sentences and has begun talking a lot. She is still working on learning new things but it is cute as all get out.
She uses “me” for “I,” so “me no no dat is,” is “I don’t know what that is.” Or simply Me no no,” “I don’t know.” Better yet, “What dat? … Me no no.” We love how she calls things at: the moment: “Um nom noms,” are M&Ms, “wipers” for “wipes.” Sometimes she runs around just saying “blah, blah, blah.” But she is pretty articulate when she wants to be, it is her syntax that cracks us up: “Me get another one book.” or “Me eat another one bite.” “Dat too tary (scary).” “Me love Hi fi (Hi5).”
Then there are really cute ones like: “Me strong like Rey. Me strong like Rey and Finn,” or “Dada pay me, pay ball.” We introduced the kids to several versions of Cinderella this month with Elia entranced by the ball scenes. She LOVES the “Slippery and Rose” movie (The Slipper and the Rose), and Ever After. The best is that she calls Cinderella “Fa la le la” or just “La le la.” She has however started to say “lello” instead of “yellow,” and that might be a Curie influence as she says “lello.”
We’ll leave many of the Toronto, Niagara Falls exploits to that blog post, but there were a few things for Elia of note. She remembers the name of her pony “Merlin (her first),” knows that the ferris wheel was “too tary” for her, that the bears made her dizzy because Albert spun them “too fast.” It is better to just watch her description on the video. We bought her a plastic boat (jet ski) and she asked to roll the window down. Curie said she dropped the boat out the side, which we thought she meant on the side of her car seat, but Elia had thrown her boat out the window. Albert rescued it from the road, fortunately we were at the parking lot of the hotel. And then, Elia didn’t want to climb up the CN tower, until we explained it was only taking the elevator up and not actually climbing the outside, she said then said “okay.”
Elia had her first hair cut the same day Curie did and though she did not need holding hands, she did not smile until it was over. Instead of watching the video of Peppa Pig, she looked at the mirror to see what the stylist was doing.
So Elia is quite head strong, pushing bigger kids out of the way on the slide, she is willful too, having definite opinions (though many are either contrary or the same as Curie’s). She has begun hitting and spitting recently which initially Albert just rasberried back into Elia’s face, Erin thought Elia’s surprised reaction was hilarious, but we are working on a better way of handling her acting up than just reacting. Elia loves to make scrambled eggs cracking and mixing the eggs. The only thing she doesn’t do is actually cook them. She is still the daredevil, loving being lifted, and loved when Albert would drop a ball over her head only to catch it right before hitting her as she lay down.
Elia really wants the company and attention and will insist you sit next to her or near her, or she will sidle up to you or sit in your lap. She always wants “mouk” at the end of the day, but will insist on “mouk on the couch.” In the morning she wants to go “downtairs!” Insistently, right when she wakes up. She knows how to count, sort of, and can tell you what the animals are and what sounds they make. She was playing with the animals and farm and kept saying “dis be?” Which we thought it meant “what is this?” Which we thought was surprising since she can tell you what the animals are, but we realized she meant “where do these go?” And then true to her nature (OCD inherited from Albert) she put them in the same places over and over again. Albert’s favorite Elia noise? “Onk onk.”