Ella's Talking!

 As you might have guessed, Ella has become INSISTENT that she feed herself. And this is the result. (She is still eating baby food since it is easiest/fastest way for me to feed her with all these food allergies.)

 Trying to get a drink out of the Slip-n-slide

ELLA IS TALKING LIKE CRAZY THESE DAYS!! Here's how our morning went:

Kalia got her out of bed this morning at 8 a.m. and brought her into my room. Ella came over to my bed and said, "Up!" I picked her up and gave her a big kiss.  I got out of bed and we went into the kitchen and she signed milk and said, "Maow", so I started to get her bottle, but first she saw the light switch and reached for it and said, "Off" (even though she says that when she wants to turn it on or off.) So I let her turn it on, then I got her bottle and took her back to my bed where we snuggled while she drank it.  Then she said, "Dow" as she turned around and went backward (feet first) off my bed. A minute later she came back into my room with a package of rice crackers in her hand. I wasn't sure how she'd gotten them, maybe Kalia helped? Anyway, she handed me the cracker and said, "Cackuh". Then she said, "Up!" again and i helped her get up on the bed. Then I ripped open the package and gave her two little pieces of cracker, and to my great surprise she said, "Take-oo" (thank you...first time she's said it un-prompted.) I giggled a little, and then Annie came running in with a different kind of cracker, and Ella rubbed her little chest (signing please) and said, "Pea! Pea! Pea!" She really wanted Annie's cracker, and I told Annie (and Ella) no, she had to wait til after breakfast. So I got out of bed again and went into the kitchen to make eggs. I put Ella in the high chair. She signed "drink" and also said "dee!" and so I gave her a cup of almond milk (a brand new development, SO glad she can have this! She LOVES it!) Then I made breakfast for the girls, and asked Kalia to bless the food. Ella immediately folded her arms. This girl pays attention to whats going on. I love it. We gave Ella some more cracker to keep her busy, and after about 5 minutes she starts shaking both hands and saying, "Ah-duh...ah-duh" (all done.) And so I get her out and  she notices a picture of her, Kalia, and  Annie on the fridge. She points to herself and says (Perfectly) "El-la."  and then she points at Annie and says (perfectly, as of 2 days ago,) "Ann-ee."  And then she points to Kalia and mumbles something I can't understand. Then I put her down she goes and finds a huge ball and brings it in to me and says, "Bah!"  so I take it and roll it away and she runs off to get it.  I remind myself to go write all this down, since I am kind of baffled at how many words she has used in one morning (seems like way more than usual!) and she comes and finds me, says, "Up!" and so I lift her up on my lap, and she tries to start typing. I hold her little arms back and she giggles and points with her little finger at the laptop and says, "No! No! No!"   So I give her my cell phone to keep her hands busy, and she immediately puts it to her ear and says, "Herro" (it's exactly how Scooby Doo sounds when he says "hello"- it's hilarious.)  She says it over and over, puts it to my ear, says "herro" over and over until I say hello back.  Soon she gets down and plays with her sisters. They make her laugh like crazy. They are finally starting to interact quite a bit with each other and it warms my heart.  When Ella comes back, she smells like rotten eggs (thanks to those rice crackers) so I take her to the bedroom to change her diaper.  She sees the package of diapers and I tell her to "grab a diaper" and she says, "Bi-pah" for diaper. Then she sees a picture of Jesus on the wall, and like she has been doing a lot lately, she says, "Gi-gi! Gi-gi!" for Jesus.

Another thing she has been doing is that she constantly says, "Mama!" to get my attention. Like even when we're driving. She figured out that I will always say, "What?" And so it makes me really feel like she's trying to communicate. She LOVES to look at family pictures. She also talks about "Daddee" a lot, and when he was out of town for a few days, she kept randomly saying his name- I figured she was wondering where he was. So she just turned 14 months old and she's talking like crazy. That's the latest on her.