The Lancasters

Well, Ellie has been counting for a long time. She has never been able to associate counting with objects and determining how many are present. That all changed today. Ellie, mommy and I were sitting in the living room and playing with big lego’s and Ellie started counting the number of pieces she was holding. She kept getting it right so Paula started quizzing Ellie and Ellie never messed up. Ellie would have a stack of 5 or so lego’s and pull one off and set it aside and say, “one.” She would then do the same with the next one and say, “two.” It was quite a pleasant surprise to us. P.S. She got all of the way to 6, but that was also the biggest stack we had.

In related news, Ellie got a few Valentine’s Day cards these past few days. Yesterday she grabbed her and Josh’s cards and correctly identified her card and Josh’s. We dismissed it as luck. Today, she did it again with 2 new cards and I mixed them up and she still did it correctly. Paula wrote ‘mommy,’ ‘daddy,’ ‘Ellie,’ and ‘Joshua’ on a piece of paper and Ellie could correctly point to one of the words and identify it…every time. I am not implying that she can read (she can’t – duh), but she is noticing the difference between letters and associating those letters with people in our family. She has been correctly spelling her own name for a while, so I suppose this was the natural next step.

She’s not quite 22 months old.

I am starting to realize that all questions starting with “why” can be answered very easily. Often, when Ellie is asked why she did something or why anything, she will answer with, “because” — duh!.

She is a very curious kid. Phrases you hear most often from her are the following:
What are you doing daddy?
What is that mommy?
Where did *insert object here* go?

She also likes to play the games with us that we play with her. She will get a book and point to pictures and ask, “what animal is this?” and “now, what is this?” She might vary the game a little and point to a color and ask, “what color is this?” or a letter, “what letter is this?” — a quick aside…the way she says hippopotamus is adorable (and she knows the difference between the hippo and the rhino). More later.