Main - Ellie - Joshua - Old Files - Tidbits
Late last week, Ellie asked to go to the doctor after having a fever for 3 days. She will not take medicine and has a pretty strong gag reflex that only adds to the complications. Anyway, she said, "I want to go to the doctor" and, not getting her to eat or drink at this point decided it was time to go (8:00pm - ish). I did manage to get her to drink some juice with her medicine on the way to the doctor's office (mommy stayed home with Joshua). I could tell Ellie was already feeling better as we sat in the waiting room. Oh well.
The doctor looked Ellie over and couldn't find anything wrong (her temperature was down to 101.9 by this time). The doctor decided to get a urine sample to test for a urinary tract infection. They put a baggy-type contraption on Ellie and told us to go to the waiting area and...well, wait. While sitting in the waiting room, Ellie named all of the colors of blocks that they had on a table. She also said her ABC's and the receptionist was amazed (she had a 2 year old daughter, too). Ellie then decided to spell her name for the woman. Before the woman could finish clapping, Ellie proceeded to spell, "m-o-m-m-y...mommy" and that even amazed me. Paula had spelled each of our names with chalk on the driveway recently, but we hadn't worked on teaching her to spell anything beyond her name.
Finally, around 10:30, we decided that she wasn't going to "go" on her own and we thought that a catheter would be the best option to get us done and get Ellie home in bed. I helped to hold Ellie's arms while the nurses and doctor did their thing. Of course, this was an unpleasant experience and Ellie cried. In between her cries, I explained to Ellie that they were just trying to help. Ellie looked at the medical staff and said, "thaaank yooouuuu" - mixed in with her cry. It just broke my heart.
Everything turned out fine and Ellie's temperature was back to normal by the time we left (~11:00pm). She's been fine ever since. She also still likes the doctor's office.
Ellie uses words far more advanced than most kids her age. We were sitting at dinner tonight and I pretended to win a contest. Ellie, without missing a beat, told me "congratulations daddy. You did a good job!" Somewhere along the line, she picked up the word, 'congratulations' and is using it in her regular vocabulary.
Ellie's dolls have full conversations with each other and her imagination is very good. She even imagines that Joshua can understand her as she talks to him all of the time. She is such a good older sister and often tries to include Joshua in an activity that is far beyond his capabilities (she likes to push him) ;-). Josh has a knack for wanting to pull hair and Ellie just laughs when Joshua grabs hold of her hair -- while she gently gets away from his grip.
Ellie proudly proclaim that basketball was her favorite sport today...You've just gotta love this girl.
Out of the blue tonight, Ellie just spontaneously starting counting backwards from 10 and made it all the way to one and then immediately counted back to 10. She's 23 months old as of this week.
We finally got the VCR hooked up after not having it for over a week. I stuck in a Dora the Explorer video and Ellie promptly said all of the words from the video right along with the characters. It was actually quite amazing to hear her get every word correct for the first few minutes of the tape even across many characters while she was also playing with her doll house. We haven't watched the tape that many times as the tape is relatively new and she's been on a Baby Einstein DVD kick for the longest time.
We have now placed 3 x 5 index cards around the house on many of the objects so that Ellie can start seeing the names of these objects. She thinks she can read because she can walk up to an index card and tell us what is on it (e.g., toy box, stairs, table, chair, door, doll house). Pretty neat stuff.
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.
Ellie now talks in complete sentences most of the time. She even uses some Spanish words at the appropriate times (I think she learns it from watching Dora the Explorer sometimes) -- Paula and I do not know Spanish.
Ellie had a wonderful Holiday season. She loved opening the presents and helping Josh to open his presents. She also loved playing with all of her relatives and friends. I think the neatest thing was watching her put on a show for everyone who came to see her. It wouldn't take long before Ellie was singing the complete ABC's or various other songs. She loves to perform.
Ellie has now said her ABC's a couple of times and can do it about every time when asked -- she sometimes acts bored with it like it is old hat. Works much better if she just spontaneously starts it herself. She is becoming shy and we have to work to get her to do things in front of other people, but once she warms up to them...watch out.
Ellie often uses sentences when talking. She also seems to understand pronoun usage despite ELMO talking without using pronouns. She can sing many songs and does so quite often. Her favorites are: Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Baa Baa Black Sheep, I Love you (Barney), London Bridge, Ring Around the Rosie and many more.
Halloween was a blast. Pictures can be found at this link.
This morning, 18 month old Ellie recited all of the letters of the alphabet...not all of the way through, but close. She said, "A-B-C-D-E-F-G" and then I said, "H-I" and she continued on for a 4 or 5 letters and would stop. I would then say the next letter or so, and she would continue on until we were finished. I then went back through and did the same thing except I tried to avoid saying letters I had said the first time. It was pretty cool and she was quite proud, "all right!" when we finished. Won't be long.
Ellie does the cutest little thing when she is thinking. If you ask her a question that requires thought, she places her chin in her hand and then says, "hmmm." She might do this 2 or 3 times and she gets a serious look on her face.
Ellie could go on her potty chair every time, but she isn't quite annoyed with going in her diaper yet. If we ask her if she wants to go on her potty chair, she will usually respond affirmatively. When she sits on the chair, she knows what to do. It is just a matter of guessing when she needs to go. We'll get it worked out.
Ellie from this afternoon (this photo gives a glimpse into the longer movie)
We had quite the scare with Ellie this past Tuesday. We noticed she had a small fever around 6:00 pm. By 9:30 it was worse, so we called the doctor and he had us go to a children's clinic across the street from the hospital (10:15 PM). The doctor checked her out and said she'd be fine. We took her home and put her to bed. Just after midnight, Paula heard Ellie cry out and went to check on her. Ellie was starting to have a seizure. I called 911 and medical personnel arrived within 2 - 3 minutes. Ellie had convulsions and was unresponsive until the time the medical people arrived. We went to the hospital and spent the night in the ER running all sorts of tests. They got her temperature down (it was at 104) and she started to act normal again; albeit, exhausted.
The cute thing is that she never fought any of the tests. They would take blood and she would cry when they stuck the needle in, but wouldn't stop them. One nurse was leaving after taking blood and Ellie lifted her head up and said, "bye" to the nurse. Another nurse took blood and gave Ellie a kid's band-aid and Ellie looked at it and said, "coooool." She had to take a bunch of x-rays. They finally concluded that it was probably a mild case of pneumonia and we went home (approx. 6:00 am).
We visited the doctor again yesterday...by the way, Ellie woke up the next day and was completely back to her old self (e.g., singing, dancing, having a good time)...anyway, we took her back to the doctor's office. Our doctor looked at the x-ray and said that she probably wouldn't say that it was pneumonia. She thought it was just a virus and had nothing to do with what Ellie went to the hospital for back in February. Whew!
They also told us that it is not uncommon for children to go into a seizure if your body has a rapid increase in temperature and/or reaches a certain temperature. It has nothing to do with anything out of the norm and there is no evidence of any harmful effects or links to any type of seizure disorders. This particular seizure is called a febrile seizure. Most kids who have a seizure of this kind will not experience another. Let's hope Ellie is in this group as that was too much to take again in this daddy's lifetime.
By the way...Ellie is 17 months old. Today we played the counting game. She made it to 14. She didn't say every number, but she would say some and then we'd fill in the next one and she would continue on. For instance, she stopped at 4 and we said 5, she the said 6, 7, and 8, etc. That's the highest she has gone. In fact, we haven't practiced past 10. Hmmm.
Finally, there is a new movie of Ellie at this link. We'll call this "Breakdancing." It is about 1.7 Mb so it might take a while if you are on a dial-up modem.
It finally happened. We were watching a Bear in the Big Blue House video and it was all about using a potty chair. About 2 hours later, Ellie was eating dinner and she said, "poop." Usually, when she says this she is telling us she went in her diaper. Paula checked and there was nothing there. We asked if she wanted to go sit on her potty chair and she said yes. We went in, placed her on her potty chair and she went poop. Pretty awesome! We were quite proud of her and she was pretty happy with herself. The best part for her was flushing the toilet and waving good-bye. Quite a big day for this 16 month old.
Ellie is identifying more objects than I thought possible at this age. She can recognize them in books, videos and out in the world and does so at every opportunity. I think her favorite things are balls, dogs, cows (Paula's parents have some), and naming all of the people she knows. She says "hi" in the sweetest voice when she hasn't seen you in a while.
If you ask Ellie how old she is, she puts one finger in the air and sometimes adds a quick, "one" along with it (she is 16 months as of yesterday). When she knows her picture is being taken, she says, "cheese" and smiles. She knows how to operate the VCR and even remove movies. If she has trouble, she points to me or mommy and indicates for us to come help her (palms facing up and she bends her fingers to her palms and then extends them over and over). Ellie is also saying "please" whenever she needs help or wants something. Additionally, she loves brushing her teeth. If she notices that we are brushing our teeth, she will say, "teeth" many times until we give her her toothbrush.
She knows just about everything that is going to happen on her videotapes before it happens. She also knows how to play along with most of them, especially the song If you're happy and you know it... -- her favorite is the last verse - do all 3 (clap your hands, stomp your feet, and shout hooray). she shouts "hooray" quite loudly. It is so cute seeing her play along with the Barney video.
Earlier this week, we tried a new pair of pajama's for Ellie. This pair doesn't have bottoms (more like a dress/night shirt). Anyway, about 20 minutes after Paula had checked Ellie's diaper (dry), Ellie came walking up to us and handed us her wet diaper. She had removed it herself. Since this initial happening, she has repeated this feat. Perhaps she is trying to tell us she wants to start using her potty chair???
Here is a new movie (2.7 Mb) of Ellie proving she is already a genius (8.5.01).
Click on the photo or here to see some wonderful photos of Ellie from yesterday.
Today Ellie grabbed her purse and placed her handy-dandy notebook (Blue's Clues) in it. She swung it over her shoulder and grabbed her hat and put it on and said "bye-bye." She gave a quick wave and walked to the door and pointed for us to let her out. Quite entertaining to say the least.
Ellie made us all happy today. She said, "Jayhawk" for the first time. It was actually the first time I have asked her to say it. She can say many, many words if you ask her to say them. Ellie and daddy went shopping at Toys-R-Us yesterday and spent over a hour at the store. Any time we saw a character she knew I would hear her say its name (e.g., tigger, pooh, bear, barney). We also went out to eat a Boston Market (mommy was teaching) and it was yucky. It reminded me of a young person's Furr's Cafeteria.
Ellie loves to play ball. She loves to kick a soccer ball and she loves throwing a small plastic baseball back and forth. I can't decide whether she is right or left handed yet, but she can throw the ball pretty well with both hands. I tend to think she throws straightest with the right, but who knows at this point?
Mommy took Ellie to the zoo yesterday. She said that Ellie absolutely loved every animal and showed excitement towards all of them. She is especially fond of the monkeys and started making monkey sounds when she saw them (who who ha; who who ha). very cute indeed.
Ellie discovered fresh blueberries for the first time today. Click here to see a few more photos from this session. And yes, I have learned my lesson.
A bunch has happened with Ellie lately (It is just amazing to watch her progress so quickly). She can now almost spell her own name. I have a video you can view (2.5 Mb -- long download) to see for yourself (added bonus -- she is covered with blueberries in it). You'll have to ignore me talking in the background.
As with all of the movies, you'll need Quicktime to view them.
Click the photo to see the enlarged photo.
Wow, I taught a class down near Ohio for the past week. I return and find out that Ellie can identify and say many colors. While taking a bath, I ask her to look at some colored cups and she knew yellow, blue, and purple (that is all there were). I'll try other colors tomorrow -- this just amazed me. She also can whistle (not really, but she tries and makes a blowing sound). She can count to 3 without any prompting. Maybe it is just me, but I am sure she is the smartest baby in the world. Paula commented recently that Ellie is great at playing by herself -- she likes exploring and understanding her own little world. Paula also thinks that Ellie will be much better off on her own without our intervention (I wonder if that is a knock on me). ;-)
This is a little out of order, but I just finished it. Ellie can count to 3 and has been doing so since she was 13 months. This is an mp3 file I saved...You'll have to listen closely for her voice (best to turn up your volume). I count to 3, but she is doing so a bit ahead of me. Click here to hear it.
Ellie has some people amazed lately with her talking. She not only waves bye-bye, but she says it. Also, while eating out recently, some women near our table waved to Ellie a few times and she waved back. When they finished eating, they walked over and told us how beautiful Ellie was. Paula said to Ellie, "Ah, they think you are beautiful" and Ellie looked at them and said, "thank you" to the amazement of the women. She also is very good with the yes and no head-thing; although, her yes is a very slow look up and then look down -- very pronounced and cute. If we ask her if her diaper needs to be changed, she will indicate yes or no and has been correct every time thus far. She can tell us when she is hungry, when she wants to play, and when she is ready for bed, etc. A very fun age.
Ellie understands many phrases these days. I was using a circular saw in the garage to cut down on the cost of the carpet installation in our basement the other day and had Ellie outside with me. When I actually used the saw, I would tell her to go sit down on a step. She did every time without hesitation and I didn't have to teach her how first. When I finished the sawing each time, Ellie would look at me and say, "ouch" and cover her ears with her hands. Very cute (and I only made 3 quick cuts so her ears are fine).
Ellie can say "thank you" and knows when to say it. She can almost say "I love you" but her vocal chords won't quite allow the enunciation yet. She greets me with a "hi daddy" when I enter a room. Very adorable. Very fun, etc. Makes me want to wake her up just to play after she has gone to bed for the evening (I don't, but think about it). ;-)
Click here to see the older Ellie files (some may also be found by clicking on the Old Files link below).