Cerin Amroth

Suanna and Ella are going to visit a close friend of Suanna’s in Ottowa this weekend. This morning I told Ella about it — knowing full well that she wouldn’t really have any conception of _when_ this was going to happen, and doubtful as to whether she’d get any of it at all.

“Ella,” I said, “Do you know what? In _two days_ — not now, but in two days — you and mama are going to ride on an airplane!”

She got it right away. Maybe not the two days part — she keeps saying “Too Daaaays” but I’m not convinced she knows what it means. But the fact that she’s going to go on an airplane soon, with mama, has her absolutely in stiches. She already likes watching airplanes out of our windoow, so now she stands there and says to me “Daaaa! I Me Ayah-Pane! I Me Mama Ayah-Pane! Too Daaay!”

Actually, it’s not so much _me_ she wants to say this to, but Mr. Mouse. Mr. Mouse (or, as Ella calls him, “Moussh”) is a puppet she got as a baptism present from her godparents — he’s a big grey rat with a snappy vest. She likes talking to Mr. Mouse, and with some things — especially pointing out airplanes — Mr. Mouse is far preferable to Suanna or I.

Just now after repeating the I-Me-Airplane line to Mr. Mouse ad nauseam, she said to him “Huh Kii,” and then gave him a hug and a kiss. Then she turned to me with a look that said “Yeah, I suppose you’re OK too,” and gave me a hug and a kiss as well.

OK, is this a parental milestone or something?

I was reading to Ella before her nap — _Green Eggs and Ham_. It’s one of those books that we’ve read a lot, so I basically know it by heart. But my mind was elsewhere. As I read, I started daydreaming, thinking about other things . . .

. . . and before I knew it, I was done with the book. I had read the whole thing, turned the pages, inflected my voice, but the whole time I had been thinking about something else entirely — the only way I was sure I had actually _read_ it was that we were on the last page and Ella’s eyes were getting droopy.

So there it was: my first book on autopilot.

There’s a little triangle of space at the end of our futon/couch formed by the couch arm, the chair next to it, and the bookshelf behind the chair. It’s usually where I stuff my backpack and where various other junk accrues. Ella just spent a few minutes painstakingly wrestling my backpack and the other items out of the nook. Then she pulled two of my books off the shelf, wedged herself there in the corner, and opened one of them up.

The books, incidentally, were _The Great Gatsby_ and _I, Claudius_. Fine taste.

I must say, though, she really didn’t give either title a fair try. After a few minutes of this, she looked up at me and said “No Pih.” (That’s “no pictures”.) Then she went off in search of other entertainments — though she’s still carrying _I, Claudius_ along with her.

Yesterday, Ella started talking to her stuffed animals. To be fair, the stuffed animals were talking to _her_, but I’ve been doing that for a while and this was the first time she responded in kind. It started when she and Old School Pooh were having tea, and Pooh said “More tea please.”

Ella stood up and looked around. Her brow furrowed. Then she looked at me and said “Weh Tee Pa?” (That’s ‘where’s the teapot?’) “I don’t know,” I replied.

She looked around a little more, then walked right up to Old School Pooh (who was sitting on my knee), put her face up to his face, comically close, and said “Weh Tee Pa?” Pooh didn’t know either, but together we all managed to locate it.

The other incident requires a little bit of background. Yesterday Ella was _obsessed_ with the alphabet song. I must have sung it to her a dozen times, and after each one she’d try to sing it to herself. Ella’s alphabet song goes like this:

“B, B, C, D, la, pooh, da, dee, “

(Funnily enough, whenever she “counts” she always starts with “two” and never says one. Not sure what’s up with the whole leaving-the-first-in-the-sequence-out trend.)

Anyway, the last time I sang it to her, she was standing near me and listening really intently, looking for all the world like she was trying to memorize it. Then she went right over to where she had set one of her dolls in the Vibrating Chair, crouched down in front of her, and started singing the alphabet song (her version) to the doll.

Ella likes carrying the car keys when we go out. Coming back to the apartment door just now, I turned to her and said “Ella, may I have the keys?”

She cocked her head, smiled, and said expectantly, “Peeeeez?”

“May I have the keys _please_?” I said.

Then she smiled and handed them over.

I didn’t catch any flak for not posting an update a month ago, but that’s probably because right around the time Ella turned nineteen months, she was spending time with all her grandparents.

Here’s a couple scenes to give you a sense of life with Ella these days:

Scene One

6:30 PM. Ella is almost done eating her supper — she has a few more bites left in her but she’s mostly at the playing-with-her-food stage. I’m reading on the couch.

“Mooooo!” she says, then looks at me expectantly. I’m supposed to guess the animal.

“A cow?” I say.

“UH-huh!” she says. “CA CA DOOOOO!”

“A rooster!”

She nods enthusiastically. Then: “Brrruuuum. Brruuuuum.”

I’m stumped. “An airplane?”

She just keeps looking at me patiently.

“A car?” I guess.

“Moh Sy!” she says happily.

I have no explanation for the motorcyle obsession though I’ve “mentioned it before”:http://www.polytropos.org/ella/archives/2005/07/the_talker.html. Very strange.

Scene Two

(Just so you don’t think everything is all cutesy and cheerful)

9:15 AM. Right on cue, Ella walks up to me and points at her mouth. “Sna! Sna!” she says.

“Is it snacktime, Ella?”

“UH-huh!”

“And how do we ask nicely?”

She grins sheepishly. “Peeeeeeez.”

“OK,” I say, and head into the kitchen and open the cupboard. Ella comes running in after me with a _very_ concerned expression on her face: she has forgotten to convey one important piece of information.

“Go Fi. Go Fi,” she says insistently.

“No, Ella, we’re going to have snappy peas for snack this morning. You may have goldfish this afternoon.” (Given a chance, Ella would eat nothing but goldfish morning, noon, and night.)

“Noooooo!” she hollers. Then she thumps down on the kitchen floor with a blubbery expression on her face. When she sees that I’m actually going through with this by taking out the snappy peas, not the goldfish, she throws up her arm and arches her back — which, of course, tips her backward so that she bangs her head on the floor. Then follows a good bit of crying and kissing of the spots that hurt. A couple minutes later, she is contently slurping milk out of her sippy cup and eating snappy peas.

—

So yeah, it’s been a wild month of talking and more talking and her thwarting our wills and flipping out whenever _her_ will is thwarted. Never a dull moment.

Her current record in terms of grammatical constructions is Subject-Verb-DirectObject-IndirectObject, which has only happened once:

“Ah Pu Teig In Bak Et!” (“I put the tiger in the basket!”)

Mostly she still just utters single words and phrases, and imitates (or tries to) just about everything she hears us say.

Physically, she’s much more coordinated than she was a couple months ago. She can now move at what passes for a run, and is pretty good at climbing up things, which she never tires of doing. She loves climbing up onto the chairs by the dining room table, whether to look out the window or just to be up on the chairs. She understands that she may not climb onto the table or onto the register _from_ a chair, which doesn’t mean that she doesn’t do it — only that she does it very slowly while watching us to see how we respond.

Eating and sleeping habits haven’t changed a whole lot, though. She’s still on two naps a day, except on the weekends when Suanna’s around, when she’ll generally do just one. Still wakes up at 6:00. Still likes (and dislikes) pretty much the same foods, though she’s doing better at sampling what we’re eating — veggies and chicken from a stir fry, for example. My sense is that she’s shot up in height since eighteen months but probably hasn’t gained a whole lot of weight.

Favorite book(s): Her red box of Maisy books. She’s into Maisy right now.
Favorite song: “If You’re Happy And You Know It.” Itsy-Bitsy Spider is still OK. I’m a Little Teapot has lost some of its lustre.
Favorite toy: Hard to say. Her Legos and Little People are in heavy rotation these days.
Favorite pop culture icon: Boots the Monkey, from Dora the Explorer. Generally speaking Ella hasn’t yet shown many signs of possessiveness — other kids can snatch things away from her and she just sort of watches them curiously and then goes to do something else. But the one giant exception was when she found a little stuffed Boots at the Barnes & Noble that she was carrying around with her while playing with the trains. Another little girl made a grab for Boots and Ella took a step back while clutching him tightly. “Ella, could you share Boots with her?” I said. “Noooo,” said Ella. “No no no no no!” Goodness knows she’ll be that way with more things than just Boots before long . . .