Our Little Monster

Ellen is close to her second birthday, but I feel like she's been a 2-year old for a while now. She runs around claiming everything is "mine." Makes it fun when it's something that she shouldn't even have. She's figured out which drawers are the fun ones to get into (even child-proofing doesn't work because she'll stick her fingers in a pull out what she can grab--- I don't think we have a complete set of measuring spoons right now). But, she keeps us on our toes, and the good FAR out weighs the bad.

Summer has flown by. School starts at the end of the month and so I thought I'd update with the big things that we've been doing. Ellen took swim lessons, which were fun. She grew to love them and we've been back once since then, but I plan on going back a couple more times during the summer. It's hard because she naps during the open swim time at the community pool, so we go on the days that she takes a short/early nap.

Here she is when we got her swim suit and new flip flops. Ellen is really into dress up and loves new things, so she couldn't wait to try them on. Hence, the clothes underneath the suit.

Ellen hated two things during swim lessons. 1. Laying on her back. She HATED every trick I tried, so we went through those positions quickly. 2. Sticking anything above her chin into the water. She stuck her nose in once, but she just never warmed up to that.

Besides the house projects I've been working on, we did take that trip to the beach. Here's a couple pics from this trip that I forgot to show earlier. This is from her second outting on the beach. The one below is a bad picture that we tried to take of our footprints in the sand. Ellen's foot didn't show up too well and photographing small pits in the sand didn't show up too well... but you can somewhat see what we were going for.

The last thing that we've been doing this summer is art projects. Ellen really loves making messes and so I really have to keep a close eye on her (because it ends up on tables or in her mouth) but she loves it. We've really been playing with a lot of playdoh and markers. The smell of playdoh brings me back to my childhood too, so it's hard not to show off and show Ellen how to properly play with the stuff. Here she is trying to make a ball like Daddy just did.

And, I think the thing that I've spent most of my time with this summer is cleaning Ellen (and her eatting space) after she eats. I didn't know a dab of ketchup could spread this far... she coats herself in it and then rubs food against her cheeks to get some of it onto her food. Sometimes I'll be putting her down to bed and discover food from breakfast. I'm getting better at finding it, but sometimes some stuff sneaks by.