Long overdue update

Dear Elise

You have changed so much in the last month!! You a have really started to assert your own personality and your likes and dislikes are becoming much more apparent, now that you can communicate. And boy do you love to communicate! You love to use your voice, practising how loud you can sing and shout! “Avril” is one of your favourite words (it sounded like “Abwol” in the beginning, but your pronunciation is getting better), and you follow her around devotedly, interested in everything she does. You get quite upset when Avril wants some time to herself on the couch or in her room, but that's something you'll get used to.

Your vocabulary is growing daily, and right now you can say juice, walk, up, Avril, Dada, Mama, Elise (Ah-dees) doggie, moo, duck, baba, book, toast, apple banana (NANA), elbow, radio, ball, please (pees), cheese (cheeee), Vienna (ee-en-a) and you are starting to put together sentences like 'Avril pee' and 'Bye bye Mama'. You have already learned many of your colours – blue “Booo”, purple, yellow “yehyo”. When you are upset you cry and cycle through Avril, Mama, Dada repeatedly chanting in a distressed voice until you are OK.

You love to turn on your music box when being put down to sleep for the night, but right now you say 'off' when turning it on! Horses and doggies are your favourite animal and you love to point out doggies excitedly even while we are driving in the car. Pictures of horses are always greeted with a hearty 'NEIGH”, which you shout even when you hear the word 'horse' being read in a story.

You love to dance, climb up on to the couch or chair and flop over. You also love doing blasters on the chair with Avril, dancing with the radio (yayyo) in your hand, swinging in the swing and being held upside down and spinning around and around.

We haven't been out much, as either you, Avril or I have been sick pretty much since November, but yesterday was a beautiful spring day, and I took you for a ride in the wagon, which you loved, giggling like crazy as we raced down the driveway and hills on our walk with Cooper.

Your favourite foods are bananas, pasta, toast, chicken, juice ('JOOO!'). Surprisingly, you don't much care for berries and blueberries are always spit out. Peanut butter seems to be causing you a bit of an allergy, we've noticed your eyes get read and even some tiny hives the few times you have had it, so we've decided to hold off a bit on that.