Elsa is Nineteen Months

Elsa turns nineteen months old today. She continues to amaze both Jarrett and me on nearly a daily basis with all of the things she does and says. It is quite clear that she listens very intently to every word that comes out of our mouths, as she is at a stage where she enjoys repeating quite a lot of those words. So, needless to say, we must be careful when we speak. Because of this, she is saying words that it does not seem a 19-month-old should know, such as "calcium" and "iPod." But this is my first go-around as a parent, so perhaps this is normal. Elsa can also repeat every letter of the alphabet when prompted, and recognizes many of them by sight. She will play with her alphabet blocks or look at her alphabet books and just start naming letters right and left. A few of her favorites seem to be "u," "p," "q," "g," "i," "s," and "t." She astonished me a couple of weeks ago when she was coloring with her crayons and started labeling the colors correctly. Just yesterday she named "red," "orange," "blue," "green," "pink," and "purple," while picking up the respective crayons. Craziness.

Elsa also seems to have reached the stage where she has memorized parts of her books, and I will often be able to make out her reciting them -- either while looking at the actual book or just whenever she feels like it. We were running errands this morning and she just randomly started speaking part of a recent favorite from her last music class, Cock-a-Doodle-MOO!, while I was checking out at the register. There is a photo of her on the last page of the book (they give you a place to paste your child's photo), and she was remembering that page, saying, "Cock-a-look! Elsa in book! Tractor...." (This is the book I mentioned in the previous post.) The woman at the counter thought Elsa said "awesome," which is not the only time someone has mistaken the word "awesome" for something Elsa says. "Want some" sounds very much the same. But, anyway, I didn't even try to explain what she was really saying. Elsa definitely says some things I don't understand either -- sometimes we will have an entire conversation and I will not have understood a word.

Elsa has only four remaining teeth to come in -- her second set of molars. She is obviously capable now of eating pretty much anything we give her, but that certainly does not mean she will.  I continue to offer her foods over and over again even if she refuses them the first time, and figure one of these days she will get over her weird texture issue. Sometimes it just depends on the day and her mood. For instance, I made her some broccoli-cheddar nuggets and she spit it out the first day, but today at lunch she popped the pieces right into her mouth and ate away. Of course, she also ate pieces of cooked carrot out of my soup, which I was not expecting, so perhaps today is just one of those lucky days. Overall, she is a good eater. It is also much easier to find out what she wants to eat by offering her options and letting her respond "yes" or "no" (the word "no" is a fairly new addition to her vocabulary).

Occasionally I wonder what other new things she might be doing if her poor little leg was not bound up in a cast and she was able to run around and explore as she was in weeks past. But then I tell myself not to dwell on it and realize that not only do we not have too much longer to go (two weeks from today until at least the first cast comes off), but Elsa has also been able to do more stationary activities, such as color, play with shape sorters, stack blocks, and play with an old-school Little People set (I wish they still made them that way!) a friend is letting us borrow. She has started making her car sound while driving the little people around in the toy car, which is just priceless.

Oh, what good days these are. Sure, we still have the tantrums and what at least seems like the purposeful defiance that comes with this age, but the fun stuff makes up for (most of) that.