{lion: jellycat via Nordstrom // tee: Old Navy // shorts: Target // book: London: A Book of Opposites}
{month twenty} Oh boy, toddlerhood! Eloise is so, so busy & very chatty these days. She looks calm in the photo above, but Leo being a blur pretty much tells you everything you need to know! I had to recruit Aaron to help me with this photo since I couldn’t even get Eloise to stay seated for one. single. picture.
Eloise has one new obsession recently and that is BUCKLES! Seriously, all day long she could play with a buckle and she says it, even if there isn’t one around. Luckily, the one on her highchair gives us a minute (or even 20 minutes!) of distraction, and Eloise found a reflective band (that Aaron has used in the winter when he is walking home from work in the dark) that has a buckle on it, so she carries it around all day. She will buckle the buckle, and then hand it to me and say “off” which is my cue to unbuckle the buckle so she can then re-buckle it. It’s pretty fun… Eloise also loves the chest buckle on her carseat which I often use as a bribe to get her to sit in her car seat since these days she is more interested in standing up in her car seat than sitting down it it. So it takes some negotiation to get her in her seat, and then, ironically, she never wants to get out of it once we get to our destination because she just wants to play with the buckle! Ahh! And, I have very intentionally not taught her how to unbuckle a buckle since I want to avoid her unbuckling her car seat for as long as possible (or ever).
Eloise is super chatty these days, though she clams up a bit around strangers or with bigger groups of people. She babbles to herself while she plays or in the car, and often she sounds like she is just blurting out all of the sounds that she knows until she gets to one that makes a word, and then she will repeat that word. And we have a lot of naming that happens: Mama, Papa, Eloise (which she says as Eh-weez), Mimi (which is Grammie), Pago (which is Grandpa, I think) ,Nana, Papaw (which is super similar to Papa) Sadie, Mapa (which is apparently a mix of Mama and Papa), and a few of her friends’ names.
Animal sounds are also very common in the Lower house and we “quiz” Eloise on them almost daily. She also says the sound (for the most part) when she sees the animal either in real life or in a picture (like all dogs are “fff” which is “woof”). We have been to the Zoo quite a bit the past month and it has been really fun to see Eloise see and understand that the Zoo is filled with different animals! The animals and sounds that she knows: dog = fff (woof); cat = meow; cow = moo; sheep = baa; horse = neigh; chicken = bok bok bok; duck = quack quack quack.
I think a lot of families start to pick up sayings or words from their kids when they are young toddlers that then stick with the family for years. We are starting to see this in action with Eloise, especially when something falls on the ground or is out of place and she says “ut no!” rather than “uh oh!” It is impossibly cute and we have adopted it as a Lower family saying.
And speaking of things being out of place, this kid is showing signs of being very Type-A, if that is even possible in toddlerhood. She wants all doors and drawers shut, lids closed, and doesn’t like a mess, including on her highchair tray or on the dinner table. She will call for help for a wet rag to clean up a mess on the floor or on her hands.
While Eloise is now super mobile (and running!), in the past few weeks we have had both baby gates down (one was in the hallway upstairs to keep her from the stairs and the other was between the living room and the entryway to keep her out of the entryway and stairs) and it has been awesome! We tried it first over a weekend so that there were two of us around to corral her out of the entryway or near the stairwell since we still don’t want her in those spaces, and we didn’t have too many issues. And a few weeks later, it is still working well and it is so nice to have the flow of the upstairs back! Eloise does still venture into the entryway to play with shoes or a bag, but for the most part if we put everything away (hung up or in the armoire) she doesn’t bother it. Sometimes she does remember that she can open the armoire doors and will start pulling things out, but not very often. And even though I have to check on Eloise much more often if she is playing and it gets really quiet, the stairs being accessible have really not been an issue. A handful of times Eloise has started down them on her own, but we know that she can safely go up and down them on her own. Even though we had the stairs gated off, we tried really hard not to make them “forbidden” and would let her go up and down them if she asked. I feel like because we did that, they aren’t such a novelty. And we still keep the upstairs bathroom door and guestroom door closed (and she can’t open the doors with the old knobs!) partly because we just don’t want her in those spaces and partly because she is so used to having them closed that now she insists on the doors being closed!
Eloise’s hair, as you can sort of see in this month’s picture, is getting so, so long! It has layers in the back which I think still sometimes makes her look like she has a mullet, but I think we are getting out of that look soon! When her hair is wet, it is almost half-way down her back! She mostly lets me put it back either in pigtails, a pony tail, or a small pony on the top of her head. Her bangs have almost completely grown out to the point I can put them behind her ear, but there are lots of new ones growing underneath that are now touching her eyebrows if they are down! I have been clipping her bangs back with a barrette a lot which she seems to mostly tolerate since her bangs are always in her face.
And lastly this month, Eloise has the sweetest demeanor. She is really into giving hugs and kisses to Aaron and me, and to other family and friends that we see quite a bit. She and her friends give lots of hugs which is adorably cute! She gives lots of hugs and kisses to her stuffed animals and dolls, and even to pictures in books. And if she doesn’t want to give someone a hug, she will almost always do a high-five or knuckles (fist bump)!
{weight} 26 pounds.
{hair} dark (reddish) brown.
{teeth} 12 teeth plus four molars.
{eyes} dark brown.
{clothes} 18 month (growing out of), 18 to 24 months, and 2T. I am only buying 2T and even 3T if it doesn’t look too huge so that she won’t grow out of it overnight! I think E is losing her belly and getting some height these days!
{diapers} full-time cloth {bum genius freetime, pocket, & elemental} & honest company size 5 diapers* at night with a bum genius diaper cover. *we just started ordering size 5 even though E is technically not within the size range since it felt like the 4s were getting small around the hip area. we had another friend suggest we size up, plus they are more absorbent!
{feeding} during the day, three meals, an occasional morning snack, & one afternoon snack. sippy cup of milk with every meal.
{likes} buckles, jumping, watching out the front window (dogs, kids, trucks), books, mama & papa’s cell phone, toys that squeak or rattle, singing & music, dancing, Sadie, standing, FaceTime, bathtime, her snack cup, shoes, mama’s (diaper) bag, clapping, putting things inside a bag or box, taking lids off of things, talking (Mama, Papa, quack quack), coloring, helping with anything & everything, when Papa comes home from work.
{dislikes} having something taken away from her, diaper changes, not eating when someone else is, being hungry.
{nicknames} Bug{s}, Love Bug, Baby Bug, E, Wheezy, Kiddo, Love, Bugaboo, Ellie or Elle.
Happy twenty months Eloise!
M
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