Eliot is mighty fierce

I took Eliot to see the dinosaurs today at the Pac Science Center, and she loved them, roaring back at them and running from one to another. Not only fierce, she is fiercely independent, and resists help or any hint of emotional neediness. If she needs to be helped up onto a bench, she chooses a spot to sit as far from anyone as possible. If dinner's running late and she is dissolving into hunger and tiredness, rather than crying she starts to beat up and roll all over her brother, who handles it with impressive forbearance. She walks around the house doing her thing, singing to herself (she also has a little rhyme she says to herself, in three parts; I found her saying it while standing on the edge of a lounge chair and on the third part she would throw herself backward into the chair), and cried today only when 1. I took away a pair of scissors that she'd found and started to apply to a clay dog (so much for childproofing) and 2. when I finally stopped swinging her upside down by her feet, apparently all too soon.