Eliot update

I haven't posted for a while on Eliot's developments. She is all into being a big girl now, and until her new big girl bed arrives, is refusing to sleep in her crib. This is causing some distress as her default option is our bed, a place that never interested her til the return from Japan. We are looking forward to the arrival of that big bed. She wants a blue one. It isn't. We'll paint it, I guess, if we have to. She has truly hit two, and "emphatic" fails to quite capture the definiteness of her opinions. Reasoning with her is literally infinitely more effective than insisting. Insistence: success rate of zero. She has us beat, but she is rational.

Despite a brief flirtation with her dolls, she exhibits a lot of Anselm's behaviors at this age, but more so: always picks up sticks while walking, runs in a crazy way, likes to climb anything and everything, deviates inevitably from the most direct route to the unobvious and adventurous one. Use of the stroller has dropped precipitously-- Jessy says she doesn't take it out with them anymore-- and scrapes and bruises on her legs, arms and face have increased inverse proportionally. She has a vivid imaginary life, and a couple of characters have appeared: Elinora, who lives in the attic, and today at the park she spent a long time off in a patch of forest on a tree stump waving a branch and calling for Briney, a horse. Much of what she perceives seems to be filtered through and matched onto her favourite movies which form a constant source of conversation-- shirts resemble those worn by characters, etc. She enjoys talking on her cellphone-- the car key-- and while I'm at work, calls to make plans, e.g., to meet me in Okinawa in forty five minutes.

She still loves to be sung to but enthusiasm is reduced (in NIHspeak) on the delivery end by her need to have every phrase explained. The Boxer has become a very long and drawn out affair-- "What is all lies and jest? What does running scared mean?". (It is a little uncanny to have her drawing and softly singing to herself "All lies and jest, still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest..").