When the Cat's Away . . .

Not two minutes after Annie left for preschool, Ellie was upstairs raiding her bedroom. And she came walking out of there mighty proud, sporting Annie's sunglasses and carrying around one of Annie's princess backpacks.


In unrelated Ellie news: she's getting more talkative. Ellie loves to vocalize, she sings and babbles and carries on strange one-sided-alien-sounding-language conversations all day long. But just in the last few days I've noticed a lot more mimicking on her part, as well as random new words. Today as we were walking Annie to preschool, Ellie saw one of Annie's friends and waved and excitedly said, "Kian!" As we were leaving she perfectly copied my, "See ya!" and waved enthusiastically at Kian's Mom as she walked away. It always amazes me at this stage how each and every day seems to bring new things they say and do; but I don't think anything is as mind boggling to me as just how much they understand, despite the lack of talking. Ellie seems to soak everything in, and her reactions and responses to things blow me away at their indication of just how much she's getting from the conversations around her! Add to that, Ellie is the most communicative baby I've ever seen (ten times what her sister was), and her ability to respond and get her own point across through various means of (mostly non-verbal) communication is a complete miracle to me. It sure does make life easier, having a kid who happily makes a complete spectacle of herself trying to just get you to understand her already, versus trying to communicate with her older sister at this age, who's attitude was basically, "If you can't read my mind, you obviously don't really love me, and there's no way on this earth I'm even gonna give you even a small hint as to what I'm asking for!!"
Also, Ellie has recently decided that anytime she is seperated from Mommy for more than 5 minutes, our reunion must be met with tight hugs and kisses, as she throws her arms around my neck, holds on for dear life, and happily exclaims, "Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma!" Melts my heart everytime. Especially since my kids have never been the most cuddly, snuggly kids ever, it's like the most rewarding thing ever to have my baby just want to throw her arms around me and squeeze as tight as she can.