This will someday make me cry... I'm sure of it.

Ella is now 22-months-old! It's hard to believe that her second birthday will be here before we know it. Here are a few recent things that I want to remember.

Me: What does a duck say?
Ella: No.
Me: What does a horse say?
Ella: No.
Me: What does Ella say?
Ella: Grroooooooooowls in a deep voice.

"Thank you Mommy." (Sadly, she sometimes just says mom.)

I went over to the oven to look in on dinner. Ella was watching me as usual and went to a drawer in the kitchen and grabbed the oven mitts. She put them on her hands and stood back ready to help.

After I picked her up from school.
Ella: Christmas.
Me: Christmas? Did you talk about Christmas today?
Ella: (long pause) Yeaaaaaa.

Now that the Christmas tree is up, she likes to get close and touch all the ornaments. I've started a rule that she can touch as long as it's with only 1 finger. Of course she doesn't always follow this rule, but if she's playing with the tree and I say "Ella...." She look up real quick at me and say "one finger."

When I vacuum she likes to help me push it around. We move at a slooooow pace so that she can keep up, but after about 10 seconds, she'll let go run off and laugh like crazy. After a couple of minutes passes, she'll do it all over again.

Ella has a love-hate relationship with Santa. We have a santa doll that she'll hug and kiss and carry around, and she even likes looking at a picture of her with Santa last year. However, last night she got the chance to sit on his lap and get a picture taken. Oh no... she wanted nothing to do with him. I was carrying her and as soon as we took a step towards Santa, she starting screaming "No, no, no," turned bright red and got big tears in her eyes. Needless to say, I couldn't even pry her off of my shoulder to sit her on his lap for a crying picture. After we got home, she started talking about Santa again like they were best friends.

She loves to get her picture taken. She'll ask us to take her picture and we've started pretending with our hands and making "click" sound with our mouths. In the past couple of days, Ella has started pretending to take pictures on her own.