Trip to the zoo & more...

Eliana's Yeh-yeh and Nai-nai (Elvin's parents) flew up to visit from California last weekend. So given Eliana's love for the neighbor's cat, we figured she would go bonkers at the zoo. At the Oregon Zoo, Eliana did get excited over the cats. (You can hear her saying "Go-go", the neighbor's cat's name, and Ellie's favorite thing.)

Besides that, however, the elephant bored her, she thought the otter was a dog, was uninterested in the rhinoceros, and she couldn't have cared less about the reptiles or the fish. The only time in the afternoon that she perked up was when she spotted the chicken's in the zoo's demonstration farm. She's still a little bit too young to appreciate the zoo, so we might try again in a few months. Nevertheless, she was tired after a day at the zoo.

Eliana is getting pretty good at going up and down the stairs. Although we still accompany her, we let her go up and down un-assisted. Here she is going down...

As you know, we have been teaching Eliana baby signs along with spoken words. She's starting to develop quite a vocabulary and picks them up pretty quickly now. Here is a small taste of the ones that she knows...

She likes water and likes her bath. She especially likes bubbles, which she has learned to say and sign. She asks for bubbles all day long. It's fun to rub the bubbles all over your body. But it's not that fun getting it into your eyes.

And she asked for a snack of cheese, which she dumped on the ground!

On the move...

Eliana is getting much better at her walking and is not falling down as often. As you can see in the video, and the picture below, Ellie is really enjoying wearing her backpack these days. She often has it open, half off her shoulders, or falling off completely. But every time she comes upon it, she picks it up and brings it to us to help her put it on.

Eliana has been learning lots of new sign language signs lately - and she catches on very quickly - often just after one or two times, she does it herself. She has added melon, bug, bubble, baby, tree, and flower to her repetoire, as well as getting very good at pointing at what she wants, and telling us "dis", meaning she wants that item. Her favorite foods at the moment are rice chex, chicken nuggets, cheese (especially Daddy's sharp cheddar), egg (as usual), and a new one - creamy ice creams on a stick.

She is always busy doing something...here she is playing with bubbles from her shampoo...

Wearing her mini-backpack around the house...

Making a list...

And, carrying this little Bible that she found. She really likes flipping through the pages for some reason...

Another week...

Eliana has a toy that plays music. Every once in a while, she gets inspired to get her groove on. But for some reason she won't perform for the camera very much, so here is a tiny snippet of what she's capable of...

She has another popper toy that you push around and it makes sounds (you'll recognize it in the video.) She's either very clever or very lazy, but she doesn't want to do the pushing and instead convinces her parents to do it for her...so she can run next to it, which is apparently much more fun.

Eliana's hair is fine and wispy, but also a little stiff. This combination makes for interesting hair formations when Eliana first wakes up in the morning. Here are some pictures we took, before gravity took over.

On Tuesday morning, she had what we call the "Half Dome."

On Friday morning, Eliana woke up with the "Hurricane category 4" hair doo.

On Saturday, she had the "struck-by-lightning" look.

And this morning, Sunday, Eliana sported the "Eiffel Tower" look. (As a bonus, you can also see that she's gotten alot better with her fine motor skills.)

Fun weekend...

Eliana got a new toy...it's a set of plastic and wooden fruits and vegetables that you can take apart. The pieces are held together with velcro.

We visited a farm to buy some grass-fed beef. We were able to walk around and check out the different animals. The goat came up to us and Eliana thought it was a dog and kept saying "woof!"

The farm had alot of chickens. Eliana also thought they were dogs and they got a "woof" too. You can see her patting her leg, the sign for dog.
The farmer had a litter of tiny little kittens that kept meowing at us. Of course, Eliana wanted to pet them. She knew these were NOT dogs; she called them "Go-go", the name of the neighbor's cat.

On the way home, Eliana ate cheese-flavored rice crackers. She dumped the whole canister onto her herself and had a great time picking the bits off of her chest.