Ellis Stories

Mike was out of town for a week, and I was on solo parenting duty. It was surprisingly easy. For one, my new boss was very understanding about my needing extra flexibility. For another, Ellis is a very, very easy child.

So let me share some stories of Ellis from this week:

1) The first story is a bit sad. The first morning after Mike left, Ellis walked around upstairs looking for him, saying "Dada?" On Wednesday night, the cat was walking up the steps and they creaked. Ellis perked up, pointed at the steps and said, "Dada!" She was also extremely clingy with me all week long, needing lots of extra love and attention.

2) On the way home on the Metro Tuesday night, I was signing with Ellis and a deaf man asked me about it. He was quite surprised that a hearing kid was signing, and then asked Ellis (through signing) if they could be friends. She responded "No, no" (which is her initial answer to every question) but then signed friend back to him. He seemed really touched.

3) On Wednesday night before she fell asleep, she was playing in her crib and talking, saying "Duke" and Memmi." This is what she calls her friends Lucas and Emmi from day care. (Emmi has since started referring to herself as "Memmi.")

4) A follow on to the previous story is that Ellis is the oldest kid in the infants program (she will be moving to the toddlers, along with her classmate Claire in June), so the other older infants copy her. They are all saying the words she says the most: "dog," "book," "ball," and "duck." But a strange thing started happening last week. They all started adding the article "a" before the words. So now they say "a book" or "a ball." Group dynamics.

5) Ellis woke up coughing at 3:30am one night. After a steam treatment and some milk, she was laying on a pillow in my bed, looking at me, half smiling and patting my arm. I had been up for over an hour and wasn't feeling well, but I was actually happy she had woken me up so that I could experience that moment.

One other thing about this week. On Monday, I cut Ellis' hair a bit -- her first trim -- because she was sporting a mullet. Now admittedly, it curled up in a very cute way most of the time. But the rest of the time, it looked like she belonged in the back woods of Appalachia. Mike is disappointed that a lot of the curls are gone, but they will soon be back.