My Favorite Age

I remember when Ellie was four months old I said to Rob, "This is totally by far Ellie's best age yet. I love Ellie at this age!" And I was secretly a little worried that I wouldn't love any other age quite as much as I loved four months. But I said the same thing at 5 months, then 6 and so far, every month has been my favorite. Month 25 is no exception. Life just isn't boring for a second. The adventure starts first thing every morning. Join me, if you will.

Usually the first sound I hear over the monitor is not a happy one. It sounds something like this: "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! That's ELLIE'S!!!" I have no idea who it is, exactly, that's upsetting Ellie so, but from experience it's pretty safe to guess that one of her stuffed animals happened to touch her sock. Or her pinky finger. So I go to her door, take a deep breath, and in the cheerfullest voice I can muster (refusing to join Ellie in Grumpsville) I say, "Hiiii Ellie!" and she JUMPS up in her crib and yells, "Sweeeeeeeeeeet dreams, Mama!" And I say, "You had sweet dreams?" And she nods real big and says, "YEEEEEEEEEEEAH!" and for the time being whatever grieved her so is a distant shadow and it's time to have fun. The other morning when I went in it seemed as though Ellie had actually had a real dream. She was so excited she was stuttering: "Ah Ellie ah dream, Mama! Monkeys wash ah window! Monkeys swimming! Monkeys ebreebere! (everywhere)"

Well, later at lunchtime I prayed for our meal. I've read recently that the best way to teach your toddler about what prayer really is to make the prayer short and about something they really care about. So I prayed, "Jesus, thank you for our yummy salami and for fun playing with toys! Amen!". And then Ellie folded her hands and decided to pray too. "Jesus, iss monkeys EBREEBERE! Jesus, iss monkeys...iss worms. Amen!" HA! I wonder which monkeys and worms out there felt Ellie's prayers??

No. I really like 24 1/2 months.

You show a child this age their new pretty panties and they end up like this:

A child this age decides the beige carpet is 'sand' and suddenly

they're in a swimsuit for the morning:

A child this age decides it's raining and this becomes their attire for the day:

And this is just in the last week.

This is definitely my favorite month of Ellie's life so far.
I wonder what next month will be like?