Eliza at 19 months

I just can't get over what a little person Eliza is turning into. It's had to believe that just a year and a half ago she was doing what Caleb is doing now. She is brimming with energy and personality. She is so much fun!

Eliza has been putting words together quite a bit in the past few weeks. She says things like "mommy's shoe," "piece of bread," "Daddy go," "pictures book," "Caleb crying," and she puts "please" with nouns and verbs. It's so fun to watch her communication skills improve.

Eliza was very ready to go to nursery and has had no problems going. The nursery leader told us she is the dream nursery kid because she is so tough. The first week in nursery, another kid hit her pretty hard on the head with a truck. The nursery leader saw it and was prepared to bring her to one of us, but she didn't even cry. Another time, one of the helpers randomly commented that she ate her snack really well in nursery. That didn't surprise us initially because she is a champ at eating pretty much anything. Well, they had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, one of the few things that Eliza has refused to eat for us! Hooray for PBJ!

When Eliza goes to bed, either at night time or for a nap, she always puts the blankets over her head to go to sleep. Often the blanket is not even over her body, just her head. It makes me nervous, so I always go in a little bit after she falls asleep to uncover her head and cover her body.

Still a little tomato monster. She has been in heaven lately with bushels and bushels of tomatoes around the kitchen. She just helps herself, then we help her remove her clothes and try to contain her.

Eliza is a bag lady and a purse lady and a bucket lady. Like any girl her age, she loves carrying things (and things to carry things) around.

Eliza is pretty much fascinated with changing Caleb's diaper. Whenever he wakes up or cries she says "change diaper" and gets out all the equipment as pictured above. I actually thought I was going crazy for a few days because I knew that I had put away the diaper paraphernalia after each change, but somehow it would magically reappear minutes later, so I figured I must not have put it away. Finally I caught her here with all of the diaper accessories.

Her favorite accessory lately has been baby powder. "Powder, powder," she'll call as she runs through the house carrying it and putting it up to her diaper. Every time Caleb has a change she wants to get some powder too. I bet you can guess what happened in this picture.

We sit on the back porch together and watch the squirrels together while I nurse the baby and tell jokes. Eliza thinks I'm hilarious and never tires of my material.

With daddy's help, Eliza learned to climb up these chain ladders, so the next time we went to the playground, she wanted to show all her friends.

Gotta love the slide static hair!

Eliza is so full of personality. Though she is often shy with strangers, she is a total ham at home. When my mom was visiting, she couldn't get over all the facial expressions Eliza has. She also said that Eliza is just like I was at her age.

Until now, we haven't done much coloring with Eliza, mostly because she eats crayons (and I'm afraid the walls will become her canvas).After her first day of nursery, she couldn't stop talking about coloring, so we indulged her. This is her first large scale piece that Daddy helped her with while Mommy took a much-needed Sunday afternoon nap.

Just love this little girl!