Eliza at 29 Months

Eliza loves to read.  She will often sit down on the couch and read books by herself quietly.  I'm pretty sure she is reading them in her head, though, because I know she knows nearly all of the words.  When I read books that we have read before (you know the drill-- if you've read it once you've read it a thousand times... at least) I will start a sentence and let Eliza finish it or I will leave blanks and let her fill in the words. That keeps things more interesting for me.  It is amazing to see how much she is absorbing, especially when it's a word or phrase that we would never say otherwise.

Since we got our first pet (more on that later), Eliza has really liked the book A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer.  You may have read this book when you were a kid-- it's an oldie.  When we feed the fish, we ask Eliza how much we should give the fish and she'll say "Just a little spot" and recite (or nearly recite): "Never feed him a lot.  Never more than a spot!  Or something may happen.  You never know what."

Eliza speaks pretty clearly and is very understandable (at least to me, but I do have my ear quite attuned to her little voice, so I may be biased), but there are a few things that she says funny that I want to remember:
"wakkle" = waffle
"box" = fox (as in "Swiper that sneaky box" or "Sister Box is in nursery")
"tid"= kid (It really sounds like one of the kids on Potty Power says "big tid," so I think that's where it started)
"todegger"= together (I've tried saying it syllabically, but she still says to-deg-ger)
"Kayba"= Caleb (She has always been able to say "Caleb" and sometimes does, but more often than not she calls him "Kayba."
"drapes"= grapes (She also calls her friend "Drace."  She says "grow" just fine though).
"Shipuz"= scriptures (She began this pronunciation when she first started saying the word a year ago, and it just stuck.)

Eliza is the most facially expressive people I know.  Her looks are worth a thousand words.  She can maneuver her eyebrows like none other.  One of these days I'll post a video, so you can see what I'm talking about.

Eliza loves to pretend everything, but her favorite recently has been swimming.  She gets a half dozen blankets out and spreads them all over the floor and swims in them.  She insists on pretending to wear a swimsuit, which apparently requires really removing whatever else she is wearing.  The other day when I was helping Eliza go potty after her nap (which I let her take in our bed, instead of hers), I noticed that her underwear was on inside-out and so was her shirt.  I asked her about it and she told me that she had been swimming in my bed.  I was really impressed that she got all her clothes back on so well albeit backward.

She always works with a smile.

We had pretzels and leftover homemade pizza for lunch one day.  

Eliza stuck her pretzels into the pizza and said "I made a Happy Birthday."

"I need my other ice skate Mom."  

I have no idea where she learned about ice skating, but lately she has been standing on little bowls, scooting around the kitchen telling me she's ice skating.