Eliza at 35 Months

Eliza is just a month away from being three.  She has been talking about her birthday for months now, so I'm glad it's getting close.  She knows her birthday is on March 4th.  In fact, we she is pregnant (she is always putting dolls in her shirt) she will tell you her baby is due at nearly the same time.  "March 4th December August" is, without fail, when every one of her babies is due.

 Eliza has enjoyed dressing up, especially when friends come to play.  We don't have tons of dress up clothes yet (it's on my sewing to-do list), but they always manage to find some fun combinations.

 Eliza loves helping out in the kitchen with just about everything.  Here we are making gingerbread trees.

 Eliza loves talking care of her babies.  When my friend returned our Bumbo seat that she borrowed Eliza's dolls got special treatment.

 As I cleaned up the kitchen after dinner, I told Eliza that we could have a dance party before bed if she and Caleb cleaned up the living room.  Usually it takes lots of prodding (err... encouraging) before a task like that is completed.  Needless to say, I was surprised when I saw the floor clean and cracking up when I saw the couch loaded with everything that had been on the floor.  Silly girl!

 It was a valiant effort, so we still had a dance party.

Eliza is a budding photographer, but since I don't always want to share my camera with her, we decided to make one for her.  With a jello box and toilet paper roll we made her a great little camera that works perfectly with her fabulous imagination.

Eliza's volume control seems to have a short in it or something.  She constantly talks (or yells) a couple of notches above normal.  She does reserve her quietest voice for church, it just happens to be at the same level as everyone else's normal speech.  At one point she knew how to whisper, but it's been a while since she did it.  We are always asking her to turn the volume down.  Of course at first she asked for a definition of volume.

Eliza also struggles with patience (what kid doesn't, to some degree).  The other day Mike told her to hold her horses.  She asked what that meant and he explained.  In the couple days that followed, Eliza tried to use that idiom, but kept combining it with us telling her to turn down the volume, resulting in "hold your volume" or "turn down your horses."  Then, a few days later when we had some neighbors over for dinner and Caleb was eager for something (probably dessert) Eliza told him (in her normal, loud voice), "Hold your horses, Caleb!"  It cracked us all up.

Eliza loves to play make believe.  She likes to assign roles to each of us when we play together. In Family Home Evening a few weeks ago, Mike had us act out Joseph Smith getting the gold plates.  We had several different scenes complete with (very makeshift) props.  It was the perfect way to teach Eliza.  She loved it.  We have acted out scenes and talked about it many times since.

Eliza found her Elmo ring that she got last Halloween.  The only association she has with rings are the wedding rings that Mike and I wear, so naturally, finding the Elmo ring led to lots of pretend marriages.  "Let's pretend to get married, mom."  I explain to her that we're both girls, so we can't get married.  "Well you pretend to be a boy and then let's get married."
 
Eliza wants to learn how to sew.  Occasionally I let her press buttons on my sewing machine so she can "sew."

Eliza likes to ask us to tell her silly stories before bed.  She gives us a topic "a silly story about Caleb" or "a silly story about bathtubs."  A three-sentence story will usually suffice, as long as it is silly.