Lucy's Birthday and more words

Yes, I've been lax in my blogging..I could give all kinds of excuses, but I'll just get on with it. I have a lot to share.

First, some great photos from Lucy's birthday party last Sunday (okay, a week ago Sunday but who's counting?). Lucy turned two!

A long time ago (in fact, two years minus one month), I was sitting on the subway, 4 months pregnant, and struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to me, who had her one-month old baby (little Lucy) in a sling. We had a lot to talk about and ended up getting off at the same stop and even walking to the same street. It turned out we lived literally across the street. We kept running into each other in the neighborhood, and a number of months later, when Eliana had emerged and was five months old, Lillian (Lucy's mom) and I set up a babysitter share that is now in its second year. And Lucy and Eliana are best friends. Lucy, being 5 months older, has taught Eliana all of the important stuff: how to color with crayons, who Elmo and Dora are, and how to jump. (Well, Eliana's still working on that one even though Lucy's got it down.) Not to mention all kinds of words, such as, "mine!" (a favorite of toddlers everywhere.)

Anyway, the Sunday before last was Lucy's birthday, and we had fun! Eliana arrived ready to party:



All right, she fell asleep on the way there, and we wanted to let her get some rest so she slept through the first part of the party. But soon she made up for lost time and got right into the party spirit:



In the middle of the party she also found one of her favorite activities:



Here is the birthday girl. She had some work to do with all of the candles.



Fortunately she got some help from her mom and some others, since the whole candle-blowing-out thing is a little new:






And then the opening of the gifts! Eliana helped her friend to organize the wrapping paper:



Here are a few more shots of our families.





Eliana came home singing "Happy Birthday to you!" which she has been singing intermittently since then. Not sure she exactly knows what it means, but it's a nice song.

Since then, Nene and Bampi came to visit and I have more photos that I have to share in another post.

Eliana continues to impress us with her language skills. In the living room, she has a library of all of her board books--probably 30 or so, maybe more. The amazing thing is that she knows all of them by name and sight. We'll say, Eliana, do you want to read "Who Moos?" And she'll look though the books until she finds it, take it off the bookshelf, and bring it to us. She's also started to memorize some of the rhyming stories...so I'll read the book and wait for her to finish the last word of the sentence. She also knows a lot of the words in the books, e.g. one of her favorites is, "What happens in the kitchen?" and when she sees the picture in the book, she knows the word. Not just "mixing" and "eating" but also "cracking," "grating" and "peeling." At least 500 times a day, she'll ask, "What's that?" and she seems to retain a lot of it. And she's putting sentences together. Here is one we heard recently: "it's raining outside, right there." It is so wonderful to see how curious and expressive she is, we just want to keep encouraging it.