We celebrated Shabbat together; since Eliana now goes to bed at 7:30, she now is awake for her blessing. Here we are blessing her:
On Saturday night, we decided to live it up, and take Eliana and my parents to Al Di La Trattoria, considered by some to be one of the best restaurants in Brooklyn. Since they don't take reservations, we walked over there and lined up 20 minutes before opening to be among the first seating..it was well worth it, we had a delicious and relaxing meal.
Eliana did great, we were able to eat dessert without her melting down. It helped that the four of us could alternate taking her for a stroll around the restaurant between courses, when she needed to stretch her legs. Our waiter was amazed that she loved the food; in addition to the bread, she had pasta and soup. Anyway here we are, about as dressed up as we get these days:
On Sunday, the Wassermans had us over for the traditional bagel brunch--yum. They buy the best lox, bagels, fruit and desserts from around Manhattan, so going there is always a treat. Below are some shots. Eliana has an incredible resemblance to Nene, which comes across in this picture:
Eliana enjoyed trying on Ann's slippers; I wasn't able to get this in one picture so the two pictures together tell the story:
And Ann brought out the baby dolls. Eliana could have been entertained for hours:
Here is cousin Lauren reading Eliana the Caps for Sale book, which was apparently her favorite when she was young.It was a little advanced for Eliana, but she did enjoy it anyway:
My parents were lucky enough to be here for the most huge snowstorm of the season. It was a snow day, and New York City was covered in around 12 inches of snow. Anyway, they're troopers (who brought good shoes and outerwear from California), and got to enjoy New York in the snow:
They also went to spend some time with Eliana when she was with our babysitter at Lucy's house; here is Bampi with Lucy and Eliana.
Good time, huh? Eliana was pretty sad to say goodbye to Nene and Bampi...she still gets a little sad sometimes thinking about them. Anyway the good news is that they're coming back in less than a month for Eliana's second birthday and Passover (can you believe it?) so all of us don't have long to wait.
It's hard to know where to start in terms of describing what Eliana does these days. She continues to be VERY busy with her baby dolls--putting them in the stroller, holding them, taking their clothes and hats on and off..and so on, she can do this for a long time. We have some play food and dishes, and she likes to "cook" the same things we cook for her--so she takes the wooden egg and mixes it with the spoon, and cooks it in the little plastic frying pan. Then she serves us some of "Eliana's nice egg."
She also loves to put things away. One of the highlights of the week is getting our Fresh Direct delivery, which we order online and have delivered to our apartment. As we open the boxes, it is better than her birthday or Hanukkah. Each item, from broccoli to coffee to yogurt, is a thrill. She will lift each out of the box and hand them to us. Some are "heavy" and we have to help her, and we have to watch carefully because she handles the carton of eggs as roughly as the coffee beans. But it's inspiring to see her sense of wonder from our grocery order...we want to continue to cultivate this in her and in ourselves.
Eliana likes to say "cheers!" and clink glasses..or clink whatever. She was excited to see that the spatula we use to make an egg looks a lot like the one she uses to "cook" her eggs. So I had her hold her toy spatula as I held mine..she wanted to clink spatulas and say "cheers!" When she found out that my nose was running also one morning, she wanted to clink noses.
Eliana is very sensitive to herself and others. When she hears a baby crying, she will stop what she's doing and say, "baby crying!" and express concern. She started doing a new thing recently where she will hold one of her dolls and say, "Baby is sad...about her mommy..about her daddy..she misses them." So we hold baby a little bit, and then baby seems better.
Her language abilities continue to expand. She now talks in full sentences most of the time, using many different verbs, more correct syntax, and adjectives. For example, "Mommy, you hide now." "I'm gonna hide now." "What are you doing?" For a while she would talk about herself in the third person, "Eli is eating," but now she has started to say, "I am eating," etc. We can understand her about 95% of the time... we feel bad when we can't understand her, and she gets frustrated also, but we do our best.
She knows a lot of letters by sight now: A, B, C, D, E, L, M, N, O, R, S, T. She is excited when she sees these letters on t-shirts, margarine boxes, or subway signs.
We haven't spoken to her too much about being a big sister. She is very much "in the present" and doesn't seem so interested in that right now, so we figure we'll address it when she wants to know more.
That's it for now..I'll share more soon.
