Miss Manners

Ellie is starting to do very well with her manners, when she wants to, of course. She knows she can pretty much get anything she wants, as long as it isn't dangerous, by grabbing our face with her little hands on our cheeks, putting her pleading face right up to ours, and saying "Please mommy or please daddy." She knows how to work us already! And if anyone in her vicinity sneezes, she immediately says, "Bless you." If we don't say "thank you" quickly enough to her, she'll beat us to the punch by saying "You're welcome."

Then again, miss proper can also be very unladylike. She is starting to potty-train (and doing very well!) so she talks a lot about her bodily functions. Everytime she "expels gas" she exclaims, "Toot, toot!" There's no more blaming our noises on Ellie, because she'll point out exactly who makes what noise. Anything crusty that comes off her cheek or eye or anywhere on her face is a "booger, yuck." I know she must have learned all of this from us, but did we really teach her this?

About potty-training again. Today we received a new potty seat for Ellie (thanks to the Harkins family). It is a Dora the explorer seat, which is Ellie's favorite character right now (well, Elmo is still in the running). We have one Dora dvd that she asks to watch over and over again, and we often let her because it is so cute to watch her dance with Dora and Boots. (Yesterday she was twisting from side to side shouting "We did it, we did it, lo hicimos") Anyway, she was very excited about the seat, but was very apprehensive of peeing on Dora. Once I convinced her that Dora wanted to see Ellie pee and poop, then she was able to relax. I'm amazed at how well she's doing with this, hopefully it will continue!