Making Deals With Elmo

I want to thank everyone for all of their kind words about Trudie. I miss my little pal, but I'm sure every day will get a little easier than the last. I especially had a lot of nice notes from the east Tennessee folks and I can't wait to meet all of you when Lee, Ellie, and I visit the Erwins this fall to watch some Vol football. I picked up Trudie's remains yesterday from the vet and they came in a nice little cedar box. I may get a just keep her for now.


On Monday morning, Ellie gave me further proof that she is a genius. When she woke up, the little brown fairy had not yet made a deposit in her diaper bank, so I changed her diaper and got her dressed for school. When we were getting ready to leave, she ran to me in the kitchen and I could smell that she needed her diaper changed. I told her to hang on because I was fixing my lunch when she ran over to her diaper bag and started rummaging through it. One of her favorite games now is drag everything out of the bag/purse/cabinet/toy box. I told her to get out of the diaper bag because I didn't want to pick up everything before we left. She then grabbed a diaper out of the bag, opened it up, walked over to me, spread the diaper out on the ground, and sat there next to it waiting for me to change her. At first, I thought surely she is not asking me to change her diaper... but I'm pretty sure that's what she was doing. This almost makes up for her pooping on our bedroom floor after her bath on Sunday night.



I looked up potty training on the internet and most sites say not to start trying until 18 months which is 3-4 months away. I think I'm going to start working with her to give a name to being wet or dirty so she'll be able to tell me. If she can tell me that a cow can "mmmoooooo", she can tell me that she just "ppppoooooooo". If that doesn't work, maybe I can figure out the sign language for it. I'm also going to get her a little play potty to get her used to the idea of a toilet.


Lately, whenever Ellie sees my cell phone, she has to have it. Nothing else will do. And she loves punching all of the buttons, so if you ever get a strange call with heavy breathing, it's Ellie - not me. I decided that she needed her own cell phone, so I bought her an Elmo cell phone on Sunday and it's so cute. It has this function that allowed me to download Elmo saying her name from a website and then use a mini USB cable to put it on the phone. It's so funny. Elmo says in his squeaky little voice "Hi Ellie! Can Elmo come over and play?" or "How are you today, Ellie?". She loves it. She holds it up to her ear and then puts it to mine so I can talk to him. I usually tell him I'm busy driving or making dinner and that I'll have to call him back.



When I dropped off Ellie at daycare on Monday morning, the kids were just sitting down to have breakfast and the ladies at day care asked me if I feed Ellie. Um, yes. At this point, I looked over at Ellie and they had given her a banana half. So then I turn around to talk to Miss Chelsea and she told me that every morning when Ellie gets to school she is so hungry and when they give her food, she eats like she has never seen food before. I told her I don't know why that is because on her way to school she has an entire cup of Cheerios. I turned around to look at Ellie, and the banana was GONE. My child took an banana half down in a minute flat. "See! That's what she does every morning!", Chelsea said. Then on Wednesday morning the kids were eating again when we got there. Ellie say down next to Grayson and I watched Chelsea cut a muffin in two and put half on Ellie's plate and half on Grayson's plate. Ellie reached out, grabbed both muffin halves at once and tried to put both in her mouth. I wonder if she's just going through a growth spurt? I really do feed her. I swear.