I realized today that it’s been entirely too long since we posted pictures of the girls – and by ‘we’ I mean Cory, so direct your plea’s and nagging toward him please – and we’ve only ever posted a couple of videos.

I have lots of stories about/from Merrin but not so many about Elsa, I guess because she’s not talking perhaps. It’s not a favourites thing, I don’t think you were thinking that, but the ingrained mommy-guilt makes me mention it.

Anyway, tonight I wanted to give you a quick update on our 15 and 1/2 months old Miss Elsa, what’s she doing and eating and saying and anything else I can think of frankly:

- Elsa has lots of teeth! 4 on top in the front, 2 fully up on bottom in the front and 1 more nearly through, and a top molar tooth down on each side. Yeah, those were fun coming in.

- She sleeps pretty good now, when she isn’t teething. Getting her to sleep is less of a chore as we pretty much just put her in the crib and go. And on average lately it’s only about once a week that she wakes up in the middle of the night and we have to get up with her. Unfortunately then she completely loses her mind (and screams and screams and screams) until we go lie down on the couch with her with the tv on the Treehouse channel. Yes, we created this bad habit/monster – and we haven’t yet been able to break it/her.

- She eats all kinds of food, and lots of it. She loves banana’s and raisins – they are definitely her favourite foods. She also loves yogurt and cheese strings – a newly discovered favourite snack of both kids thanks to Nan & Pop Pardy. But with respect to real food she will eat almost anything we put in front of her: chicken, rice, pasta, salmon, tofu, eggs, corn, peas, kiwi, strawberry, toast, peanut butter, pancakes, cereal – yup, everything.

- Speaking of eating, she’s wearing size 18 months to 2 years old clothes. She’s not fat, just the typical baby pudge legs bum and belly. She is solid though. As a rock.

- Which is a bad combination with the excessive mobility, that I think you already knew about…..

- but also bad combined with the stubborness that she has. She does not like being told no, or not getting her way in general. She will continue trying to get what she wants or to do what she wants to do, and when you end the possibility of that happening she falls to the floor and cries and cries. Sometimes she lies flat on her front and cries, and sometimes she sits on her bum, with her legs out in front of her, and doubles over at the waist so that her face is nearly buried in her legs. She’ll do that for less than a minute usually, and then she’ll move on to play or try to get at something else. Until the next pseudo tantrum.

- Unlike her sister at her age she loves being outside in the winter. She loves walking and prefers to not hold our hands – tricky with the ice around but we let her walk alone when it seems safe. When we leave or come to the house she wants to walk up and down the steps, and not be carried, and she hates getting in the car in the morning – preferring to happily walk around and around the car in the driveway. When we have time and the weather is nice enough we suit them up and bring her in the backyard to trudge around, and she likes it.

- She has a couple of dolls/stuffed animals that she favours and has been ‘mothering’ them for a while – hugging and rocking and kissing them. And dragging them with her all around the house.

- Today she wanted to sit on the toilet using Merrin’s potty seat, and I took off her diaper and let her. She then pointed to the shelf above the toilet, indicating that she wanted to book to read. Merrin does this and I’m sure that the interest in the potty today was more imitation of Merrin than true interest in using a toilet.

- And as I’ve said a hundred times but I will say it again because it makes me so happy, she loves her sister. In the mornings she loves getting in her bed with her to wake her up. If Merrin is sitting at the table colouring/painting/drawing Elsa wants to be up in her highchair next to her. Elsa has no interest in paper and crayons (outside of eating them), she just wants to be near her sister, watching what she is doing. She will follow her sister around the house and likes playing with her. They really are getting along great. For now at least.

Alright guys, that’s it for now. It’s way too late for me to be up but I wanted to post some kind of entry tonight as I’m really trying to be better at blogging more often and keeping you in the loop as to what we’re up to. Even if you really just want to hear about the girls you are gonna have to suck it up and read about what we eat for supper every now and again.