Elliott finds the knife "dorpener"	grinning at his reflection in the mixing bowl
studying a birthday party invitation he got in the mail from his friend Orin	writing back :-)
All dressed up, and...	still a goofball!
going for the maiden voyage in the new sling Mama made (he even colored on himself to match!) - I didn't mean to chop off my head, but it's hard to take a picture of yourself..

Sorry I haven't added weekly notes for a while - I've been pretty busy chasing around Sir Elliott. I have the notes jotted down, so stay tuned - eventually I'll fill in the missing weeks (maybe some year when he goes off to summer camp or something). Some highlights from this week..

We've been spending a lot of time running around outside, since the weather has been so nice. He discovered some ant hills today, brushed the sand away, and then couldn't figure out where the holes went. He likes to touch the flowers. He loves scooping dirt and rocks and anything scoopable.

He loves marbles, but he likes to rub them against his lips and scare the heck out of me. So far he hasn't eaten any of them, but I still don't let him have them unsupervised.

Almost every time I have a cup of tea, he comes up and says, "Mama, your tea warm? I have some?" - its almost all one word. He loves tea (I only drink decaf so he can have some). We went to a birthday party with a 2 year old who was drinking juice from a cup, and got into a discussion about how far away that milestone is for Elliott. He just can't handle it. He can drink without spilling if he tries, or if it doesn't matter (like in the bathtub), but he forgets the cup is there and just drops it when he's done, or tips it while running around with it. Even if he doesn't do those things, within a minute or two, he just HAS to stick one hand, then the other, into the cup, to feel the contents. Inevitably it ends up dumped and splashed all over. He's a very tactile kid. so, for now we're sticking to sippy cups. Almost every day though, we have a "tea porty", where he stands in his tower with a washcloth and a teacup full of tea, and some cookies, crackers or biscuits of some sort, and dips them in and eats them. He hardly ever drinks the tea by picking up the cup. Instead, he scoops tea up in a spoon, and then slurps it up while dumping it down his shirt (yes, we have many many pocket bibs).

He continues to love music. His favorite song is Raffi's "Old MacDonald had a band". He's really confused by the "jug" sound. I tried to show him a picture of a guy playing a jug (I guess they use a big pottery jug and blow rasberries into it somehow), but it's still a mystery to him. He also loves skip to my lou, and sings all kinds of made up lyrics to that tune. He continues to have a mysterious Brooklyn accent, so "my darling" is "my door-lin". Girls are "goorls"

He asks about what words mean more and more, especially in familiar songs. He also seems suddenly fascinated with names. If we meet new people, he asks "lady name? man name? dog name?" over and over again, especially if it's hard to pronounce. We met our new neighbors, Carol and Jack, and he just can't wrap his brain around the word "Jack".

He's also very into taking turns. He often says "my turn!" when I'm trying to do something (turn is "tour-n"). When he wants help, he's furious if we're not right there, but when he wants to do it himself, he gets equally frustrated when we don't let him.. He's so 2. :-)