elsie at 2 1/2

Elsie runs everywhere. Everywhere. She never walks, she jogs. Even if it's from her place at the kitchen table over to the silverware drawer to get a new spoon, she jogs. If we're outside and she suddenly wants to be somewhere else, she runs, pumping her arms, kicking her feet up to her bottom. It really is something to watch.

As a result, she is also the most likely to get hurt in a day. She takes some nasty spills. It's become so common that our responses are quite tempered. Last week she was on our tile taking off her winter coat and slipped on a table runner that had been used as a farm field earlier in the day. Her arms were caught in the coat and she fell forward onto her face, splitting her lip, hitting her front teeth (for the umpteenth time in her short life). We might have reacted in a more dramatic way if it wasn't so downright crazy that she fell on her face again.

Elsie wakes up in a splendid mood and is proving that she does not need nearly as much sleep as her brother. She has begun skipping her naps and instead plays quietly in her room during quiet playtime. In the mornings she will come jogging into our room sometime between 7:04 and 7:07 to tell me, "I went poopie and peepee in the potty, so now can I have a marshmallow? Mama, can I have a marshmallow? Can we go down and have a marshmallow? Mom, can you get up and get me a marshmallow? Can you sit up and come get me a marshmallow?"

It's funny because we hardly used the marshmallow at all during her actual potty training. But now she's figured out the connection and likes to play it up as much as possible.

She is quite the mess. We just started having her wear a bib again, which was a brilliant idea (that only took us a year and a half to figure out...) She is the first to find mud, dirt or food. Tonight she pulled Rory's tall glass of coca-cola off of the counter to see what was in it, right onto herself and the whole kitchen floor. We go through a disproportionate amount of hand towels and kitchen towels in this house for only having four members. But Elsie actually accounts for about seven of them a day.

She and Ivar are the best of friends. It's really a joy to watch. I heard them playing house out in the garage yesterday and they were playing so hard. At night I hear them singing songs back and forth to each other, babbling about the day, telling each other the plan for the next day. It'll melt a mom's heart.

She has started telling us about the baby in her belly. She'll let us know, "my baby loves chicken!"

She's got some strong opinions and she is happy to share them. She keeps us on our toes, trying to train her to be polite while maintaining her fun and wild spirit. I told Rory recently, "Elsie's hair matches her personality perfectly." And it's so true. Fired up and wild, we just love her and her crazy hair to pieces.