Sorry about any strange characters in the blog. It appears that somehow all periods got converted to some other character. I have fix this for the top blog entries but have not doe this everywhere. There are also some other characters that I haven't chased down. Hopefully it will not be too difficult to read.

Comments from Jenny

Ilea continues to express herself more and more. She sings a few songs now,
including the alphabet song, and is better at Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
She also like The Green Grass Grows all Around, and does hand motions to
show the "all around" part. She doesn't have the alphabet totally down, but
does most of it. Also, the I Love You song from Barney. It's very cute.

She is also climbing more, and exploring the toilet, much to mom's regret.
We had a babysitter the other night, and the next morning found a hand towel
dripping wet on the floor. We couldn't figure out why the babysitter got it
all wet, and why she wouldn't have put it on the towel rack. A few days
later, right after Jenny got her dressed, she came into the den with a towel
dripping wet, and water all over her clothes. "Dirty Towel" she tells me.
There is water all over the toilet and the floor! Mystery solved! So now I
have to keep a close eye on whatever she might consider to be dirty and need
a washing! She's also climbing up onto the bathroom counters (both hers and
ours) to explore more.

She does love her new room now, and goes in it a lot to read or play with
her dolls & stuffed animals. It's much bigger than the nursery, and she
knows the room is all for her - her new room and big girl bed.

We took our first trip away from Ilea last weekend. We went to Vancouver, BC. Vancouver is a beautiful city and we had a really nice time doing the tourist thing. Ilea stayed with some friends up the street and did not seem to suffer at all. She was very glad to see us when we returned. It looks like we can take a trip away from her fairly easily. Our next trip is to Las Vegas in October (or something like that.)

On December 27th we moved Ilea into her "Big Girl's" room that we just finished ¥wallpaper, painting and chair rail¤© The first night Ilea would not go to sleep for the first hour and a half. She just screamed like we were hurting her. After holding her for the last 20 minutes, she finally got tired and fell asleep. Now she goes to bed just like before. The only problem we have been having is during her naps she gets up and wonders around her room getting into things. One day she got a hold of the kleenex box and took out every tissue. That would not have been so bad but it appeard she had either wiped her mouth with or licked each tissue so we had to throw them all away. I guess that was expected.

Jenny sent these to me in mid-November. I'm finally getting around to putting these up.

Here are some of the things that Ilea has been up to...

She tries to sing songs now. She's not very good. Her 2 hits are Twinkle
Star, where you ARE, Twinkle STAR, where you ARE, and Where is the mumble
mumble, where can BE?? should be Where, oh where has my little dog gone.
She can't seem to follow the tunes yet, and certainly doesn't know all the
words. But it's cute. She is also singing the Barney "I Love You" song and giving us a "hug and kiss" at the appropriate times. I ¥kipp¤ never thought I would say that I like the song but it is hard not to when Ilea is singing it.¤

She is also a neat freak. She picks fuzzies off people's clothes, and
recently has taken to cleaning the family room floor. She finds and picks
up one fuzzy, takes it to the trash, then comes back for more. If she keeps
it up I won't have to vacuum any more!

She still loves to read books, and is memorizing pages from her favorites.
She love Shoes, Shoes, Shoes, of course, and has 3 -4 different pages of
that one memorized. We recently got the story of Ping from the library.
She loves the part where the little boy falls in the river. At the
beginning of the book, the duck master calls the ducks by La La La Lei! But
Ilea gets excited when she sees the boy, so on that page she says La La La
BOY! ¥It actually says Whooeey! The boy fell in the river. Oohh-aaah!¤. She
often won't let us read because she wants to read herself. She is also
learning her letters, but not in the right order. At lunch she has a plate
that says "Peter Rabbit and Friends" along the rim. She starts out with A
then picks other letters from the alphabet at random, finally ending with
'Next time mumble with ME!" She now can say most of the alphabet except for L-N.

She's starting to pretend play more. She has some food and kitchen toys,
and loves to set the table and pretend to eat and drink. It's messy, but
fun. She does help clean up though. Also she likes the Magna Doodle drawing
toy. Her favorite thing is to have you outline her hand. Over and over.
She won't do yours, only you outline hers. Make a few on the page, then
erase them and start over. And over.

Lastly, it's been really cold up here. We put her in a blanket sleeper at
night, and she has a warm quilt. We always check her before we go to bed to
cover her up again. Last Sat morning we went in to get her, and there she
was, prancing around her crib buck naked! Not only had she taken the
blanket sleeper totally off, but her diaper too! She was in a great mood!
She didn't repeat the performance, but if she does, I'll have to start
safety pinning the zipper of her sleeper!