23 Months Old!

Oh, I simply cannot believe that my sweet, baby girl is turning two years old in a month!  How did this happen so fast?  As you can tell by the pictures, Ella really has turned into a full-fledged toddler these past few months.  She is such a little girl!  And, boy, does she keep me hopping.  She is so, so busy.  Ella is constantly getting into things or trying to keep up with her older brother and sister.  She seriously thinks that she is ten years old most of the time.  But, we just love her to pieces and think she is the cutest thing around. As for her latest developments this past month, Ella continues to speak one of two words at a time.  The cutest one is that she says, "yesh" instead of "yes."  Ella also puts an "s" on the end of most of her words.  For example, she says, "mores" instead of "more" when she wants more food.  She also says, "Okay," in the funniest voice whenever she agrees to do something that we ask her to do.  The other funny word that Ella came started using this past month is "Doby" which she consistently uses for "grandma."  I don't know how or why she came up with this word, but she really says it to mean grandma all of the time.  Ella continues to love her blanket and her ya ya and insists on dragging her blanket around the house most days.  She is also my sneakiest child and continues to sneak upstairs several times a day to pull a pacifier out of her crib.  She has also managed to climb inside her crib (without the help of a stool or anything) two times this past month.  I don't know how she manages to do this, but we have found her in her crib two times without any help.  Amazing.  This little girl is so fearless and coordinated.  She still loves shoes and constantly can be found putting on a pair of her shoes or someone else's shoes in the house.  Whenever she hears that it is time to go outside or in the car, she is the first person in the laundry room trying to put her shoes on.  It's so funny!  Ella loves having books read to her and enjoys any one-on-one time I give her on the floor.  She also is loving the outdoor play that is coming with the spring weather and will climb up any ladder and slide down any side that we play on.  Ella still naps like a champ every afternoon and does a great job sleeping through the night.  Her fussy eating phase has seemed to subside a bit as she now only needs a little coaxing to get most foods in her mouth.  Ella has also started to throw serious tantrums whenever she is not happy about something and many of these tantrums are thrown on the floor.  I am going to blame her older brother for setting a stellar example in this department for her entire life as the cause of this.  Ella also gets hurt a lot and gets harassed by Logan a lot.  As a result, she unfortunately spends a lot of her day crying.  She is definitely heading into the terrible twos phase.  Oh well.  We love her anyways and just can't get enough of her!