We’ve tried to teach Ellie to have good manners. We frequently tell her to say “Please” when she wants something, and “Thank you” when she receives it. She learned sign language for both of them first, and uses it about as often as she uses words. I think we’re doing pretty well and she does say both please and thank you on her own occassionally. Usually, though, we have to ask her, “What do you say” when she wants something, or we give her something. Sometimes she’ll stare at you and think about it for a moment and then try one, and if it’s not right try the other until she gets what she wants. I figure, at least she knows what to try right?

A couple days ago I was feeding her a snack, and was giving her pieces one at a time so she didn’t pack so much in her mouth that she couldn’t close it to chew and end up drooling snack all over. Whenever she would want another piece she would say “More snack” and I would say “More snack, what?” and usually she would come back with “More snack please.” Then I’d give her a piece of snack and say, “Now what do you say?” and occassionally she would remember to say “Thank you” One time I gave her a piece of snack and said, “Now what do you say?” and she patted me on the shoulder and said, “Good job Daddy. Good job.” It was very nice, and I decided it was the end of the manners lesson for that snack time.

Nathan tells me I should try this blogging thing because I have a funny story to tell…and who knows, this may start something and I may actually do this all the time. We shall see.
Last week my mom was here watching Ellie for a few days. One afternoon after I came home from work, they were playing with little people animals. The animals were having a dance party and it was getting a little wild. Ellie picked up one of the animals and threw it at my mom. I said to her “ellie, do we throw our toys?” and she looked at me wide eyed and said “NO”. And then I asked her if she needed to be sat in a corner. She again said no. I asked her to go pick up the toys an put them in the basket, which she did…and then to our surprise and great entertainment, she went over and sat herself in the corner. That’s my independent girl…she even puts herself in time-out.

When is it that parents stop referring to people from their own perspective, and start referring to everyone from their child’s perspective? I realized the other day that when I talk to Ellie I always refer to Janette as Mommy, and our parents are always Grandma and Grandpa. I also realized that even when I’m just thinking about them, or talking to someone else, I’ll refer to them from Ellie’s perspective. For example, I’ll be talking to Janette about her mom and I’ll call her Grandma Linda and neither of us seem to think that’s weird. Is that a normal thing that parents do, or are we losing it?

On Saturday we went to the Boy Scouts pancake breakfast in Waverly. When we got Ellie up we told her about it and she got really excited. We took advantage of that and used it to keep her heading in the right direction all morning: “Ellie, lets get dressed so we can go have pancakes!” “Ellie, get your shoes so we can go have pancakes!” It worked pretty well. When we got there we got a plate for Ellie with one pancake. And what what pancake breakfast is complete without sausage? So she also had a sausage patty on her plate. We sit down and get her in her chair and give Ellie her plate and she says “pancake! COOKIE” and grabs the sausage with both hands like a hamburger. I grab her arm to stop her and tell her it’s not a cookie it’s sausage. She just looked at me and said “Cookie!” and then put a big bite in her mouth. Her face went from really excited to someone just told her Santa is a big jerk. Then she tried to put the sausage on the table as far away from her as she could get it and would have nothing to do with it the rest of breakfast. But she loved the pancake, which she also tried to eat like a hamburger.

For Christmas, Janette’s mom, Linda, made Ellie a set of wooden blocks cut out in shapes. One of the games Ellie and I play with them is dumping them out (Ellie loves that part) and then I’ll ask Ellie to find a block. For example, I’ll say, “Can you find the horse block?” and she’ll look at them for a little bit and then pick up the horse block and say “Horse! Neigh!” Sometimes she can’t find a block, or just gets distracted and then she’ll pick up another block and tell you what it is. For example, she’ll pick up the van and say “Car, vroom-vroom.” I’ll also pick up blocks and ask her what they are, and for the most part she does pretty good. Sometimes she’ll call a horse a dog, but usually she’s pretty close. There are a couple blocks that I don’t think she knows what they are, and for some reason she always seems to call them the same thing. I learned this the other day when I picked up the whale and said “Ellie, what’s this” and she looked at it for a moment and then said “Mommy!”