I speak Elyssa, and other idle ramblings...

Elyssa is just talking and singing up a storm. She is her own little jibber jabberer, she is either talking to me or talking to Pooh Bear, or talking to her baby, but she is always talking or singing to something. Now, to me, everything she says is almost completely understandable but there are several times that others and even Eddie look at me as if to say “what the heck did she just say??” So I realized that I indeed speak “Elyssa”. Now what this means is that I am the only one who can decipher some her “not so perfect enunciations” of some of the English language. I’d have to say for the most part, she does pretty well with most words but some are just a little less than perfect. I’m sure it will work itself out in the end and she will be speaking more clearly but for a 2 year old I think she is doing just great. I still think it is absolutely adorable the way she makes up words for things she has no idea what they are. One example of this is that she likes to ride “Coooch” What is “coooch” you ask? It is the exercise equipment (a stair stepper and stationary bike) that is in our room. She saw Eddie on it one morning and decided she wanted to try so she said “ride coooch daddy, ride coooch”. We explained to her it is exercise equipment, a stepper and stationary bike. She can very clearly say stepper and bike but the 2 collectively are not exercise equipment, they are “coooch”. So she will wake up in the morning and ask to ride “coooch” and it is something only myself and Eddie would understand.

We have been spending a lot of tome making new friends. We have been having lots of play dates with kids of all ages lately and it has been a real blast watching how Elyssa interacts with all the new kids. I used to think she would always be very shy and never play with other kids but it seems she is starting to come out of her shell. Usually she is very shy in the beginning, like the first 10-15 minutes, and then she is out of her shell and playing just fine. It is so cute except when she starts the “mine” stage. We are working on sharing still and from what I hear it can take kids till they are almost 5 before they completely grasp the whole idea of sharing! We have been using time out a lot. I have set up her old pack-n-play in the downstairs guestroom and when she gets totally out of control she gets a timeout in her pack-n-play in a room separated from us. I do not leave her in there long and I check on her but, she does not get to come out till she a) stops crying and b) apologizes for what she has done. I have no idea if it is working but it helps at the moment!

We got some bad news about Elyssa’s Stage II renal reflux. She had her VCUG procedure a couple months ago and the results showed that her Stage II has progressed to Stage III. Her urologist is ok with putting off surgery till after she is 3 or potty trained. He said if she gets potty trained they will do another VCUG and the reflux is still present they will have to do the surgery anyway. He did tell us that potty training will be more challenging. Apparently she has a lot of pressure on her bladder and even when she goes pee-pee and thinks she is done a few minutes later she may go more. It is very difficult for her to understand. I can say she is doing wonderfully with potty training but a bit discouraging also because it seems she is never going to just get it. She used to be only 50% potty trained now I’d say it is about 70% …she has started going potty when we are out places. In fact I’ve probably visited every public potty in every public place I’ve been and sometimes, several times. She of course does not go every time, but she does get to visit a new potty, which is I guess the whole thrill. On a positive note, she is no longer afraid of the automatic flushing potties. The noise does not bother her at all!!

We have finally planned our first family vacation! We are going to California! We are going to take Elyssa to Disneyland for a couple days, to the San Diego Zoo and of course several beautiful beaches since she LOVES the beach. We are so looking forward to it. Poor Eddie has been working a lot and has not been able to spend a lot of time with Elyssa and I so we are looking forward a whole week of just family time!

I think that sums up what has been happening in our world, time to get little princess some dinner!