Eleanor the Elaborate

I see so many of my friends posting updates on their little ones and I thought surely there is enough to say about my youngest to devote a whole blog post to her. My aim is in 5 years we can look back and see how she was almost the death of me. Or maybe, when I am tempted to romanticize these years to other, younger moms, I will be able to look back and check: yep, it was doosie. In all seriousness, I couldn't tell you what my other children were up to at her age so this is a good place to document such things.

Eleanor is 19 months and is FULL of personality. All of our kids are really. I don't know where they get it from. Their father and mother are such dull people. This girl's personality cup is overflowing.

Her most recent pratices:

1. When she wants a particular person in the house to give her their full undivided attention. She calls their name very loud. If they don't answer, she calls again even louder with a touch of a scream. Third time, she just SCREAMS. Being the 4th, the poor child is fighting desperately to get noticed and she is very good at it.

2. She is OBSESSED with Spiderman. I mean loses her mind when confronted with his image. Idol worship, basically.

She found him in the store the other day. Eeek! Michael and I are not in the habit of buying our kids toys when it's not Christmas or a birthday. I let her take him around to keep the peace and took pictures to send her daddy. He promptly called me wondering how in the world I would wrangle it out of her hands. I did what any mother would do- I took her to the bakery section and distracted her with cookies while I stole Spiderman.

3. Here in the Shea household, we don't teach our kids things like how old they are or their colors. Michael teaches them important things like how to make faces in the mirror. They have the rest of their life for that other stuff, right?

4. Eleanor has recently taken to taking off her diaper after she finishes using it for it intended purposes. This makes for interesting days for her mommy. For instance, yesterday, I saw her walking around bare bottomed and found the diaper with what appeared to be just #1. I put on a clean diaper and went about my day. Later in the day, I found some stray #2s hanging out around the playroom. This prompted a night full of cleaning and bed changing for her mommy. Not that there was anything in the beds, but it makes me feel better.

5. Here recently, I have been spending very little time in the kitchen. Can you guess why? Eleanor loves to stand on stools and steal food. This turns out to be a great way to keep mommy on a diet. I should put a listing on Craiglist: I have a child that will slash you calorie intake in half. She will come stand in your kitchen and wreck havoc for $20/hour. It's called the Eleanor diet.

6. I just want to document that her nickname is Nee-nor. I also want to document that my husband apparently pulled it out of thin air. I wish there were a cute story to accompany the name.

7. At 19 months, these are the words she can say: STOP, NOOOO, OUCH, HOT(what she says when she doesn't want to eat her food despite it's temperature), PIDERMAN, MERMAY( Little Mermaid is another one of her faves) and many more. These are just her favorites and yes, they are all screamed.

8. Motor skill wise, Eleanor is at peak performance. She is climbing up and down the stairs unabated because she can now open and close the gate. This is very frightening for her mommy. She climbs up the slide in our backyard. Soon, she will be climbing around the outside like her siblings. She runs. She climbs on her brothers dresser to jump on his bed. Am I giving you a heart attack yet? She gives me ones almost everyday.

I know God has great things in store for this child. She certainly will not entertain being overlooked. How I dreamed of the day God would give me a wallflower. He had better plans. Her family  loves her to death and she will probably turn out pretty rotten, if not already, as a result.