Since birth Ella has LOVED to read (Delia is too squirmy to sit through a book and still prefers to eat them). Each time Ella goes to bed we have to read 3 stories and then fill up a basket next to her bed with more stories that she can look at until she falls asleep. She has most of her books memorized, so she'll recite them, make up new stories or just study the pictures. Some days she'll skip a nap to just read for 2 hours. One night Dave went to peek at her and said, "Your 2-year old daughter is staying up until 10:30 to read books!" Ella has gotten sneaky about it too, when she's gone through all the books I leave her, she climbs out of bed and grabs more off the shelf. Don't ask me how she sleeps when there are 30 books crowding her bed!
Ella does love cooking in her kitchen and taking care of her baby, but another fun thing to pretend is "I'm going to be Daddy." She pulls up a chair, gets out her computer, phone and coffee cup and sits in her office writing sermons and calling people!
One of my favorite times of the day is during Delia's morning nap. I work hard to make sure this is 2 hours of uninterrupted quality time with Ella. It's a good time to create and craft things because Delia is not there to rip up the projects, eat the markers or make me chase her away from Lily's water bowl. Today Ella and I made and decorated gingerbread bear cookies. Earlier this week we put water in her sand box and built princess castles and birthday cakes. Some other fun projects we've done-- and feel free to steal these!-- have been our pretend picnic (after making and decorating a paper bag basket we cut out food from the sale papers and glued them onto paper plates) and a stop light (paper towel roll with 3 circles covered with red, yellow and green tissue paper squares). I love my happy, explorative Delia, but I treasure this time with just Ella every day too.
4 comments:
She is so smart and beautiful. Thanks for sharing these details and celebrating the extraordinary in your everyday life.
Dear Ella,
I need to let my mom know that the reason I'm not crafty is because her ideas are not as cool as your mom's ideas. I think I'll steal these. Maybe we can play this week!
Love,
Jonathan
Dear Jen,
I SO get where you are right now because that was the ages of my girls last year. I cherished that time during Rachel's morning nap in order to get some quality one-one-one time with Marissa. Now my girls lie down at the same time and it's trickier finding that quality time for each one, but it is oh so important.
From one mommy to another-
Andrea
I read an article recently that first borns really do get more quality time with their parents than subsequent children. I've found that to be true in my life - it seems like I'm often looking forward to putting Andrew down for his nap so I can have some "play/learning/imagination" time with Anika. I hope I can carve out the same time for my other children. Ella has a very creative mommy:-)
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