A Superhero and a Princess

 

Life in community rocks.

Eleanor Writes

Eleanor and I went to the library today. After we read an Elliot book, she wanted to draw a picture of Elliot and Socks (the main characters). I was going to write their names beside them, but Eleanor took the pen back and said, "No, I can do it." I spelled "Elliot" for her and she wrote it. The L's are upside down and one is backwards, and after the I, she ran out of room so the T and O are on the other side. I gave no guidance on how to make letters. I was impressed.

Buckhorn

We finally got a chance to go camping this past weekend. It was so nice. Our friends Michael and Abby went with us. Abby is Eleanor's Sunday School teacher and Eleanor loves her dearly. Michael is our Sunday School teacher. Eleanor liked feeling Michael's "scruffies." These pictures are all out of order, but they are representative of our weekend.

 

 

 

11 More Days of Two

Eleanor found her party hat (from last year, which will be reused) and has been wearing it non-stop. Here she is "smiling."

 

 

 

 

Fashion Show

I bought Eleanor some fall/winter clothes off of craigslist today. The family selling them was from France, so there are some interesting pieces. Eleanor was trying some of them on tonight. None of the pants have adjustable waists, so I foresee alterations. Otherwise, I'm quite pleased with the purchase.

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I picked up a copy of Winnie the Pooh at the library's book sale recently, thinking that E would enjoy it in a couple of years. Eleanor found it and has been insisting that I read it to her. This is not Disney's version with lots of pictures, this is the chapter book with one small illustration per two or three pages. She seems to follow the story and asks lots of questions. This is really exciting to me. I thought it would still be a couple more years before we started reading really fun books together.

Here's the outfit Eleanor was most excited about. She LOVES overalls, because they are like Corduroy

Glasses

I already know I'm beautiful. Tell me I'm smart.

Eleanor and the Baby

Eleanor got to hold our neighbor's three day old baby today. She enjoyed that.

She kept talking about her itty bitty hands. Then she started saying, "This is how you clap. I'm teaching her how to clap. Good job, baby!"
This was all under very close supervision.

Scissors and Books

Eleanor is getting better with scissors, although I cut this out. She likes to cut little bitty pieces of paper. She also likes to read. We just finished an hour long reading marathon and only stopped because my voice was tired. We read:
- Elliot's Bath
- Elliot's Shipwreck
- Elliot Bakes a Cake
- Elliot's Noisy Night
- Knuffle Bunny (I love this one)
- Bunny Cakes (Max and Ruby)
- King Bidgood's in the Bathtub
- Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

The Elliot Moose books (by Andrea Beck) have become all the rage around here. Last week we checked one out at the library (Elliot Gets Stuck). When it was time to return it, Eleanor cried out, "Not my Elliot book! I love my Elliot book!" So, after we returned it, we checked out four more. I've read them each at least twice a day since then.

She reads books by herself too. I like her paraphrases.

Cutie

Cutie

I'm not sure if Eleanor could be any cuter.

First Tree Climbed

Amazing.

A Trip to Arkansas

Eleanor and I had an impromptu visit to Arkansas last week. My grandma, who has been in hospice for over a year, died. E and I flew out for her funeral. For future reference, American Airlines has the best bereavement rates of any of the five airlines I called. Unfortunately, that rate was only available on a flight leaving at midnight. We didn't take that one. We did end up flying American from LA to Little Rock.

We had a couple of hours at Dallas airport, which worked out well. Eleanor really enjoyed the play area, the train, and the obligatory airport ice cream. Dallas airport: two thumbs up.




I was less than impressed with their baggage handling when my bag did not get to the airport when we did. We did get it back 18 hours (and many frustrating phone calls) later.

Thankfully, our gracious hosts let Eleanor use some of Silas's pj's.


Eleanor and Silas had a great time playing the next morning.


Eleanor really enjoyed being in the woods at my parents' house. It was a nice break from urban life. I think we went several days without hearing a siren.




Our journey back was less than pleasant. We flew back on Continental, connecting in Houston. It started with a 4am wake-up so we could be at the airport for our flight at 6am. Both of our flights home were overbooked. On both flights I had to haggle and harass to get our seats changed so we would be sitting together (the second one more than the first). Our first flight was delayed enough that it made our connection too tight to get a good breakfast in Houston (as I had planned). Houston airport is laid out horribly and inefficiently. It took forever to get from our arriving gate to our departing gate. We got to our gate about ten minutes before it was time to board. All of the lines at places that sold breakfast type foods were at least twenty people long. I found one restaurant without a line (there was a reason for that) and bought E the only thing that was even halfway appropriate for her: a piece of coconut cake.

After much confusion about seating, we finally get on the plane with seats together. And we sat. There was some mechanical problem with the plane...something about engines not working or something. Whatever it was made the air conditioner not work as well (and was a bit disconcerting). We sat at the gate for 30-45 minutes while they tried to fix that. Finally they find some solution to the problem, but it doesn't fix the a/c.

We taxied onto the runway. And we sat. This was part of the problem:


We were 15th in line for take off. Then the storms hit. We sat on the runway for over 3 hours with no a/c. It was horrid. Surprisingly, Eleanor did not scream and cry (I almost did). My mom had given her a big stack of books. We read Ella Sarah Gets Dressed at least 10 times and most of the others a few times as well. We got on the plane at 8:45am central time and got off at almost 2pm Pacific time (that's over seven hours). Eleanor did sleep for about thirty minutes after we got in the air and I saw parts of two movies. Luckily, we had a good friend who was flexible waiting to pick us up. Even after all that, Eleanor still asks to go back to the airport so she can ride on the airplanes.

Ice Cream with Daddy

...in "Old Town" Pasadena.