Eleanor's language skills, and vocabulary continue to grow and develop every day. Each time someone sees her after a brief absence, they comment on how much better she can speak compared to the last time they saw her. She has been working hard, paying attention to sounds and trying new sound combinations. Shes also begun singing, which is very sweet to hear. Unfortunate she seems to get her singing skills from Michael, but I still love hearing her little tone deaf voice singing, just out of eyesight, often when shes alone in her room.
Nora's new phrase when she is scared or overwhelmed is, "I can't handle it!" It snowed a few weeks back and she decided she wanted to sled down the driveway. Under the snow was a layer of ice however, and that paired with our driveway's steep slope, made for a faster than expected ride down toward the street. She screamed all the way down and then at the bottom, staring crying saying, "I can't handle it!!!!" Shes a sensitive little soul!
The last few months she has been not so great at feeding herself. I think its mostly that she is lazy, not that she is not capable. Sometimes she will get through 1/2 to 3/4 of dinner before deciding she wants us to feed her, sometimes she won't eat any of it on her own. I notice it especially when she doesn't like the food at hand. The annoying part is that if I allow her to just be done and not eat what she won't feed herself, then she complains about being hungry, the minute she leaves the dinner table. So for now we somewhat resign ourselves to feeding her what she won't herself. The odd thing is, she won't fight us at all when we offer he bites, but she absolutely refuses to take her own bites. Its pretty frustrating. I am hoping it is a short lived phase!
While she may be lazy when it comes to feeding herself, she has been motivated to learn how to dress herself on her own this month. We have been working on it slowly over the past 4 months or so. I have shown her every morning how to identify the front and back of her clothes, and how to put on pants, shirts, socks and underwear. Until this month, she could do underwear and pants on her own, but shirts and socks were a challenge. Also she lacked the strength to open her own dresser drawers on her own, so that was an impediment. Most mornings I go straight into Daniel's room to feed and dress him, then I go to her room to help her afterwards. I think she just got tired of always waiting for me, because just the other morning, she came and showed me (and told me proudly) that she had gotten dressed completely on her own! I gave her a high five and told her how proud of her I was. Shes done it every morning sense and while she doesn't always get every article on the exact right way, she does a pretty good job. Shes even learned to open and close her drawers herself! She is getting so big!
Speaking of getting big, Nora has taught herself to go to the bathroom at night, and no longer needs to wear pull-ups overnight! Since potty training in November, I had noticed that there were some mornings when she woke up dry. It wasn't the majority of the time, but it happened occasionally. I told her then that if she could keep her pull up dry every day for two weeks, she could wear underwear at night, and I would get her a baby doll whose eyes open and closed (something shes been wanting since Christmas). She was pretty excited about this and immediately she started waking up dry more often. By February she was dry most of the time, but she could never quite make it to 14 days. There were several times in fact, where she would make it all the way to 12 or 13 days and then wake up wet on the 13th or 14th day. It was such a bummer. I was tempted to give her the doll on days like that, but I waited because I knew in order to go without pull ups at night, she really needed to get good at waking up to pee at night. Finally a couple of weeks ago she did it! I think I was as excited to give her that doll, as she was to get it. Shes not let it out of her sight since, and she hasn't wet the bed once since either. My little girl is growing up SO MUCH in the past few months I can't even believe it! Incidentally this is the same age that Will also learned to stay dry at night. Those two always seem to hit major milestones at the same time as one another! 
Since then however I think she might have a bit of PTSD from that incident. Shes never had nightmares before, but now she is suddenly having them several times a week, and the dreams are always about this fall. She will wake up sweaty and just sob and sob for 10-15 minutes at a time. I'm never quite sure how to comfort her, other than holding her in my lap, letting her cry, and agreeing that that her fall was very scary and that she was right to be scared. I tell her I will keep her safe and that she now knows to be careful while climbing walls like that. I'm thinking that maybe another trip back to that park might be in order so that she can have some more good associations with it, and not have her main memory be of that fall. Poor little thing! So traumatic!
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