Love, bubs and life on our little farm

Its time for a new Elka update - my little princess has turned 19 months and is such great fun! She is such a nice little girl, I am very proud to say. She is sweet and happy all the time. Of course she does whinge and loves to throw a good tantie too but thats all part of the territory of toddlerhood so I just ignore those moments ;)

Her talking is probably the most notable thing currently - she is constantly shocking strangers with how young she is when they hear her talking. She mostly speaks in 2-3+ word sentences now and her vocabulary is enormous. For example she can list over 20 parts of her body, a massive amount of animals, colours, 1, 2, 3 numbers, all of her friends and families names and doesn't even stumble over larger words like strawberry, dinosaur and octopus. I can have full conversations with her and she can discuss abstract concepts that she can't see at the time. I can ask her what she wants for breakfast and she will say "ummmm..." and have a good think (which cracks me up! And then lists off porridge or toast etc depending on what she actually feels like, very handy! She can say "I love you Mummy" which just makes me melt. She likes to talk about the baby in Mummies tummy, although she did ask if she could have a puppy rather than a sister or brother the other day!

She is a big girl - she is wearing mostly size 2 and some small size 3. She is 84cm tall and weighs nearly 14kg. She still has a 2 hr sleep at midday and then sleeps 7pm-7am without a peep. We have introduced a pillow for her and are planning on buying her a single bed very soon.

She is very strong - she can carry shopping for me and can carry 2L of milk around. She is quite the farm girl. She can spot kangaroos from across paddocks, even when I struggle to see them. She looks for koalas in the trees and she gets nervous about where she steps if we mention snakes could be around. She can pick out and name frogs, magpies, cockatoos and kookaburras by both sight and sound. She feeds and pats the horses, can run down a chicken and pat it and check for eggs in the chicken shed and tells me if a chicken is out of their yard. She has a little wheelbarrow that she puts hay in for the horses and pushes it to their paddocks. She likes to help Jase turn on the pump down at the dam and even pointed out a pump by sight at a home renovation centre the other day. She fills up her watering can and waters our pot plants properly for me.

She is drinking out of a normal cup now and insists on mostly using adult metal cutlery to feed herself. She hasn't allowed us to spoon feed her since she was 11 months old so fortunately she is pretty nifty with cutlery (or she would have starved by now lol). She loves the mini cupcakes I cook her and loves cheesy gnocchi, spag bol and hot chips most of all - followed closely by broccolli (yes really) and my homemade custard.

She loves her piano keyboard she was given for Christmas - its a very impressive keyboard with DJ mixing buttons and lots of other features and she cracks us up making music. It also has a microphone which is very loud and she loves to sing "Baa Baa" and "Row, Row" into it - this has us rolling around in laughter. She looks so old and tween-like singing Karoke. She is really into the Wiggles at the moment and adores books currently. We read her about 30 books a day and she can't get enough. She has some newborn baby dolls, that she loves to feed and rock and take for walks in her doll stroller. She is obssessed with babies currently and is very interested in the fact that we will be having one soon, I think she will be a great big sister!

I am struggling with discipline - she loves time out and will offer to put herself in time out if it is threatened. that tends to take the wind out of my sails lol. She doesn't like being ignored so that tends to be her punishment. She is generally very well behaved though, besides insisting on pushing the stroller or trolley when we are out. I can negotiate with her most of the time and she can often be pacified with reason which is pleasing.

She likes to pick out her own clothes and shoes now, which does make for some interesting outfits but I tend to go with it!

She gives big kisses and cuddles and loves to demand to be "carried" which is hard on my back alot of the time but nice that she still likes to be close to us. Its a wonderful, demanding age and I just love seeing her cheeky grin and wonky running. Its so wonderful seeing the very big personality come out more and more every day.