By the way, I’ve started blogging at http://allaboute.tumblr.com which is getting updated a whole lot more regularly than this one since I can post to it from my phone. That one is mostly photos, videos and cute or funny things that Elisabeth says. So if you’re looking for that sort of thing, you might want to be following that blog. I expect I will still occasionally post here but it may well continue to only be every 3-4 months. Just FYI…

We celebrated Elisabeth’s second birthday on December 4th with a lovely party – lots of family, godparents, friends and three of her little friends & their parents. The house was full to bursting, and it was very fun.

I think the most noteworthy thing about Elisabeth at two years old is her verbal skills. She often speaks in long and compound sentences. She is doing remarkably well with tenses and grammatical correctness. She’s very good at communicating what she wants. And she still often has a running commentary about everything that’s going on around her.

Other than language & verbal skill, probably the most notable knowledge acquisition in the last four months (since I last wrote an update) has been her repertoire of songs she knows (which is huge) and learning her colours. She can now correctly identify orange, blue, green, purple, pink, white, black, red and yellow. (She learned them in approximately that order.)

Elisabeth is slowly becoming a little less timid, although she’s still very quiet when she meets new people or is around strangers. It no longer takes a long time for her to warm up when we talk to Oma & Opa (or other US relatives) on Skype now, though. And she’s slightly more willing to perform when asked to. She definitely has to be in the right mood, though.

She only shows fairly sporadic interest in toilet training. Occasionally she’ll ask to take her nappy off so she can do a poo on the potty. She doesn’t usually manage to actually do anything on the potty, though. I’ve told her that once she does all her wee and poo on the potty, she can wear pants, so she sometimes asks to “do poo on the potty, wear pants.” And then I have to explain that it’s not just a one-shot thing. Which, of course, she doesn’t quite understand yet. In any case, we’re still taking a fairly relaxed approach to it all. I at least am hoping that she moves herself more in that direction as she approaches 2 1/2. We shall see!

Sleep is generally good. She sleeps through the night most nights, although it’s not uncommon for her to cry out in her sleep sometime between 4:30-5:30. On days that she’s at home in the afternoon, she’ll usually take a 2 to 2 1/2 hour nap. She still usually naps at nursery as well for at least an hour. She’s also a little better at coping when she doesn’t get a nap at all, although that does still occasionally lead to meltdown at bedtime.

She’s still miserable at eating – except at nursery. It seems that she eats whatever food they put in front of her at nursery, which on the one hand is great and on the other hand makes it even more frustrating that the range of foods she’ll eat at home is still minuscule. I think she would happily exist on crisps and biscuits and milk if we let her. (At least there’s the milk…) She is pretty good with fruit, and she does eat hummus and eggs. So there’s a little variety of nutrients in her diet. Veggies and meat are still non-starters, though – except, again, at nursery. Thank goodness for nursery!

Speaking of nursery, for the most part Elisabeth still seems to enjoy it a lot. She often says “Izzabeff no go to nursery, stay at home” when we tell her it’s a nursery day. But once we reminder her of all the people she likes who will be there – especially her favourite teachers Sevda and Kate – she happily acquiesces. And her log book always says, “Elisabeth had a very good day today,” or similar.

Favourite activities include writing/drawing (especially with mommy & daddy’s pens); cutting – either cutting paper with scissors or cutting play food with a play knife; pushing her “babies” around in her doll buggies, often with a bag hanging from each arm; related to that: pretending to go shopping – usually to buy bread; singing & making music; playing with playdough; playing with water – she loves standing next to the sink and playing with the water coming out of the tap – and watching TV shows or videos on YouTube. Her favourite TV shows are Tweenies, In the Night Garden, Zingzillas, Charlie & Lola, Chuggington, Waybuloo and Timmy Time.

Elisabeth has a defiant streak – like pretty much all two-year-olds – but for the most part she’s still our very sweet, good-natured, happy little girl. She’s developing a rather hilarious sense of humour. So far having a two-year-old is loads of fun!