Our Happy Family: Little Kid Snapshots

Echo

Echo is saying lots of words now (a few months after her 2nd birthday). She said "Mama" fairly early on, and did a "Shhh" sound with her finger to her mouth. She said "Uh oh" and "Hi" early on." She started saying "Eli" a little while ago, but it sounds the same as the way she says "Here I!" She's definitely hit that word explosion phase where she's suddenly repeating and producing many words that we haven't heard from her before.

Echo gives kisses with a little puff of air like she did when she started blowing kisses. She says most things with a high little voice. She says "Mmmmm" as she hugs me. She says, "Where's you?" when we're looking for things. After watching Cocomelon for a while, she started putting her finger to her mouth and saying, "Hmmm" and then "Ah ha" with her finger raised in the air.

She is a very busy little girl, and she delights in dumping things and making messes. Truly. If I see her with the Nesquik can, and I'm running toward her, she'll start frantically dumping as fast as she can. If I haven't seen a mess she's made, she'll come take me by the hand and lead me over to it. I'm not sure why she likes it so much. For some time now, she's thrown things in the garbage, and I have no idea how many things have gone missing that way. She puts cat food in the cat water, and opens the front door and runs off. As a result of all of this craziness, we've had to put every kind of child proof thing in our house. We have locks on the bedroom doors, and locks on many cupboard doors, as well as the fridge, garbage, oven, and front door. We have four gates and try to keep her contained in the kitchen and family room, for the most part. She's lucky she's so cute, so we can never get too mad.

I left this post for a few months, and now I have a lot more things. The other day, I was lying next to her and fell asleep. I did a puff of air from my mouth and she reached over, covered my mouth, and said, "Why do?!" She also says, "What do?" and "Me do." She often says "Wait," and tries to block our path, if she wants to keep us from leaving.

She went through a phase where she said, "Yuck, Ew," for everything she didn't want: food, clothing, TV shows, etc.

She says all of the kids names now (11/21). She says, "Jo, Ma-ie, Towi, Eyi, Noah, and Baby Al."

Noah has said some cute things as well.

-In 2020, I was on the phone with Kimberly on her birthday, and Noah said, "Ask her how much age she be."

-He always said, "Have a talk," when he wanted to tell me something.

-He said, "marshable" for marshmallow.

Sometimes when he says, "No," with an emphasis at the end, it sounds like, "No-ah." He doesn't like it when you point that out, though.

He likes to draw on his arms and calls them "tattoos." He does tattoos on Echo too. And sometimes on me.