Ella is a big talker, stringing together whole sentences regularly these days. She pulls off some long ones too. A couple of my favorite unrecorded ones include:"Oh MY gosh, what's that girl doin'?"
(about a picture on the cover of a book)
and
"May a-have a piece of that cupcake please alright"
(combining the question and the answer in one!)
But sometimes a girl gets tired of perfect enunciation and complex clauses and just wants to do some babblin'! These stories string together compelling sounds with a few actual words and lots of pointing and arm gesturing:
In a similar vein, Ella has been working on performing popular songs with accompanying hand movements that distract attention away from the pasta sauce she bathed in. I think you’ll recognize this favorite:
This one may be less well-known. We call it “the Man song” and sometimes the words go like this (Grampa Grumpy, there will be a quiz):
In a cabin in a wood (outline a house with your fingers)
Little Man by the window stood (cupped hands up to your eyes like binoculars)
Saw a rabbit hopping by (bunny ears with your pointer and middle finger hop)
Knocking at my door (knocking)
“Help me, help me, help!” he cried (throwing up your arms, in panic, I guess?)
“Or the hunter will shoot me down” (pointer finger points like a gun)
“Come inside my little friend” (gesturing for the bunny to come in)
“Happy we will be!” (cradling the imaginary bunny in your arms)
Embarrassingly, you get a little glimpse of the fact that I'm doing the arm movements much more enthusiastically than she is which explains the sort of dubious look on her face.
Although I can't promise that we'll be more diligent about blog postings going forward, it can't hurt that I successfully defended my dissertation and will be graduating in a couple of weeks! Does working on your blog count as a "job"?
