Eleanor the two-year-old - nearly everything you would associate with a two-year-old, is what Eleanor is at present. She's sweet, helpful, cheerful, loving, obstinate, insistent, impatient, messy, busy, demanding, all-consuming. She loves sweets, chocolate, marshmallows - anything that's a 'treat' - which can cause problems when Mom has to say 'no'. She loves the television, which causes problems when Mom has to say 'no'. She also loves to be around me - Mom - so if I'm doing something she's not interested in, she won't leave me alone, but rather she'll come and find me and make a nuisance of herself so that it becomes nearly impossible to do the thing I was doing. She doesn't like to sleep; bedtimes are difficult, in that I have to stay with her in a dark room until she falls asleep. Naptimes are difficult, too. Just today I was trying to get her to go down in my room while I did some academic research in there at the same time. She kept whispering and then jumping out of bed, running to her room to get her dollies, then bringing them into our room, then whispering again, and then take the dollies somewhere else, then coming back to bed, whispering, then jumping out of bed, etc. All this went on for about an hour. She never slept, and this is after getting up at 6:30 this morning!

Today we made peanut butter cookies. Eleanor LOVES to make cookies, and insists on helping whenever we do. Today she turned the beaters on before they were in the bowl which had the ingredients, and slowly started to lower them into the bowl, full speed ahead! I stopped to her and tried to explain what a mess it makes if we put the beaters into the bowl after we turn them on! Then, after the dough was made, I started making little balls with the dough and coating them in sugar. She got very excited and informed me: 'This is a Mommy job, and a Nelly job.' One picture here is of Eleanor helping me make balls of dough today - our Mommy job and Nelly job. Another is of her in our back yard in September, and the third is of her as a loving and responsible older sister to Verity.