Quick Update about the one-year-old Elora

We've been meaning to mention that Elora is communicating more and
more. She says "Uh-oh" and "drop," "MumMum" and signs "all done,"
"more," and "dog." She easily makes her wants/needs known (pointing,
nodding and shaking her head). She has a great sense of humor (she
likes to get us chuckling by sticking her tongue in and out repeatedly
like a lizard). She is very into books now (no surprise if you read the
post below!) and continues to dress up in everyone's hats. She loves
Boomer and has very animated conversations with the dog; she "talks" to
Boomer in a way that is different to any of the rest of us. Elora often
takes a toy to Boomer and tries to shove it in her mouth. That's great
when it's one of Boomer's toys, but not so great when it's, say, a
stuffed animal or a Lego or something (we're working hard to teach
Boomer only to chew on her own toys).

Elora is quite demanding at the moment. She is very clingy to Mom,
though we're not quite sure why. She's working on another tooth, but I
think it may be more related to the fact that she's only napping once a
day now for the most part (and is tired by the end of the day). On a
good note, Elora has been sleeping through the night for a couple weeks. We can hardly believe it!!

We try to keep a smiling, upbeat face about life here in the DingoDen,
but truthfully anything that bumps the norm around here sends us into a
tailspin and stresses us out. For example, we found out that they want to do some renovations in our house (knocking out the wall between the living room and kitchen to make it an open style -- and knocking out the front wall to enclose the front porch thus making the living room bigger). The changes sound marvelous, but the thought of packing up and moving house for a while pretty much makes us quiver. We know this is just our time of life (having a walking, interested, lively, yet clingy, needy toddler while homeschooling and so forth). There's very, very (very, very...) little time for ourselves and we're sure not equipped for anything else off the beaten track. We simply don't have any extra time to give anything more. Sigh... We'll keep you posted on those renovations.