* Watching Elena’s disposition toward Sigrid’s iPhone is giving me some insight into the nature of addiction. We only give Elena access to it infrequently, but she is very adept with it, able to identify which apps are “hers”, start them up, and use them well. However she LOVES the iPhone. When it is time for the iPhone to go away, she loses control. It is not like other situations where she is not getting her way: here she is frenzied, desperate, single-minded in her focus to have it back. Screaming, crying, beyond the pale. When Sigrid makes a call with Elena around, she screams for the “phone” during the entire call. It’s like she can’t control herself, can’t stop. Like Pavlov ringing the bell, so does seeing the iPhone shift Elena from some degree of rational process into a person completely out of control. Most of the time she is sweet and reasonable. When the iPhone is in play, she is utterly obnoxious.
* Sigrid got Elena a really cute owl costume for Halloween this year. She actually got it some months before, and Elena has worn it from time-to-time. She has a huge pile of clothes catalogs she looks thru, and one of them is the catalog the owl costume came from. Elena knows just where the page is and enjoys turning to it and pointing out her costume to us.
Elena - Halloween 2011
* One downside of Halloween was Elena’s discovering the candy. Remember the whole “iPhone addiction” thing above? The closest I’ve seen her come to that is when she is protecting/eating/hoarding her candy. Holy smokes, the power of sugar!
* Elena can now parrot back the entirety of her A-B-C colouring book, with simple little statements like “A is for Apple”. She’s really good at it. “X is for X-Ray” is prolly the hardest one, but she gets it pretty well.
* Elena has a really cute toy from Germany, with nice models of animals that, when placed properly on their diorama, make the sounds that they make. Well, Elena likes to carry the animals around the house, show them to us, and make the sounds. It has become so ingrained into her now that she knows the words for the animals. If I say horse or cow or dog or pig or sheep, she makes the proper sound right back.
* Elena’s favourite food remains fish. She is always up for it and really enjoys it. When Sigrid is making it ans Elena smells it, she gets excited. When she sees it on the counter, ready for the pan, she gets excited. When we are at the grocery and she sees it in the display case, she gets excited. Myself and my dad both loved fish, and it is probably a trickle-down from the Scandinavian Knemeyer’s of centuries gone by who presumably ate fish as their principal protein.
* Now we are reading Dr. Seuss to her, and Elena really enjoys it. As the parent reading it is a bit of a chore – they are much longer books than the little things we were reading her before – but she certainly loves it. I can’t decide if it is the rhyming or the characters or the art or the themes or…? But while it is hardly novel to say, Dr. Seuss was a freaking genius. The quality of his books are so far out in front of the many trite, tired, poorly written other children’s books we have for her.
* Elena is in a funny stage now where, whenever she is with me or Sigrid, she repeatedly says the name of the other one. She is never happy with the one she has, she asks for the other again, and again, and again. Then, when she is in bed and one of us won’t let her out, she begins going through a progression of potential rescuers. It goes something like this:
ME: No Elena, it is bed time.
ELENA: Mommy? Mommy? Mommy?
ME: No Elena, Mommy is sleeping.
ELENA: Grammy? Grammy? Grammy?
ME: No Elena, Grammy is in Toledo.
ELENA: Oma? Oma? Oma?
ME: No Elena, Oma is in Germany.
And then Elena goes back to “Mommy” and repeats it all over again.
* Lately Elena seems to be enjoying hugging. She does not like to cuddle – she is always on the move – but every now and then she will say “big hug!” and kind of fall into one of us. I’m proud to say I taught her this! 
* This weekend we had Elena at the park and she got very excited seeing people kicking a soccer ball around. Well, that led to our all kicking around and playing with the balls as a family. She was super excited, running around, giggling, kicking and picking up balls. And I was enjoying being back out on the soccer field for the first time in…20 years?! Actually I used to play soccer in the back yard with Brandon quite a bit. It will be fun to all go out together the next time he is here.
* Elena is in the midst of a major growth spurt: she went from size 6 shoes, to 6 1/2, to 7 over the last four weeks. Otherwise she remains very tall and lean.
* And the biggest change of all for Elena is that, in about 5 1/2 months, she is going to have a new baby brother! Pretty much every day I sing to her, “El-e-na is the li-t-tle one. I love the li-t-tle one!” I’m going to have to come up with some new song to sing her, as she will be the little one no more!
