all by myself

Ella is into dressing herself these days. I don't remember Matt doing this until he was about three but I think girls develop those small motor skills faster than boys. At any rate I am amazed at how well she is doing. She can get a shirt on or pants and even dresses on all by herself with only a little help from me - getting all the appendages in the right holes and such. And honestly she does not want any help - she really wants to do it all on her own. So she gets a little frustrated when I insist on helping - like when both of her legs end up in the same pant leg. She is skinny enough that they actually both fit.

Here she found a pair of my fuzzy socks upstairs, put them on all by herself and then came down to show off her work.But this is my favorite story:

For Ella's birthday we got her a package of underwear because she is sort of starting to think about potty training. She desparatly wanted to try those pretty panties on so she took off her pants and diaper and proceeded to try them on. She is a tiny little thing and those panties were so big on her (do they make underwear smaller than 2T?). She managed to get both legs in one whole and then pulled them up so they really were just a band around her waist.

But she was so proud of herself! She ran all around the room shouting "Ella did it...all herself!"

She was so excited that we could not help but be excited and proud of her too. Later we helped her get them on the right way and get her pants back on. Then I got busy with dinner and forgot that she was wearing underwear. So about an hour later she was standing in the kitchen and said - "uh oh! Ella is super wet!"

I guess our next adventure is potty training.