Ellie Unleashed

Or "Why I Don't Post on the Blog More Often."



Ellie has been getting a little better at playing independently lately.



So when she seemed content to go upstairs to play on her own, I let her. All the doors were closed except the one to her room. Seemed safe enough.



I thought I would take the chance to check email, maybe check a blog or two, and if I was really lucky, post comments on friends' blogs, something I never seem to do. (Even though I read each and every one of your blog posts. Really.) About two minutes in, I heard a loud crash. No crying, but still suspicious.



Then it occurred to me what Ellie's definition of "play" is. It means to pull everything she can reach off shelves and tables and spread them nicely across the floor. Including lamps and lampshades it seems.



Every morning she pulls all the board books off the shelf in the family room, dumps out the wooden block on top of them, and then does a little "dance, dance, dance" on top of them all. Zero to hurricane aftermath in a minute flat.



So while she is more of an independent player, she's not much of an unsupervised player yet. I have been wanting to do more writing and have several backlogged blog posts (ha! say that three times fast), but until Ellie's definition of "play" involves her folding the laundry and picking up the toys, it would seem my Ellie-free time is limited.

P.S. The pictures are mostly blurry because this is how Ellie feels about the camera flash:


So either every picture turns out with that expression (really) or I have to try for flashless, kind of fuzzy pictures. I'll work on my lighting technique. The hair, on the other hand, I have no control over. But that's another post . . .