Sing-A-Long

Ellie has been strolling around the house singing E-I-E-I-OOOOOO to herself for a few days now, so we thought we'd let you join in on the sing-a-long. Enjoy!

Surprising Sweater

I can't believe I ever complained about it being a little too hot and dry back in July. Summer now seems to be on holiday and it is 55 degrees and rainy here in merry old England. After walking home from church in the elements, Crystal fixed a "comfort food" lunch and we decided to family-snuggle on the sofa and watch a movie. Being the vigilent mummy, Crystal called to me to get Ellie's sweater for her. "The wool one on the coat hook?" "No, the stripey one. I hung it on the kitchen chair." I paused for a moment to finish checking my email and Crystal called back, "Did you give it to her???" Seems Miss Ellie knows perfectly well what's what and had ambled over to the kitchen to fetch it for herself.

What else does she understand that we're talking about?

(And no, smoothies are not antithetical to chilly Sunday afternoons, though the English would probably be drinking tea!)

Word Count

As a PhD student, the number 100,000 is regularly on my mind. No, that's certainly not how many dollars per year I'll be making if I can land a job as a theology professor. But it is the maximum number of words I'm allowed for my dissertation. It may sound like a lot (and, I guess it is) but the usual problem is having too many words, not too few. I'm finishing up an essay right now that's around 19,000 words. I don't think it's important enough to make up 1/5 of my dissertation. Maybe I'm just wordy.

Anyway, I know you're here to read about Ellie, not me. So I thought we'd try to count her "words". Imagine our surprise when I had casually remarked that I thought she knew about 40 signs, but when we counted them up this evening, we came up with 58! And we may have missed a few.... Most are official American Sign Language (with slight "baby talk" variations), but some of them she's made up on her own. And there are some we're still trying to figure out what in the world she means!

For the record, here's the list. If you think there's anything missing from the list that a baby (oops...a toddler!) would want to say, please let us know!

Animals	Things	Foods	Actions
dog cat sheep pig frog bird giraffe bee monkey rabbit horse bear butterfly fish mouse lion	flower pen eye hand hat phone book shoes hair sand baby ball balloon keys	banana apple strawberry cereal tomato cheese grapes milk pizza egg carrot peas	more all done eat sleep bath help brush teeth thank you/please where drink swing up down sling sunscreen gentle

She can also do a few words vocally, including: Apple, Up, Pat (as in "Pat, Pat, Pat" a bucket full of sand), Ellie, Mummy, Daddy, Hi-Ya, Hey-You, and Bye-Bye. To round off her list, she does four animal sounds: Mooooo, Baaaaa, Woof, and Meow!

Saltburn-by-the-Sea

English town names can be really charming. "Newcastle-upon-Tyne" tells you that if you find Newcastle, you've also found the Tyne river (and vice versa). Of course, one must be careful about promising to pick up something one has purchased on eBay from a seller in "Newcastle" because you may find yourself trying to figure out how to get to "Newcastle-under-Lyme" when you have never head of the Lyme river before. (Hint: that's because it's far far far away....).

Anyway, we celebrated Crystal's new British driving license today by taking a family outing to Salbturn-by-the-Sea. Even the name tells you that this is a nice place to visit, unlike the probably-nonexistent "Saltburn-Well-Inland-in-the-Middle-of-Nowhere".



Saltburn is known for having one of the highest cliffs in England and it was indeed a beautiful walk along the seashore and then up to the top. There was a lovely farm up on the wide, flat expanse of the plateau.

It was fun to introduce Ellie to ocean waves and playing in a "giant sandpit". She really enjoyed the chilly water breaking over her toes. Daddy had to restrain her a little bit from charging off into the depths. She's as daring as her mother!

There's also an interesting "cliff lift" for getting up to the Victorian buildings that line the edge of the town, overlooking the sea. Apparently this was quite a holiday town for "Southerners" (i.e. the rich folk down around London) to come enjoy the nice seaside of the North East. After an ice cream break for cooling down after the cliff hike we took a little ride up to the top and did a little windowshopping before Crystal took us on the happy drive home.