Whoa, it was a big day...

Just a few accomplishments from today:

EV can now successfully and consistently open and close her bedroom door.  We live in a hobbit house where all the ceilings and door handles are really low. Basically, it's a walk-out basement built into a hill which is why we have zero natural light and ALL of my indoor pictures turn out yellow. Anyways, back to our amazing baby. In the morning, we usually use EV as our alarm clock.  Normally we hear her stirring, then talking, then talking loudly, then yelling and eventually yelling/crying for us to come get her.  Sometimes she never reaches the yelling stage and that's when we call her a "Sweet Good Mornin' Baby".  I open her door and ask, "Is there a baby in here?" She will then grab a blanket, EV bear, polar bear or something completely random and ask to be picked up.

Well, now she greets us in the morning. This morning I opened the door and she was standing in the hallway and said, "Hi" just like I say to her. Yesterday she opened her door and plopped herself on the couch with 5 books stacked up.

Side note: her "reading" voice is not the sweet voice I imagine myself using when I read to her.  She yells and sounds a little like Charlie Brown's teacher.  All the pages sound the same and you can tell when she's reading...I'm sure the neighbors hear her.  Ed told me I am not a quiet reader and when I sing the books, which I do almost every day, I am pretty loud...she's a Monkey Do (monkey see, monkey do).

Accomplishment #2: we can add a new word: ball.  She can't say the double L sound but she has the b and a and curls her lips in to finish off the word.  We practiced a lot today which also meant dodging her throwing the softball...the kid's got an arm!

And last but certainly not least, she successfully put her own shirt on today with zero help.  She brought it over to Ed and it was inside out so he fixed it for her.  She put her head through the hole, pulled it down around her neck and put her arms in the long sleeves.  Ed was overcome with emotion with how many things she's done lately to show us she is growing up.  Our little baby.