Elizabeth Montage

Elizabeth is growing so much. Her features seem to change by the week, her vocabulary expands daily, and her interests and accomplishments are more and more every moment! "DAT!!" is constantly heard coming forth from her little mouth. If you hear this exclamation, you had better turn and tell her what 'dat' is or else she will continue to yell it until she gets an answer. The child is insatiable!

She stands at the door and demands 'out' or 'doh' in order to get outside and play with her sister and brother. She walks around the kitchen begging for 'coo-kee', 'aaaaapple', 'mana', 'cacker', 'duice' or just a pathetic 'phease?!' if she doesn't have words for what it is she sees that appeals to her stomach. Which is everything.

She comes at us with 'buhts' and wants to be read to. She holds up her arms and wimpers 'up, phease'. She has an adamanet 'yes' and a definitive 'no'. She toddles over and grins at us and asks 'fi-fop?' (This is how we play Ride A Little Pony. Only the little pony never falls down, he just flip-flops from side to side, making the kid sway like a crazy thing.)

She brings me her 'hocks' and her 'sues' every day to put on her feet. She loves her 'bank't' and her 'bebe' when she is tired or going to bed. She proclaims 'tooooo' if I ask the older ones a question and they answer 'me!' and 'me, too!'. When the front door opens or closes any time after nap, she runs to the door calling 'Daddy! Daddy!' And when someone picks her up, she is often known to point one of her sweet little fingers to a distant spot and request to 'goh.'

When no-one is available to read to her sit and respond to her points and excited shouts of 'dat?', she will quietly sit in a chair and look at a book for nearly three minutes put together. Then she is off to find a different book to occupy herself with.


She is a lover of bananas (mana). She would eat one at every meal if we would only let her. She has the special talent of cramming large portions into her cheek and somehow managing to mash it up and swallow it without choking herself.


She is my shoe fiend. If she happens to be shoeless, she will wander over to our shoe basket and pull out shoes until she finds what she is after. Sometimes it is her shoe, sometimes it is Sarah Grace's shoe, occasionally it is Thomas' shoe. At other times, she finds even larger shoes to fill. Like mine! Then she smiles this little self-satisfied smile and clomps around for a bit.


She is a clown. She loves to make her brother and sister laugh, or anyone else, for that matter. She smiles easily and is our regular little Sunbeam. She is with ease the merriest child we have had. And without a doubt, the most independent and opinionated. The road is to be a long one, I do fear.