Happy Mother's Day and 16-Month Birthday Elise

At 16 months, Elise is starting to get the hang of walking even though she still prefers to crawl if she is in urgent need to get somewhere. Her verbal skills are getting more sophisticated and she's attempted to say "cat" and "eat" in Vietnamese. Also, she knows the first letter of the alphabet and points to "A" whenever she sees it. After months of babble, it's so weird to hear her little voice say something comprehensible. It's the sweetest sounding words we've ever heard. We bought Elise her first pairs of shoes, two actually, and she's still trying to get use to them. Probably unfamiliar with the heaviness, she stands planted like a statue, completely confused. Given Mom's weakness for shoes, we figure Elise will have quite the shoe collection that could rival Imelda Marcos.

Elise has started to express strong preferences and when asked if she wants this or that, she either shakes her head briskly or nods eagerly in answer to our questions. It's amazing, but she really understands us! It's hard to believe that we have another "person" living with us and it may sound strange after all this time but we've always just thought of her as our "baby".

Elise has also become quite the artist. She loves her magna doodle and has started to draw shapes like circles. If there's a pen in sight, she makes a beeline for it and starts to scribble. She's even familiar with the click of a pen and perks her ears up looking for the source. She did pick out the pen during her first birthday ceremony so this may not be all that surprising.













Elise started to play peak-a-boo with herself and the funny thing is if she covers her eyes, she thinks we can't see her. Sometimes she gets very animated playing this game that she'll slap herself in the face pretty hard.














For Mother's Day we had dinner with Grandma and Grandpa Nguyen, Auntie Truc and Uncle Gilbert. This time next year, Auntie Truc will be a mommy too! Elise will have another little cousin to play with and we're thinking it's going to be her first boy cousin.