1.5

Eleanor knows her colors now, although the only ones she signs are white, black, red, orange, yellow, brown, and green. Her favorite color is orange. She's a huge fan of any orange cats we meet outside—especially the two we captured on video last month, which she asks to see again and again.

Eleanor has always gone through cycles of good and bad sleeping. She's never slept through the night consistently, but she'll have approximately two-week periods where she manages it most nights, followed by a few weeks of more frequent waking. The worst periods are during teething, which recently started for all four of her canines. Now that she's older, she's also resisting sleep more actively in the evenings, and we've had to get more draconian about bedtime routines. No Cry has served us somewhat well up to this point, but we might need to give Dr. Ferber a try soon. I'm not enjoying this new phase.

During the day she's an absolute delight, fortunately. She is experimenting with sounds, and has expanded her spoken vocabulary to five words: mama, dada, baba ("baby"), wawa ("water"), and dowa ("door", we decided—she's still working on this one). She can walk five blocks to get to the park, and she (usually) likes helping with household chores. She also likes visiting our housemates, who will very graciously entertain her for a few minutes to give me and Sarah a little rest.