An Eliana first: She put away the silverware.

An Eliana first: She loaded a video.

It took less than 24 hours for Eliana to discover that the cabinet storing all our videos and CDs was without its child-proof latch. She found the video “The Mysterious Islands” and walked it over to the TV. I think she liked the picture on the case. She opened the Xbox tray, took out the Kinect game disc, set it aside (instead of in its case – naughty), removed the video from its case, loaded it into the Xbox, and closed the tray.

In everyone’s eyes except hers, Eliana is far too young to be manipulating discs or an Xbox, but she apparently had spent months secretly learning the necessary skills by watching her parents and brother. No one had any idea what she was doing until the Xbox controller app on the PC I was using indicated that the Xbox had been turned on. I went downstairs expecting to find Ethan trying to figure out to start a Kinect game by himself. Instead, Ethan was outside, and only our little girl was in the basement.

Not wanting to disappoint her, I spared sharing the detail that the video she chose was Blu-Ray, which Xbox 360 doesn’t support. I stuck with the “discs are too fragile for little girls” theme, which she took well.

An Eliana first: She encouraged a friend to slide with her.

Eliana was on the of the kiddie play set at the park with another girl about her age. At one point they were on the central platform together, when her friend started going one way to crawl through a tube. Eliana went the other way toward the slide. At the top of the slide, Eliana turned to the girl and asked her to slide down with her.

At least, that’s what I think she was asking. I don’t know for sure, since I don’t speak baby talk gibberish, and Eliana didn’t use any of her English words. Fortunately, the other girl, also being a little one, spoke baby talk gibberish fluently. She came over and slid down right after Eliana.

An Eliana first: She borrowed a book from her brother.

Eliana has a bin of books and a drawer of books in her nursery. For her bedtime stories, I chose three books from the drawer and asked her which one she’d like me to read first. Eliana picked up the books, put them back into the drawer, and walked out of the room. I could tell by the sound that she was walking to Ethan’s room.

Eliana returned shortly with one of Ethan’s favorite books – not a picture book, and certainly not a baby book. She sat down in her baby rocking chair and motioned for me to sit next to her. She handed me the book. It was Redwall, by Brian Jacques, a children’s novel that I’ve been reading to Ethan since before he turned four.

Ethan and I are nearly through the book. Since Ethan was already in bed and I didn’t want to disturb our place by reading to Eliana, so I started over and read a couple pages from the beginning. Eliana was captivated, not only in the dialog and its voice characterization, but also in the narrative, painting pictures such as the habit-wearing protagonist’s oversized, floppy sandals.

It’s hard to say how much Eliana understood, but she clearly enjoyed it. She also enjoyed when I took out a baby book with lots of pictures and read that to her, reassuring me that she’s not all grown up just yet.