As you can see, Ella is getting quite good at writing her name and drawing pictures of herself. After some prevarication she seems to have decided to be right-handed. Her "E" is somewhat unorthodox, having as many cross-strokes as Ella can fit in. This is a picture of "Ella being Peter Pan". As she approaches the age of three, Ella has announced that she does not want to have a birthday, but will just always be two, and not grow up, just like Peter Pan. This would mean doing without balloons, it is true, balloons being a feature of birthday parties; but Ella has observed that "when you go to Safeway they give you a balloon", which is true.

This week Ella did an "upsperiment" (experiment) using coloured hyper-absorbent polymer gels, and visited the Tech Museum in San Jose, where she pressed lots of buttons and saw herself through the eyes of a heat-sensitive camera. She also made her weekly trip to the Exploratorium, and visited a teddy-bear factory, where she made her own teddy, called Lucy. On Saturday she went to wine country and had a rainy picnic, and on Sunday she went boating in Golden Gate Park.

Ella's favourite game at the moment is called "Daddy Get It Wrong", in which Ella commands Daddy to say something she knows to be wrong, so that she can correct him. For example:
Ella (having just taken off her sleeping bag): Daddy, say "I will just take Ella's sleeping bag off."
Daddy (wearily): I will just take Ella's sleeping bag off.
Ella (triumphantly): I already did it!

Now over to Ella...

"In playgrounds you play. There's swings in them and no swings in them too. One day I went to the Upsploratorion and it was shut. Then one day I came back and it was open. What happens at the Upsploratorion is that there's a ball thing and a coin thing. There's some water things in it, and some smoke things in it. And also at the Upsploratorion one day I saw a new thing that's hide and seek! There's a bit where you help a aminal look for him." (Ella is talking about a exhibit on animal camouflage.)