Ella!

The egg hunts and the dinosaur cocktails continue, but Ella is now hiding the eggs herself and has started correcting Daddy on his dinosaur nomenclature. "Yat not a Ankylo-daw-dus!" she declared this week -- and the dinosaur in question was in fact a Scelidosaurus, not an Ankylosaurus. Other Ellisms this week include "somali" (salami) and "bamboom" (bamboo). Ella saw bamboo at Kew Gardens, and invited her Panda to eat it. She also saw chocolate and coffee plants, after which she pointed at other plants and asked "An what yat plant make?". Ella played her violin at Grandma Jenny's this week; she claims to have played "Twinkle twinkle little star" but we suspect she is exaggerating. Ella is also aware that her second birthday is fast approaching. "Ella is one," she says. "Ella wool be two, on your birthday". (The difference between "my" and "your" is still troublesome.) Also this week Ella has been helping in the kitchen, fetching the milk-shake flavouring to make pink milk and adding salt whenever it is needed. And she wants to visit Mummy's new godson, William, who was born in Cape Town on Saturday. "Wih-me-lin in Af-kih-ka" she says. "Ella want to see him, an take your but-dit and your bade". (Ella wants to go back to South Africa and make sandcastles.)