Ellie's Outdoor Obsessions

Every few weeks Ellie discovers something that she loves and becomes completely obsessed with it. Sometimes it's a food (it was blueberries for a while, now it's cantaloupe) and sometimes it's a toy (she currently loves this I Love Hawaii beanie baby bear that our friends Michael and Dawn got her over a year ago. She tucks it under her arm and takes it with her everywhere she goes. She feeds it and rocks it and hugs it...this bear has become her baby and her appendage). It used to be that she discovered just one item at a time, and devoted all of her time and attention to it, like said bear. But lately she's racking up the things that she loves and obsesses over, and it encompasses entire categories, not just particular individual items.

Where's Suna? Ellie looks for our neighbor's dog
Sure, she has a quasi-alarming obsession with her Hawaii Bear right now, but there are lots of other things that she's completely fixated on. First and foremost is her obsession with dogs. She absolutely loves dogs. It doesn't matter if it's a dog in a book or on the street. It could be our neighbor's dog (Suna) or Gram and Grandpa's dog (Bentley). She just loves them all. Every time she sees a dog, hears a dog (that includes barking or dog tag jingling) or sees a person walking that she thinks should be walking a dog, she barks (woof, woof). In fact she barks so much that it's quite possible that she actually thinks that she is a dog. When we're outside, she spends half of the time either pointing out dogs walking by or pointing to our neighbor's yard, where their dog may or may not be.

She spends the other half of her time outside obsessing over buses. This child has a bizarre fascination with buses. And lucky for her we live right on a bus route so she stops what she's doing (which is usually looking for our neighbor's dog) every 5 minutes to point at the bus as it goes by. We have a bus stop right in front of our house too, so she often gets extra time to ogle. She says "bus" each time she sees one, although she calls every over-sized vehicle (trucks, SUVs, ambulances) a bus. She also has pretty keen hearing because when we're inside and a bus goes by (Marty and I have completely tuned it out and have no idea this is happening) she helpfully points out that somewhere outside there is a "bus" going by. So pretty much the only thing she is saying these days is "woof, woof" and "bus". Fortunately she just points at the bus and says "bus" but she doesn't chase after it. Yet.